I was born in Stuart Circle Hospital, named after the striking sculpture of the Confederate general at the circle’s center. Over the years from the backseat of the family station wagon, I anticipated the galloping horse as we got closer, turning to look back at the rider’s plumed hat and cape. My last image was always of the spurs on the heel his left boot, barely secured in the stirrup. Fortunately, mine is not the only imagination captured by this sculpture. Meet Kehinde Wiley’s 2019 re-imagination of another whinnying horse and purposeful rider.
Read MoreThis time I was struck by King’s call for “creative tension” to shake loose the status quo and force dialogue.
Read More“Is your heart right? If your heart isn’t right, fix it up today” (The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.). That’s the big question along with a clear mandate. Take an honest look within. Fix what’s not good.
Read MoreOn August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his impassioned “I Have a Dream Speech” to over 250,000 civil rights supporters at the Lincoln Memorial, site of the culmination of the historic March on Washington. Two weeks earlier, on August 16, a young girl played in the first integrated tennis match on the public courts of Byrd Park in Richmond, VA. I did not comprehend the meaning or the magnitude of either event at the time. But I do now.
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“Give me hope, help me cope / with this heavy load,” George Harrison sang and strummed with three of his British friends in 1973. Wrong weighs like a wet blanket on our souls. Performing his song years later, Harrison’s prayer remains ours: “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth).” Hearts seek light—hands want holding.
twenty-twenty-five / give us love…connect the dots… / our new-fashioned plans