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It may not have a beat that you can dance to, but I think you’ll all agree that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech is lyrical and music to our ears. London and Maddie have the day off from Mendham Township Elementary School in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., and both of them will be reading the speech and watching and listening to the video as part of a class research project.  Please join London and Maddie, Rex and me in celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Music Monday.

If you can’t see the video and you’re using Internet Explorer, try coming back via another browser such as Firefox. Otherwise, you can read the words below the video.

Delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.
August 28, 1963

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon of hope to millions of slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the colored America is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the colored American is still sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination.

One hundred years later, the colored American lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the colored American is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed to the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked “insufficient funds.”

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is not time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy.

Now it the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.

Now it the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God’s children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of it’s colored citizens. This sweltering summer of the colored people’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hope that the colored Americans needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.

There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the colored citizen is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.

We cannot be satisfied as long as the colored person’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.

We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating “for white only.”

We cannot be satisfied as long as a colored person in Mississippi cannot vote and a colored person in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of your trials and tribulations. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality.

You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our modern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you, my friends, we have the difficulties of today and tomorrow.

I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day out in the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom, ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,

“Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

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Rex and I are still wishing people a Happy New Year, but I’d say there aren’t too many more days we can get away with that, and we’d better get our last handful of New Year’s cards out in the mail on Tuesday, along with a Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day greeting for sending them out so late… the ones that slip are the people who have moved and changed their address, or new friends who haven’t been on our mailing list in previous years.

Just to prove to all of you that I’m not the only one who’s a little bit behind, the 4-H Prep New Year’s Party was rescheduled for tonight due to last weekend’s snow, so Rex, London, Maddie and I are off to wish all of our 4-H friends a Happy New Year.

Maddie came home from her weekly gymnastics lesson at Randolph Gymnastics in Randolph, New Jersey, beaming with pride.  “Maddie’s got news!”  her sister, London, called out.  “I’ll tell you all about it at dinner,” Maddie said secretively.

Turns out that after training for a couple of years in Novice I, Maddie is ready to move on to Novice II with her older sister for the next session.  Just when I had started to fear that Maddie had inherited my can’t-do-a-cartwheel gene, she proves me wrong and moves ahead.  Congratulations, Maddie… way to go!

I woke up this morning and realized that I was supposed to be this week’s “Mystery Reader” in London’s second grade class at Mendham Township Elementary School, and that 1) I had neglected to send in any of the daily clues and 2) although I have worked from home on every single Friday for the past five years, on this particular Friday, Rex and I have a very important business meeting in New York City that conflicts with my Mystery Reader slot on Friday afternoon.  At this point, I feel like the worst mom in the world to have let my daughter down.

It’s funny, this morning I was just reading an article in Cookie Magazine about Brooke Shields and how being a mom makes her feel normal, possibly for the first time in her life.  Brooke goes on about how her daughters will always remember how she did things in their classrooms, but they won’t even notice that she was exhausted at the time, so she gets to the school for her commitments on little to no sleep, tired or not.

Because I’m in the midst of planning a spectacular eighth birthday party for London at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), I know she’ll forgive me for the Mystery Reader disappointment.  However, it still stings.

The weather was so bad in the Roxiticus Valley that we almost didn’t make it to the annual Christmas pageant at Hilltop Presbyterian Church in Mendham, New Jersey.  Even though the icy rain kept coming down, Rex packed us into the Suburban and we made it to church.  Once we were safe indoors and the kids were up there singing Christmas songs, I was so happy to be at church for Christmas.  The kids were dressed up as angels and shepherds and the three wise men, and as always, a little baby was on Mary’s lap and in the manger for as long as he would sit still.  We sang along to “Joy to the World,” “Oh Come All Ye Faithful,” and “Go Tell It On the Mountain” and I was filled with the true meaning of Christmas… it always come back to me during the pageant at our church, and I am grateful to the children for allowing me to rediscover Christmas through their eyes and voices.

Time for just a quick post before Rex, London, Maddie, Grammy and I head out to New Canaan, Connecticut to see Rex’s eight year old granddaughter perform as a pixie in the Nutcracker.  Over the past few years, ever since London and Maddie were able to sit still and enjoy live theatre, we’ve taken them to see a holiday performance of the Nutcracker…. we’ve seen professional ballet troupes such as the New Jersey Ballet at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey, and there’s always a local ballet studio such as Garden State Ballet in Randolph, New Jersey that puts on a holiday benefit performance of the Nutcracker featuring up and coming young dancers.  Today’s Nutcracker ballet is going to be special… it will be the first time that London and Maddie have actually known one of the dancers, and they are all dressed up and excited to see their niece turn into a pixie before their very eyes.