This entry was posted January 19th, 2009 and has no nomments.
On Saturday afternoon I joined 40,000 of my fellow Baltimoreans to welcome President-Elect Obama to our city. Tomorrow, of course, Mr. Obama will be sworn-in as president. For many people, especially older African-Americans, this is a day they thought would never come. Tomorrow, January 20, 2009, the United States of America will inaugurate our first African-American president.
While we were waiting for Obama to address the crowd, I stood next to an older African-American couple and their friends. You could just tell that the election of Barack Obama meant so much to them. They lived through the worst and most disgraceful part of American history and now are seeing an African-American man take the office of President of the United States of America.
Our country has come so far in the 45 years since Dr. King gave his beloved I Have a Dream speech. Many are even saying today that Dr. King’s vision has now been fully realized. CNN released poll results this morning saying that “More than two-thirds of African-Americans believe Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision for race relations has been fulfilled.”
This entry was posted November 7th, 2008 and has 4 comments.
My grandmother, Mary Smiraglia, passed away this Wednesday at the age of 85 after a bout with liver cancer. Each of the grandchildren were asked to write a letter to or about her. This is mine.
From my earliest memories, my grandparent’s house was always filled with what seemed like a thousand people. Whether it was Thanksgiving, Christmas, or just someone’s birthday, my entire huge family was always there. I looked forward to these events so much because I knew how fun they would be.
As a kid, I thought everyone had a large family that they were really close with. The older I got, the more I realized that this was something very special and a thing to be cherished. Despite having 7 children, 18 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren, my grandmother always made time for each of us. I remember her coming to my elementary school for ‘grandparents’ day’ and bragging about having 18 grandchildren and how amazing they all were. They would ask all of the grandparents to stay standing until their number of grandchildren was called. My grandmother was always the last one standing.
Sometimes you don’t understand how strong a person is until they have to deal with tragedy. My grandfather passed away rather suddenly when I was 10-years-old. This was a very tough time for my family and something that I know devastated my grandmother. Some people would have been defeated by the loss of their true love, what must have been an overwhelming experience. My grandmother, however, dealt with the loss by bringing the family even closer together.
This entry was posted November 5th, 2008 and has 1 comment.
November 4, 2008 was a historic day in America. It was a day that we will all remember for the rest of our lives. Forty-five years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, the United States of America has elected Barack Obama, our first African American president. This is a major accomplishment and one for which I feel extreme pride.
We also have many other things to celebrate today. A huge number of new voters came out yesterday. People who previously couldn’t care less about politics were bursting with pride and passion for this candidate and becoming involved in the political process. Countries around the world are looking at America once again as a place where anyone can rise to the top.
President-Elect Barack Obama’s acceptance speech last night was absolutely amazing. He spoke with much honor, thankfulness and hope. One of the most powerful moments came when he told the story of the 106-year-old Ann Nixon Cooper who voted yesterday. He talked of all that America has accomplished in the last 100 years and all that we hope to accomplish in the next century.
This entry was posted November 4th, 2008 and has no nomments.
I am proud to have exercised my right as an American citizen and voted this morning. I arrived at my polling location at 7:10 am to find a line of approximately 200 people already there. This is much larger than the line I stood in during the 2004 election, maybe even twice the size.
I have spent a lot of time researching the candidates, watching debates, and talking with people on both sides. There are so many huge issues to deal with in America and around the world. From the economy, to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to what I believe is the most critical issue, energy independence, and many more. With all of these issues to consider, the decision for me came down to who I believe is best equipped to lead the United States in the right direction.
For these reasons, this morning I cast my vote for Barack Obama. I believe Mr. Obama has the vision and leadership ability to unite our country and move it in the right direction.
We should not, however, expect immediate change. The problems with the US and global economies were not created overnight and will take time to correct. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will need to be handled properly in order to ensure victory and peace in those countries after we leave. And the issue of energy independence needs a well thought-out, long-term solution.
While we cannot expect immediate change, what we can expect with Barack Obama is a president of high integrity who will motivate and inspire Americans to reach for something better. We can expect a president who looks out for the middle class and not the most wealthy Americans. And we can expect a president who deeply cares about our country and will bring in the best team possible to help get America back on track.
Regardless of who you are voting for today, I encourage you to get to the polls and make your voice heard. We all have a chance to be a part of history today and I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
This entry was posted October 15th, 2008 and has no nomments.
Again this year, I’m proud to participate in Blog Action Day. Last year’s topic was the environment, and tons of high-profile blogs participated to raise awareness. This year, Blog Action Day is focused on a very important issue that is close to my heart, Poverty.
Now, I myself have never been poor or experienced anything close to poverty. However, anyone who lives in this world and has their eyes open notices poverty, how it affects people, and how difficult it can be for people to pull themselves out of it.
The problem is that most people don’t have their eyes open.
