25 October 2005

The Rose, Rent

Rosa Parks, 92, Founding Symbol of Civil Rights Movement, Dies - New York Times

There really aren't words for a loss like this; but everyone dies, and what I'm mourning isn't so much the passing of a legend -- legends never really die.

I'm going to miss the woman. I don't have many heroes. We live in an age where anyone who's foolish enough to allow themselves to be put on a pedestal gets knocked off pretty handily.

But Rosa Parks was that rare hero -- one who never stopped insisting that she was a flawed human.

You know how sometimes someone will ask you, "If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would it be?" Well, like all such lists, I'm never able to narrow it down to one choice -- my tastes and desires change like the direction of the wind, and depend on the time, tempurature, my whimsy, and the barometric pressure -- but when confronted with a question like that, I'll gladly give you a rotating, shifting Top Five. And in answer to that question, Rosa Parks would have been way, way up at the top.

So that's why I'm a little sad, today.

No comments: