Monday Meh, MLK edition

The Problem We All Live With, Norman Rockwell

One of the most disheartening experiences for those who grew up in the years when Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall were alive is to visit public schools today that bear their names, or names of other honored leaders of the integration struggles that produced the temporary progress that took place in the three decades after Brown v. Board of Education, and to find out how many of these schools are bastions of contemporary segregation. It is even more disheartening when schools like these are not in deeply segregated inner-city neighborhoods but in racially mixed areas where the integration of a public school would seem to be most natural, and where, indeed, it takes a conscious effort on the part of parents or school officials in these districts to avoid the integration option that is often right at their front door.

Jonathan Kozol, "Still Separate, Still Unequal"

Wienerdog Wednesday, Literary Edition

Read excerpts HERE

Just back from a hurried road trip to Boston and back. The drive North was made more entertaining by the audio version of The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, recommended some time ago by Mr. Charleston but only last week finding its way into my CD player.  This is the second book in a trilogy, but even without having read the first (Portuguese Irregular Verbs), it required no background knowledge of the protagonist -- just the ability to stay focused on the road while laughing hysterically.

Wienerdog Wednesday, Winter Edition

Nothing for a long dog to do on long winter afternoons but take a long snooze.

We finally did something we said we'd never do and bought Scooter Pie a sweater this year - I think her ol' bones appreciate having the extra layer of warmth when there's not a lap to latch onto.