Freida Wheaton’s sense of occasion and community brings together a diverse and accomplished group of creative and business people that are always a pleasure to meet. Last year we gathered to celebrate the victory and promise of Barack Obama’s new administration. This year we gathered again to remember Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy as it…
Janet — Michelle and I were heartbroken to learn this morning of the death of our dear friend, Senator Ted Kennedy. For nearly five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well-being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts. His ideas and…
Marvin Bell has written a fine poem on an impossible subject. In its sweep, yet anchored in strong, precise images that anchor the ideas that America was founded on…in its inclusion of family, of people who work with both hands and heads…for me, it’s a true poem—perhaps even a great poem—of the beat of what…
(Photo from http://www.writespirit.net/inspirational_talks/political/martin_luther_king_talks/martin) Yesterday I attended a magnificent brunch celebration for Martin Luther King Jr. and the upcoming historic inauguration of Barack Obama. Freida Wheaton’s home art gallery named “Studio 53” was a fitting backdrop for this salon–a gathering of the most prominent African Americans in St. Louis and its expanded metro area…reaching as far…
It seems that humans, in order to deal with the mass of humanity they encounter, need to organize the masses by reverting to labeling people through identity. I don’t know if this is genetic or a learned behavior (clearly the details are very much learned), but it is the root of much of the problems…
As we got closer to Grant Park, a friend from Oregon called and said she just wanted me to hold my phone up when Barack spoke so she could hear him. The lines of people snaked up Michigan Avenue; by now it was 9:45 p.m. and my daughter was sure we were too late. About…
Courtesy of the Obama family Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro with son Barack in Hawaii. I’m in love this morning with Janny Scott’s NY Times profile “A Free-Spirited Wanderer Who Set Obama’s Path” which so delicately traces the “unconventional life of Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, the parent who most shaped Mr. Obama”. A Mother’s Influence is…
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of…