Among the highlights of a wonderful weekend (much of it spent with plumtreeblossom) were watching her perform live radio drama at Arisia, watching the entirety of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech on CNN in the hotel (and then listening to parts of it on the radio), and attending ragingamazon’s Third Annual Going-Away Celebration with a bunch of wonderful people.

And today is no longer the weekend, but today is certainly still a celebration. I’ll be going over to plumtreeblossom’s after work to watch post-inauguration coverage on TV (if we can figure out how to work the cable box :-). We might stop in at one of the area celebrations, or we might be so overcome with joy and relief that we can’t move.

Speaking of Martin Luther King day and that speech, damn, was that a good speech! I’m not sure I’d ever heard the whole thing before; I’d certainly never seen the whole thing before. After the speech, CNN had an interview with a civil-rights lawyer who was involved in preparing for the speech and had essentially written it (or I should say, had written the draft). It turns out that the “I have a dream” part and what followed it were not in the prepared speech. King got to that point following the prepared speech, and colleague of his yelled out, “Tell them about your dream, Martin!” and he glanced at her and turned his written speech upside down. The lawyer who had drafted said (to himself or to somebody next to him, I don’t quite remember), “These people don’t know it, but they’re about to be in church.” And Martin did tell them about his dream, and the rest of the speech was extemporized.