I am proud to live in a town that sees clearly what is happening to our country. I am proud that our journalists fearlessly put the truth in our Iowa City Press Citizen newspaper on the day we honor one of our greatest United States citizens via the above "political cartoon." I am less and less proud that the tone of this "cartoon" is necessary.

Dr. Martin Luther King lived and worked in a world of possibilities, and he met many powerful obstacles to achieving these possibilites. Hoover was just one. But the powerful did not stop him. He had more power because he was sure that another world was possible, and he worked selflessly -- in the face of much ridicule and hate -- to make it come true for all. In the process, Dr. King's work served to shine a harsh light on the ways in which we treat those who are less fortunate, different, or marginalized by the ways in which our society "defines" them. 

Dr. King must be honored beyond this day; he and his dreams are not only to be paid homage on one day each year, but forever. We have been privileged to live longer than Dr. King, and we have a duty to do as much and more. His short life reflected his belief that whatever we do, we must try to set an example for others, we must live to serve, and we must serve as an inspiration to all. Few citizens who hold the most powerful microphones in the US today are doing any of this. They are not doing it in government, in the mass media, in churches or so called faith-based-institutions, in aid to the poor, in commitment to educate the populace to the best of our ability, and more. Instead, citizens are forced to continue to fight for basic freedoms that were won long ago by the blood of Dr. King and long before him by the very words of our Bill of Rights. 

We have inherited a legacy from Dr. King that must be continued in all we say, do, and think, at all costs. Most are not living this legacy today, but some are trying. 

Thank you, Dr. King, for your inspiration, and for your life. You have made me proud to be alive. I, for one, will try harder to proudly uphold your legacy.

Enough said.

Nan

Each time I pick up the newspaper, any newspaper, another shift in time has occurred. This is no surprise. Bound to happen. Time, the places, spaces, and actions by which we have fabricated our lives, holds our attention like flittering cardinals' wings in fresh snow. This time, however, I am appalled beyond words. Thus, this will be a short posting; I am struggling to speak to you.

Yesterday, I saw the movie "Brokeback Mountain" in the small town of Iowa City, Iowa. The theater was packed. In fact, lines wound out the lobby doors, past the once rollicking now defunct video arcade, and nearly clear to the outer doors of Sycamore Mall. It was Saturday, cold, and people had been cooped up, residing indoors under the gray dome of winter for more than a week. I thought they were going to other films. I was wrong. Most met me as we shared a squeeze through the door and maneuvered our ways to our favorite seats, IF they were empty.

"Brokeback Mountain" broke my heart, and it was so well done I couldn't get it out of my mind all night. Ang Lee creates film better than most, but that's not why. This is not a story about sex. This is not a story about homosexuality, although that is the underpinning of Annie Proulx's and Larry McMurtry's story on film. This is a story about human love ~ body and soul ~ and how humans struggle to express it within the strictures of a culture. Human love in its rawness, its horrors, and in its supreme beauty and glory runs this movie. Indeed, as is true with both time and love, "Brokeback Mountain" serves as a strong metaphor for life itself, for it wrestles from shoulder to shoulder with the things we've deemed devilish and the things we've deemed angelic. And in the process of watching this film, if we are given and take the opportunity to watch closely, we will see that those seemingly disparate "things" are identical and impossible to ever really take away.

So the time has come for this kind of movie to break through boundaries and educate people about love. In this time of hate, greed, war, extreme occurrences in the environment as a RESULT of our humanness, and extreme cruelty and generosity to those we do not know in the face of hardships, we can certainly learn to love better. And through "Brokeback Mountain" we can learn about the kind of human love Christ and other great masters REALLY showed us we have within us: how we give love fearlessly and fearfully, how we take it away, throw it away, and ultimately how we will suffer from the loss of the love of another human being because time just simply runs out for all us. There is much to learn about how we grow and live out our human life and love from this movie. It must be seen. 

This is why I was appalled beyond words as I opened the New York Times this morning and read that an area outside of Salt Lake City  had successfully banned the opening of "Brokeback Mountain" from its theaters (not the first, and I'm sure, not the last). And this is what I have to say about it:

We are given chances time and time and time again to learn about why we're here, that we have differences, and that it shouldn't matter, but we make it matter. This movie is one of those chances, and we have once again allowed some feeble-minded people with power in their pulpits and pocketbooks to take it away.

Shame on us! 

Nan