A blog deferred
But after going on three months of silence, I had better admit the obvious.
A blog deferred does not explode.
It sighs and folds.
Campaign workers talked to Davis about supporting Nixon in January 1972. "The entertainer's reaction was that he has not chosen sides and is 'hanging loose,'" said a memo sent that month by campaign staffer Paul Jones to the re-election committee. "He indicated wanting to see 'what is in it' – which was spelled out to mean something 'for the people' – not for himself."
Another example of the unexpected outdoing itself in its power to surprise, as Ralph Ellison said!
He also taught me a lot about collegiality in public service--that is, about working together as colleagues. And he never ceased to remind all of us us--usefully, no doubt--that we are public servants, that our actions and decisions must always be for the good of the whole community. As anybody who knew him can tell you, he had a powerful deadpan--he could shock you momentarily into thinking you'd committed some mighty offense! only to let you know it was all right, everything was going to be all right. He really had one of the sweetest dispositions of any man I've ever known (and surely it is OK, in the 21st century, to call a man sweet). When I think of him, I will always see him smiling.
Sumner Elementary School, a National Historic Landmark that helped launch the nation's Civil Rights Movement as one of the schools at the center of the U.S. Supreme Court's (1954) ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, presently sits in a deteriorated and threatened state. Vacant since 1996, the school suffers from deferred maintenance and has sustained significant damage from water infiltration, neglect and vandalism. As current problems remain unaddressed and damage worsens, this national icon is being allowed to deteriorate even further and resources have not been allocated to stem this tide.