Week in Seven Words #490

blaring
The cafe is cozy, dimly lit, with a decor of dark wood and cream. What kills the atmosphere is a large, loud TV mounted on the wall, the people on it yammering away.

blunting
The splinter doesn't hurt so much, because it has lodged in a callus.

directs
The wind stirs the pages of her speech, as if reminding her to look away from the words and at the audience.

encouraging
Hearing good feedback on a draft of my novel sweetens a week of painful, worrisome symptoms.

hydration
A teenager takes a swig from a large bottle. "Water is the best f*cking drink," she says. "It's my best friend."

panels
One man gives a lecture on confronting viewpoints radically different than your own. Another holds a discussion group that reminds me of sitting around in a dorm room at 1 a.m. pondering the meaning of life.

topics
We haven't seen each other in a while, so over pizza we have a short, intense conversation that we try to pack with all kinds of important things – family, politics, cultural differences, the tendency of pigeons to crap on roofs and balconies.

Week in Seven Words #425

designed
A 20-minute walk or a 20-minute subway ride takes me to neighborhoods far apart in architectural style and atmosphere. In one neighborhood, some of the homes look like they could feature in a fairy tale. They have charming irregularities, an uncommon interplay of shapes, bricks arranged into patterns that may be communicating something.

lobbed
I never know where a laugh will come from. This time it's a pun delivered by someone calling from across the Atlantic.

monologuing
He's preaching about oppression and civil rights to a crowded train. He isn't asking for money; all he wants is an audience for his rage.

poultry
When they're loud, the chickens sometimes sound like sea gulls. Otherwise, their vocalizations are quiet and peeved. (If I were anthropomorphizing them, I'd say it's because the sickish scent of compost fills the hen house, and the discarded vegetables and fruit don't meet their standards, not like last week's compost, which was richer in variety and quality.) My favorites are the buttery-colored Buff Orpington variety. (Mostly because I like the name 'Buff Orpington' - sounds like a character from a P.G. Wodehouse story.)

reddening
One eye-catching detail are the red flowers and plants cradled in windowsills. They include poinsettias, carnations, and roses.

unprotected
A field of lavender licked by a cold wind.

variations
Morning rush hour. "Stand clear of the closing doors," says the subway conductor. Then he shouts it. At the next stop and the one after that, his voice is pleading. The stop after that, he sings the words in an anxious lullaby melody, as if he's a parent whose baby is wide awake at 2 am.

Week in Seven Words #396

businesslike
There are several groups meeting in the atrium. One is for learning Spanish, another for figuring out how to make your home more neat. Although the neater home group is the one I should be signing up for, I've joined a discussion on streamlining business processes. It takes a while to get started. The host shows up late; most of the people who RSVP'ed don't turn up at all. (The conversation is interesting anyway.)

entertaining
A mariachi band steps into the subway car with the suddenness of a channel change. Everything's bright and lively and loud for a couple of minutes. Later on in the ride, as the train stalls on a bridge, breakdancers appear, a hair's breadth away from head injury as they swing wildly from the poles and do backflips.

gratified
A young boy and his mom sit in the mouth of a blue tent that's backlit by the sun. They take turns blowing bubbles.

happenstance
The different parts of Prospect Park feel only loosely connected. We explore a forest where a stream slips through tumbled rocks. We come to a dog beach where people wade ankle deep and throw toys for their dogs to splash after. A picnic area floats past us at one point, in a mist of smoke. We follow the tail of a larger body of water; it's serpentine and keeps changing shape. Clearings open up, criss-crossed with shadow, and large meadows suddenly spring into view, bared to the sun. These places don't feel like parts of the same park, only that they settled next to each other by chance the day we visited, so we could walk from one to the other.

overspread
In these narrow streets, a theme emerges of brick submerged in leaves. Trees screen polished windows, and plants spill out of window boxes.

preaching
A passionate sermon in a woman's voice resounds through a barred door. It's a storefront church that contains a cauldron of apocalyptic feeling.

transportation
The lower level of the museum is home to vintage train cars, one of them displaying an ad for cocoa with eerie children. The upper level shows a history of city transportation and its challenges, from overcrowding to extensive flooding.

