#including the bus I was on to Dublin breaking down!

[novemberhush]

Saw these guys live at the Olympia in Dublin tonight (well, last night now, I guess) and they went a long way to making up for what was a pretty dismal week otherwise. I think this was the first song of theirs I ever heard, so I thought I’d post it.

[k00297635]

Paper Clay!!!

Today we learned how to make paper clay! So cool, so fun.

Step one: Slowly add some cheap toilet paper (piece by piece into warm water) breaking it up as you add it.

Step Two: Break up pieces of porcelain into small pieces.

Step three: Blend the porcelain and water until its a smooth consistency

Step four: With a cheese cloth drain the water out of the toilet paper but not all of the water

Step Five: add the mixture together with the porcelain and blend everything well together

Step six: Get yourself some fired slabs and scrap them back with a metal ruler to make sure they're smooth. Add you mixture on in thin layer and smooth over with a rubber kidney. You can do about three-four layers.

Step seven: When its dry peel a corner off and lift it up and voila!

I was thinking of making a porcelain train out of train tickets made out of paper clay. The porcelain allows light to pass so it would be cool to have it hollow and put fairy lights underneath so give the train a warm glow. I think I would do it in the shape as the new train because its so lovely and warm as opposed to the old train which has rubbish doors and is very cold and miserable.

On the train home I noticed that nobody was talking to each other but sometimes your feet have an awkward conversation/ fight for space. My friend was on the new train from Dublin to Galway and he was telling me about a funny interaction. Its my friends 20 year old GAA brother. He said he was sitting across from a "small boy wearing an anime t-shirt" and he unapologetically kicked Rorys feet out of the way to give himself more space. Rory described it as "getting alpha maled by some feet". Neither of them spoke a word to each other but yet they had a whole interaction. It was a foot conversation? I thought it was interesting and funny and something that often happens on the train so I made a silly little drawing about it.

I made the little drawing yesterday and I thought I would include it even though I hate it because you never know sometimes the bad drawings or the ones you hate can have a small part of it that can lead to an idea you love later down the line. It was just about me being annoyed by someone skipping me in the queue for the bus and then hearing them say to the driver that they didn't have a ticket to the fully booked bus. So annoying. I just have a favorite seat I like to sit in (its the one beside the emergency exit at the back of the bus because no one can sit behind you so you can always out your seat back). I did think it was funny to call City link Sitty link because it the same word but with a different meaning. Maybe I'll do something with that but I'm not quite sure yet. I don't really like taking sound recordings on the bus because its very quiet and boring. Maybe its too comfortable and everyone is too realaxed to be interesting.

[snlangford]

Let’s Talk About Trackers...

Because of the major talk about them yesterday and how an anon tried to throw me under the bus, I want to make an informative post about the specific tracker I use and certain others do too (assuming they still use these). This will also go under a keep reading so you don’t have to scroll in case you read it and then don’t wanna scroll past it a second time.

I personally use a site called statcounter. What is stat counter? Well, let me explain with an excerpt from Wikipedia!

“StatCounter is a web traffic analysis website started in 1999. Access to basic services is free and advanced services can cost between US$5 and US$119 a month. StatCounter is based in Dublin, Ireland. The statistics from StatCounter are used to compute web usage share for example. As of May 2019, StatCounter is used on 0.9% of all websites. StatCounter statistics are directly derived from hits—as opposed to unique visitors—from 3 million sites, which use StatCounter, resulting in total hits of more than 15 billion per month. No artificial weightings are used to correct for sampling bias, thus the numbers in the statistics can not be considered to be representative samples.”

Statcounter I find has some cool features too if you do run a business site, which I aim to do in the future, here’s some of the cool analytics stuff they have if you’re a business marketer:

This above is a capture taken for the tracker on my OC blog @ / barashikki-dialoversoc

This tool here provides where the majority of your people come from, so it will help businesses to have features such as this, so StatCounter is cool to use for business and marketing.

But that’s not why we’re here, are we?

StatCounter says they provide you with IPs in hopes of blocking/banning them from your site and/or stopping fraud on your website.

Sure, that’s useful as I personally use that to block people’s IPs if they send me hate anons. But here is how it’s an issue... This specific tab, which I know M/C uses quite often from my former friendship with her: Visitor Activity

Now, let’s go there and break it down. I will be censoring sensitive information like people’s locations and IP addresses to protect them.

I want to also address the “xxx is now using 100% of its log space” too.

It may be hard to read, but it says the following 

“Your Project Bara Shikki is now using 100% of its log space. This means that your website traffic data for detailed stats older than 7 months* will be overwritten to make room for new data. You can upgrade for $9/month to increase your log to 10+ years*. If you don't mind losing this old data for detailed stats, then no action is required on your part. Summary Stats are included with all plans and are unlimited.

* Estimated based on your current traffic”

For my other blog @ / dialoving-lemons, it deletes this info in 7 days due to the high demand traffic (it is a LOT more popular than any of my other blogs despite me being on hiatus there).

So while that is good, this information stays for a while. If someone is paying for this service, they can keep this info for a long time.

Now onto the part we are mainly addressing, addresses and IPs. I will use my own visits for the example (the white censor). And yes, you can appear on your own tracker as it picks anyone up who visits the URL.

I color coded this so we can do a breakdown. 

Yellow is my city. Green is the state (will be providence if you are in another country). Then you see “United States” as the country it says I’m from. Your country’s flag also appears before your location.

^^^This here is already pretty accurate and sensitive information, and we haven’t even gotten to the second line yet.

For the second line, we have these: Purple is your internet provider. White, that’s your IP. See that tag next to it? You can click on that and make notes in it for when that person returns to your url. You can even sign up for notifications to get emails or alerts on your phone (if you have the statcounter app). How do I know this? This is how:

Incognito doesn’t have dark mode, so sorry for bright image lol

Idk about you guys, but that’d make me uncomfortable to know someone could just get a ping saying I’m visiting their page. Again, I don’t know what features M/C uses, so I can’t say if she has this or not.

So not only can you find someone’s location, internet provider, and IP (which I think is enough for someone who hack or screw you over somehow, idk. I’d want to look that info up) but you can also stalk when they’re on your blog. This is a big YIKES.

Now back to the breakdown of the image from earlier...

You can learn what device they used, their browser, get a timestamp, and also how long they were on your page. I personally don’t care sharing this info, many of us use the most updated browser of our choice and most of us are on windows 10 for computer users.

So... yeah. While I use statcounter myself to block haters and redirect their IPs so they can’t get on my page anymore, I feel this site does give out too much information. On top of that, the one we all know who uses this software also has some software that checks who unfollows her. She uses these to get dirt on people and to expose them, it is not for her safety.

Now some tips on how to be safe if you don’t want to be tracked thanks to me testing things out:

Use the tumblr app.

The tumblr app uses coding for mobile usage. It does not rely on urls, but another form of code. StatCounter cannot log this code, so you will not appear on the visitor activity tab.

View blogs in side view

This is side view for those that don’t know. Side view acts a lot like the app in terms of the coding. So viewing like this is safe for you to not appear on trackers.

StatCounter relies on you typing in and clicking on urls on someone’s tumblr page (if installed on a tumblr).

As long as you are on a way that doesn’t rely on url systems, you are safe from appearing in someone’s tracker.

And a final note, if you are going to use one like I do, for blocking haters’ IPs, then I highly recommend putting a disclaimer in your description. I immediately did that when I installed mine so people knew they’d get rerouted if they started crap with me. I personally feel that keeping it secret that you have a tracker is violating someone’s consent as you are gathering info without their permission. By saying you have one, them being able to use ways where they won’t be tracked is very useful and helps them feel at ease knowing they can decide if they’re fine popping up on your tracker or not. Here is an example disclaimer you can put if you do put one in. Feel free to copy and paste too!

"Disclaimer: I use a tracker that allows me to see visitors’ IPs so I can block them if they cause problems for me, proceed at your own risk"

[infinite-nevers]

chapter one; wayward son

Enna Scanlan bounced in her computer chair. Only two hours to go before Owen’s return to their village in around six years. Her best friend, Grace, stared at her over her mug, an amused smile across her face and dark green eyes creased. Enna’s eyes had been flicking over to the clock on the other side of the room since she got in at nine this morning. Her personal phone was barely out of her sight and checked every five minutes. It was usually kept tucked away in her bag in case their boss caught sight of it. ‘No personal phones in the office’ until lunch time was a strict rule. Then, Enna had devoted the entirety of today’s lunch hour to chasing signal around the huge office and cursing their hotel’s terrible location.

“He’s not texted then?” Grace asked mildly, sipping her tea, and twirling a red curl. That glare was thrown at her again. She chuckled, “I don’t get it- you’re in contact everyday, why is today any different?”

Enna and Owen couldn’t go a single day without contacting each other. There was always some text or phone call to interrupt her day. Enna had once gone away with her boyfriend on a surprise trip and had neglected to tell Owen. Two days had passed without contact and Owen had gotten so worried he’d rung Enna’s mum. There had been a long talk about boundaries after that, but their daily contact had resumed.

“Today is the day I finally see him,” Enna said, looking so excited Grace might have been a little jealous had she not already understood that she always came second to Owen. If only Sean, Enna’s boyfriend, would remember that too. Nothing could break Enna and Owen’s bond from birth, including not seeing each other for a year or two.

Enna sighed and grabbed her mug. Just as she began to stand to go to the kettle, she saw that Grace had already poured them their 3pm brews. She raised her mug, a kitsch red and blue offering, in an apologetic salute.

Enna knew she could become a little occupied in her friendship with Owen, but she’d never been this bad before. They’d been best friends growing up and in university but had still managed lives outside of each other. The ever-lengthening time apart and Owen’s sudden urge to come home had made Enna realise just how long it had been. They’d always planned visits but with life happening all around them it had never quite panned out as often as it should.

“Sorry,” Enna grimaced when she realised that she’d gotten lost in her head again. Grace just laughed, used to the memory lane disappearances by now.

“No worries. Just remember you’ve got ‘the future Mrs O’Donaghue’ breathing down your neck.”

“Oh f-” Enna squealed. Dragon Bride, a young woman who only answered to ‘the future Mrs O’Donaghue’, was getting married in a week’s time and her wish list only kept growing. As events coordinator for the hotel Enna had dealt with many difficult clients over the years. Dragon Bride beat them all. Enna shuddered to think of the consequences of ignoring her.

Two hours later, Enna pretended to bash her forehead against her desk as a high-pitched voice screeched into her ear, “this of the utmostimportant! Do you understand?”

Enna breathed in deeply through her nose and bunched her hair into a fist, “ma’am. Your wedding is in two weeks, it might be difficult to find a petting zoo to rent out in that time.” Her exhale whistled through gritted teeth.

“I don’t want it for the wedding! I want it for the hen do. Is this making sense to you now?” Dragon Bride yelled again. Enna’s knuckles whitened in her hair.

“That is in a week so it’s the same-”

“Just get it done.” Dialling tone rung loud in her ear.

She raised her head from her desk and stared at the phone. She let out a loud, frustrated squawk and slammed the phone down, “This woman is a nightmare!”

“Who’s a nightmare?” A cheerful voice cut through Enna’s frustration. She jumped with a yelp. Swivelling around in her seat she saw her boss, Conor, beaming widely at her. A charismatic man, half the office was in love with him. Blonde hair flopped over his twinkling eyes, always looking suitably messy from his paddle-boarding habit. He looked so much like a stereotypical Australian surfer that it was sometimes a little difficult taking him seriously as her boss.

“The future Mrs O’Donaghue.” Grace supplied, voice light with barely contained amusement.

“Ah,” Conor nodded, “the Dragon?” Enna blinked at his flippant tone. He was a very relaxed boss, insisted everyone called him and his wife by their first names, invited all of his staff down to the pub every Friday and knew them all by name, right down to the ground staff he saw maybe once a year, but usually he was quite respectful towards clients. Enna nodded dumbly.

“What did she want this time?” There was an annoyance in his voice that Enna couldn’t quite parse. Conor never got involved in her clients until Enna came to him with a problem. Then he’d hear the problem from both sides and try to help her solve the issue. She’d only mentioned Dragon Bride once in passing and Conor had dismissed her worries, promising to take her side in whatever.

“A petting zoo!” Grace replied with malicious glee. Enna shot her a look over her shoulder and got a quiet ‘what’ shrug back.

“Who’s paying for the wedding?” Conor asked without preamble, “trust fund baby?” It clicked in Enna’s head. Despite his own wealth from being a hotelier Conor was a snob about rich people. He hated people who had been born into wealth rather than working for it. He thought it made them spoilt and irresponsible. In the case of Dragon Bride, he was right.

“Her father,” Enna muttered. She didn’t want to add fuel to a possible tirade about the plight of the common people. Grace was giggling behind her, turning it into a cough when Conor furrowed his brows at her.

“Ignore her! If she complains I won’t take any notice. Just do your best! And put your phone away,” He nodded towards to Enna’s beeping phone, “oh wait, look it’s five. Pack up lads and ladies! It’s home time! Who’s coming to the pub?” He grinned and swung his arms around to suggest everyone wrap up what they were doing. Everyone instantly stood, having waited for their boss’ weekly pub invitation. Enna picked up her phone with a wry grin towards her eccentric boss, huddling people out of the door. A text from Owen awaited her – he had arrived.

She bolted for the door.

She arrived at the small, red brick bus station twenty minutes late and swearing the entire time. The bendy country roads, thankfully leaf free this time of year, were difficult to navigate anyway. Having vengeful farmers move their herds during rush hour just made it an exercise in anger management. She parked the car across the road, kicked the door shut with another loud curse and looked up to laughter.

Across the road, crouched against the bus station’s toilets walls, was Owen and he was laughing at her. He ran a hand through his hair. Enna grinned back at him, anger instantly melting away. She surreptitiously studied him as she tried to get to him. It had only been around two years since she’d gone to see him in the UK, but he looked untouched by that time. His hair still swung messily around his ears and his eyes still creased when he smiled.

“Sorry!” She yelled over the traffic, “I meant to text but signal on this road y’know,” she carried on as she ran across a gap in the cars going home from the city. Owen waved a dismissive hand as he stood and held his arms out. She threw herself into them apologising profusely, “Alan-”

“-is still punishing us mere mortals for not choosing God’s own profession by letting his sheep loose during rush hour?”

“Exactly!” She beamed as she drew away. Her eyes darted down to what he had been crouched over, “is that all you have?” Disappointment washed over her as she eyed the small duffle bag.

Owen laughed loudly. He ruffled her hair before dropping an arm around her shoulder. Picking up his bag, he guided her towards the luggage hold office opposite the ticket booth. Two huge suitcases stood in wait, “fear not little one, I’m here a while.” Enna let out a breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding. It was time to bring Owen home.

Later that night, and one sheep free journey later, the two stood outside their old home away from home. Ramble Inn was an old pub in a beautiful Georgian building with red trims around the window. The door had also been red at one point, but the paint had now peeled and faded to a faint pink. As they were growing up it had been their second living room. It was where they came after Mass, where they came after a match, and where they came after school once you hit fifteen. Try as you might though, Tom would never serve you.

Owen laughed at memories of a bygone era. Him, Enna, Grace and Liam, Enna’s older brother, clustered around a table playing dominoes with the old men. They’d enjoyed playing at being adults and the real adults had enjoyed indulging them. He wondered if they were still there.

“Tom still won’t serve you underage.” Enna guessed at his previous thoughts. Owen rubbed at his beard. One night, drunk and seventeen, Owen had tried to get served. He’d gotten quite rowdy; Tom had thrown him out and he’d landed on his face. He’d never forgotten the pain of a dislocated jaw.

“Tom’s still psychic, knows everyone ages, even the passers through. Kids don’t get anything but juice,” Enna grinned at him lost in his misty-eyed memories.

“You two going to stand outside here all night?” A voice cut through their reverie. They turned their head in unison. Caoimhe Walsh stood there with a hand on her hip and bright eyes fixed on Owen. A more recent addition to the village, a blow-in from Dublin, Caoimhe had been an instant hit. Tall, blonde, and beautiful, she was everything Enna wasn’t but every bit as sweet as she looked.

“Keev!” Enna grinned, “thought you were out with the girls tonight?” Unlike Enna, who found socialising wearing, Caoimhe thrived on it, flitting happily between social groups, welcomed by most.

“Yeah, we decided on a quiet one instead.” She slung an arm around Enna’s shoulder and threw a hand up to the Ramble Inn’s curling gold letters. Enna snorted. Caoimhe shot a wolfish grin back. They both knew she’d have no such thing.

Caoimhe’s eyes finally strayed to where Owen was looking at them with a slightly dumb smile on his face. Noticing Caoimhe looking at him, Owen offered a slightly dumb wave.

“Owen?” Caoimhe’s eyes went wide and, after a beat, threw her arms around him in a massive hug, “oh my god, you’re that Owen?”

Enna blinked rapidly at them. Keev had moved the village long after Owen had left. Although she had featured heavily in the stories Enna told him, he never mentioned knowing her.

“You’re that Caoimhe?” His laugh was jubilant as he picked her up, “I never made the link! Enna talks about you all the time. Oh, Eni, do you remember that business trip I took like two months ago?” Owen turned back to her when he caught sight of her tilted head and querying expression.

Caoimhe came back to Enna’s side and slid her hand into the hook of Enna’s arm. She grinned at her expectantly, “and remember that holiday I took two months ago?” She prompted when Enna didn’t connect the dots straight away. It must have all been too exciting because she didn’t wait for a response, “well we met at this bar, got chatting and when I said I was living in Ballygra… how did we not make the connection?”

Enna pulled a face. It certainly seemed a little unbelievable. There were so few people in the village and none with her name. Before she could query it, Keev said,

“Can’t believe Ballygra produces such hot men.” She winked at him. He nodded and winked back with a flirtatious grin. Enna snorted.

