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Notes and

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The Scoop

at City Hall

         I suspected this could be one for the storybooks and, although I love to read and write stories, I wasn't looking forward to this one.  I was not looking forward to the first Victoria City Council meeting of the New Year 2017.  I did not have hopes for a good evening, having witnessed this new element in town for some time.

         I said a prayer and bravely drove off into the night.  At least the snow had stopped, but the roads were slippery.  Although I was 20 minutes early for the council meeting, there was no place to park next to nor in front of City Hall.  The entourage of the inaugural evening had already arrived.  Since I didn't see any "No Parking" signs in the construction zone across from City Hall, I pulled in and made tracks in the new fallen snow.

         Sure enough, the first half hour of the council meeting was a mean-spirited and nasty discharge, like from a bully or tyrant, pointed at the Gazette, and it didn't have  courage to glance in my direction, much less to meet my eyes.

         As the rant continued, I took notes, as is my wont, and found myself smiling inside, knowingly, because long ago I had so accurately assessed the new element.  It is one that seeks to deceive, denigrate, and destroy.  It reared its ugly head with the yellow flyer back in the summer of 2013.  That flyer, distributed anonymously, contained misinformation, as have other things  from the same source.

         On the other hand, the record of the Victoria Gazette is 37 years -- 37 volumes! -- of building up this city and the people who live and work here, with honesty, accuracy, and decency.  The Gazette is a historical and continuing testimony of transparency and truthfulness that cannot be credibly denied.

         I do not print garbage.  I am not a pawn of prevarication.  And I don't fall prey to sophistry. The Victoria Gazette remains dedicated to the sunshine of truth, the moonshine of meeting deadlines, and the starshine of Victoria.  It is a grand constellation. 

***

         In my various reading materials this past month, I ran across the speech of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,the one he wrote in 1963 from a Birmingham Jail. 

         MLK Day was celebrated this year on Monday, January 16th, which happens to have been my mother's 90th birthday.  Yes, we were down in Ghent celebrating my mother on January 16th and I took many pictures for the online album on my website.  My mother was born in 1927, two years after my dad was born in 1925, and two years before Martin Luther King Jr was born in 1929.  Quite a sandwich.

         Back in 1963, the year of the speech, the USA was still a Christian country.  People were by no means perfect then either, but they agreed on basic morality and the Ten Commandments.  They cared about the difference between virtue and vice. 

         A public lie, for example, was disgraceful, certainly not compounded and applauded as it is today.  Media and Hollywood and the University weren't yet drowning in the mire and muck of perversity nor had they been dumbed down by the new pagan god of Political Correctness.

         If my world was divided back in 1963, it was between Catholics and Lutherans, and black and white people.  I met my first Lutheran in high school in 1961.  I met my first black person in college in 1965.

         And so in this differently divided day and age, I read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s old speech with new eyes.  I see him today as much more than a pastoral and peaceful protestor in his quest for civil rights.  He wasn't just a preacher, but also a teacher.

         In his jail speech, Dr. King, who was a Baptist minister, quotes, among others, St. Augustine (350 A.D.) and St. Thomas Aquinas (1250 A.D.)  When is the last time you heard Augustine or Aquinas quoted in the Media, Hollywood, or the University?

         For that matter, when is the last time you heard Augustine or Aquinas quoted in Church? And so I'll fill in a bit of the gap for you right here in the Victoria Gazette.

         As Dr. King quoted them in his 1963 speech from jail, St. Augustine.  "An unjust law is no law at all." St. Thomas Aquinas:  "An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law." 

         Such is the wisdom -- of teachers and preachers, presidents and pastors, mayors and editors, citizens and countrymen -- that stands the test of time.

From the Editor

Dedicated to the sunshine of truth,

the moonshine of meeting deadlines,

and the starshine of Victoria.

The Victoria GAZETTE

Sue’s Album

A symphony of photos

and fewer than a thousand words

at www.VictoriaGazette.com

February 2017