Even living in a major American city like Baltimore, which has pockets of severe poverty, it is so easy to ignore the problem. That’s because poverty doesn’t always infiltrate our neighborhoods and daily lives. But this doesn’t mean that we don’t have a responsibility to confront the issue of poverty and do something about it.
This entry was posted April 30th, 2008 and has 1 comment.
In order to make up for my lack of posts over the past few weeks, I feel I need to justify myself to my faithful readers. Here are some of the ways I have been spending my time over the past few weeks while not blogging. I know it’s a bummer to click on a blog and see the same post at the top that’s been there for 2 weeks. I promise to do better in the future.
Playing social league sports, but having lots of rain-outs.
Thursday nights with the ABL (Abbott Basketball League) are always a lot of fun. Some nights the actual basketball being played is better than others, but it’s always a good time.
I was a little reluctant about joining a kickball team this season, but am glad that I did. I’ve spent the last 6 Saturdays at Patterson HS playing on an awesome kickball team. We’ve also had some good team-building excursions to Kislings after the games.
The Sore Losers are yet again displaying our dominance in BSSC football. We have won all 4 of our games, even though I almost lost the last one for us. Strangely enough we haven’t had any Saturday kickball rainouts, but have had 3 on football Sundays.
Last, is the Parkville men’s softball team. I am really looking forward to playing on this team, but our first 2 games have been rained out. Lame.
This entry was posted April 7th, 2008 and has 2 comments.
I spent the majority of this past Saturday afternoon in Cumberland, MD helping to clean out my grandparents’ house. My grandmother died 3 years ago and my grandfather recently moved into a retirement community. On the drive home I was thinking about a piece I wrote in 2005 after my grandmother passed away and thought it was appropriate to post it here in memory of her.
One additional side note: in the piece I talk about my grandfather’s deteriorating health. Well, it’s 3 years later and he is healthier than he was then. Even in his late eighties, he’s as sharp and quick-tongued as ever. He’s doing well in the retirement home and can be seen relaxing on the bench in front, smoking his pipe and reading a book.
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The recent death of my grandmother, the imminent death of her sister, and the deteriorating health of my grandfather, have made me think about how death affects families. Here are some thoughts.
As the oldest generation of a family dies and leaves this world, an entire layer of history is removed from our lives. No one remembers what it was like to live through the Depression. No one knows how Aunt Catherine acted when she was a child. And as the family members that have told us these stories leave us, so do our recollections of our family’s past. With the loss of this generation, we lose a portion of our family’s history.
This entry was posted March 28th, 2008 and has 1 comment.
As is now tradition here on chriswalbert.com, I would like to give a congratulations and shout out to my friends Ben and Nikki Hughes who just had their second daughter. Lyla Faith Hughes was born on March 26th, 2008 at 11:50 am. She weighed 8 lbs, 14 ounces and was 20.5 inches long. According to Ben’s email mom, baby, and big sister Keira are all doing well.
Ben and I have been good friends since middle school and it’s pretty awesome to see him as a proud father now. It looks like he is continuing the Hughes tradition and building his own big family.
I’m not sure exactly what Ben looked like when his new daughter was born, but I imagine since he was both proud and excited he looked something like this (click the link to see).
This entry was posted March 20th, 2008 and has 1 comment.
Last week a headline came across my CNN RSS feed talking about the identity of the woman at the center of the Eliot Spitzer controversy. “Interesting,” I thought to myself. “Maybe I’ll take a minute to read what CNN has discovered.”
To my surprise, the CNN article had no first-hand quotes from the woman, Ms. Dupre, or even any actual news. The article begins by pulling one quote from a recent New York Times interview. The writer then did some amazing, high-level journalistic research and found Ms. Dupre’s MySpace page.
The writer did more than just mention the page however. Instead of interviewing Ms. Dupre or anyone who knew her to get some background, this writer spent all of 10 minutes browsing her MySpace page, copied and pasted it into an article, and called it a day.
Here are some of my favorite lines from this article:
This entry was posted January 21st, 2008 and has 1 comment.
Today we celebrate the life of one of the greatest men, and greatest Americans to walk this earth. Dr. King has always been a source of inspiration to me, not just because of the things that he did and what he accomplished, but the way he went about his life. He was a man who spoke out against injustice and fought for human rights, but without violence or hatred.
The words he spoke are as applicable today as they were 40 years ago. We again find ourselves in the midst of a long and brutal war. There is perhaps now an even greater divide between rich and poor. And while I hope and believe that we have made progress against the overt racism seen in the 60s, we still do not live in a country where every person has the same opportunities.
Dr. King was also a man of deep faith. He possessed the kind of faith that I strive for. A faith that not only convicts you to believe certain things, but forces you to act. A faith that will not permit you to react in anger, hostility, or violence, but requires something more of you. A faith that will not allow you to judge another person by their race or class, but one that makes you respect and treat all people with dignity.
