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Spock: "I--I'm sorry, Leonard. I really thought this was how a mint julep was supposed to look."
Ok--I've been neglecting this blog for over a week. I do have an excuse! A good one! But I won't bore you with it now, lol. Instead, I'll present this classic picture. We've captioned The Tholian Web before, but not, if memory serves, this shot:
Great entries all around--every single one got me giggling! But this one clinched it for me:
A portable nutcracker? Are you sure that's what Harry Mudd said, Spock? 
. . . That spirit of resilience and good humor would see Teddy through more pain and tragedy than most of us will ever know. He lost two siblings by the age of sixteen. He saw two more taken violently from a country that loved them. He said goodbye to his beloved sister, Eunice, in the final days of his life. He narrowly survived a plane crash, watched two children struggle with cancer, buried three nephews, and experienced personal failings and setbacks in the most public way possible.
It is a string of events that would have broken a lesser man. And it would have been easy for Ted to let himself become bitter and hardened; to surrender to self-pity and regret; to retreat from public life and live out his years in peaceful quiet. No one would have blamed him for that.
But that was not Ted Kennedy. As he told us, "…Individual faults and frailties are no excuse to give in - and no exemption from the common obligation to give of ourselves." Indeed, Ted was the "Happy Warrior" that the poet William Wordsworth spoke of when he wrote:
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
Through his own suffering, Ted Kennedy became more alive to the plight and suffering of others - the sick child who could not see a doctor; the young soldier sent to battle without armor; the citizen denied her rights because of what she looks like or who she loves or where she comes from. The landmark laws that he championed - the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, immigration reform, children's health care, the Family and Medical Leave Act - all have a running thread. Ted Kennedy's life's work was not to champion the causes of those with wealth or power or special connections. It was to give a voice to those who were not heard; to add a rung to the ladder of opportunity; to make real the dream of our founding. He was given the gift of time that his brothers were not, and he used that gift to touch as many lives and right as many wrongs as the years would allow. . .
~President Obama on Ted Kennedy
These words struck me--President Obama didn't disect Ted Kennedy's failings, but he didn't ignore them either. Instead, he used them to show Kennedy's resilience. Ted Kennedy could have slunk off in shame into a private life after Chappaquiddick, but he chose to do what he could to redeem himself. He went on to become a champion for universal healthcare, for ending the death penalty, for civil rights (including gay rights) . . . for so many other worthy causes.
There are times when I look at my life and think it's a disaster. No, I have nothing equivalent to Chappaquiddick in my history; my weaknesses are of a different sort. Nonetheless, I think most of us, at one time or another, have looked back and boggled at all the wrong choices we've made.
Ted Kennedy's life was an eloquent statement on what it is to continue on, to march forward and do our parts to repair the world--even if we helped screw up our little part of it.
I'm going to hang Ted Kennedy's words on my wall, right near my desk where I'll see them day in and day out: "Individual faults and frailties are no excuse to give in - and no exemption from the common obligation to give of ourselves."
Hehe . . . this should be fun!
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Spock: "I--I'm sorry, Leonard. I really thought this was how a mint julep was supposed to look."
