Somewhere in an earlier post ...


I'm sure that I've entered the lyrics to this song. However, since the MLK Day speech I have received a number of requests for the words. I used this as a closing:

To Each of Me ...

To each of me
to love within the reach of me
and if this love could teach to me
why each of me, in turn,
should torture so the soul of me
and tear apart the whole of me
within life's play, each role of me
must speak to me, must learn
that blackness and the white of me
  are just the day and night of me
are not the wrong or right of me,
can't you see ... there's got to be
some answer to this planet's pain
my microcosmic world -- insane!
if only I could make you see
it's here to see
just look at me!
there is within me all of you
from distant lands the whole of you
the dreams, the heart, the soul of you
if only you would see
that black and white are part of it
my brown is at the heart of it
and blending was the start of it
and someday it shall be
that blackness and the white of us
will be the day and night of us
and not the wrong or right of us
the weak or might of us

then we'll be free!
Betty Reid Soskin
copyright 1969
never published

It's been an eventful week. Not sure that I'll be able to respond to those who've sent words of caring and best wishes, but surely sometime this weekend I'll be out of my paper hat enough to write sensibly about all that's happened.

Probably the most important is that today there was a message from the reporter who covered the Martin Luther King celebration informing me that she is planning a series on racism and diversity for her paper in the near future and would like to use parts of the original interview. That such a conversation has begun in the Diablo Valley is far more than I'd have imagined. I couldn't be more pleased.

But I've just returned from the kickoff party for a young man I've been working with as a mentor. He is a candidate for the Richmond city council in November, and is someone I'm so very proud of.

So much is happening. If I only had another couple of decades to complete the work ... .