Week in Seven Words #373

appeased
She deals with the fussy kid by pouring chocolate candies into his hands. His parents won't find out until later.

begging
At the lake's edge, she pleads with her friend on the other end of the line. Her friend has slipped into an inexorable state of mind, and no pleas will move her.

companionable
Sharing a window seat and sipping apple cider with rum on a chilly day.

elephants
Elephants are so weirdly awesome. The configuration of their anatomy, their perceptiveness and intelligence, their size, their apparent emotion. They're fascinating.

gingerly
We're not close; there's no strong love between us. Our hug feels like a tentative touch to a wound.

misanthropically
I swing between having hope in humanity and thinking we're just complete wallowing morons.

trifling
He thinks his words are gold coins; he's pouring them out for us beggars, and we should be grateful. But all he's doing is tossing us some pocket change and bits of lint to go with it.

Week in Seven Words #340

askew
Playing basketball while wearing glasses.

colorant
In a sunset after a thunderstorm, the clouds have a tangerine underbelly.

creamy
His dessert is a cookie drowning in half-melted ice cream. It doesn't matter that he won't finish it. Part of the pleasure comes from chasing chunks of cookie around with his fork in the sweet puddle.

forewarned
Someone who checked out the book before me penciled a warning over one of the short stories: "If after 5 pages you think this is going to change it isn't. It's like swimming in molasses and takes more from you than it gives back."

glimmer
To find the speech moving, I have to forget most of what I know about the speaker. I just take in the cadence and listen to the phrases promising hope and progress. For a short while, I can believe the speech is real. The world doesn't yet intrude on its promises.

ignited
When we step outside, there's a mix of rain and blinding sunlight. The sun has set fire to the rain.

teatime
She lays out a tea service for a woman with white woolly hair and a girl with blue ribbons in her braids.

Deal Me In 2017 - Short Nonfiction Version

Over at his blog, Bibliophilica, Jay has announced the 2017 "Deal Me In" Challenge.

Pick a bunch of short stories, assign each of them to a different card in a deck, and each week pick a card at random. Read the story and share your thoughts about it. (If you don't want to do this on a weekly basis, use only two suits from the deck or something like that.)

The thing is, I don't read short stories based on a pre-planned list. But I'd like to participate. Given that the challenge allows for variations, I'm focusing on essays, feature articles, letters, and speeches. I've been making a list of my own anyway as part of my effort to study more short nonfiction.

So here's my list. I plan to comment on these here or at Words in Bold, depending on the topic.

(If you're interested in participating in this challenge, whether with short fiction, short nonfiction or a mix, go for it, and let Jay know.)

Week in Seven Words #315

biding
Open doorways breathe out sour smells, moist wood smells. People wait for death with the TV on as round-the-clock company.

denseness
When she sits, her cloud of perfume settles like a soft cloak, cushioning the bench and protecting her from other people's touch.

expires
The elevators groan open and admit you at your peril.

fragmentation
With a sense of satisfaction, she tells me that the world is going to pieces. It could be that it's her own world she's talking about, the one of slowness and illness. If her body is crumbling, so must everything else. She's not alone in her disintegration.

minimal
She speaks with command, her message urgent and worth hearing. Most of us won't act on it. We'll think we've done our part by showing up and appearing attentive.

ocher
One of those hopeful days, when the storms have ended, and it's possible to think there'll be no time wasted. The future is all mellow morning sunlight.

sepulchral
A dim marble lobby where a doorman paces, muttering about his dead phone.

Week in Seven Words #294

conferring
To his great pleasure, he gets to roam around with kids a year or two older. They accept him without condescension and pay attention to his opinions.

goofy
I put on oversized orange glasses, hold an inflatable guitar, and pose for snapshots. It's fun. I like these photos much more than the formal ones.

inebriant
He drinks his way to greater warmth and friendliness. His smile is relaxed, his voice cheerful. For a few moments, I imagine we're close.

liquescent
With slow, savoring bites, they suck up the gooey center of a fried Oreo cookie.

pad
The speeches are more or less what I expect. The room is mostly silent, and people continue to eat.

territorial
Once they've filled their plates at the buffet table, they don't move. They stand at the table, eating and talking, their elbows bristling as they defend their ill-gotten space.

youngling
I don't know who the kid is, but he's out on the fringes of a parking lot, playing on an embankment dotted in dandelions. No one else is around.

