MLK and gratuitous dog photo

Yesterday was one of my favorite holidays during the school year. I’ve been attending the Martin Luther King Jr. Symposia here at UM for a long time (in fact, this may have been my 10th!), and I really enjoy the chance to take a brief break and hear someone interesting talk about something important. This year’s symposium, with the theme “We the People… Realizing the Dream?” was kicked-off yesterday morning by Shirley Sherrod, the former USDA Director of Rural Development in Georgia who was fired after some remarks she’d made were wildly distorted in a right-leaning media frenzy. Her message encouraging each person to consider what she/he could to to promote social justice was a welcome one, and I enjoyed her talk, despite of the frequently strong religious tones that don’t resonate particularly well with me.

Even before the question and answer period ended after the keynote address, I headed over to the hospital for the Health Sciences MLK event featuring Sherman James speaking about the legacy of health disparities from the Civil Rights Movement. I wasn’t able to stay through the entire talk, however, before I headed up to the 7th floor of the hospital to… see a patient by myself! Fear not, nothing I did made any difference (for better or worse) in the patient’s care. I’ll post more about how that went later in the week.

To close, I’ll remind you all what sunshine looks like:

This was only taken over the weekend, but already seems so distant after a day of “ice pellets” falling from the sky.