Today we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. I hate to be morbid on such a day, but my memory keeps going back to that evening in April 1968 when the news of his shooting broke. I was alone in the living room, listening to a TV show about the Beach Boys while playing with my Barbie on the coffee table. It felt scary and important. Usually I liked being alone -- my parents were in the kitchen dining together and my older sister was in her room doing homework -- but not now.
That's the thing of it: I grew up on Dr. King. I heard about him my entire life. I did papers on him, one in grade school and another in high school. He influenced my life and he changed the world. When a man is so consequential, how to observe his birthday?
Today I wrote Postcards to Voters, alerting Long Island Democrats to the upcoming Special Election for George Santos' vacated seat. In my small way, I'm tried to make the world a little better. It felt right.
It's things like your memory of this that make me realize the difference a few years makes. I have no recall of it whatsoever; I would have been only 5 years old, so of course I don't. My earliest memories of taking note of the vastness of the world around me start taking place when I'm 9 - probably close to the age you were in 1968.
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