Last Christmas I got two gift certificates for amazon...I sent about fifteen items to my brother's, so now when I go there I bring a few back with me to open, a time released Christmas. One of them is a book of speeches by Abraham Lincoln, one a cd of speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. Also a book of photos of Frida Kahlo, and Faulkner's Light in August.

I just noticed that this post page has not the usual options for italics, color of font, etc.

Listening to a speech, I noticed that King's use of the word "freedom" specifically included the warning not to let such an idea include greed or hatred. Not merely to dole back whatever ill treatment one has received but to enact a moral responsibility when flexing one's freedom.

A book store on Valencia has in its front window little cards with illustrations and information about literary people who have died within the past year, while I was away from the states. Two of them are authors I love; Janet Frame and Gloria Anzaldua. I have been somewhat more inspired by Frame because of what she suffered in her life: a misdiagnosis of schizophrenia (back when almost nothing was known about it) and subsequent years of being held in rather primitive mental institutions in New Zealand. It turned out she had no actual mental illness. What is inspiring is that she was able to publish novels throughout and finally free herself from her trappings. These from her writings:

The day is early with birds beginning and the wren in a cloud piping like the child in the poem, drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe. ..

See those black stripes alternating with yellow?
They are bars of actual darkness not perceived by the naked eye.

To undeceive the sight a detached instrument like a mirror is necessary.
The human senses never speak the truth if they can get away with an easy lie.

(Here the font color would change, or I would have put those excerpts in block form, indicating that I am now again the speaker). Happy to find out that three of my friends from Japan will visit me in September. Knowing that the evening sun will turn the top half of the buildings orange, having forgotten what waits in the remaining packages I sent myself.