Nothing had changed then. It had been like this since he was about twenty-one. That’s when the braces had finally come off, bed head stopped being his only hair style and he’d discovered the power of personal hygiene. Since then people had flocked around him. She saw it, of course, but actual attraction was hard to summon when you’d seen them hungover countless times since you were fourteen.

“Are you coming to Midnight’s, Owen?” Caoimhe beamed as the thought occurred to her.

Saturday lunch at Café Midnight was their tradition; Enna, Liam, Grace and Caoimhe. Sometimes Sean would pop in his head, but Friday night was Boys Night and lunches were usually slept through as a healing process. Caoimhe dragged the pair inside instead of waiting for an answer. She already knew that, when together, where Enna was Owen would also be.

The Ramble Inn was the same as Owen remembered it. The wooden bar stood proud in the middle; battered, worn, and smelling of spilled beer and disinfectant. Old, wobbly stools stood guard including the one Enna had completely unpicked when she was fifteen. Tom had made her re-sew another one and, despite it being the ugliest thing in the world, he had made her sit on it every time she came in for years.

It was filled with the usual Friday night suspects. On the right-hand side, the men still played their dominoes. Old Man Charlie still had his whiskey clutched in his hand and an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips, smoking ban be damned.

On the left-hand side sat the younger crowd, some with kids because who wanted to cook on a Friday night? Teenagers tucked in the corner with juice, a group playing darts. Tom stood through it all, keeping court with a raggedy dishcloth tossed over his shoulder. The only difference was Tom’s hair now silver all over and there were extra wrinkles around his eyes. A spotty teenager served as a glass collector.

Caoimhe left Owen’s side the moment they entered. A group of women sitting at the back waved her over. One of them nodded to Owen and Caoimhe flew over to them to spread the gossip of his return.

Owen turned for Enna, but she had already brushed past. She nodded to all the familiar faces as she moved towards the bar. She leant on it, sitting on her stool, and laughed at whatever Tom said to her. Then she turned to point at Owen still standing by the door. Tom’s bushy eyebrows shot up.

“You’ve grown boy!” Tom yelled over the pub noise. It fell quiet. Everyone looked over at him. He shifted on his feet and offered an awkward wave. It took a few seconds, but the pub noise swelled once they recognised Ballygra’s wayward son. Old Man Charlie and his group raised their glasses. Tom beckoned him over. He shuffled over and Tom busied himself by the bar,

“You still Jameson’s?” He grinned his familiar, crooked smile and pushed a glass towards him. His returning smile was awkward, wondering how his jaw might last this encounter. A beer was in Enna’s hand and he raised an eyebrow. All through university Enna had been a cocktail girl, proudly declaring beer to be nothing but ‘wheat water’. She noticed his pointed look.

“Well, you’ve got to lower your standards for this place,” the wink she sent Tom was waved good-naturedly away.

Suddenly a large set of arms wrapped themselves around Enna’s waist. Lips pressed against her cheek and told her, “You’re late. Took your time getting here, didn’t you?” The tone aimed for teasing but missed.

“Sean! I had to pick Owen up and say hi to his mam of course,” Enna laughed. She turned around and reached up to peck him on the lips.

“How could I forget?” There was a slight edge to Sean’s voice that made Owen prickle slightly. Sean reached over with his hand extended. Owen shook it, proud that he only winced a little at the firm grip. The two men then regarded each other coolly over Enna’s head. She pretended not to notice, preferring to ignore a problem until it went away. Instead, she busied herself with looking around the pub for someone. The two men regarded each other. Sean was dark haired, blue-eyed, and muscular, the exact type Enna had lusted after all these years. Owen was brown haired, brown-eyed and, in Enna’s eyes, still wearing his teenage skin. Sean offered him a smile that never reached his eyes and turned away.

“She’s over there with Conor.” Sean said. Conor and Grace sat in a booth with their heads bent over a piece of paper. His beautiful wife, Sarah, sat on the other side of the pub, playing on her phone. Waving to Sarah, Enna grabbed Owen’s hand and pulled Owen towards her friend. Sean was shrugged off and sulked over to his darts group. His friend heard his complaining and clapped him on the shoulder. Sean hadn’t been in the village long enough to understand the friendship but everyone else had.

As the pair approached Grace and Conor, Enna narrowed her eyes on the piece of paper they were looking at. It was on the hotel stationery. Rarely was work brought to the pub, only during a big event at the hotel, and if it was, Enna’s presence was required. She strained her head forward to try and get a better look. Instead, it alerted the pair to their arrival. Grace glanced up. Her eyes widened and she kicked Conor under the table. He jerked up. It took a second but then he shot them his signature twinkle. The paper got surreptitiously tucked away into his inside jacket pocket.

“Owen!” Grace cried as she launched herself up and threw her arms around him. Enna was almost jealous of the amount of people hurling themselves at him.

Owen punched out a laugh as he braced for impact. His eyebrows shot up at her reaction. Sure, they’d grown up together, but it had been Enna and Owen, Liam and Grace. It had changed with Owen moving away and Liam getting a job as a GP in the next town over. It had become Enna and Grace with Grace falling out of contact Owen and taking less to Liam.

“How are you doing Grey?” Owen’s voice went soft, once more lost in memory. Grace shot him a wide smile. She placed her hands on his cheeks and gave them a pat, like she used to do.

She turned back to the table, “this is Conor, I mean Mr Murray!” Grace presented him with an arm flourish, “our boss,” she tacked on when the confused silence lengthened. Owen, not one to be rude, offered up a hand and a friendly greeting. Conor stood to clap him on the back before making his excuses to return to Sarah. Enna watched for a moment before she turned around to eye Grace.

“Number puzzles,” she said, “he finds one, sometimes in work, I help him if he’s stuck. You know Sarah has no head for numbers. Anyway, you back then?” The pair slipped into Conor’s vacated space. Grace dragged her eyes around the wayward son, “my, my you havegrown up.”

God, why did everyone keep saying that? Enna turned to assess him again. All she could see was the friend she’d helped get over ex’s, whose hair she’d held back during the morning afters.

“I don’t know.” He huffed to Grace’s question, “I told myself a month and then back to work.” A wistful look stole over his face as he turned it about the room. Some of Caoimhe’s friends were looking back over their drinks. The Old Boys kept flicking their eyes over, clearly wondering at how to treat him. Was he still considered one of their own after so long away? Was he a blow-in, like Conor and Caoimhe? Tom still wore holes in the floor behind the bar. The darts game ended with groans and Sean fist-pumping the air, “but who knows? This place – it’s home.”

Sean sidled over now that he’d won his game. He came to stand by Owen, looking down his nose pointedly at him. Owen avoided his gaze; seemingly engrossed by the bottom of his glass. Sean hovered a second more before sliding in beside Grace with a pout. Enna swallowed. Well, this might be awkward.

[180abroad]

Day 144: Going East

Today, after two and a half months in (mostly) English-speaking countries, it was finally time to dive back into continental Europe. And we'd be diving pretty deep--all the way over to Poland.

After our last British breakfast, we took a taxi out to the Inverness airport. Our flight was at 10:55, and our host had recommended leaving at 8:30  to make sure we had plenty of time.

Back when we first arrived in Scotland, we'd thought that flying out of Dublin was as easy as it could get (not counting the Burger King incident). But Inverness was on another level. Checking in, dropping off our bags, and going through security took less than 15 minutes total. That left us plenty of time to browse the airports impressively stocked whisky shop and admire the airport's three gates. Not three terminals--three gates.

Our flight was with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and included a layover in Amsterdam. We were a little nervous about the layover because it would only be 35 minutes long. But the tickets had all been booked directly through KLM, so we figured that we could trust their judgement.

It worked out, but I’m not so sure about their judgement.

Our flight from Inverness actually left early, and we arrived in Amsterdam over ten minutes ahead of schedule. Which was a very good thing, because we were at the far end of one terminal while our next flight was at the far end of the opposite terminal. And half of the moving walkways were out of service. And we had to go through passport control.

There was a fast-track lane for short connections at passport control, but an attendant told us to go into the main line anyway. This wasn’t an Inverness or even a Dublin line–this was a major-international-hub line. After waiting in this line for about ten minutes, our mental math was raising red flags. We would have a hard time getting through the line before our flight took off, let alone getting all the way to the gate, which was still a considerable walk beyond the passport control desks.

Just as we were getting ready to ask again, another attendant came up and shouted for us to get over into the fast-track line.

Passports stamped, we speedwalked straight to the gate, bypassing several badly needed bathrooms, and only just made it to the gate at the scheduled opening time. If our plane from Inverness hadn't arrived early, we might not have made it to our gate even if we hadn't gotten stuck at passport control.

Luckily for us, our next plane was also late, so we had time to use the toilets and grab a cold beverage from a vending machine before hopping on the bus that took us to our plane. It was smaller than the plane we took from Dublin to Edinburgh, but it did have jet engines instead of turboprops–so I still count it as an upgrade.

The flight was smooth, and soon enough we were stepping out into Krakow's John Paul II Airport. We decided to get some Polish Złotys (pronounced “zwah-tes”) from the airport ATMs (or "Bankomats") before hailing a taxi from into town. We ended up withdrawing way more money than we needed--the interface had been designed to make it look like you couldn't pull out smaller amounts unless you looked closely.

As it turned out, we probably would have been better off skipping ATMs in Poland altogether.

I always imagined Eastern Europe as a very cash-based place, but that couldn't have been further from the truth--at least in Krakow. Everyone there seems to use credit cards for everything. Spending the 100zł bills that we'd gotten from the ATMs (worth about $25 US) was nearly impossible. Even at large grocery stores and tourist sites, the cashiers would just shake their heads and smile at us condescendingly as if we were simpletons trying to pay with rocks.

We eventually went looking for a bank or currency exchange that would break some of our larger bills for us and gave up after a frustratingly unsuccessful hour of searching. Two of the currency exchanges (or "kantors") practically laughed us out of the doors.

I have to admit that I got angry once or twice over this odd phenomenon. There are ATMs everywhere in Krakow. How is it possible that everyone is using them when the money they dispense is worthless?

It actually seemed like there was a shortage of small bills and coins going on. When I tried to buy 41zł worth of groceries with a 50zł note, the cashier was visibly distressed at the prospect of having to scrounge together 9zł in change. When Jessica managed to rustle up a 1zł coin from her wallet (bringing the change to a single 10zł bill), the cashier's face lit up with relief and gratitude.

All of this wouldn't have been a much smaller deal if my credit card hadn't stopped working back in Scotland. We never figured out why, but at some point my credit card's chip had gotten corrupted and slowly started working less and less reliably. By the time we reached Krakow, it had stopped working altogether. I eventually got comfortable using Android Pay at places that took it, but Jessica ended up making most of our in-person purchases for the remaining two months of the trip.

But all of that was still ahead of us in the coming hours and days. For now, we happily made our way to the airport taxi stand with cash in hand and got a ride into town.

The first thing that struck me about Poland–and I noticed it from the airplane window before we even landed–was the totally unique landscape. I’ve seen forests, farmland, and urban sprawl before, but never mixed together quite so thoroughly. On the 30-minute drive from the airport into town, we passed through dense forests, low-density farmland, and a wilderness adventure park. Even in the suburban periphery of the city, apartment blocks are separated by cornfields as well as vacant lots.

This patchwork aesthetic extends to the architecture of the old city itself. On any given street, the buildings form a mosaic that tells the long and turbulent story of Poland’s past, from the middle ages through the 21st century. Many struck me as ironically eastern European, with inward-sloping buttressed walls and steep, almost pagoda-like roofs. Others looked straight out of Renaissance Venice or Imperial Vienna. And, of course, there are the Brutalist mementos of Soviet austerity.

What holds it all together is a charmingly rough-around-the-edges spirit of making do with what you have. Concrete walls patched with plaster, plaster walls patched with plywood. Walking down an alleyway between two buildings, you might tread on tile, cement, and gravel all in the space of thirty yards.

But this is not a third-world country. Enter into one of these unassuming domiciles, and you might find a surprisingly luxurious abode.

Like ours.

Poland is not a wealthy country. But that means that a little money can go a long way. And while you may trip on a pothole or slip on a patch of sand outdoors, you can come home to a bathtub bigger than any I’ve enjoyed in the States.

The second thing I noticed about Poland are the people. They are both the most reserved and the most outgoing people I’ve met in Europe.

Professionally and in public, everyone is just a blank face in the crowd. Our taxi driver from the airport did not make a single attempt at small talk the entire ride (not that I’m complaining!), and shopkeepers have no trouble flatly declining to assist you if you ask for something they don’t want to do.

But if you engage them personally, as a friend, guest, or tour companion, you’ll have trouble getting a word in edgewise as they talk your ears off with kind enthusiasm, sincere questions, and thoughtful advice.

Obviously, this is a stereotype and doesn’t apply to everyone in Poland. But it’s exactly what Jessica–who spent a summer here in 2010–told me to expect, and it’s exactly what I’ve experienced.

Another funny quirk is that two of Poland's biggest chain stores are named after animals. The main supermarket chain is called Biedronka, which means ladybug, and the main convenience store chain is called Zabka, which means frog.

After checking into our Airbnb and stocking up on groceries, Jessica could hardly wait to take me into the old town. Rick Steves says there isn’t a better city in Europe for just wandering around in, and I can’t say I disagree.

The main market square is spectacular–like Venice’s San Marco Square and Madrid’s Puerta del Sol rolled into one.

The old Renaissance merchant hall dominates the center of the square, and St. Mary’s Basilica stands proudly overlooking its northern corner.

Technically, the church only has one tower. The taller tower on the left–the one with the crown encircling its spire–is officially a city watchtower. According to legend, a 13th-century watchman was struck silent by an enemy arrow in the middle of trumpeting an alarm. Now, every hour on the hour, a trumpeter plays the same traditional anthem almost but not quite to completion in his honor.

The curtailed call is also used by the Polish national radio broadcaster, so it is a familiar sound across the country.

After taking a peek inside the market hall and up at the nearby clock tower–the remains of an otherwise-demolished medieval city hall–we meandered up the main road to the barbican gate–one of the few remaining parts of Krakow’s medieval walls.

Unlike the many European cities that turned their medieval walls into ring roads, Krakow turned their walls into a green belt surrounding the old city center. Like many Polish names, it was unintentionally amusing to us as English speakers--Planty Park.

As we walked back down the main tourist drag, Jessica noted how much the place had changed in just the past eight years. A local café she'd wanted to take me to had been replaced by a Starbucks, and there were a lot more ethnic restaurants than she remembered seeing before. Though not all of them looked especially authentic.

Tired and thirsty, we headed back to our flat after stopping for drinks at a Zabka along the way. It was a warm night, but thankfully the windows were big and opened wide. As much as I had feared a culture shock, and our currency-related annoyances notwithstanding, our arrival in Poland had been surprisingly smooth. We were comfortable, well-fed, and excited to see what the city had to offer.

Next Post: Schindler’s Factory and St. Mary’s Basilica

Last Post: Resting Up (Markets, Museums, and More Pizza)

[didsomeonesaygo]

Dublin down

Made it to Dublin last night and took a bus into the city. Had unfortunate adventures in getting a cab, but eventually figured it out. Checked in at the Maldron Hotel on Kevin St. and had dinner there - it was late and we were tired. Today, we explore!

We started with breakfast at hotel, where P was annoyed by the literal busload of American senior citizens. (We really have been surrounded by Americans at every turn, 95% older than us, 80% from Florida.)

St Patrick’s Cathedral is about a block from the hotel, so we started there. P was not greeted as a VIP (rude), but the church was beautiful. We also walked through the gardens out back.

Christ Church was just a few blocks away, so we walked even though it was starting to rain. In addition to the beautiful architecture and stained glass, other highlights include the mummified cat and rat that were found in the pipe organ during renovations. Oh, also the heart of St Lawrence O'Toole, an archbishop who died in France in 1180, and his heart was brought back to Ireland in a heart-shaped reliquary (fancy box), where it remained in Christ Church until 2012, when it was stolen, and subsequently recovered. Weird. Down in the crypts, our fave was da two dudes (our name). Also odd is the Tomb of Strongbow (d. 1176), which is not the tomb of Strongbow, but looks like the Tomb of Strongbow would have looked if it had not been damaged when the south cathedral wall collapsed in 1562. It is unknown who is actually in this tomb, but the family crest on it is not that of Strongbow.

Then we walked to Dublin Castle, which from 1204-1922 was primarily used as a residence for the Viceroy of Ireland, the representative of the British monarchy. Today, it is a museum, and it is still used for ceremonies and government functions.

It also has lovely gardens in the back with some interesting art. We think this is the head of Apollo, under the foot of Nike (see swoosh), but Nike is traditionally female. But gods are all-powerful, so I assume they can also be fluid in their gender presentation; we'll go with Nike.

Then it really started raining, so we got on a hop-on-hop-off tour and drove around the city for a while. We couldn't see much because of the rain, but we drove through part of Phoenix Park, past the Dublin Zoo, the US Ambassador's residence, and Áras an Uachtaráin, the residence of the President of Ireland, built in 1751. If it looks a little familiar, that's because the White House was modeled after it. Central Park was also modeled after Phoenix Park. Americans tend to think we're the first and best in everything - it's good to get knocked down once in a while visiting sites and buildings that have been in use for thousands of years.

Quick break at the hotel to change for dinner, then walked through the St Anne's district and down Grafton St to see the Phil Lynott statue (hi, Big Jeff!) Then on to O’Donoghue’s to look for Badger’s 1019 dollar and Kate's Paddy, but to no avail. This guy is not him, but he is named Paddy. (NOW how does it feel seeing your name everywhere, including on every third guy in town? 😂 ) Paddy also served us our first Guinness in Ireland.

Met Tara & fam for dinner at Thunder Road Cafe in Temple Bar. Her girls are lovely, and Gareth is a force to be reckoned with; he conquered the F#@k Burger and was awarded a t-shirt to prove it. They only had women's sizes left, but he's a sport and wore it with pride.

