brainrow

The NewsHour on PBS reported on a memorial service for Rosa Parks:

Julian Bond: Ms. Parks was much, much more than the bus woman. She was much, much more than that. Eldridge Cleaver famously remarked that when she sat down that December day in Montgomery fifty years ago, somewhere in the universe a gear in the machinery had shifted. Rosa Parks shifted the gears of the universe all her life. Now she belongs to the universe.

Oprah Winfrey: That day that you refused to give up your seat on the bus, you, Sister Rosa, changed the trajectory of my life, and the lives of so many other people in the world.

Ted Kennedy: She, too, was our shepherd. She restored our soul. She led us in the paths of righteousness. She walked through the valley of the shadow of death, but she feared no evil, because she knew the Lord was with her. Goodness and mercy followed her all the days of her life, and now — and now — she dwells in the house of the Lord forever.

Since June, I’ve been watching The Al Franken Show on cable TV, on Sundance Channel. The show has provided me with a lot of ideas for blog posts. From Thursday’s show, here’s Canadian journalist Patrick Graham:

Everything in Iraq, for the first year and a half, was run for how it appeared in the States. People talk about Iraqi democracy. Iraqis are voting in large numbers. The problem is American democracy and this debate at home. And everything in Iraq was run, basically, for Bush’s re-election campaign. And you can’t run a war in a complex country — you can’t run a complex country — and an insurgency, when your only real interest is your poll numbers at home. That’s a big problem.

Graham spent a lot of time talking to insurgents in Iraq. He wrote about it in Harper’s magazine, in an article called “Beyond Fallujah.”

Friday night’s Franken Show was the last one that will be carried on Sundance Channel. If this blog is to survive, I may have to start making stuff up.

Rosa Parks has died. From CNN:

Rosa Parks, who helped trigger the civil rights movement in the 1950s, died Monday, her longtime friends told CNN. She was 92.

Parks inspired the civil rights movement when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama in December 1955.

Update: BBC News has photos from the civil rights movement.

A new Kate Bush music video: King Of The Mountain.

Today would have been John Lennon‘s 65^th birthday.

Lennon was killed in 1980, not long after his 40^th birthday. Every year, fans have marked the anniversary of his death with various memorials. His widow, Yoko Ono, has said she would rather have fans observe his birthday, to commemorate his life rather than his death.

Today is the national opening of George Clooney’s new movie, Good Night, and Good Luck. I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks.

But it’s not playing at any theater here in Columbus, Ohio.

Rats.