ST. PAULS — Thirty-degree weather wasn't going to stop Annie Pearson from marching the two-mile walk in remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr. – she showed up at St. Pauls Elementary School. But the rest of the St. Pauls Bladen County Chapter of Las Amigas never arrived at school.
"I guess they thought it was too cold," Pearson said with a smile on her face. The Las Amigas president got back in her car. "Just come to the church at six – I'll see you there."
Pearson walked into the church and sat on one of the 56 bright blue-cushioned pews. As more and more people escaped the wind-chilling cold and entered the small brick building. Pearson moved from the left row of pews to the middle. She sat alone. Her black jacket that she draped over the back of the wooden pew coordinated with her shoes, her nylons and the color of her skin.
The choir began singing. The crowd was clapping and tapping; Pearson didn't move. Her right hand grasped her thin gold-framed glasses.
She walked up to the podium after the singing stopped. "You know the reason for us being here … remembering the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.," Pearson said, serving her role as the organizer of the 11th annual event. "We hope you will be blessed, we are blessed to have you here."
She took her seat, put on her glasses and scrutinized the night's agenda like a professor would a textbook.
The singing started again. She stood up. Her voice rose above the other 40 people in the crowd. But that distinct sound was only heard on certain words. The glasses had moved to her left hand and a tissue was scrunched up in her right hand.
The preacher, Rev. Curtis Barginere, stood up to speak. Pearson crossed her arms on her lap and kept her abnormally good posture.
"Like Moses in his day, God used King mightily to pave a better way," Barginere said with his voice maintaining one noise level – loud. "Let us remember the marches. Let us remember the jail time. Let us remember the water. Let us remember the dogs."
When Barginere referred to King with the phrases "by peaceful means" and "full of love for mankind," Pearson strongly nodded her head.
"King stepped out of that fear only on the foundation of Jesus Christ," Barginere said.
The crowd was no longer an audience, but a part of the show with shouts of "Amen" and hands raised – some people stood up.
Barginere spiced up scripture.
"You are my friends if you do, if you do, if you do what I command you," he said raising his voice to a level that made the microphone buzz. His hands remained in the air waving and shaking, as if they automatically did that when his voice reached a certain level.
He continued: "We are about something. We are about peace and love and happiness, not this violence state. Not drugs and crime … not breaking into houses … ."
After the service, Pearson said she thought Barginere did well.
"It was different from what we've heard," she said. "I liked when he tied Martin Luther King into biblical characters."
Pearson was a college student during the 1963 March on Washington. She said King's ideals are still alive.
"He set the floor for civil and economic justice," she said.
lunes, 28 de enero de 2008
lunes, 14 de enero de 2008
The Glass Castle
Despite having a selfish mother and an alcoholic father, Jeanette Walls and her three siblings stay afloat amidst an almost-homeless lifestyle.
Walls has a knack for writing well as she tells a fascinating memoir of what it was like to live in a condemned house with no plumbing, no food, and no refrigerator.
Her father uses her beauty to get a few bucks, her mother wont wake up to go to work every day. Walls and her brother go "hunting" for food on a daily basis, sometimes sitting in the bathrooms at school to wait for other children to throw away their leftovers at lunch.
To read a real account of the different effects an impoverished lifestyle can have on American people in recent times from a page-turner of a book, pick this one up.
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