Drinks after at the Foggy Dew (I t’ought dey was sayin’ Foggy Jew 😧). They gave us a ride home, and we inexplicably got stuck in the parking garage for 15 mins. It gave us a chance to visit a little more, but we were all glad to get out.

[hooliainprague-blog]

galway, ireland

22.3.2018

I woke up at 6:30 to inhale three croissants and some cheese and go to the airport. Prague airport is really weird because you check in, go through passport control, go through all the shopping, and then you sit in the terminal and wait until about an hour before your flight before going through security. I also think that lemon Pepsi will be my new “waiting for a flight” drink because it’s so good and the only place I’ve seen it so far is in the airport. 

Upon arrival in Dublin, I got some water and a vegetable and mozzarella “toastie” (hehe) and went to find my bus to Galway. I’ve already noticed so many differences between Prague and Ireland and I’ve been here for less than an hour.

After the three hour ride to Galway, I met Alyssa at the bus station and we basically went straight to dinner.

Galway is the third largest city in Ireland, but it really has a small town vibe more than a city one because there’s only about 75,000 people. It’s perfect.  For dinner I had chicken kiev, and it was delicious and full of garlic. I also tried “brown sauce” for the first time. I dipped some fries in it, and it tastes like if you mixed a teeny tiny bit of ketchup into a lot of apple cider vinegar....I stole some packets to take back to Prague. AND the water was free and cold. 

There’s so many cute little canals and rivers and waterways around Alyssa’s apartment (which is the nicest student apartment I’ve ever seen, might I add).

When we got back, Alyssa did my makeup for fun, we relaxed for a while after my journey, and then we went out for drinks in some Irish pubs. We jumped around for a while listening to a bunch of different live music (which is so lighthearted and fun and in every bar).

By the time we made it out of the apartment, the live music scene was winding down, so we walked around Galway at night. We saw some beautiful things and had a great time. We also got some BIG pizza!!!

It was a great first day.

23.3.2018

We ate some bagels for breakfast, and Alyssa took me to her school to show me the campus. It was beautiful, and it was also kinda nice to be on an actual college campus separated from the rest of the city for a little while. 

We then walked the short distance to the Galway Cathedral, which is the last great stone cathedral to be built in Europe. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to go inside because there was a mass going on when we arrived. 

We went to Tesco to buy some snacks for the next day, went back to the apartment to drop them off, and walked around town stopping in different stores and showing me the city in the daylight. 

I also got to go into TK Maxx and felt at home a little bit. Miss you, TJ Maxx!!!!!!!

After that, we got some coffee at a cute little coffee shop and ventured home, making a pit stop at the Spanish Arch (sparching: sitting along the water at the arch) and strolled on a part of the Long Walk (thanks to Alyssa and Ang and the entirety of Galway, I can’t type that out or think of Galway at all without thinking of this song, but tbh, I’m not mad about that at all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3V-oXwCWL4).

We got some garlic bread on the way home, went to take a lil snooze, ate some soup and grilled cheese for dinner, and decided to go out to a bar/pub again after. But first, look how cute this little canal spot is. 

Here’s a nice picture of me, Alyssa, Ang, and my new pal Katie.

My first Guinness (both in Ireland and ever)!

This was a super fun night because the live band was incredible and sang songs we all knew, and there were a couple of Irish girls who made us all dance with them. It was a lighthearted and almost spiritual even. Ethereal, you could say, if you said it in the right tone. 

After we left, we got the most amazing pineapple pizza with ranch dip (the best in Europe!!) and went to bed.

24.3.2018

Surprise, we ate bagels for breakfast again!! We met up with Alyssa’s friend Lauren and we all headed to the coach station to get on our tour bus for the Cliffs of Moher and a few other destinations. 

Our first stop on the bus tour was the Dinguaire Castle from the 16th century.

Alyssa is good at almost falling.

We got back on the bus and took some cute cow pictures through the window on our way to our next stop.

The next stop: Poulnabrone dolmen.

Next: The Celtic High Crosses. It was unsettling to have to walk and jump over graves to get to them.

After that, we had a break for lunch in the teeny tiny town of Doolin. I got bangers and mash, which was even better than I imagined. We also had a couple of minutes to go in some small shops and take some pretty pictures. 

Finally, what we’ve all been waiting for, we arrived at the Cliffs of Moher. I am not exaggerating when I say that the cliffs were the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in Europe so far this semester. We really lucked out with this beautiful warm sunny day considering Ireland is usually at least cloudy if not rainy and windy. My words don’t do the cliffs justice, and the pictures barely do either. 

You know we had to give my mom a heart attack (don’t worry, I was actually standing on a ledge, sorry to ruin the illusion).

OK here’s the cutest little wet floor sign in the bathroom at the bottom. I’m obsessed.

Our final stop on the journey back to Galway included a stop on the Burren where the ground looks like the surface of the moon.

When we finally got back, we were chilly and tired, so we got some pasta from Pasta Factory and went back to the apartment to eat that and cookies. We were going to lay down for a bit and get up to do something else, but we ended up crashing at like 8:30 pm. I don’t blame us, it was a long day on the bus.

25.3.2018

We woke up after a long night of sleep even though we lost an hour for Daylight Savings, and we went to walk around town in the morning waiting for brunch places to open. How CUTE IS THIS PLACE?!

I’d been craving pancakes and bacon and a smoothie for as long as I can remember, so thank gosh for this delicious place. I’m getting hungry again just looking at this picture.

Alyssa then walked me to the coach station and we said our goodbyes. I got to get on a bus an hour earlier than what I paid for because my flight was scheduled to leave earlier than I thought it would. I’m grateful for the kindness of Irish men who work for this bus company. The three hour ride was fine and seamless, but the Dublin airport is one of the most stressful ones I’ve been in so far. I’m glad I got there earlier. It was a long day of traveling, but it didn’t feel like it because everything was fine and Ireland is beautiful.

My last picture I took in Dublin, Ireland before getting on the plane home to Prague (miss you sweetie). 

I think that if I had the opportunity to study abroad again after Prague, I would choose somewhere in Ireland. It was so fun, relaxing, beautiful, and full of nature and nice people. 

Differences between Ireland and Prague:

Everyone I encountered in Ireland in the first hour of me being there has been incredibly kind, even when their jobs are typically those who get negatively stereotyped as being miserable, such as passport control, bus drivers, fast food stops in airports, etc. 

They drive on the other side of the road. I knew it when I booked the flights, but it’s a weird concept to see in real life. 

A total stranger asked me to use my charger on the bus and then called me a “fine woman” when I said she could. People in Prague don’t even look at me!!

Night life is so pure and good. There’s live music everywhere and everyone is happy to be there and everyone dances with everybody. 

Alyssa’s school has a designated campus. My school in Prague is extremely integrated into the city, while hers feels like a separate community in a way.

Prague uses bars as social gathering points to sip on beer and talk to old friends, while Ireland uses bars and pubs as places to drink a lot and dance with new friends. Both are great!

They all speak English, and I love the Czech language and I think I’m picking up some phrases relatively well, but it is so refreshing to hear English everywhere.

I’ll be back, Ireland!

[littlemuffinblog]

Hello all!

It’s been a long while since I’ve written up a proper blog post on here. I’m most active on my instagram these days, but I’m going to make an effort to post more regularly on my actual page as sometimes I find I cut recipes short to fit them all into the Instagram/Facebook format etc.

I was recently in New York and pretty much centered the entire trip around finding all the good foodie spots, so I figured it deserved a lengthy post! We tended to eat a late brunch and dinner most days, skipping lunch as our hotel had a free snack bar which was very handy. They had fresh fruit, lovely coffee & granola bars in the morning which were great to grab n’go. The options changed from lunch time and included savoury snacks and sweet treats with limitless soft drinks, fizzy water etc. We stayed in the Club Quarter Hotel Midtown near Times Square. It was a brilliant location, lovely room, great value, nice staff and the unlimited snack bar with filtered water on tap was such a bonus. They even gave little bottles to take your water with you! Hotel website linked here.

So, without further ado, here are all of the foodie places in New York during my trip. Hope anyone travelling to NY finds it useful! Thanks to everyone who recommended food spots to me before I went – you all helped to make my trip deliciously good and my foodie self is eternally grateful!

BRUNCH 

Bubbys – Easily the single best brunch I have ever had and was the food highlight of the trip for me. We went to the one in Tribeca but they have a few locations. We got the Eggs Benedict and ‘Pancake Flight’. The Eggs benny was to die for, we opted for the version with bacon and added some avocado to it. The pancakes were also EPIC. Super fluffy & thick, they came with berries, nutella, blueberry compote, whipped cream, caramelised banana and toasted walnuts. They also came with maple syrup and butter on the side without even asking – it was a lovely touch. The total bill came to about $60 including a tip and we didn’t get coffees/drinks, only tap water. I honestly can’t wait to go back to NY to have Bubbys again, it was just that good. Bubbys is a definite must! Website here. 

@bubbys

Sarabeths – This is super near to Central Park. We had seen on their instagram that they are famous for their french toast so that’s what we went with. For $50 we also got a caraffe of Bellini’s – it’s about 5-6 glasses which were $15 each so it’s good value really ;). I ordered the Almond crusted French toast and my friend went for the ‘Fluffy Fat’ french toast. We also ordered a side of bacon (additional $12). I will say I was quite disappointed with my almond version as when I cut into it, it was actually bone dry in the middle. The whole point of French toast is that it should be eggy/custardy having been soaked in an egg mixture but this was essentially dry almond toast. They were very good and immediately replaced it with the plain version that my friend had ordered. This was absolutely delicious and came with a side of butter and maple syrup. The service was great here and I would definitely recommend the Fluffy Fat french toast and skip the almond version! All in all the bill came to about $115 excl tip. Pricey but it is in a great location and overall the food and drink was lovely. Website here. 

  @sarabethsnyc

Fresh & Co – We definitely couldn’t leave New York without trying a cream cheese bagel! I had lots of places recommended to me, but we happened to be passing by here and were stuck for time so we just popped in. It wasn’t on the menu and breakfast had just finished, but they made these specially up for us which was really nice. We asked for 2 wholemeal bagels, filled with cream cheese, avocado, crispy bacon and a runny fried egg. We got freshly squeezed orange juice to go with. It was honestly *so* good and hit the spot. Great place to call into if you just want something quick to eat & go. I think it was roughly $12 for the two bagels, with orange juice about $5 extra incl taxes. They have quite a few locations. Website here.

@freshandconyc

DINNER 

Ellens Stardust Diner – This place is pretty much as American as it gets. It’s a diner set in the heart of Times Square, waited by Broadway hopefuls who sing and perform throughout the entire meal. They are also famous for their brunch. We headed here our first night and ate dinner here. We went for the Mac n Cheese burger, served with waffle fries. We then shared a Brownie ‘Mudslide’ Sundae for dessert. It was typical American diner food, it was decent and hit the spot but you definitely more so go there for the surroundings than the food. Total bill was about $60 excl tips but be mindful, they send around a separate bucket for the tips for the singers too. Website here.

@ellensstardust

Ottos Tacos – We got these the night we went to Woodbury Common Shopping outlet. It was such a long day and we were absolutely shattered when we got back to our hotel, so we ordered Uber Eats. We opted for a ‘Beyond’ Vegan chorizo taco, chicken taco, chips & guac and rice and beans. The chorizo taco wasn’t great but all in all was a tasty meal and perfect for a late night nibble. Uber eats is super handy if you’re stuck on time/tired and they have no problem delivering to hotels, they had a huuuuge selection of foods available. Website here.

@ottostacos

Otto Pizzeria – We had a lovely dinner at otto pizzeria. We originally wanted to get to Joes pizza which I’d had lots of recommendations for or Scarrs… however otto was closer by and Joes had queues out the door! I opted for a delicious egg pizza washed down by blood orange cocktails. We actually arrived half an hour earlier than our booking and they were lovely about it and immediately seated us. We also got complimentary focaccia & olive oil to start! It did the trick but definitely still have Joes & Scarrs on the pizza list! Website here.

@ottopizzeria

BAKERIES 

Levain Bakery – I went to the one just off central park. I had heard a lot of hype about this place. They are famous for their super thick gooey cookies and sweet jesus, they did not disappoint. Some of the best cookies I’ve ever had. All made better by eating them while strolling on lovely sunny day in central park. You wouldn’t even know the bakery is there – it is tiny and down these little steps, I had to ask a local where it was as I couldn’t find it! There was no queue when I was there thankfully, but be mindful of this as apparently there is usually a big wait. The cookies were $4 each and worth every bit and more! Their hot chocolate looked epic too so will definitely be paying here a visit the next time I’m in New york to get it! Definitely put this place on your list. Website here. 

@levainbakery

Magnolia Bakery – If you are a fan of Sex in the City, you’ll be familiar with this place. It is just around the block from Carrie Bradshaw’s famous apartment and the bakery featured in the TV show a couple of times making it an instant hit. They are famous for their banana pudding – a creamy pudding filled with banana, sponge and graham crackers. I opted for the small pot (as I was stuffed but couldn’t not go to NY and not try it!). It was absolutely insanely good. I think it was about $5 incl tax and worth it for sure. Next time I’m going to try their cupcakes as I’ve heard they are amazing too. Website here.

@magnoliabakery

Carlos Bakery – If you’ve ever watched Cake Boss, here is a must visit! We went to the one near the Port Tunnel (where we got our bus from to Woodbury Common. We actually got a great deal for this on groupon, I’ve linked it here) The original one is in Hoboken and I believe is worth a visit too! The bakery itself was full of a mix of treats, a lot of artificially coloured american style cakes which wouldn’t be my thing, but their pastries, cookies etc all looked amazing. We were spoiled for choice. M\y friend got an M&M cookie which was really tasty and I got a chocolate hazelnut lobster tail pastry filled with delicious hazelnut creme patisserie and drizzled with nutella. So good. All in all they both came to about $11 dollars. The perfect breakfast to bring on board the 1 hour bus journey!  Bakery linked here. 

@carlosbakery

OTHER BITS…

Airport Lounge – 51st & Green in Dublin Airport terminal 2. We opted to pay into the lounge before our flight as we had a few hours to kill. It was definitely worth it in my opinion! It was located after pre clearance for the US so it was lovely to relax and unwind knowing you had that already done. It costed €39 to get in at the door, but you can book it online for €35. Our flight was in the morning, so they had a full buffet breakfast bar alongside a cocktail bar and coffee station. You can see the lounge by clicking here. 

The Plaza Hotel – We were initially going to book ourselves in for afternoon tea here as we’ve heard rave reviews. It was booked out in the end, but we went their for a drink after our brunch in Sarabeths. We opted for 2 x champagne cocktails each $26 excl tax/tips. They were served with a lovely little snack plate of chilli pumpkin seed chocolate and roasted chickpeas. The cocktails were amazing and the setting was just fabulous. It is pricey, but 100% worth it. We sat in a window seat and watched the world go by, just taking in the surroundings for the afternoon. It was such an activity fulled break, it was lovely to just relax for a while and unwind. Would highly recommend it and I think I would definitely try the afternoon tea the next time I visit! Website here. 

@theplazahotel

Tourist Attractions – I figured I may as well pop in the places we went while I’m at it. We pretty much ticked everything off the list except visiting the Brooklyn Bridge and the Highline… next time!

Statue of Liberty – We got a free ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island. You don’t need to pay for the tourist ones and they will try the hard sell to push it on you at the door of the terminal but stand your ground! You can get the commuter ferry for free from Whitehall which goes right past it and you get a very clear view. We just hopped off at the other side and got straight back on it. Took 20 mins – they go every half an hour. Would definitely recommend. Info link here.

Carrie Bradshaws Apartment – Quite near the Statue of Liberty area, about 20 mins in an Uber. It was so cool to see as a SATC fan. It was also just around the corner from Magnolia bakery. Be mindful people actually live in the Apt block when you’re taking photos. Location is here

Ground Zero – We went here en route to statue of liberty as it is quite close by. It was also quite close to Bubbys in Tribeca. We just went to see the memorial which is free but you can go into the museum too. There is a great shopping mall and discounted designer department store nearby called Century 21. Worth a visit too. There is also a target nearby if that’s something you wanted to browse!

Rockefeller Centre – Top of the Rock. We paid about $42 for the ticket to get up. We bought online but they have a ridiculous queue system where you need to validate your online ticket to get a physical one, so the queue was the same for those who didn’t buy online and it cost the exact same. Be prepared to queue, we waited almost an hour to get up but we were told it was unusually busy as it had been raining the 2 days previous. However, the views are absolutely spectacular when you get up, so it was well worth it in the end. You can go at sunset for an extra $10 per ticket which would also be pretty cool.

Woodbury Commons Shopping Outlet – This place is definitely well worth going to if you are in the market for discounted designer handbags / shoes. The clothes were good value too depending on what you’re looking for but the handbags we’re exceptionally cheap with 60%-80% some items depending on what coupons you had/how much you spent. As I mentioned above, we got the return bus from the port terminal near times square. It was $27 on groupon linked here or you can buy it there for $42 so it’s definitely worth getting it online. It took about an hour each way, with a pretty regular time table. It doesn’t open until 10am so we got the 8.30am coach which worked out great. You also get a free coupon book from the information desk when you arrive which is included in your bus ticket.The food was okay there, had a lot of fast food outlets and a Pret A Manger (they are everywhere in NY!) Definitely a must visit if you’re looking to do some shopping! Link for outlet is here.

Central Park – I was really taken with central park. It is so cool to stroll around (especially with some Levain cookies!). You can hire a horse drawn carriage for a pricy $100 per half an hour or a bike cart for $5 per minute. We were initially going to rent bikes but we didn’t bother in the end, instead walking around and taking it all in. Well worth a look. The plaza hotel and Sarabeths were super near here too.

