Thursday, November 10, 2005

My Morning


I had a kind of a neat morning, but not the kind you'd talk to just anybody about. So I thought I'd come to you, my closest friend, and tell you about it. No big deal, just a series of events that seemed to convey a common message.

On the way in I heard a great song for the first time, Waltzing Along, by James. Kind of inspiring, and it made me feel good.

Tomorrow's Veterans Day, so tomorrow's the beginning of a 3 day weekend. Veterans Day is always important to me. It reminds me of the price that was paid for my freedom, and helps keep me from taking it all too much for granted.

Anyway, I figured I'd stop for coffee in Roslyn, VA, which is right across the Potomac River from Washington DC. As usual, parking was tricky and I ended up parking right in front of Freedom Park, a small elevated walkway set among the skyscrapers of Roslyn. As I got out of the car, I saw a woman walking her dog. She looked fairly happy and non-descript, except for the fact that she had no arms. No big deal, in and of itself.

I decided to take a stroll through Freedom Park. While there I...


  • Stopped in front of an actual section of the Berlin Wall and thought about it's history and the millions of lives effected.

  • Stood behind a bronze casting of the cell door where Martin Luther King was held in Birmingham, AL, and considered the price paid (and still being paid) by champions of human rights.

  • Took a stroll on the actual cobblestones of a pre-World War II Warsaw ghetto and thought of the millions of lives destroyed by Hitler's "final solution" and the incredible struggle that ensued to stop it.

  • Stood in front of a replica of the "Goddess of Democracy" statue from the ill fated demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in Peking, and thought about the hundreds of millions of people who suffered and continue to suffer under communist China's iron rule.


Finally, I went and got my coffee. As I walked back to the car, I passed a man who, again, looked fairly happy and non-descript, except for the fact that he was in a wheelchair and had no legs.

I'm not trying to give a single message by this blog entry. Suffice to say that, as I walked the three blocks from my car to work, I felt a little prouder to be a human being than I normally do.