Happy Birthday Dad

January 19th, 2009. My father's 64th birthday. Had Janis Joplin lived, she would be 66 today. Also the birthdays of Dolly Parton and Robert E. Lee. My father once told me that when he was a kid growing up in the south, people often bought him books about Robert E. Lee for his birthday so he knows a whole lot about the Confederacy. Some places in the south still count it as a holiday honoring their famed general. While I'm pretty neutral about Dolly Parton, I truly enjoy Saturday afternoon cooking sessions with JJ in the background. Needless to say, January 19th is a big day. Particularly this year.

2009's version of January 19th also happens to be Martin Luther King, Jr. day and the day before we inaugurate America's first-ever African-American president. It also happens to be the 19th day of the bicentennial year of Abraham Lincoln, after we just closed the centennial year of Lyndon B. Johnson's birth, the signer of the Civil Rights Act. Such a convergence of events makes me think a greater power may have decided it was proper that we Americans be slapped in the face with the reality of all our failures and all our potential at the same time.

What an incredible time to be an American. I have never been so proud and so hopeful and so confident in our ability to achieve everything that our collective being is capable of and so much more.

Happy Birthday Dad, I know today and tomorrow mean more to you than I might ever be able to understand. And Rest in Peace, Reverend King. I think we made it to the Promised Land.