The Tower Bard
Sean GonsalvesA longish #BlackMastodon photo 🧵as we head into #MLKDay weekend with its mostly saccharine remembrances and "celebrations” of a complex prophet born Michael Luther King Jr.
The man, not the myth calling …
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When my son was young and first starting to learn about Martin Luther King (someone I studied in great detail as a kid into my adulthood), I wanted to make MLK real to him and not let him come away with the watered down myth corporate America has embraced …
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Tink
Algernon D'Ammassa
The Sane@seanalan Thank you for sharing this
SomersetWhovian 🇺🇦💙@seanalan
These are amazing photos - thank you so much. Seeing the man, not the myth is so important.
These are amazing photos - thank you so much. Seeing the man, not the myth is so important.
@ClaireCopperman ya know even as a kid I reveled in learning about the small details and reg life stuff of great historical figures and that always left me with a “what one person could do so could another” vibe
Chris Tirpak@seanalan what a great thread and pics! I especially like the 1st on the phone. Did you have to explain rotary dial pay phones to your son? I remember having to do that with my kids - I got a lot of funny looks that day!
@tpak I don’t remember if he asked about the rotary phone but I do recall a diff convo when he was incredulous at the thought that TV actually went off air every night when I was a kid 😂
@seanalan ha, that and you had to get out of your seat to change the channel and there were not 500 channels and a DVR! These threads make me feel old every time!
Goddessdeeva@seanalan oh joyous. Its that time of year where I get I have a dream quoted at me as a way to tone police me.
@goddessdeeva yes, I don’t have much patience for “color-blind” “content of our character” conservatives either 🙄
@seanalan ugh. Yeah. I loved your thread by the way. Seeing Dr King as a complex and flawed man is good practice
pandabutter [I have moved]@seanalan This is incredible, thank you for sharing. Historical "role models" are never as cool as the actual people they were.
In that spirit, from disability circles: Hellen Keller wasn't just a radical socialist, she was also a big fan of Akita dogs! She was given the first one, Kamikaze-go, when she visited Japan in 1937; when he fell ill and died shortly after her return to the states, his brother Kenzan-go was sent to her. They were the first Akitas to ever enter the US!
@seanalan I highly recommend http://www.northlandakitas.com/hellen.htm if you're interested – it's a translation of an article by Ogawasara Ichiro, Kamikaze-go's original owner, about Keller and the dogs. It's genuinely sweet, I can't do it justice.