Week in Seven Words #250

clear-eyed
They prefer being spoken to sincerely, not smothered in pats and hugs and baby talk - a tone-deaf sort of love.

inconsistent
He's wearing a seatbelt, driving at speed limit, and taking his eyes off the road to check sports news on his mobile device.

jarring
He murders an otherwise good presentation with jokes about mental illness. The laughter that ripples through the room is faint and disbelieving.

projectiles
His parents are too polite to discuss the issue publicly, but he's overheard them hash it out at home. He doesn't understand everything they say, but he knows enough to know they'd be embarrassed. He knows how to make the next family get-together more entertaining.

stashed
She's brought paper shopping bags full of winter clothes and toiletries to an elegant restaurant. The waiters pretend not to see any of it poking out from under the tablecloth.

tickling
His small feet thrumming on the back of my car seat.

what-ifs
To what extent would my life have been different had I grown up next door to him? I consider this as we sit on opposite benches and pick at our salads. He might have been an advisor or advocate. Or maybe still too much removed from what was going on. I might not have listened anyway.

Week in Seven Words #195 and #196

#195
ambiguity
The child finds the balloon entrancing. The dog backs away from it with a growl.

appraising
He's young but speaks like a savvy consumer, confident of what's a quality product and what isn't.

erratic
I've bumped into them, careened off of them, and have no particular desire to see them again.

facade
When you speak with him, he'll look past your shoulder at the next prospect. I feel like I'm standing outside a vacated building, talking at it.

mold
She will only be satisfied when she breaks me. Of course, she doesn't see it that way. She sees it as helping me.

partisanship
He makes it a point, wherever he goes, to wear a hat covered in political pins, with additional pins on his lapel and the front of his jacket. His appearance is more an endorsement for the other party than for his own.

pollyanna
Sometimes I find it difficult to believe that he can look at us all and really believe in what he says. His words come up against the harsh reality of who we are.

Week in Seven Words #142

effusive
She talks without pause about books, school, computers, e-readers, clothes, and soccer, and apologizes (unnecessarily) for talking too much, even as she tells her younger sister not to interrupt her.

faded
The trees are dusted with yellow and pale orange, and the shadows are long as we stand together beside the remains of a picnic. Most people have left, except for a businessman who tells us about his mystical healing powers.

germinal
I don't think it's best for me to stay in my current home for more than a year or two. We'll see.

soured
In the car, an atmosphere of rancor and brokenness.

strands
His speech is made up of several beautiful threads that don't get tied together.

synergistic
Seared tuna with avocado and mango. The ingredients separately don't move me one way or another, but together they're bliss.

tapped
He looks away at one point, tears in his eyes, as he asks for advice. My voice sounds stronger and wiser than I am; the words emerge from a place that's deeper than the surface pettiness and worries in my life. But I don't know if any long-term good will come of this conversation.

Week in Seven Words #139

distinct
They're identical twins in platform shoes and airy skirts, wearing jewelry with mystical designs. If I had to guess their age I'd say they're in their 50s, but they carry themselves like much younger women, brushing back the hair from their face and perching bird-like on their seats during the Kol Nidre service on the eve of Yom Kippur. I don't even know them but I have a feeling they're pretty awesome.

distracting
On Saturday afternoon a little girl, maybe three or four, shows up to synagogue wearing shoes with built-in squeakers. Every time she takes a step they let out a loud high chirpy noise. Two questions cross my mind as I try to concentrate on praying: 1) Why would you have your child wear shoes like that to synagogue? 2) Why would you buy shoes like that to begin with? Children are already experts at making noise; they don't need your help.

matrimony
The first married couple: man and woman stand apart and discuss the pains in their legs and whether there will be rain later in the evening. The second married couple: man and woman sit on a bench, hold hands and say nothing.

mums
The orange-yellow mums in the flower pot by the window look like a multi-faceted sea creature, small insects swimming in and out of it.

receptive
Towards the end of the fast on Yom Kippur I'm mellow. During the short afternoon break between synagogue services I sit in a nearby park, where my mind throws open its doors and says, "Welcome world," to the trees, the passing cars and pedestrians.

summation
He speaks eloquently, but his story would have been more powerful had he not ended it with a request for money.

teshuva (תשובה‎)
The Hebrew word for 'repentance' is teshuva, which means 'return.' You've gone off course and now it's time to come back. Teshuva is important all year round but is especially emphasized in the 10 days spanning from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur. On Sunday we go out to lunch, mindful of what happened last month. But unlike last month there are no fights this time, no recriminations that ruin our plans.

