I recently came across one of those matchstick puzzlers where you are challenged to move one match stick to complete the puzzle’s objective. It had been posted on Facebook by our class valedictorian. She is one of the country’s true heroines because she pursued a career in teaching our youth.
Immediately, I saw that using one matchstick to cross the equal sign would solve the problem. In mathematical terms, I created the sign of inequality. I knew I was correct but I strongly suspected it was not the intended solution.
I was quickly proven right. Three solutions of equality were also offered. The last was provided by a niece who can parry words like an gold medal Olympic epee champion. She is also an American heroine because she, too, teaches our young students.
Once I focused on the inequality sign, I was unable to find the other solutions and I tried. I’m up early this morning due to going to sleep too early last night. My preferred method for dealing with this situation is to force sleep to make an encore.
Getting out of bed, I woke up my wife. Or more truthfully, the book and glasses I knocked to the floor woke her up. Or maybe it was my settling down too hard on the bed after I couldn’t initially find my glasses. Seeing as how she was awake, I asked her to turn on the lamp light. After explaining that I had woken up much earlier and couldn’t get back to sleep because insights were bombarding my brain, and now I couldn’t find my glasses in the dark, the light went on.
I don’t mean the lamp light. Before that light went on, I had the insight of what was awaiting me. It was just before 4:00 a.m. and no husband should put himself in position for the mild head shake and withering look I saw when the light came on. I hope I can avoid a third “I married the village idiot” look within this 30 day period.
The inequality sign blocked my efforts to find any other solutions. If that was the case, then it was benign. In real life, my predilection is inequality is corrosive to the human soul. Prolonged and enforced inequality has been and will be cancerous to the country’s collective soul. How can it be otherwise? You cannot declare a body healthy when one part of the body is afflicted with cancer.
Racism is the enforced inequality of the American soul. This year’s murder rate in Chicago is a small indicator of the cancer. This year, President Obama, in his State of the Union Address, announced a national program to cure cancer. Dubbed “Cancer Moonshot” by the media, it is a worthy goal. If Reagan had acted similarly with AIDS, he would not be the only president I hate. And, I hope it remains singular.
Based on his favorable comments on Kaepernick’s stance, it’s not an out of the box inference that President Obama would support action to force the country to openly confront racism. We should be crying that a land so blessed has large pockets of despair where human life is devalued. But, declaring a national program to erase racism is a political non-starter.
So much for my insight. I’m going to hide in one of the kids’ bedrooms to avoid that third look.
