Birthday coincidences

The significance of my birthday was altered forever for me on April 4th 1969, when Martin Luther King was asassinated. (His killer's name was James Earl Ray--my double cousin is named James and my middle name is Ray.) And another coincidence involving birthdates and numbers is the fact that my only child's birthday is the same as my only brother's. My in-law's home telephone number combines the years of my birth and high school graduation: 48/66.My brother's first phone number in Hawaii was xxx-1971 (I was married in 1971.) Then there's the date of my father's death in a freak highway accident on September 7, 1995, nine months after Mom died. Dennis was recently remarried to Betty, and was on still on thier "honeymoon." But it was on Joyce and Dennis's 49th wedding anniversary that he was "called home." Another coincidence that gave me pause at the time occurred on Friday 13th, 1989, when the jury verdict came back against my clients in the longest and most important trial I'd ever conducted in my law practice on the Island of Kaua`i--the jury gave us the "bird" and let a trigger happy cop off the hook on that unlucky day.
Therefore, it's not at all surprising to me that yet another American mother, Cindy Sheehan, lost a son in Iraq on my 56th birthday.
Here's Casey's story:
www.truthout.org/docs_2005/040805C.shtml

More about my birthday

The date April 4th has had a somber significance for me since the day in 1968 when one of the regular "lounge loungers" at Cambridge House Apts. in Ft. Collins, Colorado gleefully informed me of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That's not the name the abysmally asinine Aggie called the martyr, of course. The epithet is a vile one I'll never forget; it made me more conscious than ever before how much I was a foreigner in the land of my birth. Another such downer marked my 56th birthday, but I didn't learn of it until Casey Sheehan's mother began publishing his story and it came to me via truthout.org. I'll post the mother's story of her first born's martyrdom in Iraq in the near future on this blog.
Today's historical significance involves the first prom date of our 'ichiban & only'--we procured his tuxedo earlier and will leave in a couple hours to pick up the flowers & meet up with his girl at the Ilikai Hotel in Waikiki. We get to meet the parents as well. I'm sure John dreads some Ben Stiller stunt on my part. He calls me the 'loose cannon.'
Note: I got an email from Jon Gordon at Minnesota Public Radio. His production is Future Tense, as you will recall--the web address for his cool website is http://futuretenseweb.org .
Laterz
M

I'm A Blogger ( & Photo)

The folks at www.futuretense.org say there are now millions of bloggers--or was it billions? It's a shame not to be one of them, especially when it can be done for free. As usual I've turned to the world of Google for kokua. I don't have much time to spend on this. I haven't even had time to keep up with truthout.org as I usually do. I want to put together a good short story before the next meeting of my writer's group at Church of the Crossroads. Then of course there's the stuff at HPU that's waiting to be worked on (some for pay, some pro bono.) Gotta take care of my legal work (definitely not pro bono--those days are gone.) I'll be getting lots done over the next week--no distractions!
Laterz, you all.
Misha