I DON'T READ MANY BOOKS, BUT THIS ONE IS A MUST READ

I own lots of books. I check out books from the library. But to be truthful, I don't read many books. Rarely do I get through an entire book, even when I start it. I read biographies, non-fiction, seldom does a fiction book get more than a promise that some day I'll sit with it. And yet, I prefer the book over the kindle and similar inventions. And when I do read a book, I like to mark it up for favorite lines and passages.

Yesterday, I sat down and finished a book that I had started a few weeks ago, liked and wanted to finish. But that has happened before, the wanting part and the book never gets read. But, I had a day that I decided to sit down and actually use the hours to read. No television on as background to my life, no music, no computer to gobble up my attention and time. First, I went to bed early the night before, which is also a rare thing for me to do and I took the book to bed and read a little before closing my eyes. In the morning, as the pen went dry that I was journaling with I decided to get my day started and then sit down with Michele Norris' book, The Grace of Silence. That is the book I finished yesterday. Of course, knowing that it was due at the library tomorrow was a bit of a motivation. And my son, inspired me, as well. He loves to read books and spoke of it on Saturday.

This book was an inspiration to me because I want to write about chapters in my life. And it was also relevant because the years that she wrote of her father's life was during the time I was about to be born and the time my father was also the age to go into the service for World War II as her dad was.

I highly recommend this book and hope that high schools and colleges will put it on their reading lists. It should be included certainly on history course book lists.


Click on the images to enlarge


The chapter The War at Home is worth the price of the book.




There is an excerpt at Michele Norris' website.

You can buy the book at Amazon

Or you can check it out at your library. It is a "must read" if you want to take the advice from someone who doesn't take the time to read a book very often.

The portion below from page 81 in the chapter Service is relevant to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy today by Senator Mc Cain and the like. The color added is mine.

Over the course of my father's enlistment, the navy adopted new attitudes toward Negroes and their abilities, deciding that the marginalization of men with able bodies and agile minds only served to undermine the war effort. In February 1945, the navy published a new pamphlet for all naval officers, called the Guide to Command of Negro Naval Personnel, it spelled out the reversal of p0licy: "In modern total warfare any avoidable waste of manpower can only be viewed as material aid to the enemy. Restriction, because of racial theories, of the contribution of any individual to the war effort is a serious waste of human resources." 6

Personally, war is a waste of human resources to me. But Michele Norris book is about racism in the USA and she covers it in ways that I never learned about in my history courses.

These pictures are not from The Grace of Silence. The link is below for more pictures of African Americans who fought in World War II

US Army

1. "On parade, the 41st Engineers at Ft. Bragg, NC in color guard ceremony." N.D. 208-NP-4HHH-2. (african_americans_wwii_001.jpg)

2. "An MP on motorcycle stands ready to answer all calls around his area. Columbus, Georgia." April 13, 1942. Pfc. Victor Tampone. 111-SC-134951.

Pictures of african-americans World War II

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Also, I saw the HBO documentary Wartorn-1861-2010 recently. It is about post-traumatic stress and the veterans and their families who live with the effects of it after serving in the military.

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The Buzz

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synopsis

ARE WE FREE YET?

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This Belongs to You and Me
. . . NOT our elected politicians. Not Corporations, not the media, not corporate-paid lobbyists.
But to you and me. But we must claim it, proactively.

And why should we care when other people aren't free? Other than it is the morally, ethically and spiritually the right thing to do ~ it lends to our own security at home and in the world. When there is unjustice in other countries, there is more of a chance that we will have less leverage and influence in those places and also terrorists love to go to those places and build their forces. This is what happened in Sudan.

Whether we like it or not, we are only a player in this world. We are not king. And we have lost our influence around the world during the George W Bush administration. It doesn't take much travelling outside the United States of America to learn the effects of the torturing that we have been doing in the name of the USA, the Iraq war and our stubbornness to ignore environmental effects of our lifestyle choices.

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From: lovethec

I actually typed in the google window Bush Killing the Constitution and found this Youtube.

MARTIN LUTHER KING'S LETTER FROM THE BIRMINGHAM JAIL

EXCERPT:
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait."

But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking:

"Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.

I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws.

One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

A TESTAMENT OF HOPE: THE ESSENTIAL WRITINGS AND SPEECHES OF MARTIN LUTHER KING

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"The Constitution is just a piece of paper" ~ George W. Bush