Wednesday morning. Los Angeles. Expected temperature: 90 degrees! Oh, and it's February. Ain't global warming fascinating! Several years ago, when I was living in New York City, starving. I think the year was 1997. I'm not sure. When you're starving everything's a blur [it's from all of that light-headedness]. Anyway, I was working for this internet company called The Mining Company. My job was to surf the site for faulty links, misprinted text, etc. One morning I decided to read the New York Times, something I rarely did then: It was strictly the Village Voice, or no voice at all. I found this tiny tiny article nestled deep between blurbs about liposuction and Katie Couric's teeth... it was an article by the National Weather Service. It stated: our globe's climate was undergoing a major shift. That within the next two years the average American would NOT be able to walk down the street and say Oh, a twister during an Ohio Christmas is not big thing. This has been happening for years. Relax. The tiny article clearly suggested that our weather would be unrecognizable and highly unpredictable. I remember telling a lot of my friends about this story, and they just looked at me like, Here Keith goes again. Harping on the extremes. And of course there were those who blew a hole in the story by claiming the bible's Book of Revelations says the same thing, but even better, there will also be wars and rumors of wars and brother against brother all under a falling sky, LITERALLY.

Which brings me to this:

Yesterday evening, after a long day at rehearsal, I came home and watched Coretta Scott King's funeral telecast on CSPAN from New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. Now she was one beautiful, amazing woman. The whole fact that she attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs Ohio, a notoriously progressive, leftist, artsy, critical-thinking institution of higher learning tucked away in plain-Jane Ohio, well... that says A LOT about the late Mz King. She even had plans to graduate and pursue a career in performance and progessive social activism, much like her HERO, the socialist and outspoken artist Paul Robeson. Mz King had the soul of a real RADICAL. And then much of that vivacity seemed to be submerged once she married the young Christian minister, Martin Jr. Or did it? According to a few of my radical, intellectual sister-friends in High Places... Coretta may have very well been the MIND behind the MOVEMENT.

Which brings me to this:

I actually wanted to segue into a discussion about religion and black people and New Birth Missionary Baptist Church's crusade against homosexuality, and Fred Phelps saying Coretta was being punished by the wrath of God for promoting the homosexual agenda, and Bernice King leading the march to her father's grave speaking out against gays and their rights, and if Coretta really would have wanted to have her funeral in such an anti-human rights place when she was ALL ABOUT human rights. And when will some black people, in particular, examine how they're using Christianity to legitimize their hatred and FEAR of "the different"; of themselves. But I won't discuss that. Not today at least.

Which brings me to this:

With global warming encroaching and the polar caps melting [officially] and Coretta Scott transitioning, I'm compelled to say this: Some of us know we are here for something great. It's a whisper in the ear, it's a dream we refuse to remember; it's something locked into our DNA. And that something great may not be to build an empire of kings, or discover Atlantis, or climb a mountain and just sit there and chill, but to simply recognize we are here on Earth and that today we can breathe and think and see and hear and that we have that right by any means necessary... well, that may be as great as it gets. And that's a whole lot of greatness!

Until next time,

Keith