[Day four of Robin's Some/thing old, new, borrowed, blue funfest, in honor of Freedom to Marry week. Lots of folks have joined the party -- take a peek. Many thanks to Robin for a delightfully inventive idea.]

My grandfather’s bench. That’s what I’m going with, for something blue.

(I highly recommend your firing up this snippet of Sir Miles’ classic, and reading this post with it as accompaniment. Did it up in its own window, special for the occasion. It just might last you through the entirety of the post, if you read fast and don’t let yourself get too distracted by the link to the Bower Bird.)

I could have taken the “blue” theme in a lugubrious direction, and waxed on about the sorrow and misery that has collected around our door in recent years. Loss, loss, loss. Much to be blue about. But I spend plenty of attention, blogular and otherwise, on that stuff. So I decided — perhaps because the sky was so blue this morning — I should flit and frolick in a more chipper direction.

I wouldn’t have skipped more than a few blocks in this direction before I’d have bumped into the 130 year-old Flagg House (pictured above right). As you can see, it is done up in ALL BLUES. And no, I don’t think any descendents of Miles Davis live there, but I can’t be sure; I’ve never seen anyone walk in or out after walking past it for the two and a half years we’ve lived in this neighborhood.

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From Dr. King’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Dec. 10, 1964:

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.

I refuse to accept the idea that the “is-ness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “ought-ness” that forever confronts him.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of nuclear annihilation.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

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Stephanie Coontz’ op-ed piece today in The New York Times, “Taking Marriage Private,” is very much worth a read (it’s short and to the point), and absolutely worth passing on to anyone who is a bit befuddled about the history and current limitations of that strange institution, marriage.

Some choice clips (all stuff that should be in the talking points of thinking folks whenever they take up the topic of marriage):

• For most of Western history … marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.

• In 1215, the church decreed that a “licit” marriage must take place in church. But people who married illictly had the same rights and obligations as a couple married in church: their children were legitimate; the wife had the same inheritance rights; the couple was subject to the same prohibitions against divorce.

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