Worth Watching: The King's Speech (2010)

Title: The King's Speech
Director: Tom Hooper
Language: English
Rating: R (because His Royal Highness doesn't stammer when he's cursing a blue streak)

Synopsis
The Duke of York (Colin Firth), known as "Bertie" to his family, is second in line to the throne after his older brother. Bertie prefers to stay out of the public eye; the few speeches required of him are disastrous on account of his stammer. At the arrangement of his wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), he undergoes speech therapy with Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), who demands great effort and openness from him. In spite of some progress, Bertie still stumbles during moments of nerves and high emotion. After his father, George V (Michael Gambon), dies and his brother, Edward VIII (Guy Pearce), abdicates the throne, Bertie becomes King George VI. On the eve of WWII he's required to broadcast an important speech with a strength and eloquence he's convinced he'll never possess.





Characters
Lionel Logue is passionate, wry, and just a little bit bonkers (in a manner unique to Geoffrey Rush). His character is also deepened by personal disappointments and struggles, such as his inability to start up a career as a Shakespearean actor.





From Colin Firth's Bertie you get a sense of a decent man who's fun to be around when he can relax, which isn't often. The few people who make him feel at ease are his wife and daughters (the elder of the two became Queen Elizabeth II in 1952). As his wife, Helena Bonham Carter is good at mixing upper-class restraint and properness with the sense of fun and play that she's brought to other very different movie roles.

I got a kick out of the fact that they made Winston Churchill a character, though I laughed too because I recognized the actor who plays him (Timothy Spall) from only one other role: Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter films. He doesn't look sufficiently different from Peter here and doesn't have a large enough part to make himself a distinct character, so I kept thinking of him as an animagus politician. Another "cross-over" moment that briefly threw me out of the film was the scene where Lionel Logue's wife, Myrtle (Elizabeth Ehle), meets Bertie for the first time. Ehle starred as Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC's grand 1995 production of Pride and Prejudice, which also made Colin Firth famous as Mr. Darcy; it's probably still the role that Firth is most strongly associated with. So to have the two of them meet in a quiet room tipped the movie back into the Regency era for a few seconds, and I expected him to launch into a pompous marriage proposal. But then I was tilted right back to the 1930s, because Myrtle Logue treated the king with a nervous deference that Elizabeth Bennet would never have felt in the presence of Mr. Darcy.

Relationships and conflicts
Bertie and Lionel become friends, though it's a struggle, and they fight along the way. Bertie hates appearing vulnerable, and he's had to deal with so many quacks that it takes him time to trust someone; he's also conscious of the difference in station between him and Lionel, and it isn't easy for him to get used to Lionel's informality. Add to that the pressure of his public duties and the fact that he had thought, with great relief, that he'd never be king, and friction between the two men is inevitable. With the exception of his wife and daughters, Bertie tends to be reserved around everyone, in part as a defense mechanism against the mocking he's endured over his stuttering.

Bertie is sweet to his daughters and has a steady source of warm support and companionship from his wife, who consoles him, cheers him up, banters with him, and occasionally sits on him or stuffs things into his mouth. Firth and Bonham Carter play well off each other.





Memorable sights and sounds
Lionel runs Bertie through various exercises that lend themselves to interesting visuals (like Bertie rolling around on the floor) and sounds (vowels belted out with mixed dignity and silliness). At a few points in the movie, Bertie also speaks in song; if he couches his sentences in the melody of a familiar song, he stutters much less or not at all. This use of song sometimes has a comic effect but at other times is used to highlight a personal melancholy.

I also loved Bertie's expression as he hears himself deliver a soliloquy from Hamlet. Lionel had him record it while being drowned out by music so that he couldn't actually hear himself speak. Later on, after breaking off in disgust from Lionel Logue and his unconventional methods, Bertie listens to his own voice speaking steadily, and it's a wonderful moment of revelation. Shakespeare in general is woven nicely into the movie (including Lionel's audition for the part of Richard III).

Stand-out scenes
The King Edward's Chair scene. Bertie's confidence initially lapses, and it seems that he's going to give up again on working with Lionel. But after Lionel insolently drapes himself over King Edward's Chair, which is the throne used during a monarch's coronation, Bertie's anger at Lionel's presumption prompts him to eventually shout out that he has a voice! Bertie also shows himself to have a feeling and respect for tradition that contrasts with his older brother's depicted carelessness in abdicating the throne to be with Mrs. Wallis Simpson.

