Parades!

Where are the Mummers?  Wasn’t there some kind of Orange Bowl Parade?

The Rose Bowl Parade is at 11 am on NBC, ABC, and HGTV (which does by far the best job).

Football!

Outback Bowl 11 am (supposedly on ESPN).

• South Carolina
• Iowa

Capital One Bowl 1 pm ABC

• Georgia
• Michigan State

Gator Bowl 1 pm CBS

• Nebraska
• Clemson

Rose Bowl 5 pm ABC

• Penn St.
• USC

Orange Bowl 8:30 pm Faux

• Cincinnati
• Virginia Tech

I have to say this is a completely substandard performance.  I should be able to hangover hazed glut myself on sex, violence, and consumption through a dimly remembered bacon and eggs benedict, pancake, bloody mary, mimosa binge for a solid 24 hours.

I am expecting you to provide substitute amusement.

Wednesday I’m headed north to the lake house, where I’m supposed to have Inet but maybe not, one reason I’m agitating for Wednesday.  

Could be gone until the day after eksmas (Friday) and while I would normally expect to be available as usual between 11 pm and midnight certainly, I’ll also unavailable during “family time” at my sister’s which includes at least 2 huge meals a day.  She doesn’t have a connection.

If I have access I’ll be working out of a flash drive on a borrowed machine which is always excellent fun.

Still I’m hoping and planning on staying in touch, looking forward to it actually.

But the lake house could be basically uninhabitable unless you wanted to camp out by the fireplace.  No heat, no phone, no electricity, no water.

No fun at all.

Nor is staying at my sister’s although I’m usually allowed a quiet corner to sulk.

I’ll expect she’ll get tired of cooking and be glad to see our backs.  I imagine we’ll leave right after breakfast Friday, after lunch if we leave from the lake house (which should mean net).

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Guess Who?