“No person has the right to rain on your dreams.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Happy Monday, folks. I hope you’re enjoying a three-day weekend, or some semblance of a day off. Here, it is currently minus two degrees Fahrenheit. Not as cold as it was at the NFL game in Kansas City on Saturday, but still fair to describe as “bitter cold.”
Among the writers I first admired was Mike Royko. He was a syndicated columnist from Chicago, and the reason why, as a teenager, I would flip straight to the Op-Ed page of my daily newspaper. His column from April 5, 1968, in response to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is a humbling reminder to us that, although we honor him in death, we disgraced ourselves in the way we treated him in life. Find a link to that column from the Chicago Daily News at the end of this post.
Glossary of Feelings entry II
Disappointed (adjective)
depressed or discouraged by the failure of one's hopes or expectations
This Week in History
January 14, 1940 - MLB Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis gives free agency to 91 Detroit Tigers minor league players.
January 15, 1535 - King Henry VIII declares himself head of the Church in England. 1929 - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia.
January 16, 1412 - The Medici family is appointed official banker of the Papacy.
January 17, 1899 - United States takes possession of Wake Island in the Pacific.
January 18, 1258 - Mongol army of 150,000, led by Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan, arrives at the walls of Baghdad. The city would fall on February 13.
January 19, 1810 - Cold Friday: temperature at Portsmouth, New Hampshire drops from 54°F to minus 12°F in one day with many frozen to death.
January 20, 1788 - Pioneer African Baptist church organizes in Savannah, Georgia.
What I’m Reading
The Crossing, by Cormac McCarthy
The Johnstown Flood, by Davis McCullough
Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, by David Sedaris
How to Know a Person, by David Brooks
What I’m Watching
Barry on HBO
What I’m Listening To
Live from Lincoln Theatre, The Milk Carton Kids
Bitches Brew, Miles Davis
Journaling Prompt for the Week #3 of 2024
Write about the people in your life who have rained on your dreams. Who are they to you? How well do they actually know you? How do you feel in their presence? What do they have in common?
If you have a chance, please give a listen to my conversation with Eric Bricker in the most recent episode of The Path to Authenticity.
And, please check out “The Manifest Mixtape,” a community playlist on Spotify.
Have a great week. Thanks for reading.