My Replacement Bridge

Early Wednesday morning, I’m going to the dentist to get a replacement bridge; the temporary bridge which I acquired early this month already broke once, so I went in for a replacement. Then the second temporary bridge came out Tuesday morning, when I was eating breakfast, taking the tooth substitute with it, so I’m going in this morning for more dental work, and a temporary bridge which I hope will last until my next official appointment on February twenty-third. Wish me luck.

And now I need to sleep!

“I Am Somebody”

I wasn’t inclined to make much fuss over the passing of the Reverend Jesse Jackson. I didn’t agree with him politically, and he was guilty of various sleaze, from fathering a baby out of wedlock to shaking down businesses by threatening to smear them as racist if they did not donate to PUSH.

But then I read Michelle Singletary’s column in today’s Washington Post. She’s a financial advice columnist, and she’s black; she reminisced about Jesse Jackson’s visit to her elementary school decades ago, when she and her siblings were living in poverty with her grandmother, their parents being badly messed up. He taught the children to say, “I am somebody.” Even if they were poor, even if they were on welfare, even if this, that, or the other, and in little Michelle ‘s case, it worked. He started her in the road to going to college, becoming a journalist, and helping people, readers and people at her church, to get their finances in order, avoid frivolous overspending, and improve their own and their families’ condition.

It occurs to me that there could be quite a few others like her out there, even if some kiddies who were taught to say “I am somebody,” remained knuckleheads.

Mr. Jackson, wherever you are, whatever your faults may have been, if you served as an inspiration to Michelle Singletary, your life wasn’t entirely wasted.