Another great scene is the climactic delivery of the speech on the eve of WWII ("In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history..."). The movie cuts back and forth between Bertie picking his way through it word by word, with Lionel standing opposite him, gesturing and coaching, and the king's large audience including various people in their homes, Bertie's family in the palace, and his older brother and Mrs. Simpson.

Further thoughts
Though the movie isn't a documentary and was made to show a man overcoming challenges to rise to the occasion, it still interests me to think about how the filmmakers played around with history and with the characters. For the sake of drama, the relationship between Lionel and Bertie was compressed to a shorter period of time, when in fact they had been working together since the 1920s; and who knows if they ever got to be this informal with one another by the end. I haven't read enough about the characters in general to venture a guess as to what they were like with each other. The movie also omits the whole issue of Neville Chamberlain and appeasement (along with George VI's public show of support for Chamberlain after the Munich Pact) and depicts Churchill and George VI as being friendly and supportive of one another from the very beginning. The filmmakers shape it so that everyone seems more or less united at the war's start, with George VI hoping that his speech impediment won't prevent him from being a resolute figurehead, a symbol of strength and resistance. And it's true that during the war, he and his wife appeared often in public, and visited various places in the UK and abroad, to boost morale.

Here's an actual recording of George VI, delivering the speech on September 3rd, 1939:



The text of the speech is here.

*All images link back to their source (Flixster community).

For Presidents Day - a bit of Valley Forge

After reading this interesting Smithsonian Magazine piece on George Washington's skill with maps and his extensive use of them, I thought I'd post some photos from a visit this past summer to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania where the Continental Army was encamped the winter of 1777-78.

The army held its drills on these fields, under the supervision of Baron von Steuben (there would have been ice, mud and snow everywhere):



George Washington's Headquarters:







The accommodations for the soldiers guarding the house were more spare:



There was rampant disease and scarce supplies; over two thousand soldiers died over the course of the winter.

At the Washington Memorial Chapel, the "Grieving Mother" statue:



Some of the mothers of these soldiers would have been with them at Valley Forge (along with wives, sisters, children...); the estimated 500 women encamped there worked primarily as nurses and to repair and launder clothes.



From a letter that Washington wrote from Valley Forge to George Clinton, governor of NY:

I am calling upon all those, whose stations and influence enable them to contribute their aid upons so important an occasion... tho' you may not be able to contribute materially to our relief, you can perhaps do something towards it; and any assistance, however trifling in itself, will be of great moment at so critical a juncture, and will conduce to keeping the army together till the Commissary's department can be put upon a better footing, and effectual measures concerted to secure a permanent and competent supply.

Several years later he was addressing a meeting of his officers, who had serious grievances against Congress (with the danger of there being a clash between the army and the civilian government). At one point he said, in the middle of reading a letter written by a Congressman explaining the financial difficulties that made it difficult to adequately recompense the troops: "Gentlemen... you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country." Neither his speech (he wasn't the best of public speakers), nor the words he'd read to that point, seemed to move them as much as that little bit of human frailty.

It's amazing to think about all the turning points of history in which he was a key figure.

Week in Seven Words #50

conflagration
It takes me a few seconds to register that the sky is full of smoke, a great expanding cloud that thins out with distance, mixing into the mild peach sunset. As I get closer, I see large flames several blocks away, trembling insanely, tall as a house. Later on the news gets out - an apartment building destroyed in a five-alarm fire, thankfully no one killed or hurt. There are however over a hundred people who lost their homes.

imparted
The first time I arrive at the building complex, someone walks me through the corridors, shows me how they're interconnected and which staircases I should use to get to the third floor. The next day as I arrive, someone asks me for directions, and it's my turn to be the helpful guide.

reticent
She wishes I would confide in her more, but there are reasons I don't. I tell her little things, here and there, some offerings of opinion and thought, occasionally a deep feeling, but nothing that would make me too vulnerable.

roughhew
He doesn't seem comfortable with public speaking. This is hardly his first time in front of a crowd, and he does just fine, but there's only so much of himself that he can master - he can't help the flushed cheeks, the hands that tremble slightly, the voice that stops and starts.

slurry
Gray brown slush, messing over everything, as if the sidewalk has spit up and forgotten to pat its mouth clean.

tenacity
I don't want to be resigned, to walk a rut because that's the most comfortable way. I say this not because I'm one hundred percent certain I won't betray myself, only because I hope I won't, and I'll work hard not to. There are things I can't compromise on and give up on, not without a sense of crushing sadness.

tracery
I love how the trees are outlined by snow, a crisp network of branches. Each bare limb is traced in white, sharp and elegant.

