I was speaking to a friend today about the idea of holding a rally against the hate and ignorance being spewed toward our Muslim brothers (not to mention our Hispanic friends.) We kicked around a few ideas and I am thinking about taking action to organize such an event.

The hate and ignorance I see and hear and receive in my email inbox is so repugnant that I am beginning to shed friends left and right here in the hinterland.

Anyway, I came across this event on C-Span from the National Press Club:

Top faith leaders will meet today in Washington to discuss the country’s reaction to the proposed Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero. The Islamic Society of North America will examine the interfaith response of the controversy and lay out a plan of action for interfaith collaboration moving forward.

Leaders from the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faiths will discuss how their religions can work together to combat what they call “an atmosphere of fear and intolerance” toward Islam. The National Press Club meeting aims to discuss the state of interfaith solidarity and propose solutions to the anti-Muslim discrimination that has emerged in recent weeks.

Related.

It jumped off the page when I read his claim to have “cut state spending by $3 billion.” Luckily, those scruffy media types don’t let stuff like this pass unnoticed:

The ad is misleading. The state has cut some of its annual spending, but the $3 billion claim is over-stating things. Clearly, the reader is meant to take away that Cole helped cut $3 billion in actual spending, which is not the case. While North Carolina will spend $3 billion less of its own tax money it is not spending $3 billion less on programs than it did three years ago. The $3 billion cut claim relies on an accounting quirk rather than actual cuts.

Tariq Ali pulls back the veil on the progressive and true socialist left’s view of the current president.

That would fit nicely with this comment from Krugman’s column, which I think is one of the most prescient comments I’ve ever seen online:

Although I generally agree with the thrust of this piece, we need to keep in mind that the post WWII prosperity was not just a matter of war related spending: it was also a result of having taken 500,000 people, mostly young men, out of the post war work force.

Renewable energy, replacing aging water systems, and similar infrastructure improvements are good places to spend money today. Current consumption items aren’t.

A night spent researching localism and sustainability led to Max Weber and then Edward Goldsmith and this compelling video from the late 1980s.

Part II

Related.

And they still die, often in the deserts of the Southwest, sometimes at the hands of thieves and kidnappers and now, in a startling twist, apparently at the hands of a drug gang seeking money or possibly recruits, officials said, though nobody knows for sure. Mexican officials confirmed Wednesday that they were questioning a second survivor, a Honduran man, beyond the Ecuadorean who first alerted them to the killings.

ProPublica’s A.C. Thomspon spent three years examining one incident and actually broke leads that led to the recent federal indictment of five NOPD officers in the murder of a young man.

The first time I put myself in Charter you came and I was so glad to see you. I had been crying for about six hours. I never cried so much until you died and now it’s about all I can do effectively. The tears aren’t even salty anymore.

I wish you had told me about Robert W. Spaugh of Winston-Salem. I wish you had told me what he did to you in 1966 and how it broke your heart and how you never forgave yourself. I would have forgiven you mom. I would have understood.

Everybody is telling me to not dwell on it, that it was 44 years ago. They don’t understand that it wasn’t 44 years ago for me. It is the last 40 years. It is now. It will be tomorrow.

I can’t believe I feel like a speck of dust collecting in the corner of some abandoned house, like the one’s that stood in the woods behind our house on Philpark. I know you loved it there. I know you felt at home, finally. I’m sorry your daddy died right after we moved in. I liked him a lot. I am sorry that he didn’t love you as much as he doted on your half-sister. I guess like me, he felt you were big enough and strong enough to fend for yourself.

I did tell you that one time when you moved to Durham to the newer Womble Carlyle office that I would come stay with you so you would not be lonely. You were strong then and told me not to worry about it, that you had plenty of friends. I wish you would have told me the truth. I am sorry you could not make the friends you wanted and that you vented on them and they drove you away. I am sorry they made fun of you for living in Mebane. I never liked the Triangle anyway.

I am sorry mom that I didn’t buy into your Christianity. You really tried hard and I respected you for your passion and your learned study of the scriptures. I am sorry I embarrassed you that time when I did something really wrong as a teenager and the whole church knew about it but no one would tell you to your face.

The day you were waiting for me in the parking lot of the high school I thought you were going to tell me somebody had died.

I am sorry I couldn’t do better in school and live up to your high expectations of me. I just couldn’t do it mom with so many people telling me how ugly and stupid I was and calling me fat ass and fat boy and fat nerd all day. I found escape in my room with music until David gave me a joint when I was 15.

That sucked up the next 14 years of my life. But I still hear them laughing.

I’m glad that you got to see me graduate from college. I felt so good that day. Clean. Sober. Achieving. I know it only lasted five years mom, but they were a good five years and I had some money to enjoy life with from time to time.

I’m sorry I didn’t fire those boys and then the entire world said how much of a failure I was and then the locals here rehashed my failure and you had to go through it all again. I know that hurt you worse than it did me.

They still go on about it mom. Not the original ones, but some new ones, blue hairs from Eden mostly. We never liked Eden anyway. I’ve pretty much made my peace with the original ones.

I remember the day you came to see me in jail. I never saw you look sadder. I’m glad you took my phone calls at 4am when they let me out of solitary once every couple of days. I didn’t suffer. I deserved it. I learned a lot, mom. I read War and Peace and Brothers Karamazov and then that judge said I could go home after six-months. I’m glad you listened to me that first day when I asked you not to come back. I couldn’t bear that, but it would probably have been a breeze compared to what I am going through now. It was peaceful in solitary mom. There was a lot of yelling, but they weren’t yelling at me.

