Italian Graffiti

Complexion Complex

It is not necessarily surprising that this should happen in the year 2009, but it is mind boggling that someone would say that allowing 60 African-American kids into the pool threatens to "change the complexion" of a club -- and in the city of brotherly love no less.
Meanwhile, here in the Old Dominion, as the "staycation" continues, I took my daughter and her friend Tasnim (whose name accurately suggests that her family is not native to these parts) to the public swimming pool. I was walking behind them across the parking lot and it occurred to me that within my lifetime a little girl with skin the beautiful shade of Tasnim's would not have been able to walk so free of care to a public pool in Virginia to swim with all the pale-skin kids. Of course, the pool here today was full of a rainbow of folks enjoying the clear blue sky and not giving a second thought to the complexities of complexion.
Why does this remain so difficult for so many?

Gotta Love the Web

I'm still enjoying some away time but managed to post a brief diary on Daily Kos. Oddly enough, it wound up here on This Week.
The net is an amazing place. You never know where you might turn up, nor under which name.
If you follow the links back you'll see that my extremely brief bit on McNamara was basically a news blast to the Kos community that wound up generating a huge comment response simply because it was the first diary posted noting McNamara's death.
As to McNamara, he was a fascinating character who lived fully into his own complete name: Robert Strange McNamara.