Extracts: "The better angels of our nature"

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. - from Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, 1861

Much-needed perspective.

Week in Seven Words #17

aperture
For the second time in as many weeks, I watch a film that holds my attention and afterwards leaves me feeling inspired and content that I spent time on it. I also watch it with someone who has seen it before, and I like catching his reactions as he anticipates or rediscovers the little moments and details that delight him.

conviction
During the talk he gives at the public library, his body sometimes seems to seize up with the force of his words.

kaleidoscope
A young child's birthday party. Wrapping paper, fragments of cardboard, and colorful plastic figurines litter the floor and slip between sofa cushions. There's pin the nose on the clown (almost every child peeks), and turns taken at a seemingly indestructible pinata (the bat swings wildly, narrowly misses windows and faces). There are water gun fights, mouths and fingers messy with chocolate cake and pizza grease, laughter and smiles, the occasional sulk in the corner, and adventures into the far corners of the yard.

ladylike
At a bridal shower we eat off paper plates decorated with purple flowers. Lavender candles float in a bowl at the center of the table. There are colorful salads to start with, and then a decadent descent into cheesecake, brownies, and ice cream. Two of the guests fashion an impromptu hat out of wrapping paper, ribbons, and silver bows; the bride-to-be wears it at a becoming angle on her head.

odds
I buy her a birthday gift, and as it turns out, it's the exact same gift she bought for her boyfriend on his birthday last year. It's not a popular gift either, like a best-selling book, but something obscure (it seemed).

scintillation
Our walk takes us across an open bridge, a row of lampposts on our right, traffic hurtling along on our left, the river dark and speckled with light. Lightning flares across large swaths of sky; we walk more quickly, thinking that no, this is not the best time to find ourselves on a bridge, but that we might as well take the opportunity to be dazzled.

sculpture
Chiseling the text and graphs so that they all fit on a single page; I'm not there yet, there are still some lines spilling onto page 2, so I need to play around with space, plucking out a word here and there, and slowly it will assume its final compact shape.

"It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream."

Here's the text of the "I Have a Dream" speech.

And posted on the same site, a video excerpt:



I'd like to highlight these lines in particular:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

There's more than one way to understand the words "judged by the color of their skin", especially these days. There's the salient meaning - that of a vicious racist judgment; there's still racism today of course, and this racism is verbalized and perpetrated by individuals all over, from different racial and ethnic groups in our society.

There's also another meaning to those words. One where the judgment doesn't have to be negative, or at least overtly negative. It just has to be a judgment, based on skin color alone. A decision, based on skin color alone. Forget looking at the individual in a well-rounded sense - as a complex person. The individual is instead seen in a superficial sense, a member of a group, like all the other members.

It's a laziness of thought, a degradation of the individual, a diminishing commitment to regard each person as his or her own unique self and help people develop to the fullest extent of their potential. It promotes divisions among people. It promotes a superficial sense of "diversity" - not a diversity of intellect, of ability and talent and temperament - but a kind of diversity that looks good in photo ops. And race is only one dimension in which this superficial and more subtly pernicious form of thinking crops up.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

Let's work towards and fight for a love of the individual - of individual merits and substance, individual complexity, each person judged on character, on competency, on word and deed.

"The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here."

Both the words and the deeds are remembered, though like much of our history, the fact of them is remembered more than the spirit. We need reminding; the words, the memory of those deeds, need repeating.

November 19th, 1863, Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. And the words, they project across decades, decades, the spirit and the force of the ideas alive to us, if only we choose to attend to them.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

It's easy to take this country for granted; it's easy take your liberties for granted. But the struggle for their continuance and endurance has always been hard-fought; it certainly still is today. Don't let yourself forget what our soldiers do and face every day. And keep in mind the multiple ways in which this struggle manifests itself - the daily battle against complacency, ignorance and lazy habits of mind, defeatism, petty tyrannies, the creeping tendrils of confinement and control that wrap themselves around our lives when we're not looking, when we cease to care.

The Gettysburg Address