So that’s a wrap! It’s pretty much all I can fit into this post. I hope it’s helpful for any trips you have planned to New York. Please tag me if you visit anywhere I’ve recommended so I can relive the memories… @littlemuffinblog

It was the most epic trip and I will definitely be back! Miss you already NYC.

New York – Foodie & Travel Guide Hello all! It's been a long while since I've written up a proper blog post on here.

[emilyzh2019-blog]

Tips For Renting A Car In Ireland

Ireland Driving Guide

Renting a car in Ireland and driving around the country yourself is a wonderful way to experience the Emerald Isle. But here’s some advice about the best way to do it.

When my family and I were planning our genealogy trip to Ireland to learn more about our ancestors, we were initially hesitant about renting a car to explore the country by ourselves.

Ireland has a bit of a reputation for narrow and scary winding roads!

Plus of course, they drive on the other side of the road, so there’s that. But the more we researched, the more we realized renting a car in Ireland would allow us to make our itinerary as imaginative as possible.

I love the freedom of road trips and planning my own travel itineraries. Ireland is such a diverse country that it made sense to rent a car so we could stop anywhere to discover small villages, castles, and go hiking in the mountains at our own pace.

Here are some important tips we learned from our experience renting a car in Ireland, to help you save money and stay safe while driving around the country!

How To Rent A Car In Ireland

Driving in Ireland for Tourists

Should You Rent A Car In Ireland?

Hey, if you love those big group bus tours, by all means, go book one. It’s a decent way to see Ireland if you don’t have a lot of time.

No planning, no driving, just sit back and let someone else do all the work!

But if you’re like me, you prefer the adventure of independent travel.

No set schedule or timetable — driving around Ireland with the freedom to stop anyplace cool you find along the way.

If that’s the kind of traveler you are, renting a car in Ireland is the way to go!

Just keep in mind that some of the backroads in Ireland can be very narrow, and often feel like a single lane (but they’re not). With some practice, you’ll gain confidence on them!

Another nice thing we enjoyed about having a car was the ability to store things in the trunk, stopping off in Irish towns with small daypacks rather than hauling luggage everywhere.

Learning to Drive on the Opposite Side!

Where To Rent Your Car In Ireland

The best site to book your car is Discover Car Hire. They search both local and international car rental companies to help you find the best possible price. This is the easiest way to rent a car in Ireland.

We rented our car from Dublin Airport after spending a few days in the city. Our South West route brought us to Cork on the M8 before moving on to Killarney National Park and then Glengarriff, where my grandmother was born.

After tracking down our family history in this small coastal fishing village, we drove North on the Wild Atlantic Way up to Dingle and the famous Cliffs of Moher, then to Galway, and finally back to Dublin.

However there are many different road trip routes you can choose when driving in Ireland. Other major airports to consider picking up a car are Shannon in the Southwest and Cork in the Southeast.

Crazy Irish Winding Roads!

The Amazing Cliffs of Moher

Car Rental Insurance In Ireland

Some of the rumors about driving in Ireland are true, and the roads are VERY narrow in areas. Especially the backroads outside Ireland’s smaller towns. Don’t worry, I’ll share some tips for dealing with them below.

This is why I highly recommend getting full insurance coverage.

Typically, rental cars in Ireland come with a basic Collision Damage Waiver (CDW), but this isn’t exactly insurance, and only covers the car for up to €1000-3000 EUROS worth of damage.

This is the amount they hold on your credit card until you return the car in one piece. CDW typically does not include tire, cracked windshield, or undercarriage damage either.

While you can often save money booking your car with a credit card that includes car rental insurance, you REALLY must read the fine print, because many people wrongly assume their card covers them in Ireland.

If you get in a wreck driving in Ireland, declined full coverage, and you suddenly learn your credit card doesn’t actually cover the damage — you’re screwed. I can’t tell you how many travel horror stories I’ve heard like this…

It’s why I usually pre-book full coverage online. It’s cheaper than at the counter — and then you won’t have to worry about accidents at all!

The Stunning Cobh Cathedral

How Much Does It Cost To Rent A Car In Ireland?

Renting a car in Ireland is going to cost you around $25-$40 USD a day, depending on the type of car you get. Our 4 door sedan was about $30 per day.

I recommend renting a car with an actual trunk (no hatchbacks) to hide your luggage from prying eyes. It helps to prevent break-ins if thieves can’t see your stuff.

Gas Prices

Gas (petrol) prices in Ireland might seem cheap to Americans, but remember that the rest of the world quotes gas in Liters, not Gallons (1 Gallon = 3.78 Liters). Currently, gas costs about $5.90 per gallon (€1.40 per liter) in Ireland. Diesel cars will often save you some money on gas.

Automatic vs Manual

Automatic cars are more expensive to rent than manual cars (but manuals are more common in Ireland), and you must specify what type you want when booking.

One-Way Rentals

There’s also an additional fee for one-way car rentals, which can vary by company. For example, if you want to drop off the car in a different city than you started from.

Admin Fee

If you opt to use your own credit card insurance, companies will charge you an “admin fee” of about €30 EURO.

Credit Card Fee

I was charged an extra €5 EURO just for using a credit card. Which is strange to me, but typical in Ireland.

Irish Taxes

Car rentals in Ireland have a very high tax rate of 13.6%. Ouch!

Age Requirements For Renting A Car

The minimum age for driving in Ireland is 18 years old, however most car rental companies enforce their own age limit of 21 years old to rent a car. They also charge an additional fee if you’re under 24 years old.

Driving Through the Town of Killarney

Irish Driving Laws Tourists Should Know

The most confusing part of driving in Ireland for most tourists is driving on the left side of the road — with the driver’s seat on the right side of the car.

If you’ve never been to a country that drives on the left, it’s wise to practice a bit in a small town before you head onto the highways of Ireland.

For example, just North of Dublin Airport is the town of Swords. Maybe spend an hour or two getting the hang of driving there before you enter Dublin or onto the main highways.

While challenging at first, especially if driving a manual, you’ll get the hang of it quickly and will be ready to explore Ireland by car in no time!

The speed limit on local roads is generally around 80 km/h while on national highways it’s up to 100 km/h.

International Driver’s License

No, you do not need an international driver’s license to drive in Ireland or rent a car there. Just bring your passport, credit card, and your driver’s license from your home country.

Ross Castle at Sunrise

Helpful Tips For Driving In Ireland

Watch out for sheep! In many smaller towns, local shepherds move their sheep on the roads. You can easily round a sharp bend and find yourself stuck behind a huge flock walking down the road.

Narrow backroads in Ireland don’t have standard break-down lanes as we have in America. There’s often no room for error or pulling over.

Sometimes your side-view mirror will be inches away from stone walls or hedges while passing other cars! It can make driving here nerve-wracking.

Remember to carry some cash for road tolls on Ireland’s major highways. Irish tolls can cost between $1-$3 for a passenger car.

In the countryside, some roads are truly single lane, but with traffic in both directions. In these situations, there are pull-outs so one of you can pull over for the other to pass.

USEFUL TIP: Buy a cheap “learner” sticker (L) sold at gas stations so locals don’t get pissed off at your incompetence on their roads!

The Colorful Town of Glengarriff, Ireland

Advice For Renting A Car In Ireland

You don’t need a rental car for Dublin itself. Parking can be a pain and Dublin is very walkable with excellent public transportation too.

If you’re starting your trip in Dublin, maybe book a rental car when you’re ready to leave the city, for exploring the rest of the country.

Don’t book a car without reading the company reviews. You’ll find plenty of bad reviews for every company (people love to complain online), but try to pick one with the LEAST bad reviews.

You may not always get the make/model/type of car you booked. If they give you a smaller car, or a manual when you asked for an automatic, be pushy and ask for an upgrade.

Inspect your car thoroughly and record video on your smartphone pointing out damage before you leave. This is a backup if they attempt to charge you for damage that was already there.

Pay attention to if your car takes regular petrol or diesel fuel, so you fill up with the correct type at gas stations.

Use Google Maps on your smartphone for directions. Bring your own hands-free adapter and buy an Irish SIM card at the airport.

Enjoy Your Ireland Road Trip!

Exploring the small villages, ancient castles, green mountains, and coastal cliffs of Ireland in a rental car was definitely the right choice for us.

Self-drive road trips get off the beaten track to see things most people miss! ★

Check Car Rental Prices & Availability In Ireland

Packing Guide

Check out my travel gear guide to help you start packing for your trip. Pick up a travel backpack, camera gear, and other useful travel accessories.

Book Your Flight

Find cheap flights on Skyscanner. This is my favorite search engine to find deals on airlines. Also make sure to read how I find the cheapest flights.

Rent A Car

Discover Car Hire is a great site for comparing car prices to find the best deal. They search both local & international rental companies.

Book Accommodation

Booking.com is my favorite hotel search engine. Or rent apartments from locals on Airbnb. Read more about how I book cheap hotels online.

Protect Your Trip

Don’t forget travel insurance! I’m a big fan of World Nomads for short-term trips. Protect yourself from possible injury & theft abroad. Read more about why you should always carry travel insurance.

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READ MORE FROM IRELAND

How To Visit The Cliffs Of Moher The Best Of Dublin Travel Guide My Irish Genealogy Road Trip Claiming Irish Citizenship By Descent

Any questions about driving or renting a car in Ireland? Are you planning a road trip there? Drop me a message in the comments below!

This is a post from The Expert Vagabond adventure blog.

[themindfulword]

BUDDHIST IRELAND: A week at Dzogchen Beara Buddhist Meditation Centre

If you'd told me a year ago that I'd spend a week at a Buddhist retreat in Ireland, I would've laughed and asked, “Are there even Buddhists in Ireland?” But the end of a grey Irish April found me in the city of Cork, in a crowded hostel room above a loud bar, prepared to leave for Dzogchen Beara Buddhist Meditation Centre and a week of meditation. With some time in Europe before I walked the Camino de Santiago, wanting to find walking paths to train for the pilgrimage and a place where I could begin to quiet my mind, I'd stumbled across Dzogchen Beara online and had immediately reserved a bed in their hostel, along with a flight from Italy (where I'd started my journey abroad) to Ireland. I'd never thought that Ireland would be a place I’d like to visit for spiritual reasons. I pictured a grey, boring country with a lot of sheep (I wasn’t wrong about the sheep!) and a lack of the warmth and heart that I'd found to be so spiritual in Italy. When I found Dzogchen Beara, however, and saw photos of its gorgeous grounds and views, I thought I'd give Ireland a chance.

Cork

My first impression of Cork was that I would've done better to stay in Italy. The full Irish breakfasts were greasy and the coffee was weak. Each night, I had to choose between staying out all night drinking Guinness in a bar with my newfound hostel friends, or listening to other people do just that in the bar beneath my shared bedroom. I often chose the former, and although I enjoyed the live music scene in Cork and the odd collection of young French, American, Italian and Australian people who happened to find themselves in the hostel with me, by the time the day came for me to head to the retreat centre, I was ready for a good spiritual cleansing and some quiet time. After some research, I found that the only way to get to Dzogchen was to take a local bus from Cork to the town of Castletownbere, and a cab another 20 minutes from there. In order to reserve my place on the local bus, I had to call a number I’d dug up from the depths of the Internet and talk to a woman with a thick Irish accent. I headed out on the colourful streets of Cork, under the sky that always threatened rain, to meet the van with Castletownbere across its side in blue lettering. As I waited for the driver to return from his break, I talked with an older Irish woman who was the only other passenger waiting for the bus. She asked me lots of questions about America, and told me about her weekend in Dublin to see her son in the “big city.” The driver arrived: an old man with messy white hair, picking the few teeth left in his mouth as he walked very slowly from a nearby pub back to the bus. When he spoke, the older woman had to translate for me, as his missing teeth exaggerated his Irish brogue.

Castletownbere

Three hours of remote country roads and rolling grassy hills later, we were in Castletownbere. I understood I was to go to the pub called MacCarthy’s and ask for a cab to the Buddhist centre. With my heavy bags, I walked into MacCarthy’s and into the midst of a live music night. A plump, smiling woman behind the bar invited me in. She told me to leave my things behind the bar and sit and enjoy the music while she called the cab driver from an old-fashioned telephone. The walls of the pub were plastered with various photos and postcards from around the world, and there was a collection of penny candy, gum and shaving products for sale. I ordered a Guinness to sip as I watched people gathered around candlelit tables strumming guitars, playing the flute and singing Irish songs. Surrounded by music and candlelight, I felt content and knew it was a good omen for things to come.

Dzogchen Beara 

Dzogchen Beara, a 15-minute drive of winding country roads from MacCarthy’s pub, was just about as peaceful a place as you could imagine. The hostel was a small, wooden cabin-like structure with a central sitting room and kitchen, and rooms with wooden floors and wooden bunk beds with thick blankets. The whole place smelled like pine and cats. The view of the craggy coastline was breathtaking, and outside the hostel was a small garden with a bench and a plastic chair for meditating or quiet reflection. Every morning at 9 a.m., there was meditation in a simple room with a wall of windows that looked out on the water. While sitting there, it felt as though you were teetering on the edge of one of the cliffs. After the morning meditation, I'd often go to the centre’s cafe for a breakfast of either a croissant or scone, jam, cream and a large coffee. There was no Wi-Fi, but in my seat by the window, I managed to get enough phone service to write to my family. I'd sit there for hours and read or write in my journal, while sipping a cappuccino that was several notches above the coffee I’d had in Cork. During my time at Dzogchen Beara, I managed to read two books—something I hadn’t done in months. I made my way through both The Bhagavad Gita and The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rimpoche, who founded this centre and one in France. At 1 p.m. each day, lunch was served in the meditation room. The lunches consisted of a buffet of different delicious vegetarian options—usually a rice or couscous dish, potatoes, a stew, some roasted vegetables and a salad. After lunch, I'd head out for a walk. The centre was connected to a donkey sanctuary, so I explored that first. I then continued on the path that hugged the coastline past the animals’ enclosure, down to where the grassy hill bled into a collection of huge rocks on the edge of a brilliantly blue pool of water. A perfect place to meditate.

Taking walks

One day, I walked the seven miles (about 11 kilometres) back to Castletownbere for groceries. I'd started to head back, when suddenly the sky opened up and released a floodlike downpour on me and my paper bag of groceries. For the first time in my life, I stuck out my thumb, and was immediately picked up by a friendly townsperson. My saviour was a teacher at the local elementary school who said he frequented the loving-kindness meditation held in the afternoons at Dzogchen Beara. Another day, I walked five and a half miles (approximately nine kilometres) to the tiny seaside town of Allihies, had a piece of chocolate cake in the town’s only cafe (inside a coal mining museum) and walked all the way back to Dzogchen. On my walks, I'd think over the things I’d read that day, and the feelings that had come up during my meditation. I'd gaze out at the farmhouses, the coastline in the distance and the tangle of greenery that made up the landscape, and ask myself what I considered to be deep questions: How can I find out who I am, if at the same time, I'm supposed to let go of my ego and find my sameness with the universe? How can I devote my life to living fully, in the moment, while also keeping in touch with the greater universe?

Back at the hostel

The hostel volunteers were a joy to be around. One, a sweet little old man with the build of a farmer, said “Yeah, I would be meditatin’, yeah," when I asked him if he followed the practice. He sang in a chillingly beautiful voice one night, when those of us staying in the hostel sat around sharing songs and stories. One of the other volunteers, a young German girl, told me this man had been an alcoholic for years before starting to meditate. I can’t say my time spent in meditation at Dzogchen Beara yielded much more than a few semi-blissful moments, but the gifts of my time in Ireland went far beyond that. In Ireland, I learned to step away from the rush of modern life, including the technology and online universe and the comforts of living in a city. I discovered how to find space for contemplation. I learned to walk through my thoughts and send my questions to the wind and the hills. I learned to read and sing, and to tell and listen to stories. I experienced the unexpected Irish friendliness in the warmth of each bartender or cafe worker who asked “Are you OK?” instead of “Can I help you?” and in the wave of each passerby. Yes, there are Buddhists in Ireland, and there might just be some kind of ancient wisdom to be found in the country's expansive farmlands, unruly hills and rocky coastlines, too! «RELATED READ» SEVEN DAYS AWAY FROM MY LIFE: A week of meditative self-discovery at Esalen Institute» images: 1. Pixabay 2. By Ingo Kirschnereit (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0) 3. Dzogchen Beara by Olivier Riché via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0) 4. John Gibson via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0) Click to Post

[bravehardts]

Day 3 - Enough with the Beer, on to Whiskey

Our last full day in Dublin began with a long bus ride out to Phoenix Park and the Dublin Zoo. But first, we stopped in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, another grand stone monument bursting with history. Alex immediately grabbed Allison’s phone and started snapping pictures of everything he saw–the stained glass window, the tiled floor–amazing she has any storage space left. The walls were covered in memorials to old dead dudes and dudettes, including Jonathan Swift, who was a dean of the Cathedral.

Boarding the bus again, there were quite a few sights along the way from the second deck, including Kilmainham Gaol (a now-closed jail). Sadly, this attraction was entirely booked for the weekend and we completely dropped the ball–a huge disappointment since there was so much rich prison history to learn about (like Lockdown Raw, 1900s style). So if you ever plan to visit, don’t make the same mistake and get your tickets early!

Entering the vast and verdant Phoenix Park, we were informed it was twice the size as Central Park and the largest green space in any European city. Along the way, the weather was partly cloudy and teetered towards wanting to rain at moments, but that didn’t deter us from heading into the zoo. We had few expectations other than to pass the time with a happy child, but we were pleasantly surprised by this fantastic place. The size of the zoo is tremendous and the scenery flows from one type of environment to the next. The diversity of the animals was grand as well–it had all the staples you might expect: tigers, rhinos, hippos, gorillas, chimpanzees, sea lions, flamingos, giraffes–and quite a few animals I had never seen before in the flesh (like tapirs, African hunting dogs, and even a stupidly photogenic red panda). With that much land, all the animals were in exceptionally large and comfortable-looking enclosures.

