Today's Federal holiday

 Of course, today is the commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birth. 

Yesterday at lunch after church, a newer member asked if we had a parade in town here and one of the women who had lived here her entire life, laughed ruefully and said no, and then explained that until the 1950s, this place had been a so-called "Sundown Town" (I knew what that was, and I knew we had been). 

Some of the cities in the area  - Sherman does - do have official commemorations - parades or walks or similar. My own campus does service projects. 

 But I will say, it feels in the past year like the country's going backwards. Things seem worse than they were. I don't know if it's my prejudgment but people do seem to be meaner, and less willing to live and let live. 

I hope I live to see a time where things get better again but some days I wonder. 

Anyway, there was a dream of a better world, where people cared about each other more, and understood that someone being different to them didn't make them bad or wrong. 

I will say a current favorite piece of music has a link to this day - Oscar Peterson's "Hymn to Freedom," which he composed in the mid-60s, was (later, I guess) dedicated to Dr. King, and Harriet Hamilton wrote words to it

Here's a purely instrumental version with Peterson playing piano. Unfortunately towards the end the microphone tips over or something and there's a loud crash, but it's a nice performance of it otherwise:

 And here's a version with the words, with Oliver Jones (who was a great friend of Peterson's) playing piano, and Dione Taylor singing:

 It's that gospel style which is so familiar to me. I can envision the next chord in the progression even if I don't play by ear well enough to figure them out. It all sounds so "right" to me. 

I did find sheet music for it somewhere. I can play the first two pages, sort of, but after that I'm not there yet, and the part where you do...I forget what it's called, but it's symbolised with three heavy diagonal lines between the notes, and you're supposed to vibrate between the two tones as fast as you can, and I can't my my hands that fast these days.