II Mendel's Short Digital Film/Docu Project

Creating a digital film is an artistic way of expressing your view. Leaps in technology have indeed made it easy for ordinary and simple people to accomplish this. Film-making, as of date, is no longer an exclusive playground for giants.

Being aware of this fact, our class will venture into this game called film-making. Using your cellphones, digicams and pc's, let the world know what's in your mind. Let them know that your opinion count. Be heard!

Here is how we will go about this class project:

The class will be grouped into 3-4 groups with boys and girls evenly distributed, as circumstances will allow. The output shall be guided by the following matters:

A. General subject and theme: "SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IN THE EYES
OF A STUDENT"
Specific topics may be: 1. Common folks as heroes;
2. Weeding out roots of corruption;
3. Inspirational true-to-life stories;
4. Honesty and love for truth;
5. Making schools a better place for everyone;and
6. Leading by example;
B. What to submit?

A Digital Film OR A Documentary

C. Duration/Playing Time: 10-20 minutes including intro, cast and credits.

D. Language: English is preferred.If you will use English as medium, you
will receive an additional 3 points.

E. Format: MPEG, WMV, AVI or any common video format.


IMPORTANT RULES:

1. ALL GROUPS are totally prohibited from filming in risky, remote or potentially hazardous places. Films or documentaries made inside the school will receive additional THREE points. There is absolutely no need to go to far places and risk your safety. Improvisation and resourcefulness are highly encouraged.

2. ALL films shall be filmed during daytime only; otherwise, your film will be rejected.

3. Filming inside the school will be done during your spare time and only during school days.

4. You may also shoot your film/docu in any of your group mate's house BUT MAKE SURE YOU HAVE PERMISSION to do so and that you have been given absolute consent by your parents. Have a responsible adult or parent supervise your group. Again, you may only undertake filming in this case if you will do it during daytime and your classmate's house is just nearby.

5. In making the film, you may seek assistance of an adult; but, this should only be minimal. You are prohibited from hiring anybody.

6. This project is not about how good you are technically; but, it's mostly about how good you are in sending your message. Clarity and simplicity are crucial.

7. Violence and bad language have no place in your project.


WE SHALL USE THIS SET OF CRITERIA from the Nevis Film Festival:

Create a short/feature film that offers the audience an entertaining and interesting insight into our community and world. Each film should be unique and cover a diverse range of issues, ideas or images. Creativity and simple story-telling is the key to a successful and meaningful short/feature film.


Screenplay
Is it original?
Was it captivating?
What is the aim/purpose of the film?
Does it successfully achieve its aim/purpose?

TOTAL: / 10

Cinematography
Are technical skills and/or methods used?
Does the cinematographer make good use of lighting and camera positioning?

TOTAL: / 10

Editing
Does the film flawlessly flow from scene to scene?
Does the editing aid or hinder the emotional build-up?

TOTAL: / 10

Soundtrack
Is it original?
Does it capture the mood of the scene?

TOTAL: / 10

Acting
Are the performances realist?
Are the selected actors suited for their roles?

TOTAL: / 10

(Source: http://www.nevisfilmfestival.com/judging_short.asp)


If you have anything to ask, kindly do so right away. Thanks!

Distinguish Facts from Propaganda Devices

As previously discussed, fact means that something has actual existence. It is one that can be proven by evidence. On the other hand, propaganda means the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Propaganda device is the method, way, or technique by which this is achieved.
The following are some comments of known people on propaganda. These comments strengthen the point that we should always be watchful and critical about the things we see and hear.

"Today the world is the victim of propaganda because people are not intellectually competent. More than anything the United States needs effective citizens competent to do their own thinking." —William Mather Lewis

"Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases." —James Bryant Conant

"Propaganda must not serve the truth, especially insofar as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent." —Adolf Hitler
Common Propaganda Devices

The Institute of Propaganda Analysis (IPA) identified a number of basic propaganda devices. These are:

1. Name calling

The name-calling technique links a person, or idea, to a negative symbol. The propagandist who uses this technique hopes that the audience will reject the person or the idea on the basis of the negative symbol, instead of looking at the available evidence (Delwiche, 2002). In deciding whether something uses name calling, these questions from the IPA are enlightening:

a.What does the name mean?

b.Does the idea in question have a legitimate connection with the real meaning of the name?

c.Is an idea that serves my best interests being dismissed through giving it a name I don't like?

d.Leaving the name out of consideration, what are the merits of the idea itself?