There were the inevitable play structures and slides around the park which Alex enjoyed (and its essential for us to get to sit down every once in a while)���he finally started interacting with other kids which he hadn’t much chance to do prior. It seemed like the vast majority of visitors were locals, so it was nice to feel a little less touristy.

Hiking back to the bus stop, there were all types of busses, bike tours, yoga sessions, and even cricket matches surrounding us. The sun really wanted to come out and say hello, and when it did, it was getting on the hot side. But cruelly it would pop back behind some cranky clouds and force our jackets back on (but it didn’t rain!)

Taking the bus journey back towards the city center, we passed by the Jameson Whiskey experience, but that was not where we had signed up for our tasting. Instead, we had booked at a brand new distillery in Dublin, called Teeling. To be forthright, the Teeling brand has been around for a long time, but this distillery in particular was built in 2015. Prior to that, there hadn’t been a distillery in Dublin for 125 years. And one can understand why, considering the Dublin Whiskey Fire of 1875, where distilleries went up in an inferno, sending a flaming river of liquor through the streets. Once it was finally put out, people started gathering all the whiskey right off the ground to drink. 13 people died as a result–not from the fire, but from alcohol poisoning. Seriously, that happened.

So, brand new distillery in Dublin, great name, great logo. This is marketing genius to me–the Guinness Storehouse is the most visited attraction in Dublin. Clearly, visitors are very thirsty. But surely not everyone wants a pint of the black stuff. So why not open a real distillery and have a tour, followed by a tasting, followed by a gift shop offering finely designed glasses, shirts, bags, and of course, lots of expensive whiskey.

It was actually a really educational experience, and they break down the process into its simplest bits. After a quick video intro (more slow-motion, epic brew making shots), we entered a large warehouse with huge vats of sweet-smelling liquids. The three giant copper pot stills were beautiful to see. I think even Alex was a little impressed, even though he kept complaining about the smell and the heat.

The final room (before tasting) was a demonstration of the aging process, where we saw quite explicitly how whiskey starts clear, then takes on its amber color from the wood barrels. According to our tour guide, Irish whiskey makers import barrels from all over the world to impart different flavors (for instance, bourbon barrels from Kentucky and wine barrels from France). Mixing the aged whiskey from these barrels gives each style its unique flavor and feel.

The tasting itself was fascinating–three different whiskeys (small batch, single grain, and single malt). I really enjoyed the first–Allison loved the next two. And Alex? He especially liked playing Lego City on my phone while we tasted.

A couple of bottles and many less Euros later, we were on our way back to the hotel, a long walk through the city which we are finally getting more familiar walking around.

Dinner was a simple stroll down the street to “The Duke”, a traditional pub, that was really kicking on this Saturday evening. We went for the atmosphere–lots of locals chatting loudly and enjoying their pints. Also lots of fish. Also lots of chips. For us, it was Guinness Beef Pie and Smoked Salmon. How was the food? Again, we went there for the atmosphere.

Tomorrow we leave Dublin and visit Kilkenny Castle before hitting our next hotel, Mount Juliet.

[zeroboats]

Zero Boats #16: Communists, Terrorists, Pirates, Votes.

There are weeks that go by with a certain rhythm, even in the strangest of situations. This always makes me think of the biography of Victor Serge, how he worries about raising funds to publish pamphlets or has to move house, even while all around him is guns and Stalinist show trials. And then there are days that seem to collect all the strands together and the it turns out that the threads were really fuses.

The past week has seen a culmination in various ways: the Mediterranea rescue mission, on its third expedition into the sea, finally carried out a rescue operation bringing fifty people to Lampedusa. Predictably, the crew – including Luca Casarini, a well-known figure from the Genoa protests twenty years ago – are being investigated for aiding human trafficking and the ship has been seized by the police. This was entirely predictable because the Italian state has been experimenting with judicial methods of criminalising the rescue missions since 2017, and criminalising boat-drivers goes much further back still. This took a significant dictatorial turn around the Diciotti case in August 2018, when (under the populist-racist coalition government) an Italian Coast Guard ship was stalled at port and the rescued migrants refused from landing for nearly 3 weeks.

With perfect timing, the events of the Mediterranea landing – which was pushing to the surface a problem which the coalition government was trying to silence, that is, the humanitarian disaster in Libya, Italy's colonialist role, and the potential for this situation to split the Five Star Movement, thus weakening the ruling coalition itself – was then shoved aside in the media by an outlandish act of terrorism. A black bus driver kidnapped a school bus and locked the children inside, threatening them with a knife. When stopped, he threatened to set fire to the bus with the kids inside. Once they were all out, he did indeed torch the bus, and was then arrested. He said that he was acting in protest against the deaths at sea and that the blocking of the Mediterranea ship was the final straw.  His parents are from Senegal but he was born in France, and after marrying an Italian received Italian citizenship and has spent most of his life here in Italy.

It is extremely difficult not to believe that the kidnapping of the bus was organised in some way – directly or indirectly, through provocation or instigation – by either the Italian secret services, Fascist groups or, as has been a constant of Italian post-war history, a combination of the two. Not only is the timing too perfect, effectively giving the right-wing press a story to distract from the Mediterranea ship, but the act itself makes no sense. The bus driver has never had any political involvement nor indeed does he seem to have ever even discussed politics; his action did not involve any demands nor did those kidnapped have any connection to the political target. Despite having a knife and a concealed gun (not an easy thing to come by...), he committed no physical violence. It certainly does not entirely make sense as a conspiracy either however: till now, the narrative has been of do-gooders/bleeding heart liberals (“buonisti”) perhaps unwittingly allowing terrorists into Italy and wittingly collaborating with human traffickers for financial gain. At the more extreme wings of Italian right-wing thought, the anti-racists are in league with a Jewish conspiracy for financial gain and the substitution of the white race. Yet in none of the right-wing modern myths is the “buonista” also a terrorist. So let us leave it as this: either this was a left-wing protest gone very wrong, or a right-wing conspiracy gone very wrong. Time will tell...

The same pattern quickly developed when the Mediterranea ship, was finally let go a few days ago, albeit with the captain and Casarini under investigation for aiding human trafficking. The release of the boat could have been a real win for the left, a front-page moment as the case to seize the ship crumbled for lack of evidence (or, more precisely, the evidence already all have been collected). But this headline moment was removed by a still more stunning episode: pirates. A rubber boat of African migrants was picked up by a Libyan merchant vessel near the Libyan coast. According to the ship's captain, the rescued migrants violently threatened the crew and even threatened to damage the ship itself if they were brought back to Libya. Instead, the captain changed route, and took them to Malta. This news of the hijacking was immediately tweeted out by Salvini, saving his party the embarrassment of conceding that the autonomists' ship was being allowed to take to the seas once more.

Again, it's really very difficult to know what's true and what's not anymore. This would be the first instance of a hijacking of this kind by rescued migrants, as far as I am aware. Is this a 21st century Amistad, the passengers rebelling against the crew, refusing to be returned to the war and slavery of the Libyan inferno? As with the terrorist bus driver, it's difficult to believe. Perhaps these are new forms of resistance emerging in a situation of desperation, on land and sea. But again things might not be as they seem. Perhaps the piracy claim is simply a plot to smear the migrants themselves, introduced solely to distract from the release of the Mediterranea. Or, to provide a conspiratorial argument that includes no one on land, Fascist, communist or otherwise: perhaps this was the way the captain could ease the shipping company out of having to reply to an insurance claim for delayed freight. Again, time will tell. The EU Elections and the Migrant Question

This might all seem far from the concerns of many of my friends in the UK, dominated by the battle over Brexit. But in truth it is very close to home in many ways. Firstly, the criminalisation of the NGOs is part of Fortress Europe, part of the offensive against freedom of movement and the state's attempt to regain the control of movement. This is not only important as one of the supposed motivations for a left-wing critique of the EU but – far more vitally – is part and parcel of the rightward reaction to the attack-on-two-fronts of 2015 (Middle Eastern migrants pushing from the East, African migrants from the South). The break in the UK Conservative party was exacerbated and brought to the fore by this international right-wing reaction.

Secondly, the attitude of the current populist Italian government has taken this criminalisation and turned it into a hostility to Europe itself. Even if not in relation to the Dublin Accord (where such hostility would be rationally channeled) the 'migrant question' , much like the 'Jewish question' a hundred years ago, is being instrumentalised as a method for mediating intra-European imbalances of capitalist development.

Finally, these actions come in the build up to the European elections. This is something entirely obvious to anyone on the European continent and entirely mysterious to most people in the UK (even with the Brexit date now being pushed to the limit of the elections). The Mediterranea ship is a political project, backed by party politicians of the left. The criminalisation of Luca Casarini – formerly a part of the extra-parliamentary left and till recently a regional organiser for Sinistra Italiana, as well as a candidate with the Tsipras list in 2014 – is not separable from this context.

The Coming Crises?

On a formal level, little has changed within the Italian economic or political situation over the last two years. In terms of immigration policy, the previous government arguably introduced policies that are worse than anything brought in by the current one (the severe reduction in appeal times for asylum cases, the elimination of second appeals, the funding of the Libyan coast guard). They finally brought in the landmark 'Five Star Movement' policy of a citizen's income, which really translates as an expanded income support with the possibility of becoming a form of workfare – and doing nothing to confront the mass problem of irregular, uncontracted work. The Italian economy officially went into recession, while the European Commission battled to get the government to cut spending. The spending added in for the citizen's income meant that the budget went over the limit required by the EU in relation to the bailing out in 2008 (the pay back of which has been postponed time and again). Economic sabre-rattling with the EU continued with the Italian government signing up to a new investment deal with the Chinese Republic, without EU support. There have also been spats with the French state, no doubt partly due to Italy's chosen side in the Libyan civil war (Serraj) now being isolated in Tripoli while Haftar, backed by the French and Egyptian states, has conquered most of the country.

As the European elections near, the left is in complete disarray, presenting 5 or 6 separate lists in Italy alone. But the truth is that the right is little better: despite claims that the rise of right-wing populists could spell the end of Europe, none of these right-wing parties is standing on a sovreignist, anti-EU ticket. Just as the liberals have given in and backed the racist borders, so too the right has had to back down and recognise that power in Europe needs to be won within Europe. The one state which hasn't recognised this is of course the UK and the lack of its MEPs will in the end mean a boost to the European centre-right – although splits on the far-right (not especially more organised than the far-left) mean that they're unlikely to form a dominant coalition anyway. The following month will no doubt see important developments as the European elections near.

[oonandhergoons-blog]

June 12, 2017

I definitely put forth my best effort to break in these walking shoes today.

The great thing about the fact that we’re going to be in Dublin for as long as we are is how slow our mornings can be. We don’t feel the need to get up super early and rush to every event and cram as many sights as possible into a few hours because we have the ability to space things out if we want to. I know, this definitely sounds like I’m bragging, and maybe I am a little bit, but it’s only because I’m excited about the fact that one of my first international experiences can be both completely stunning AND relaxing.

After a fairly basic breakfast in the apartment, Mom, Dad, and I headed over to the Hop On, Hop Off bus stop near the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in order to catch a ride over to Trinity College. Trinity College is one of the oldest universities in Europe (which means that it’s HELLA old) and was founded by Queen Elizabeth I in order to prevent the largely Protestant Irish population in Dublin from being “tainted” by Catholic ideals when they went to go study aboard in countries like France. It’s absolutely stunning and the sun was shining when we went to visit this morning, so it looked even more gorgeous!

(Unfortunately, I didn’t get the name of this art piece that was painted near the entry to TC, but it was really beautiful and MASSIVE.)

We were intending to see the Book of Kells while we were there, but due to the fact that it was around noon, the line was ridiculous, so we decided to save it for later in the day when we would come back with online tickets.

Our next stop was the famous statue of Molly Malone, who is the title character of a well-known Irish folk song. The legend told in the song says that Molly was a woman who sold raw seafood on the streets of Dublin. She then dies of a fever, but continues to try selling her products as a ghost. Her statue is a really popular tourist site and Mom in particular was really excited to see her.

From there, we went to the National Gallery of Ireland, which showcases a bunch of really beautiful Irish art. Well, normally there is a bunch. No one told us before we got there that the Gallery has actually be going through a significant renovation for the past six years and doesn’t have a ton of art to be viewed at the moment. Luckily for us, there were still some awesome pieces and they’re actually having their grand “reopening” this Thursday, so we may come back to see some more pieces another time!

We couldn’t photograph in the Margaret Clarke exhibit, but I highly recommend looking up some of her work. THE EYES in her portraits are crazy expressive.

Mom and I were starting to get a bit hangry by the time we made it through the exhibitions, which prompted Dad to immediately rush us over to the nearest restaurant in order to prevent any loss of limb. We ended up at this place called Lincoln’s Inn, which was fairly empty in the late afternoon and had an awesome selection of food, including VEGETARIAN LASAGNA, so you know what your girl went for.

After we thoroughly sated, we headed back towards Trinity College in order to see the Book of Kells, which is an “illuminated manuscript” of the Four Gospels translated entirely into Latin sometime in the 10th century. We weren’t allowed to take pictures of it, but there were some beautiful illustrations throughout each of its pages and some EXCELLENT calligraphy, which I was living for. However, I have to say that my favorite part about seeing the Book of Kells was actually what followed immediately after it, which was these section of Trinity College called the Long Hall. THIS LITERALLY LOOKS LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF “BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.”

This place was absolutely massive and smelled like old books, which should be a car freshener smell, in my opinion. They had all of these cool manuscripts on display in glass cases, including this “word-book” written by Esther Johnson, a girl whose education was largely sponsored by Jonathan Swift and whose ended up being an important figure in Swift’s life and writings.

Following the magical library, the three of us walked over to Christ Church, which is one of Dublin’s most famous churches (out of the multitude that are here). As you can probably imagine, the architecture here was breathtaking. And the church itself was HUGE. The exterior picture I got of it doesn’t even represent half of the building.

We also, of course, went inside to look around for a little while and even went down into the church’s crypts, where there were a bunch of interesting tidbits laying around, including this mummified cat and rat that are apparently the church’s “most famous residents.” They apparently got stuck in the church’s organ pipes during the 1860s and became mummified there, which is super sad, but also makes for an interesting story. We also found out that the heart of St. Laud used to be kept on display in the church, which Dad was very excited to see (maybe a bit too excited), but it was STOLEN about five years ago. Someone literally STOLE a saint’s heart from the church and it hasn’t been seen since!!! The woman at the information desk said they think it was sold on the black market. How crazy is that?!

By this point, we were all pretty exhausted so we decided to head back to the apartment and are currently making plans for the rest of this week! Ahhhhh! Can’t wait to let you in on more adventures!

Prospective plans for tomorrow: Little Museum of Dublin, The Post Office, and “Evita” at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre 

[adreamersholiday]

Day 33: Dublin part 2

The tour bus left at 8 am on the dot. Our driver was Paul, a native of Galway but currently lives in Dublin. Let me tell you, this guy is an entertainer. Before introducing himself, he is singing the Molly Malone song on his headset. He is quite a jokester....poking fun of Trump, teaching us some Irish slang and giving us advice on drinking. Aside from his one of a kind entertainment, he is very informative in the history of Dubin and Ireland in general. He points out key landmarks and provides facts as we pass the point of interest.

Our first destination was Kinvara, south of Galway. It is a small town that makes a good stop for a bathroom break or if you want to grab tea/coffee. There is a nice farmer's market every Friday. We got a nice slice of a vegan vegetable quiche and a box of various hummus. I like trying homemade food, especially outside a traditional restaurant setting. It is a chance to be in their shoes and eat what the locals eat.

We then went to the baby cliffs, a sneak peek of the Cliffs of Moher. There is nothing baby about these cliffs. We got some great pictures including one with my feet off the rocks, looking down at the waves. We also climbed to a high point where you can see the beautiful ocean.

Lunch at Fitzpatrick's in Doolin, Ireland wasn't bad. I have come to realize that some of the food in Ireland, especially the vegetables are seasoned minimally or not at all. Which is fine because everywhere you go, you have to respect the culture and how they do things there. The salmon we had was cooked perfectly. You can't get any fresher than salmon from the Atlantic ocean. We learned the fisherman are only allowed 10 catches of salmon a year to perserve the species. Unlike the potatoes, carrots and cabbage I had with the fish, the vegetable soup was full of flavor and seasoning. Very delicious.

We were on the great Wild Atlantic Way for some time. It is one of the longest driving routes in the world. Like many of the bodies of water we have come across on our European trip, the ocean was amazingly blue. We saw many farm animals roaming the fields. We also saw the stone walls that divide houses, yards and meadows. Many of the stone walls have been here for hundreds and even thousands of years. During the potato famine in the 19th century, the country lost about 2 million people; either to death or immigration to other countries. The king knocked down majority of the houses, as a sign to never come back to Ireland. But a lot of the stone walls survived and still divide the land nicely today.

We arrived to the Cliffs of Moher around 2 pm. We had exactly 1 hour and 30 minutes to explore on our own. The reason we have such a specific time limit is because it is for the safety of the tourists. Every year, on average a hundred people die exploring the cliffs. The government currently restricts all tour companies 1.5 hours time for their groups; in efforts to minimize the number of deaths. Whether it actually has an effect, we are unsure stated the bus driver.

Although it was raining, we still had breathtaking views of the cliffs and water. Paul has stated a dozen times this year, groups would come to see the rocks and there would be dense fog covering everything in sight. The rain was actually on and off. There has been such a heat wave in all the cities and countries we have visited. It is amazing to say that Friday was my first rainy day of the 33 days I have been traveling in Europe. It was Jackie's second; her first rain was day 11 in Monaco and it only lasted 2 hours. After several weeks of suffering in the heat, we welcomed the rain.

