Segregation forever? I provide a fascinating link below to a Newsweek photo exhibit which traces segregation then and now through pictures. It tells of our nation's sad story on race during the mid-20th century, a era of profound segregation. It prompted me, to write a little bit on this Achilles heal of our nation.

After you click on the link below, simply click on each individual picture which has a description to the left of it.

I wrote:


When one thinks nothing much has changed simply view those pictures. They are worth a thousand words. I was a little white girl in the 1950's and raised in a mostly white (at that time) Boston suburb. I remember our high school class elections when a black woman was running for president. She said to me that she would never win because she was, as she put it then, a Negro. I was astounded that she would make such a statement. I thought about that continuously for many years and when I looked back I, of course, sadly realized she was absolutely right. I think even then, though, I knew she was right but I simply did not want to realize that would be true in the country I loved. Much has been accomplished since that time nearly 35 years ago, but, I believe, we still have a long way to go.

There is, I think, something, perhaps, which is woven into our genetic tapestry to resist those who are not a member of our group. Perhaps it dates to the origin of man. We, hopefully, as years go by and decades pass will know that we are one species -- homo sapiens -- and that all of us, each and every one, can trace his or her lineage to Africa. We must learn to live together if we are all to survive together. I hope I see that in my lifetime.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/94787

Oliver Stone is going to make a film about George W. Bush. Supposedly he will take a balanced look:

Nothing is ever black and white EXCEPT, as I see it, the George Bush presidency. I never, from day one, ever thought George Bush was up to the cerebral task, or possessed the intellectual excellence and wisdom that, in my opinion, one needs to be president. Risking arm chair psychology, George Bush, in my opinion, is a vapid and vacuous man who had the good fortune to be born into the right family which he used successfully to extricate him from heaps of trouble and get him into prestigious schools for those would be presidents-in-waiting. He got out of trouble most of which most of us would pay a huge price whether it was his evasion of military service, the consequences of his severe alcoholism, drinking and driving, failure in business, countenancing the theft of an election or even courting treason by the outing of a covert agent. I think he did not care about anyone, anything or even his country as long as he advanced himself and his own hide was saved. I even believe his so called conversion is bunk.

I believe George Bush knows he was given the intelligence short straw and feels uniquely inferior to his much more able father H.W., grandfather Prescott and brother Jeb. So, he appears outwardly to be unmovable and strong. In reality, though, I believe he feels utterly incapable and weak. I think he is a weak man, unknowing of history, and a man who by his ignorance and lack of insight, has cost thousands their lives through his utterly failed policies both foreign and domestic.

Admittedly, I am not a Republican but I could manage to say some positive things about Reagan, Eisenhower, H.W. Bush and even Nixon. There is not one thing I can say that is positive about George W. Bush. Not one. I am not sure I would want to see ANYTHING positive about a man I consider utterly catastrophic for our country and, indeed, for the world.