Examples of name calling: dictator, fascist, stingy, “promdi”, “barriotic” and many others

Practice

Write NC if name calling is used and F if the statement is factual.

1.He is a cut-throat.
2.That brand of shirt is for crackpots.
3.Ferdinand Marcos imposed Martial Law.
4.Big countries are modern day imperialists.

5.According to CNN.com, “there have been 4,523 coalition deaths -- 4,209 Americans, two Australians, one Azerbaijani, 176 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, one Czech, seven Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Fijian, five Georgians, one Hungarian, 33 Italians, one Kazakh, one Korean, three Latvians, 22 Poles, three Romanians, five Salvadoran, four Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians -- in the war in Iraq as of December 8, 2008.”

6.With almost five parties for elite figures that she pays out of her own pocket every two weeks, she is a true-blue squanderer and social climber.
7.The titans of boxing meet today to discuss upcoming fights.
8.He was a fascist; so he deserved his fate.
9.The chaos in Iraq is a “war for oil”. It should stop now.
10.One who believes a convict is a fool.

2. Glittering generalities

“When someone talks to us about democracy, we immediately think of our own definite ideas about democracy, the ideas we learned at home, at school, and in church. Our first and natural reaction is to assume that the speaker is using the word in our sense, that he believes as we do on this important subject. This lowers our 'sales resistance' and makes us far less suspicious than we ought to be….

The Glittering Generality is, in short, Name Calling in reverse. While Name Calling seeks to make us form a judgment to reject and condemn without examining the evidence, the Glittering Generality device seeks to make us approve and accept without examining the evidence. In acquainting ourselves with the Glittering Generality Device, therefore, all that has been said regarding Name Calling must be kept in mind..." (Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 1938, as cited by Delwiche) To help you decide if something is mere glittering generality, the IPA suggests these questions:

1.What does the “virtue” word really mean?
2.Does the idea in question have a legitimate connection with the real meaning of the word?
3.Is an idea that does not serve my best interests being "sold" to me merely through its being given a name that I like?
4.Leaving the “virtue” word out of consideration, what are the merits of the idea itself?

Examples of words that may be used in this propaganda device: freedom, nationalism, patriotism, motherhood, science among others

Practice

Write GC if the statement is a propaganda and X if not.

1.We know what’s best for this country because we are true freedom lovers.
2.You should follow us because we are righteous and patriotic.
3.“Come to where the flavor is. Come to Marlboro country.”
4.Vote for me. I’m your hope for a better future.
5.All we need is love.
6.The road to chaos is misunderstanding; but the way to prosperity is strengthening our military.
7.Justice is what we stand for; and we would like you to go with our crusade.
8.The Da Vinci Code is a New York Times bestseller.
9.We want you to taste the sweetness of fame and glory so try our brand.
10.Calibrated Preemptive Response or CPR is the best way to free our roads disturbances.

3. Euphemisms

Euphemism is a propaganda technique that uses pleasant or neutral terms to hide the negative side of something. Simply put, it’s the way of saying a bad thing.

Examples:

1.“Post-traumatic stress disorder” for “war shock”
2.“Mentally handicapped” for “mentally ill” or “insane”
3.“The Peacekeeper” for the MX Missile

Practice

Encircle all the numbers corresponding to the statements that use euphemisms.

1.She has legal incapacity even if she’s already 40 years old.
2.The shooting incident was just a minor operation setback. I’m sure we can fix this.
3.The soldiers had operational exhaustion; so we had to pull them out of the hostile zone.
4.Rejoice! We have just neutralized our target.
5.We deeply apologize for the collateral damage that this pacification initiative caused.
6.The reclaimed water can now be used to support life.
7.The casualty was due to a friendly fire.
8.Military aggression is for peace.
9.He died two years ago.
10.The police shot the suspect.

Adverb Clause

An adverb clause functions much like an adverb. It has a subject (implied or explicit) and a predicate; and it modifies a verb. It is a dependent clause and as such cannot stand on its own.

John Sinclair summarizes the Kinds of Adverb Clauses as follows:

1. Time clauses- used to say when something happens by referring to a period of time or to another event.

Example: Her father died when she was young.