Our last stop of the day was Bunratty, between Shannon and Limerick, Ireland. We had just enough time to take a picture of the famous Durty Nelly's Pub and the Bunratty castle; check out the gift shop; and use the bathrooms. Paul strongly suggested not to drink any alcohol or liquids, as we had a straight 2.5 hour drive back to Dublin. We thought the tour was great; even though we had limited time at each point of interest, we got a good idea of what it was like outside of Dublin. And sometime in the future, we can return to the towns we enjoyed the most. Paul made the trip entertaining and fun. Some of those scenic routes we took were just unbelievable.

For dinner, we ate at a small Italian restaurant called I Mornelli. The service was slow but was made up in the delicious pasta dishes. We realized how much we missed Italy....and how much we will miss being away on our honeymoon...away from our work, daily tasks and stress. We still have one more day in Dublin. We hope to check out Merrion Square, the Oscar Wilde statue and the Epic Museum...where Jackie can learn more about her family history.

[blackkudos]

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr., January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.

King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia (the Albany Movement), and helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.

On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches, and the following year he and SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled "Beyond Vietnam".

In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities.

King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971, and as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honor, and a county in Washington State was also renamed for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.

Early life and education

King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. (1899–1984) and Alberta Williams King (1904–1974). King's legal name at birth was Michael King, and his father was also born Michael King, but the elder King changed his and his son's names following a 1934 trip to Germany to attend the Fifth Baptist World Alliance Congress in Berlin. It was during this time he chose to be called Martin Luther King in honor of the German reformer Martin Luther. King had Irish ancestry through his paternal great-grandfather, as well as African ancestry.

King was a middle child, between an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King. King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind. King liked singing and music. His mother was an accomplished organist and choir leader, and she took him to various churches to sing. He received attention for singing "I Want to Be More and More Like Jesus." King later became a member of the junior choir in his church.

King said that his father regularly whipped him until he was fifteen; a neighbor reported hearing the elder King telling his son "he would make something of him even if he had to beat him to death." King saw his father's proud and fearless protests against segregation, such as King Sr. refusing to listen to a traffic policeman after being referred to as "boy," or stalking out of a store with his son when being told by a shoe clerk that they would have to "move to the rear" of the store to be served.

When King was a child, he befriended a white boy whose father owned a business near his family's home. When the boys were six, they started school: King had to attend a school for African Americans and the other boy went to one for whites (public schools were among the facilities segregated by state law). King lost his friend because the child's father no longer wanted the boys to play together.

King suffered from depression throughout much of his life. In his adolescent years, he initially felt resentment against whites due to the "racial humiliation" that he, his family, and his neighbors often had to endure in the segregated South. At the age of 12, shortly after his maternal grandmother died, King blamed himself and jumped out of a second-story window, but survived.

King was skeptical of many of Christianity's claims. At the age of 13, he denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus during Sunday school. From this point, he stated, "doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly". However, he later concluded that the Bible has "many profound truths which one cannot escape" and decided to enter the seminary.

Growing up in Atlanta, King attended Booker T. Washington High School. He became known for his public speaking ability and was part of the school's debate team. King became the youngest assistant manager of a newspaper delivery station for the Atlanta Journal in 1942 when he was 13. During his junior year, he won first prize in an oratorical contest sponsored by the Negro Elks Club in Dublin, Georgia. Returning home to Atlanta by bus, he and his teacher were ordered by the driver to stand so that white passengers could sit down. King initially refused, but complied after his teacher told him that he would be breaking the law if he did not submit. King said that during this incident, he was "the angriest I have ever been in my life". A precocious student, he skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grades of high school.

During King's junior year in high school, Morehouse College, a respected historically black college, announced that it would accept any high school juniors who could pass its entrance exam. At that time, many students had abandoned further studies to enlist in World War II. Due to this, Morehouse was eager to fill its classrooms. At the age of 15, King passed the exam and entered Morehouse. The summer before his last year at Morehouse, in 1947, the 18-year-old King chose to enter the ministry. He had concluded that the church offered the most assuring way to answer "an inner urge to serve humanity". King's "inner urge" had begun developing, and he made peace with the Baptist Church, as he believed he would be a "rational" minister with sermons that were "a respectful force for ideas, even social protest."

In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a B.A. degree in sociology and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a B.Div. degree in 1951. King's father fully supported his decision to continue his education.

While attending Crozer, King was joined by Walter McCall, a former classmate at Morehouse. At Crozer, King was elected president of the student body. The African-American students of Crozer for the most part conducted their social activity on Edwards Street. King became fond of the street because a classmate had an aunt who prepared collard greens for them, which they both relished.

King once reproved another student for keeping beer in his room, saying they had shared responsibility as African Americans to bear "the burdens of the Negro race." For a time, he was interested in Walter Rauschenbusch's "social gospel". In his third year at Morehouse, King became romantically involved with the white daughter of an immigrant German woman who worked as a cook in the cafeteria. The daughter had been involved with a professor prior to her relationship with King. King planned to marry her, but friends advised against it, saying that such an interracial marriage would provoke animosity from both blacks and whites, potentially damaging his chances of ever pastoring a church in the South. King tearfully told a friend that he could not endure his mother's pain over the marriage and broke the relationship off six months later. He continued to have lingering feelings toward the women he left; one friend was quoted as saying, "He never recovered."

King married Coretta Scott on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents' house in her hometown of Heiberger, Alabama; he was 24 and she was 26. They became the parents of four children: Yolanda King (b. 1955), Martin Luther King III (b. 1957), Dexter Scott King (b. 1961), and Bernice King (b. 1963). During their marriage, King limited Coretta's role in the Civil Rights Movement, expecting her to be a housewife and mother.

At age 25 in 1954, King was called as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

Doctoral studies

King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received his Ph.D. degree on June 5, 1955, with a dissertation on A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman. While pursuing doctoral studies, King worked as an assistant minister at Boston's historic Twelfth Baptist Church with Rev. William Hunter Hester. Hester was an old friend of King's father, and was an important influence on King.

Decades later, an academic inquiry in October 1991 concluded that portions of his dissertation had been plagiarized and he had acted improperly. However, "[d]espite its finding, the committee said that 'no thought should be given to the revocation of Dr. King's doctoral degree,' an action that the panel said would serve no purpose." The committee also found that the dissertation still "makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship." A letter is now attached to the copy of King's dissertation held in the university library, noting that numerous passages were included without the appropriate quotations and citations of sources.

Montgomery bus boycott, 1955

In March 1955, a fifteen-year-old school girl in Montgomery, Claudette Colvin, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in compliance with Jim Crow laws, local regulations in the Southern United States that enforced racial segregation. King was on the committee from the Birmingham African-American community that looked into the case; because Colvin was pregnant and unmarried, E. D. Nixon and Clifford Durr decided to wait for a better case to pursue.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat. The Montgomery bus boycott, urged and planned by Nixon and led by King, soon followed. The boycott lasted for 385 days, and the situation became so tense that King's house was bombed. King was arrested during this campaign, which concluded with a United States District Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses. King's role in the bus boycott transformed him into a national figure and the best-known spokesman of the civil rights movement.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

In 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, Joseph Lowery, and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group was created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct nonviolent protests in the service of civil rights reform. One of the group's inspirations was the crusades of evangelist Billy Graham, who befriended King after he attended a Graham crusade in New York City in 1957. King led the SCLC until his death. The SCLC's 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom was the first time King addressed a national audience. Other civil rights leaders involved in the SCLC with King included: James Bevel, Allen Johnson, Curtis W. Harris, Walter E. Fauntroy, C. T. Vivian, Andrew Young, The Freedom Singers, Charles Evers, Cleveland Robinson, Randolph Blackwell, Annie Bell Robinson Devine, Charles Kenzie Steele, Alfred Daniel Williams King, Benjamin Hooks, Aaron Henry and Bayard Rustin.

On September 20, 1958, while signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in Blumstein's department store in Harlem, King narrowly escaped death when Izola Curry, a mentally ill black woman who believed he was conspiring against her with communists, stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener. After emergency surgery by Aubre de Lambert Maynard, Emil Naclerio and John W. V. Cordice , King was hospitalized for several weeks, while Curry was found mentally incompetent to stand trial. In 1959, he published a short book called The Measure of A Man, which contained his sermons "What is Man?" and "The Dimensions of a Complete Life". The sermons argued for man's need for God's love and criticized the racial injustices of Western civilization.

Harry Wachtel—who joined King's legal advisor Clarence B. Jones in defending four ministers of the SCLC in a libel suit over a newspaper advertisement (New York Times Co. v. Sullivan)—founded a tax-exempt fund to cover the expenses of the suit and to assist the nonviolent civil rights movement through a more effective means of fundraising. This organization was named the "Gandhi Society for Human Rights". King served as honorary president for the group. Displeased with the pace of President Kennedy's addressing the issue of segregation, King and the Gandhi Society produced a document in 1962 calling on the President to follow in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln and use an Executive Order to deliver a blow for Civil Rights as a kind of Second Emancipation Proclamation - Kennedy did not execute the order.

The FBI, under written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, began tapping King's telephone in the fall of 1963. Concerned that allegations of communists in the SCLC, if made public, would derail the administration's civil rights initiatives, Kennedy warned King to discontinue the suspect associations, and later felt compelled to issue the written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other SCLC leaders. J. Edgar Hoover feared Communists were trying to infiltrate the Civil Rights movement, but when no such evidence emerged, the bureau used the incidental details caught on tape over the next five years in attempts to force King out of the preeminent leadership position.

King believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that convinced the majority of Americans that the Civil Rights Movement was the most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.

King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted into the law of the United States with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

King and the SCLC put into practice many of the principles of the Christian Left and applied the tactics of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out. There were often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities. Sometimes these confrontations turned violent.

Throughout his participation in the civil rights movement, King was criticized by many groups. This included opposition by more militant blacks such as Nation of Islam member Malcolm X. Stokely Carmichael was a separatist and disagreed with King's plea for racial integration because he considered it an insult to a uniquely African-American culture. Omali Yeshitela urged Africans to remember the history of violent European colonization and how power was not secured by Europeans through integration, but by violence and force.

Albany Movement

The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia, in November 1961. In December, King and the SCLC became involved. The movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a broad-front nonviolent attack on every aspect of segregation within the city and attracted nationwide attention. When King first visited on December 15, 1961, he "had planned to stay a day or so and return home after giving counsel." The following day he was swept up in a mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators, and he declined bail until the city made concessions. According to King, "that agreement was dishonored and violated by the city" after he left town.

King returned in July 1962, and was sentenced to forty-five days in jail or a $178 fine. He chose jail. Three days into his sentence, Police Chief Laurie Pritchett discreetly arranged for King's fine to be paid and ordered his release. "We had witnessed persons being kicked off lunch counter stools ... ejected from churches ... and thrown into jail ... But for the first time, we witnessed being kicked out of jail." It was later acknowledged by the King Center that Billy Graham was the one who bailed King out of jail during this time.

After nearly a year of intense activism with few tangible results, the movement began to deteriorate. King requested a halt to all demonstrations and a "Day of Penance" to promote nonviolence and maintain the moral high ground. Divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts. Though the Albany effort proved a key lesson in tactics for King and the national civil rights movement, the national media was highly critical of King's role in the defeat, and the SCLC's lack of results contributed to a growing gulf between the organization and the more radical SNCC. After Albany, King sought to choose engagements for the SCLC in which he could control the circumstances, rather than entering into pre-existing situations.

Birmingham campaign

In April 1963, the SCLC began a campaign against racial segregation and economic injustice in Birmingham, Alabama. The campaign used nonviolent but intentionally confrontational tactics, developed in part by Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker. Black people in Birmingham, organizing with the SCLC, occupied public spaces with marches and sit-ins, openly violating laws that they considered unjust.

King's intent was to provoke mass arrests and "create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation". However, the campaign's early volunteers did not succeed in shutting down the city, or in drawing media attention to the police's actions. Over the concerns of an uncertain King, SCLC strategist James Bevel changed the course of the campaign by recruiting children and young adults to join in the demonstrations. Newsweek called this strategy a Children's Crusade.

During the protests, the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene "Bull" Connor, used high-pressure water jets and police dogs against protesters, including children. Footage of the police response was broadcast on national television news and dominated the nation's attention, shocking many white Americans and consolidating black Americans behind the movement. Not all of the demonstrators were peaceful, despite the avowed intentions of the SCLC. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police, who responded with force. King and the SCLC were criticized for putting children in harm's way. But the campaign was a success: Connor lost his job, the "Jim Crow" signs came down, and public places became more open to blacks. King's reputation improved immensely.

King was arrested and jailed early in the campaign—his 13th arrest out of 29. From his cell, he composed the now-famous Letter from Birmingham Jail which responds to calls on the movement to pursue legal channels for social change. King argues that the crisis of racism is too urgent, and the current system too entrenched: "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." He points out that the Boston Tea Party, a celebrated act of rebellion in the American colonies, was illegal civil disobedience, and that, conversely, "everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal'". King also expresses his frustration with white moderates and clergymen too timid to oppose an unjust system:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistic-ally believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season".

St. Augustine, Florida

In March 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with Robert Hayling's then-controversial movement in St. Augustine, Florida. Hayling's group had been affiliated with the NAACP but was forced out of the organization for advocating armed self-defense alongside nonviolent tactics. Ironically, the pacifist SCLC accepted them. King and the SCLC worked to bring white Northern activists to St. Augustine, including a delegation of rabbis and the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, all of whom were arrested. During June, the movement marched nightly through the city, "often facing counter demonstrations by the Klan, and provoking violence that garnered national media attention." Hundreds of the marchers were arrested and jailed. During the course of this movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.

Selma, Alabama

In December 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, where the SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months. A local judge issued an injunction that barred any gathering of 3 or more people affiliated with the SNCC, SCLC, DCVL, or any of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965.

New York City

On February 6, 1964, King delivered the inaugural speech of a lecture series initiated at the New School called "The American Race Crisis". No audio record of his speech has been found, but in August 2013, almost 50 years later, the school discovered an audiotape with 15 minutes of a question-and-answer session that followed King's address. In these remarks, King referred to a conversation he had recently had with Jawaharlal Nehru in which he compared the sad condition of many African Americans to that of India's untouchables.

March on Washington, 1963

King, representing the SCLC, was among the leaders of the "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were Roy Wilkins from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Whitney Young, National Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James L. Farmer Jr., of the Congress of Racial Equality.

The primary logistical and strategic organizer was King's colleague Bayard Rustin. For King, this role was another which courted controversy, since he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of United States President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march. Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation. However, the organizers were firm that the march would proceed. With the march going forward, the Kennedys decided it was important to work to ensure its success. President Kennedy was concerned the turnout would be less than 100,000. Therefore, he enlisted the aid of additional church leaders and the UAW union to help mobilize demonstrators for the cause.

The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the southern U.S. and an opportunity to place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation's capital. Organizers intended to denounce the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks. However, the group acquiesced to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took on a far less strident tone. As a result, some civil rights activists felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the "Farce on Washington", and the Nation of Islam forbade its members from attending the march.

The march did, however, make specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public schools; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for Washington, D.C., then governed by congressional committee. Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success. More than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington, D.C.'s history.

King delivered a 17-minute speech, later known as "I Have a Dream". In the speech's most famous passage—in which he departed from his prepared text, possibly at the prompting of Mahalia Jackson, who shouted behind him, "Tell them about the dream!"—King said:

"I Have a Dream" came to be regarded as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory. The March, and especially King's speech, helped put civil rights at the top of the agenda of reformers in the United States and facilitated passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The original typewritten copy of the speech, including King's handwritten notes on it, was discovered in 1984 to be in the hands of George Raveling, the first African-American basketball coach of the University of Iowa. In 1963, Raveling, then 26, was standing near the podium, and immediately after the oration, impulsively asked King if he could have his copy of the speech. He got it.

Selma voting rights movement and "Bloody Sunday", 1965

Acting on James Bevel's call for a march from Selma to Montgomery, King, Bevel, and the SCLC, in partial collaboration with SNCC, attempted to organize the march to the state's capital. The first attempt to march on March 7, 1965, was aborted because of mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day has become known as Bloody Sunday and was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the Civil Rights Movement. It was the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King's nonviolence strategy. King, however, was not present.

King met with officials in the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration on March 5 in order to request an injunction against any prosecution of the demonstrators. He did not attend the march due to church duties, but he later wrote, "If I had any idea that the state troopers would use the kind of brutality they did, I would have felt compelled to give up my church duties altogether to lead the line." Footage of police brutality against the protesters was broadcast extensively and aroused national public outrage.

King next attempted to organize a march for March 9. The SCLC petitioned for an injunction in federal court against the State of Alabama; this was denied and the judge issued an order blocking the march until after a hearing. Nonetheless, King led marchers on March 9 to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, then held a short prayer session before turning the marchers around and asking them to disperse so as not to violate the court order. The unexpected ending of this second march aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement. The march finally went ahead fully on March 25, 1965. At the conclusion of the march on the steps of the state capitol, King delivered a speech that became known as "How Long, Not Long". In it, King stated that equal rights for African Americans could not be far away, "because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice".

Chicago open housing movement, 1966

In 1966, after several successes in the south, King, Bevel, and others in the civil rights organizations tried to spread the movement to the North, with Chicago as their first destination. King and Ralph Abernathy, both from the middle class, moved into a building at 1550 S. Hamlin Ave., in the slums of North Lawndale on Chicago's West Side, as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor.

The SCLC formed a coalition with CCCO, Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, an organization founded by Albert Raby, and the combined organizations' efforts were fostered under the aegis of the Chicago Freedom Movement. During that spring, several white couple / black couple tests of real estate offices uncovered racial steering: discriminatory processing of housing requests by couples who were exact matches in income, background, number of children, and other attributes. Several larger marches were planned and executed: in Bogan, Belmont Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park (a suburb southwest of Chicago), Gage Park, Marquette Park, and others.

