Good Day

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I tend toward pessimism. So, in an effort to reset the universal balance of my life, I offer the following:

Today is a good day. The sun is shining and I don't need a jacket in this first week in November. The leaves have started to change colors. I wrote a lecture for yesterday's classes, then decided to review instead. My students confirmed that some of them, more than a few, are actually getting it. So, instead of spending my Wednesday struggling through mid-week exhaustion to put a lecture together, I'm relatively relaxed. My hair looks pretty good today.

And . . . change is on the horizon. Tomorrow, I'm lecturing on the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Sometimes, life just works out. I can't help but think about an August afternoon before I was born, when a preacher from Georgia stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered one of the best-known speeches in our history. I can't say it better than he did, and I won't even try.

"With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true."

-----Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have a Dream," March on Washington, August 28, 1963

Today is a good day.