I am sorry I embarrassed you so much that you left town to go work in Durham. I thought I could handle working as a magistrate at that age, but I couldn’t. I used to come home and drink till I passed out.

I am sorry that I started doing coke on New Years Eve 1996. I was taped out then, and tired, oh so tired of feeling hollow.

We got through that phase mom, together, even when you were the only person besides my friend Jason who would listen to me so I could get stuff off my chest.

But you always were a good listener. I wish you were here now to listen to me. I need somebody to listen. I am sorry I couldn’t listen to you anymore mom. That really tears me up inside. My dad told me again that I am stupid. I can’t believe he still does that. I don’t blame him though. I know he saw a lot of pain when he was a kid.

My son sees pain, but he only sees it in me when he catches me crying and asks me what’s wrong. I tell him “Nothing, son. I love you.”

I hope I can keep it together long enough to see him grow up.

I’m sorry you had to make that choice in 1967. I talked to Dawn today and she told me all about it. She said you were a good friend, just like everybody who knew you does. I wish more people could have known you. I wish Robert W. Spaugh of Winston-Salem hadn’t known you. She said you loved him. Did you mom? Did he lead you on for a few weeks? A few months? I wish I knew. Maybe I will pay him a visit. Mema said the last time you talked to him your were sitting in the hallway crying. She said there was a song that year about “go away world and take this weight with you” I don’t know what she is talking about. She’s not doing well mom. She is so sad and angry and she even lashes out at me. J&J are doing a good job keeping up with her. She told me a few weeks ago that I never loved her. Can you imagine her saying that to me?

She does talk fondly of you now, finally. I think she feels remorse for what she did mom. I wish you had told me. I would have made it right for you.

Now I don’t know what to do. You are gone. Mema is half gone. Most of my friends think I’m nuts. The world says I’m nuts. I think the world is nuts.

I think the world is nuts when a young woman who just wants to be held and loved and told she is special gets abused by a man who has everything in the world going for him. I think the world is nuts when a woman has to give up her son because her mother says so. I think the world is fucking nuts when the man gets to go on about his “prominent” affairs and you have to live with guilt and shame and pass that on to your children, crippling two of us.

I think the world is nuts when it beats me down for the first 20 years of my life and then spends the next 20 telling me how fucked up I am.

I remember a guy in high school. He had “WTF” tattooed on his arm. I asked him what it meant. “Fuck the world,” he said.

Yeah, fuck the fucking world.

But the world doens’t care. Your half-sister told me to “find a bit of joy wherever you can.” I use to wish she was my mom. They seemed so together compared to our family. It’s no wonder they are all so successful. I send them emails and call them but they don’t ever return my messages. They probably wrote me off too.

So yeah, I turn 40 next month mom. Can you believe that. I was 18 when you were 40. I couldn’t imagine having a kid that old right now. I was careful mom not to do what Robert W. Spaugh of Winston-Salem did to you.

I called the newspaper. They looked up the article from 1962 when he had broken into that girl’s room and tried to get her. The clerk read me the story, with the judge telling him he was reducing the burglary charge to a misdemeanor because “he had good parents.”

Maybe if my name was Spaugh and my daddy was the chief of the synod I could have gotten malicious injury to property. But it’s not and I didn’t. Pete did a great job representing me. We were lucky he was there for us.

Most of all I am sorry for the last decade. It’s been crazy. August 2001 was so beautiful. The wedding was perfect. Everybody enjoyed the rehearsal dinner. Savannah was great. Even when I forgot my keys back in Winston and only realized when we got to Lynchburg it was no big deal.

I’m sorry you gave up. I’m sorry I couldn’t figure it out until it was too late. I would have been better. I really hoped you would like her. I hoped she would like you and you could be friends. I am sorry you could not. That really hurt me. But then nobody else knows you like I did, except J. I remember you standing over me to kiss me goodnight. I liked that. I remember longing to be with you when I was a little kid. I remember crying to go home with you after the kindergarten pick nick. I remember how distraught I was in the third grade field trip when they said I couldn’t ride in the car with you. We had good times then, going to Old Salem. I wonder if Robert W. Spaugh’s daddy was still the chief of the synod? Remember all the pictures I drew of the houses? Remember the parchment we made from coffee and regular paper?

Remember how I could never go to sleep? I still can’t mom. Unless I’m lit. What kind of life is that? I still toss and turn until three in the morning and then like to sleep until 10. I always look at the clock at 11:17. It really messes with my head. I don’t know what I’ll do this year when you don’t call me that day at 11:17. It was hard to take you out of my cell phone and delete you as a contact from my email.

I’ve been reading your emails. I am sorry it never got easier for you. If I had understood I would have been more compassionate. I am sorry you suffered even the day you had the stroke. You were tough mom. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

How did you bear all of that pain? I know how but I just can’t accept it. I guess I am rebellious like you. But if you are right and I am wrong it will be just like our life. Separated by some small circumstance beyond our control with a chasm driven between us that neither of us understand. I spent 15 years mom wondering why I was so fucked up that I couldn’t love my own mother. I am sorry for that. You deserved my love. You gave me lots of love, but the abuse was louder than the love and that’s what I remembered.

Your pastor took your bible and notepad for a week before the memorial service. He studied it and preached a good sermon. He said you marked “forgiveness” over and over in your bible and underlined it in your notebook. I forgive you mom.

I hope somebody can forgive me someday.