Abernathy later wrote that the movement received a worse reception in Chicago than in the South. Marches, especially the one through Marquette Park on August 5, 1966, were met by thrown bottles and screaming throngs. Rioting seemed very possible. King's beliefs militated against his staging a violent event, and he negotiated an agreement with Mayor Richard J. Daley to cancel a march in order to avoid the violence that he feared would result. King was hit by a brick during one march but continued to lead marches in the face of personal danger.

When King and his allies returned to the South, they left Jesse Jackson, a seminary student who had previously joined the movement in the South, in charge of their organization. Jackson continued their struggle for civil rights by organizing the Operation Breadbasket movement that targeted chain stores that did not deal fairly with blacks.

Opposition to the Vietnam War

King long opposed American involvement in the Vietnam War, but at first avoided the topic in public speeches in order to avoid the interference with civil rights goals that criticism of President Johnson's policies might have created. However, at the urging of SCLC's former Director of Direct Action and now the head of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, James Bevel, King eventually agreed to publicly oppose the war as opposition was growing among the American public. In an April 4, 1967, appearance at the New York City Riverside Church—exactly one year before his death—King delivered a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence". He spoke strongly against the U.S.'s role in the war, arguing that the U.S. was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony" and calling the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today". He also connected the war with economic injustice, arguing that the country needed serious moral change:

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."

King also opposed the Vietnam War because it took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare at home. The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti-poverty programs at the same time. He summed up this aspect by saying, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death". He stated that North Vietnam "did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of thousands", and accused the U.S. of having killed a million Vietnamese, "mostly children". King also criticized American opposition to North Vietnam's land reforms.

King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham, union leaders and powerful publishers. "The press is being stacked against me", King said, complaining of what he described as a double standard that applauded his nonviolence at home, but deplored it when applied "toward little brown Vietnamese children". Life magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi", and The Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people".

The "Beyond Vietnam" speech reflected King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, which paralleled the teachings of the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center, with which he was affiliated. King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the nation, and more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct racial and economic injustice. He guarded his language in public to avoid being linked to communism by his enemies, but in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism. In a 1952 letter to Coretta Scott, he said: "I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic ..." In one speech, he stated that "something is wrong with capitalism" and claimed, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism." King had read Marx while at Morehouse, but while he rejected "traditional capitalism", he also rejected communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism", and its "political totalitarianism".

King also stated in "Beyond Vietnam" that "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar ... it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring". King quoted a United States official who said that from Vietnam to Latin America, the country was "on the wrong side of a world revolution". King condemned America's "alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America", and said that the U.S. should support "the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World rather than suppressing their attempts at revolution.

On April 15, 1967, King participated in and spoke at an anti-war march from New York's Central Park to the United Nations organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and initiated by its chairman, James Bevel. At the U.N. King also brought up issues of civil rights and the draft.

I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. I would like to see the fervor of the civil-rights movement imbued into the peace movement to instill it with greater strength. And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both.

Seeing an opportunity to unite civil rights activists and anti-war activists, Bevel convinced King to become even more active in the anti-war effort. Despite his growing public opposition towards the Vietnam War, King was also not fond of the hippie culture which developed from the anti-war movement. In his 1967 Massey Lecture, King stated:

The importance of the hippies is not in their unconventional behavior, but in the fact that hundreds of thousands of young people, in turning to a flight from reality, are expressing a profoundly discrediting view on the society they emerge from.

On January 13, 1968, the day after President Johnson's State of the Union Address, King called for a large march on Washington against "one of history's most cruel and senseless wars".

We need to make clear in this political year, to congressmen on both sides of the aisle and to the president of the United States, that we will no longer tolerate, we will no longer vote for men who continue to see the killings of Vietnamese and Americans as the best way of advancing the goals of freedom and self-determination in Southeast Asia.

Poor People's Campaign, 1968

In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. King traveled the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would march on Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created an "economic bill of rights" for poor Americans.

The campaign was preceded by King's final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? which laid out his view of how to address social issues and poverty. King quoted from Henry George and George's book, Progress and Poverty, particularly in support of a guaranteed basic income. The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C., demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States.

King and the SCLC called on the government to invest in rebuilding America's cities. He felt that Congress had shown "hostility to the poor" by spending "military funds with alacrity and generosity". He contrasted this with the situation faced by poor Americans, claiming that Congress had merely provided "poverty funds with miserliness". His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than mere reform: he cited systematic flaws of "racism, poverty, militarism and materialism", and argued that "reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced".

The Poor People's Campaign was controversial even within the civil rights movement. Rustin resigned from the march, stating that the goals of the campaign were too broad, that its demands were unrealizable, and that he thought that these campaigns would accelerate the backlash and repression on the poor and the black.

After King's death

The plan to set up a shantytown in Washington, D.C., was carried out soon after the April 4 assassination. Criticism of King's plan was subdued in the wake of his death, and the SCLC received an unprecedented wave of donations for the purpose of carrying it out. The campaign officially began in Memphis, on May 2, at the hotel where King was murdered.

Thousands of demonstrators arrived on the National Mall and established a camp they called "Resurrection City". They stayed for six weeks.

Assassination and aftermath

On March 29, 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of the black sanitary public works employees, represented by AFSCME Local 1733, who had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment. In one incident, black street repairmen received pay for two hours when they were sent home because of bad weather, but white employees were paid for the full day.

On April 3, King addressed a rally and delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" address at Mason Temple, the world headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. King's flight to Memphis had been delayed by a bomb threat against his plane. In the close of the last speech of his career, in reference to the bomb threat, King said the following:

And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

King was booked in Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel (owned by Walter Bailey) in Memphis. Abernathy, who was present at the assassination, testified to the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations that King and his entourage stayed at Room 306 so often that it was known as the "King-Abernathy suite". According to Jesse Jackson, who was present, King's last words on the balcony before his assassination were spoken to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was attending: "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."

King was shot by James Earl Ray at 6:01 p.m., April 4, 1968, as he stood on the motel's second-floor balcony. The bullet entered through his right cheek, smashing his jaw, then traveled down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder. Abernathy heard the shot from inside the motel room and ran to the balcony to find King on the floor. Jackson stated after the shooting that he cradled King's head as King lay on the balcony, but this account was disputed by other colleagues of King; Jackson later changed his statement to say that he had "reached out" for King.

After emergency chest surgery, King died at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 p.m. According to biographer Taylor Branch, King's autopsy revealed that though only 39 years old, he "had the heart of a 60 year old", which Branch attributed to the stress of 13 years in the Civil Rights Movement.

Aftermath

The assassination led to a nationwide wave of race riots in Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Baltimore; Louisville; Kansas City; and dozens of other cities. Presidential candidate Robert F. "Bobby" Kennedy was on his way to Indianapolis for a campaign rally when he was informed of King's death. He gave a short speech to the gathering of supporters informing them of the tragedy and urging them to continue King's ideal of nonviolence. James Farmer Jr., and other civil rights leaders also called for non-violent action, while the more militant Stokely Carmichael called for a more forceful response. The city of Memphis quickly settled the strike on terms favorable to the sanitation workers.

President Lyndon B. Johnson declared April 7 a national day of mourning for the civil rights leader. Vice President Hubert Humphrey attended King's funeral on behalf of the President, as there were fears that Johnson's presence might incite protests and perhaps violence. At his widow's request, King's last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church was played at the funeral, a recording of his "Drum Major" sermon, given on February 4, 1968. In that sermon, King made a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to "feed the hungry", "clothe the naked", "be right on the [Vietnam] war question", and "love and serve humanity". His good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", at the funeral.

Two months after King's death, escaped convict James Earl Ray was captured at London Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the United Kingdom on a false Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd on his way to white-ruled Rhodesia. Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and charged with King's murder. He confessed to the assassination on March 10, 1969, though he recanted this confession three days later. On the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman, Ray pleaded guilty to avoid a trial conviction and thus the possibility of receiving the death penalty. He was sentenced to a 99-year prison term. Ray later claimed a man he met in Montreal, Quebec, with the alias "Raoul" was involved and that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy. He spent the remainder of his life attempting, unsuccessfully, to withdraw his guilty plea and secure the trial he never had.

Allegations of conspiracy

Ray's lawyers maintained he was a scapegoat similar to the way that John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is seen by conspiracy theorists. Supporters of this assertion said that Ray's confession was given under pressure and that he had been threatened with the death penalty. They admitted that Ray was a thief and burglar, but claimed that he had no record of committing violent crimes with a weapon. However, prison records in different U.S. cities have shown that he was incarcerated on numerous occasions for charges of armed robbery. In a 2008 interview with CNN, Jerry Ray, the younger brother of James Earl Ray, claimed that James was smart and was sometimes able to get away with armed robbery. Jerry Ray said that he had assisted his brother on one such robbery. "I never been with nobody as bold as he is," Jerry said. "He just walked in and put that gun on somebody, it was just like it's an everyday thing."

Those suspecting a conspiracy in the assassination point to the two successive ballistics tests which proved that a rifle similar to Ray's Remington Gamemaster had been the murder weapon. Those tests did not implicate Ray's specific rifle. Witnesses near King at the moment of his death said that the shot came from another location. They said that it came from behind thick shrubbery near the boarding house—which had been cut away in the days following the assassination—and not from the boarding house window. However, Ray's fingerprints were found on various objects (a rifle, a pair of binoculars, articles of clothing, a newspaper) that were left in the bathroom where it was determined the gunfire came from. An examination of the rifle containing Ray's fingerprints also determined that at least one shot was fired from the firearm at the time of the assassination.

In 1997, King's son Dexter Scott King met with Ray, and publicly supported Ray's efforts to obtain a new trial.

Two years later, Coretta Scott King, King's widow, along with the rest of King's family, won a wrongful death claim against Loyd Jowers and "other unknown co-conspirators". Jowers claimed to have received $100,000 to arrange King's assassination. The jury of six whites and six blacks found in favor of the King family, finding Jowers to be complicit in a conspiracy against King and that government agencies were party to the assassination. William F. Pepper represented the King family in the trial.

In 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice completed the investigation into Jowers' claims but did not find evidence to support allegations about conspiracy. The investigation report recommended no further investigation unless some new reliable facts are presented. A sister of Jowers admitted that he had fabricated the story so he could make $300,000 from selling the story, and she in turn corroborated his story in order to get some money to pay her income tax.

In 2002, The New York Times reported that a church minister, Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson, claimed his father, Henry Clay Wilson—not James Earl Ray—assassinated King. He stated, "It wasn't a racist thing; he thought Martin Luther King was connected with communism, and he wanted to get him out of the way." Wilson provided no evidence to back up his claims.

King researchers David Garrow and Gerald Posner disagreed with William F. Pepper's claims that the government killed King. In 2003, Pepper published a book about the long investigation and trial, as well as his representation of James Earl Ray in his bid for a trial, laying out the evidence and criticizing other accounts. King's friend and colleague, James Bevel, also disputed the argument that Ray acted alone, stating, "There is no way a ten-cent white boy could develop a plan to kill a million-dollar black man." In 2004, Jesse Jackson stated:

The fact is there were saboteurs to disrupt the march. And within our own organization, we found a very key person who was on the government payroll. So infiltration within, saboteurs from without and the press attacks. ... I will never believe that James Earl Ray had the motive, the money and the mobility to have done it himself. Our government was very involved in setting the stage for and I think the escape route for James Earl Ray.

Legacy

King's main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the U.S. Just days after King's assassination, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Title VIII of the Act, commonly known as the Fair Housing Act, prohibited discrimination in housing and housing-related transactions on the basis of race, religion, or national origin (later expanded to include sex, familial status, and disability). This legislation was seen as a tribute to King's struggle in his final years to combat residential discrimination in the U.S.

Internationally, King's legacy includes influences on the Black Consciousness Movement and Civil Rights Movement in South Africa. King's work was cited by and served as an inspiration for South African leader Albert Lutuli, who fought for racial justice in his country and was later awarded the Nobel Prize. The day following King's assassination, school teacher Jane Elliott conducted her first "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise with her class of elementary school students in Riceville, Iowa. Her purpose was to help them understand King's death as it related to racism, something they little understood as they lived in a predominantly white community. King has become a national icon in the history of American liberalism and American progressivism. King also influenced Irish politician and activist John Hume. Hume, the former leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, cited King's legacy as quintessential to the Northern Irish civil rights movement and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, calling him "one of my great heroes of the century."

King's wife, Coretta Scott King, followed in her husband's footsteps and was active in matters of social justice and civil rights until her death in 2006. The same year that Martin Luther King was assassinated, she established the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia, dedicated to preserving his legacy and the work of championing nonviolent conflict resolution and tolerance worldwide. Their son, Dexter King, serves as the center's chairman. Daughter Yolanda King, who died in 2007, was a motivational speaker, author and founder of Higher Ground Productions, an organization specializing in diversity training.

Even within the King family, members disagree about his religious and political views about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. King's widow Coretta said publicly that she believed her husband would have supported gay rights. However, his youngest child, Bernice King, has said publicly that he would have been opposed to gay marriage.

On February 4, 1968, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, in speaking about how he wished to be remembered after his death, King stated:

I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Beginning in 1971, cities such as St. Louis, Missouri, and states established annual holidays to honor King. At the White House Rose Garden on November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor King. Observed for the first time on January 20, 1986, it is called Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Following President George H. W. Bush's 1992 proclamation, the holiday is observed on the third Monday of January each year, near the time of King's birthday. On January 17, 2000, for the first time, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was officially observed in all fifty U.S. states. Arizona (1992), New Hampshire (1999) and Utah (2000) were the last three states to recognize the holiday. Utah previously celebrated the holiday at the same time but under the name Human Rights Day.

Liturgical commemorations

King is remembered as a martyr by the Episcopal Church in the United States of America with an annual feast day on the anniversary of his death, April 4. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America commemorates King liturgically on the anniversary of his birth, January 15.

UK legacy and The Martin Luther King Peace Committee

In the United Kingdom, The Northumbria and Newcastle Universities Martin Luther King Peace Committee exists to honour King's legacy, as represented by his final visit to the UK to receive an honorary degree from Newcastle University in 1967. The Peace Committee operates out of the chaplaincies of the city's two universities, Northumbria and Newcastle, both of which remain centres for the study of Martin Luther King and the US Civil Rights Movement. Inspired by King's vision, it undertakes a range of activities across the UK as it seeks to "build cultures of peace."

Ideas, influences, and political stances

Religion

As a Christian minister, King's main influence was Jesus Christ and the Christian gospels, which he would almost always quote in his religious meetings, speeches at church, and in public discourses. King's faith was strongly based in Jesus' commandment of loving your neighbor as yourself, loving God above all, and loving your enemies, praying for them and blessing them. His nonviolent thought was also based in the injunction to turn the other cheek in the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus' teaching of putting the sword back into its place (Matthew 26:52). In his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, King urged action consistent with what he describes as Jesus' "extremist" love, and also quoted numerous other Christian pacifist authors, which was very usual for him. In another sermon, he stated:

Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the Gospel. This was my first calling and it still remains my greatest commitment. You know, actually all that I do in civil rights I do because I consider it a part of my ministry. I have no other ambitions in life but to achieve excellence in the Christian ministry. I don't plan to run for any political office. I don't plan to do anything but remain a preacher. And what I'm doing in this struggle, along with many others, grows out of my feeling that the preacher must be concerned about the whole man.

In his speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop", he stated that he just wanted to do God's will.

Nonviolence

Veteran African-American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin was King's first regular advisor on nonviolence. King was also advised by the white activists Harris Wofford and Glenn Smiley. Rustin and Smiley came from the Christian pacifist tradition, and Wofford and Rustin both studied Gandhi's teachings. Rustin had applied nonviolence with the Journey of Reconciliation campaign in the 1940s, and Wofford had been promoting Gandhism to Southern blacks since the early 1950s. King had initially known little about Gandhi and rarely used the term "nonviolence" during his early years of activism in the early 1950s. King initially believed in and practiced self-defense, even obtaining guns in his household as a means of defense against possible attackers. The pacifists guided King by showing him the alternative of nonviolent resistance, arguing that this would be a better means to accomplish his goals of civil rights than self-defense. King then vowed to no longer personally use arms.

In the aftermath of the boycott, King wrote Stride Toward Freedom, which included the chapter Pilgrimage to Nonviolence. King outlined his understanding of nonviolence, which seeks to win an opponent to friendship, rather than to humiliate or defeat him. The chapter draws from an address by Wofford, with Rustin and Stanley Levison also providing guidance and ghostwriting.

Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's success with nonviolent activism, King had "for a long time ... wanted to take a trip to India". With assistance from Harris Wofford, the American Friends Service Committee, and other supporters, he was able to fund the journey in April 1959. The trip to India affected King, deepening his understanding of nonviolent resistance and his commitment to America's struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, "Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity".

Bayard Rustin's open homosexuality, support of democratic socialism, and his former ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand King distance himself from Rustin, which King agreed to do. However, King agreed that Rustin should be one of the main organizers of the 1963 March on Washington.

King's admiration of Gandhi's nonviolence did not diminish in later years. He went so far as to hold up his example when receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, hailing the "successful precedent" of using nonviolence "in a magnificent way by Mohandas K. Gandhi to challenge the might of the British Empire ... He struggled only with the weapons of truth, soul force, non-injury and courage."

Gandhi seemed to have influenced him with certain moral principles, though Gandhi himself had been influenced by The Kingdom of God Is Within You, a nonviolent classic written by Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy. In turn, both Gandhi and Martin Luther King had read Tolstoy, and King, Gandhi and Tolstoy had been strongly influenced by Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. King quoted Tolstoy's War and Peace in 1959.