2. Conditional clauses- used to indicate a condition upon which another part of the sentence is predicated or connected.

Example: If they lose weight during an illness, they soon regain it.

3. Purpose clauses- used to indicate the purpose of an action.

Example: They had to take some of his land so that they could extend the churchyard.

4. Reason clauses- used to indicate the reason for something.

Example: I couldn't feel anger against him because I liked him too much.

5. Result clauses- used to indicate the result of something.

Example: My suitcase had become so damaged on the journey home that the lid would not stay closed.

6. Concessive clauses- used to make two statements, one of which contrasts with the other or makes it seem surprising.

Example: I used to read a lot although I don't get much time for books now.

7. Place clauses- used to talk about the location or position of something.

Example: He said he was happy where he was.

8. Clauses of manner- used to talk about someone's behavior or the way something is done.

Example: I was never allowed to do things the way I wanted to do them.

FOR YOUR ASSIGNMENT, WRITE TEN SENTENCES WITH ADVERB CLAUSES. UNDERLINE THE ADVERB CLAUSE AND INDICATE ITS KIND. USE ONE-HALF CROSSWISE.

For Students with No Grades

Make a HANDWRITTEN report in English of the Filipino classic short story entitled "Tata Selo" written by Rogelio Sikat.


Parts of the Report:

Part I
a. Summary and Plot
b. Time and Setting
c. Characterization
d. Major Social Issue Tackled
1. Main Parts of the Story that Discusses the Issue
2. Author's View as Inferred from the Story
3. Why I Agree or Disagree with His View
e. Highlights of the Story
f. My Criticism
g. About the Author

Part II
a. Tata Selo and our Concept of Social Justice
b. Real Life Examples of Injustice (From News)
C. Main Reason Why Injustice Continues
d. How Can I Help


Mechanics and Format:

1. Short Bondpapers
2. The report should consists of at least 16 pages including the cover page.
3. The letter size should be more or less the size of the space in long pad paper.
4. Write in Gothic letters (in case you can't write this way, use cursive writing but IT MUST BE LEGIBLE) .
5. The final copy should contain no erasures.
6. Again, the report should be ENTIRELY HANDWRITTEN BY YOU.
7. No need for folder; just put them together by means of staple wire.
8. YOUR WORK MUST BE ORIGINAL. (IT MUST BE "your" WORK.)

Ninoy Aquino's Arrival Statement

I have returned on my free will to join the ranks of those struggling to restore our rights and freedoms through nonviolence.

I seek no confrontation. I only pray and will strive for a genuine national reconciliation founded on justice.

I am prepared for the worst, and have decided against the advice of my mother, my spiritual adviser, many of my tested friends and a few of my most valued political mentors.

A death sentence awaits me. Two more subversion charges, both calling for death penalties, have been filed since I left three years ago and are now pending with the courts.

I could have opted to seek political asylum in America, but I feel it is my duty, as it is the duty of every Filipino, to suffer with his people especially in time of crisis.

I never sought nor have I been given assurances or promise of leniency by the regime. I return voluntarily armed only with a clear conscience and fortified in the faith that in the end justice will emerge triumphant.

According to Gandhi, the WILLING sacrifice of the innocent is the most powerful answer to insolent tyranny that has yet been conceived by God and man.

Three years ago when I left for an emergency heart bypass operation, I hoped and prayed that the rights and freedoms of our people would soon be restored, that living conditions would improve and that blood-letting would stop.

Rather than move forward, we have moved backward. The killings have increased, the economy has taken a turn for the worse and the human rights situation has deteriorated.

During the martial law period, the Supreme Court heard petitions for Habeas Corpus. It is most ironic, after martial law has allegedly been lifted, that the Supreme Court last April ruled it can no longer entertain petitions for Habeas Corpus for persons detained under a Presidential Commitment Order, which covers all so-called national security cases and which under present circumstances can cover almost anything.

The country is far advanced in her times of trouble. Economic, social and political problems bedevil the Filipino. These problems may be surmounted if we are united. But we can be united only if all the rights and freedoms enjoyed before September 21, 1972 are fully restored.

The Filipino asks for nothing more, but will surely accept nothing less, than all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the 1935 Constitution -- the most sacred legacies from the Founding Fathers.

Yes, the Filipino is patient, but there is a limit to his patience. Must we wait until that patience snaps?

