And if My Thought Dreams Could be Seen

Tomorrow is Juneteenth Day. For the fisherman who use the Marina at Norwich Harbor, it will feel a little bit stressful but it's all for a good cause. We've seen Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore, Maryland, Charleston, South Carolina in the last few turnings of the calendar page, we are not those places.

I could offer you an explanation on the origins and history of the day but that news article does a better than good job of it though I think for us in Norwich, unlike a lot or urban areas in recent months we have a softer focus on the day and the events around  and behind it.

But don't kid yourself, there's unresolved sorrow, fear, resentment, anguish and anger associated with the origins and causes for the system of oppression whose end, in the United States as we knew it came back then one-hundred and fifty years ago on June 19, as on June 19, 1865, when slaves in Galveston, Texas, learned the War Between the States had ended moths earlier on 9 April and  they were now free. 

Starting at noon tomorrow and lasting until six, it will be the 27th Annual Observance of Juneteenth Day and it promises to be quite a do. Everyone is invited and anyone who chooses to attend will be welcome 

Holiday celebrations help bring different people, and peoples, together, to reflect on who they are, who they were and who they are on the way to becoming. Ideally, each of us sees in one another a reflection of ourselves as well as a better understanding of our unique talents and gifts-the stuff that makes you, you and me, me. 

That's why the Juneteenth party at the Norwich Marina is so large--not only all the people who are going to be there are at it, but all those who've come before them and those generations as yet to be born who will fulfill their promises and who will dream their own dreams and then live those as well. 

So celebrate with us here in Norwich or where ever in the world you find yourself today.Sometimes, unless and until you look back it's hard to see how far you've traveled. It can be easy to realize the journey has a distance yet to accomplished and to feel daunted by the challenge of that task, but it is sweeter and sweetened by the knowledge of where we were and where we are now. 

"And if my thought dreams could be seen, They'd probably put my head in a guillotine. But it's alright, Ma, it's life and life only." 
-bill kenny