Another influence for King's nonviolent method was Henry David Thoreau's essay On Civil Disobedience, which King read in his student days. He was influenced by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system. He also was greatly influenced by the works of Protestant theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, as well as Walter Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis. King also sometimes used the concept of "agape" (brotherly Christian love). However, after 1960, he ceased employing it in his writings.

Even after renouncing his personal use of guns, King had a complex relationship with the phenomenon of self-defense in the movement. He publicly discouraged it as a widespread practice, but acknowledged that it was sometimes necessary. Throughout his career King was frequently protected by other civil rights activists who carried arms, such as Colonel Stone Johnson, Robert Hayling, and the Deacons for Defense and Justice.

Politics

As the leader of the SCLC, King maintained a policy of not publicly endorsing a U.S. political party or candidate: "I feel someone must remain in the position of non-alignment, so that he can look objectively at both parties and be the conscience of both—not the servant or master of either." In a 1958 interview, he expressed his view that neither party was perfect, saying, "I don't think the Republican party is a party full of the almighty God nor is the Democratic party. They both have weaknesses ... And I'm not inextricably bound to either party." King did praise Democratic Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois as being the "greatest of all senators" because of his fierce advocacy for civil rights causes over the years.

King critiqued both parties' performance on promoting racial equality:

Actually, the Negro has been betrayed by both the Republican and the Democratic party. The Democrats have betrayed him by capitulating to the whims and caprices of the Southern Dixiecrats. The Republicans have betrayed him by capitulating to the blatant hypocrisy of reactionary right wing northern Republicans. And this coalition of southern Dixiecrats and right wing reactionary northern Republicans defeats every bill and every move towards liberal legislation in the area of civil rights.

Although King never publicly supported a political party or candidate for president, in a letter to a civil rights supporter in October 1956 he said that he was undecided as to whether he would vote for Adlai Stevenson or Dwight Eisenhower, but that "In the past I always voted the Democratic ticket." In his autobiography, King says that in 1960 he privately voted for Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy: "I felt that Kennedy would make the best president. I never came out with an endorsement. My father did, but I never made one." King adds that he likely would have made an exception to his non-endorsement policy for a second Kennedy term, saying "Had President Kennedy lived, I would probably have endorsed him in 1964." In 1964, King urged his supporters "and all people of goodwill" to vote against Republican Senator Barry Goldwater for president, saying that his election "would be a tragedy, and certainly suicidal almost, for the nation and the world." King supported the ideals of democratic socialism, although he was reluctant to speak directly of this support due to the anti-communist sentiment being projected throughout the United States at the time, and the association of socialism with communism. King believed that capitalism could not adequately provide the basic necessities of many American people, particularly the African-American community.

Compensation

King stated that black Americans, as well as other disadvantaged Americans, should be compensated for historical wrongs. In an interview conducted for Playboy in 1965, he said that granting black Americans only equality could not realistically close the economic gap between them and whites. King said that he did not seek a full restitution of wages lost to slavery, which he believed impossible, but proposed a government compensatory program of $50 billion over ten years to all disadvantaged groups.

He posited that "the money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils". He presented this idea as an application of the common law regarding settlement of unpaid labor, but clarified that he felt that the money should not be spent exclusively on blacks. He stated, "It should benefit the disadvantaged of all races".

The lack of attention given to family planning

On being awarded the Planned Parenthood Federation of America's Margaret Sanger Award on 5th May, 1966, King said:

Recently, the press has been filled with reports of sightings of flying saucers. While we need not give credence to these stories, they allow our imagination to speculate on how visitors from outer space would judge us. I am afraid they would be stupefied at our conduct. They would observe that for death planning we spend billions to create engines and strategies for war. They would also observe that we spend millions to prevent death by disease and other causes. Finally they would observe that we spend paltry sums for population planning, even though its spontaneous growth is an urgent threat to life on our planet. Our visitors from outer space could be forgiven if they reported home that our planet is inhabited by a race of insane men whose future is bleak and uncertain. There is no human circumstance more tragic than the persisting existence of a harmful condition for which a remedy is readily available. Family planning, to relate population to world resources, is possible, practical and necessary. Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims...

FBI and King's personal life

FBI surveillance and wiretapping

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover personally ordered surveillance of King, with the intent to undermine his power as a civil rights leader. According to the Church Committee, a 1975 investigation by the U.S. Congress, "From December 1963 until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to 'neutralize' him as an effective civil rights leader."

The Bureau received authorization to proceed with wiretapping from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in the fall of 1963 and informed President John F. Kennedy, both of whom unsuccessfully tried to persuade King to dissociate himself from Stanley Levison, a New York lawyer who had been involved with Communist Party USA. Although Robert Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so", Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy. The Bureau placed wiretaps on Levison's and King's home and office phones, and bugged King's rooms in hotels as he traveled across the country. In 1967, Hoover listed the SCLC as a black nationalist hate group, with the instructions: "No opportunity should be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques the organizational and personal conflicts of the leaderships of the groups ... to insure the targeted group is disrupted, ridiculed, or discredited."

NSA monitoring of King's communications

In a secret operation code-named "Minaret", the National Security Agency (NSA) monitored the communications of leading Americans, including King, who criticized the U.S. war in Vietnam. A review by the NSA itself concluded that Minaret was "disreputable if not outright illegal."

Allegations of communism

For years, Hoover had been suspicious about potential influence of communists in social movements such as labor unions and civil rights. Hoover directed the FBI to track King in 1957, and the SCLC as it was established (it did not have a full-time executive director until 1960). The investigations were largely superficial until 1962, when the FBI learned that one of King's most trusted advisers was New York City lawyer Stanley Levison.

The FBI feared Levison was working as an "agent of influence" over King, in spite of its own reports in 1963 that Levison had left the Party and was no longer associated in business dealings with them. Another King lieutenant, Hunter Pitts O'Dell, was also linked to the Communist Party by sworn testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). However, by 1976 the FBI had acknowledged that it had not obtained any evidence that King himself or the SCLC were actually involved with any communist organizations.

For his part, King adamantly denied having any connections to communism, stating in a 1965 Playboy interview that "there are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida". He argued that Hoover was "following the path of appeasement of political powers in the South" and that his concern for communist infiltration of the Civil Rights Movement was meant to "aid and abet the salacious claims of southern racists and the extreme right-wing elements". Hoover did not believe King's pledge of innocence and replied by saying that King was "the most notorious liar in the country". After King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, the FBI described King as "the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country". It alleged that he was "knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking guidance from communists".

The attempt to prove that King was a communist was related to the feeling of many segregationists that blacks in the South were happy with their lot but had been stirred up by "communists" and "outside agitators". However, the 1950s and '60s Civil Rights Movement arose from activism within the black community dating back to before World War I. King said that "the Negro revolution is a genuine revolution, born from the same womb that produces all massive social upheavals—the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations."

Adultery

Having concluded that King was dangerous due to communist infiltration, the FBI shifted to attempting to discredit King through revelations regarding his private life. FBI surveillance of King, some of it since made public, attempted to demonstrate that he also engaged in numerous extramarital affairs. Lyndon Johnson once said that King was a "hypocritical preacher".

Ralph Abernathy stated in his 1989 autobiography And the Walls Came Tumbling Down that King had a "weakness for women", although they "all understood and believed in the biblical prohibition against sex outside of marriage. It was just that he had a particularly difficult time with that temptation". In a later interview, Abernathy said that he only wrote the term "womanizing", that he did not specifically say King had extramarital sex and that the infidelities King had were emotional rather than sexual. Abernathy criticized the media for sensationalizing the statements he wrote about King's affairs, such as the allegation that he admitted in his book that King had a sexual affair the night before he was assassinated. In his original wording, Abernathy had claimed he saw King coming out of his room with a lady when he awoke the next morning and later claimed that "he may have been in there discussing and debating and trying to get her to go along with the movement, I don't know."

In his 1986 book Bearing the Cross, David Garrow wrote about a number of extramarital affairs, including one woman King saw almost daily. According to Garrow, "that relationship ... increasingly became the emotional centerpiece of King's life, but it did not eliminate the incidental couplings ... of King's travels." He alleged that King explained his extramarital affairs as "a form of anxiety reduction". Garrow asserted that King's supposed promiscuity caused him "painful and at times overwhelming guilt". King's wife Coretta appeared to have accepted his affairs with equanimity, saying once that "all that other business just doesn't have a place in the very high level relationship we enjoyed." Shortly after Bearing the Cross was released, civil rights author Howell Raines gave the book a positive review but opined that Garrow's allegations about King's sex life were "sensational" and stated that Garrow was "amassing facts rather than analyzing them".

The FBI distributed reports regarding such affairs to the executive branch, friendly reporters, potential coalition partners and funding sources of the SCLC, and King's family. The Bureau also sent anonymous letters to King threatening to reveal information if he did not cease his civil rights work. The FBI–King suicide letter sent to King just before he received the Nobel Peace Prize read, in part:

The American public, the church organizations that have been helping—Protestants, Catholics and Jews will know you for what you are—an evil beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significant [sic]). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation.

A tape recording of several of King's extramarital liaisons, excerpted from FBI wiretaps, accompanied the letter. King interpreted this package as an attempt to drive him to suicide, although William Sullivan, head of the Domestic Intelligence Division at the time, argued that it may have only been intended to "convince Dr. King to resign from the SCLC". King refused to give in to the FBI's threats.

In 1977, Judge John Lewis Smith Jr. ordered all known copies of the recorded audiotapes and written transcripts resulting from the FBI's electronic surveillance of King between 1963 and 1968 to be held in the National Archives and sealed from public access until 2027.

Police observation during the assassination

A fire station was located across from the Lorraine Motel, next to the boarding house in which James Earl Ray was staying. Police officers were stationed in the fire station to keep King under surveillance. Agents were watching King at the time he was shot. Immediately following the shooting, officers rushed out of the station to the motel. Marrell McCollough, an undercover police officer, was the first person to administer first aid to King. The antagonism between King and the FBI, the lack of an all points bulletin to find the killer, and the police presence nearby led to speculation that the FBI was involved in the assassination.

Awards and recognition

King was awarded at least fifty honorary degrees from colleges and universities. On October 14, 1964, King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading nonviolent resistance to racial prejudice in the U.S. In 1965, he was awarded the American Liberties Medallion by the American Jewish Committee for his "exceptional advancement of the principles of human liberty". In his acceptance remarks, King said, "Freedom is one thing. You have it all or you are not free."

In 1957, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP. Two years later, he won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his book Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. In 1966, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America awarded King the Margaret Sanger Award for "his courageous resistance to bigotry and his lifelong dedication to the advancement of social justice and human dignity". Also in 1966, King was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In November 1967 he made a 24-hour trip to the United Kingdom to receive an honorary degree from Newcastle University, being the first African-American to be so honoured by Newcastle. In a moving impromptu acceptance speech, he said

There are three urgent and indeed great problems that we face not only in the United States of America but all over the world today. That is the problem of racism, the problem of poverty and the problem of war.

In 1971 he was posthumously awarded a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for his Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam.

In 1977, the Presidential Medal of Freedom was posthumously awarded to King by President Jimmy Carter. The citation read:

Martin Luther King Jr. was the conscience of his generation. He gazed upon the great wall of segregation and saw that the power of love could bring it down. From the pain and exhaustion of his fight to fulfill the promises of our founding fathers for our humblest citizens, he wrung his eloquent statement of his dream for America. He made our nation stronger because he made it better. His dream sustains us yet.

King and his wife were also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

King was second in Gallup's List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century. In 1963, he was named Time Person of the Year, and in 2000, he was voted sixth in an online "Person of the Century" poll by the same magazine. King placed third in the Greatest American contest conducted by the Discovery Channel and AOL.

Memorials and eponymous places and buildings

There are numerous memorials to King in the United States, including:

More than 730 cities in the United States have streets named after King.

King County, Washington, rededicated its name in his honor in 1986 and changed its logo to an image of his face in 2007.

The city government center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is named in honor of King.

In 1980, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated King's boyhood home in Atlanta and several nearby buildings the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site.

A bust of Dr. King was added to the "gallery of notables" in the United States Capitol in 1986, portraying him in a "restful, nonspeaking pose."

The beginning words of King's "I Have a Dream" speech are etched on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, at the place where King stood during that speech. These words from the speech—"five short lines of text carved into the granite on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial"—were etched in 2003, on the 40th anniversary of the march to Washington, by stone carver Andy Del Gallo, after a law was passed by Congress providing authorization for the inscription.

In 1996, Congress authorized the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, of which King is still a member, to establish a foundation to manage fund raising and design of a national Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. King was the first African American and the fourth non-president honored with his own memorial in the National Mall area. The memorial opened in August 2011 and is administered by the National Park Service. The address of the monument, 1964 Independence Avenue, SW, commemorates the year that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law.

The Landmark for Peace Memorial in Indianapolis, Indiana

The Homage to King sculpture in Atlanta, Georgia

The Dream sculpture in Portland, Oregon

The National Civil Rights Museum, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where King died

Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Alabama

On October 11, 2015, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported a proposed "Freedom Bell" may be installed atop Stone Mountain honoring King and his "I Have a Dream" speech, specifically the line "Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia."

Numerous other memorials honor him around the world, including:

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Church in Debrecen, Hungary

The King-Luthuli Transformation Center in Johannesburg, South Africa

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Forest in Israel's Southern Galilee region (along with the Coretta Scott King Forest in Biriya Forest, Israel)

The Martin Luther King Jr. School in Accra, Ghana

The Gandhi-King Plaza (garden), at the India International Center in New Delhi, India

In Norfolk, Virginia stands a memorial in honor of King. The 83-foot-high granite obelisk was conceived by former Norfolk Councilman and General District Court Judge Joseph A. Jordan Jr.

Five Dollar Bill

On April 20, 2016, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced that the $5, $10, and $20 would all undergo redesign prior to 2020. Lew said that while Lincoln would remain on the obverse of the $5 bill, the reverse would be redesigned to depict various historical events that had occurred at the Lincoln Memorial. Among the planned designs are images from King's "I Have a Dream" speech and the 1939 concert by opera singer Marian Anderson.

Wikipedia

[connorrenwick]

Friday Five with Paul McClean

Photo: John Russo

Contemporary architect Paul McClean, founder of McClean Design, grew up in Ireland, where he later attended the Dublin Institute of Technology. After graduating with honors, he relocated to Southern California and worked for various architectural firms before establishing McClean Design in 2000. Thanks to the creation of lasting relationships with leading builders and designers, he’s helped ensure that his entire team is committed to realizing the dreams and aspirations of their clients. McClean is a member of the American Institute of Architects and works primarily in California, Hawaii, and Nevada. He recently released his first book, McClean Design: Creating the Contemporary House, that takes us behind the scenes of 21 of the architect’s homes that have been completed in the past fifteen years. Today, Paul McClean is joining us for Friday Five.

I have always enjoyed working with different people and am constantly amazed by the different and varied backgrounds of our clients. Design is more than a job for me. It is what I wanted to do as a little boy and which I am lucky enough to be able to practice today and hopefully for a very long time.

-Paul McClean

Photo: Jim Bartsch

1. Light Our projects always start with light, architecture is just a way of sculpting light in the end. I think we sometimes forget how important light is to our moods and well-being. Growing up in Northern Europe the winters were long and dark, and I think that’s part of what attracted me to coming here in the first place. Upon leaving a greyhound bus terminal in San Francisco many years ago, my initial impression of California was an intense blue sky laced with watery fog. We spend a lot of time thinking about how light will work in a space, trying to find ways to ensure that we have different exposures so that you can feel the movement of sun as the day passes.

Photo: Simon Berlyn

2. Water Water is life, but here in Southern California the landscape is mostly defined by the lack of it. Coming from a wet climate, I gravitate to water as a design tool. We borrow from the long history of using water in arid climates as a source of cooling and comfort. All of our projects incorporate water as a defining element; we use pools to passively cool spaces, to control how people move, to reflect light deep into spaces, and to act as a mirror to the landscape and sky. We generally choose dark finishes to enhance the reflectivity of the water.

Photo: Simon Berlyn

3. Nature We are really fortunate in Southern California to live in a very mild climate. Here, if you add water, almost anything will grow, but I find that every landscape is beautiful. I can only say that for me the desert landscape is as inspiring as a tropical mountain. In our work, we try to make sure that landscape and nature are a fundamental part of the design; we work to break down the barriers between interior and exterior space so that you remain connected to your surroundings rather than separate from them.

Photo: Jim Bartsch

4. View Any project we do starts with how we can enhance the views that surround us. We have been really lucky to work on amazing sites with views of the city, canyons, or the sea, but even a dense urban site has a view of the sky. The trick is to edit the view so that we can find balance and a little serenity for the people within. We will often edit views like a director, establishing the scene. We do this by strategically placing buildings, landscape components, and water to control how you walk the property and see the surroundings; for example using a tree to block an unsightly utility pole or a pool to prevent you from walking to the end of the yard to see the street below. It can also be as simple as a sculpture at the end of a garden to draw the eye.

Photo: Jim Bartsch

5. Architecture It would be hard to imagine a life without architecture for me. I wanted to be an architect since I was a small boy, and I have trouble visualizing what I would do if I couldn’t practice it. It’s more of a calling than a job and an integral part of who I am, there really was no other option. I am continually inspired by the great work I see being done by so many professionals out there, most of it unsung – including our friends working in interior and landscape design. I am frequently humbled when I see the quality of projects that have been done in the past; visit any city in Europe, for example, and just walk around and look at all the beautiful design work done over the centuries. Not to mention the astonishing work of the distant past, such as the Pantheon in Rome or the Parthenon in Athens. It’s often the smaller buildings that surprise me though; we visited Bruges in Belgium this year and every street was full of wonders, and I don’t mean the chocolate.

Work by Paul McClean:

Casale \\\ Photo: Jim Bartsch

Robin \\\ Photo: Simon Berlyn

Skylark \\\ Photo by Simon Berlyn

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