Goodbye to Goldendale

It is really strange/moving to be uprooting and relocating.

It's something I have done rather often dating back to my escape from "The South" in 1942 as I had all my worldly goods (except my beloved Lionel electric train) in one big trunk (which got lost by the railroad company) on my way to Boston by way of New York City.

This time is just as adventurous/risky because I will arrive in Madrid on Wednesday with no known place to sleep that night, although I'm pretty sure it will be OK and not require finding room at the inn.

I was just invited to give the welcoming keynote at the Web4All conference next year in Raleigh and all of this is becoming part of that talk. The years since the WWW conference in Santa Clara (WWW6 - 1997) at which the Web Accessibility Initiative was kicked off have been largely flooded with almost magical experiences and the flight to Spain seems a fitting companion to all the relationships I've formed since.

This will likely be the last sermon written in Goldendale and I may never return here but it has been an incredible time during which I learned to be "old".

As I am fond of saying "if I felt any better, they'd put me in jail".

Love.

Bah

On Sept. 15, 1963, four black girls were killed when a bomb went off during Sunday services at a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, in the deadliest act of the civil rights era.

On June 12, 1963 Medgar Evers was murdered.

On June 21, 1964 Cheney, Goodman, and Schwerner were murdered.

Where were we?

I'm still not "reconciled" to these events and feel much like I do in other personal periods of grief. I cannot forget and probably will never forgive so I just avoid going to that part of the country, even though it has changed some. In fact, because I feel that I am living in a "rogue nation", I am moving to Spain as soon as possible.

Love.

A different 9/11

An earlier tragedy on September 11 still tears me up.

I wonder if some future "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" concerning American captors at Guantanamo will reveal some awful events that now are swept up in Bro. Cheney's "waterboarding isn't torture" assertions. I wonder if he will say, like his South African counterpart Jimmy Kruger, who in a speech touching on Steve Biko's murder that it "left him cold"?

Love.

Who's Human?

As I examined the failures of the U.S. Constitution's being amended with an "Equal Rights Amendment" (ERA) I realized that "piecemeal" elaborations of Human Rights via legislation like those passed to end discrimination for various diversities ("race"/ethnicity/gender/"disability") might be better served by a "Human Rights Amendment" (HRA).

The ERA was successfully opposed by women's groups.

The possibility of a HRA is problematic because we are torn by at least two distinct definitions of "human": Until it can breathe and pulse on its own, a fetus is just an elaborate part of a woman's body and survives with her permission; As soon as it is conceived, the fetus has all the protections of law that all humans enjoy.

Although we might find some solace in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, it is clear  that "United Nations" was organized by and for the continuing dominance over humans by nation-states. However it does sidestep defining who's human. I wonder if it could be adopted today?

Love.