The nation-wide rebellion is escalating and threatens to explode into a bloody revolution. There is a growing cadre of young Filipinos who have finally come to realize that freedom is never granted, it is taken. Must we relive the agonies and the blood-letting of the past that brought forth our Republic or can we sit down as brothers and sisters and discuss our differences with reason and goodwill?

I have often wondered how many disputes could have been settled easily had the disputants only dared to define their terms.

So as to leave no room for misunderstanding, I shall define my terms:

1. Six years ago, I was sentenced to die before a firing squad by a Military Tribunal whose jurisdiction I steadfastly refused to recognize. It is now time for the regime to decide. Order my IMMEDIATE EXECUTION OR SET ME FREE.

I was sentenced to die for allegedly being the leading communist leader. I am not a communist, never was and never will be.

2. National reconciliation and unity can be achieved but only with justice, including justice for our Muslim and Ifugao brothers. There can be no deal with a Dictator. No compromise with Dictatorship.

3. In a revolution there can really be no victors, only victims. We do not have to destroy in order to build.

4. Subversion stems from economic, social and political causes and will not be solved by purely military solutions; it can be curbed not with ever increasing repression but with a more equitable distribution of wealth, more democracy and more freedom, and

5. For the economy to get going once again, the workingman must be given his just and rightful share of his labor, and to the owners and managers must be restored the hope where there is so much uncertainty if not despair.

On one of the long corridors of Harvard University are carved in granite the words of Archibald Macleish:

"How shall freedom be defended? By arms when it is attacked by arms; by truth when it is attacked by lies; by democratic faith when it is attacked by authoritarian dogma. Always, and in the final act, by determination and faith."

I return from exile and to an uncertain future with only determination and faith to offer -- faith in our people and faith in God.

Due Process

Of all the rights guaranteed by the 1987 Constitution, the right to due process is one of the most significant. It is in fact our foremost safeguard against any invalid act that curtails our right to life, liberty and property. Thus, the fundamental law declares: No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of law...".

Contrary to common notion, the right to due process is not only inherent in judicial proceedings but in administrative proceedings, as well. An employee can only be removed for just cause. This "just cause" must be proved by clear, convincing evidence before a tribunal, a tribunal that is impartial. The process must not however end there; the tribunal must hear the defending party, with or without the service of counsel. In addition, when the defending party presents controverting evidence the tribunal must consider such evidence presented; otherwise, the process is incomplete, therefore undue or invalid. After both parties have been accorded their respective day in court, the tribunal renders judgment based only on the matters proved and evidences duly submitted. In sum, this is the essence of due process--hear, after wards, condemn if warranted.

Due process as a principle is inherent in any civilized and moral society. This is because due process is based on fairness and equity, which are foundations of any God-fearing community. There is thus no point in making due process limited to legal and administrative proceedings; it must be sacredly observed even in our day-to-day dealings.A father, before he employs the harshness of the rod, must hear his child first; otherwise, the lesson he wants to impose is likewise lost by such denial. More so with persons who are privileged to hold high offices. With more reason that they should act with caution. They must be responsible in whatever words they utter and whatever judgment they make. A false belief, which is held as "the" truth by the official becomes "the" truth that almost everybody believes in. If the official opines that a group is "bad" and all "rotten eggs", the people who hears the opinion will be more inclined to hold that the opinion is true. As people differ in understanding situations, there will be those who will believe that the opinion is flawless whether or not it has basis. And when this happens, we perpetrate injustice. We perpetrate an act of depriving some faultless individuals with their right to a clean name. And there is nothing more regretful than that....

Watch This....Great Vid!

My Redeemer Lives - Team Hoyt

Click Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFVGdZOhlL0&feature=related

Noone Can Put You Down, But Yourself

I believe that nothing is impossible... The only barrier that separates YOU and SUCCESS is your will to succeed. Noone and nothing can ever hold you back from what you aspire to achieve. They will only succeed in doing so if you allow them to pull you down. You are the lone creation who is near perfect. God Himself has designed you that way...a unique and supreme creation of this earth.

I believe that nothing is impossible...because IMPOSSIBLE is but a mere creation of the dictionary. The word "impossible" doesn't exist in my vocabulary so why make it a part of my life? I am as powerful as my thoughts and as weak as my imagination.

I can...only if I make up my mind that I CAN. So long as I allow myself to be a prisoner of my self-made prison cells, so long as I allow myself to be manipulated by Fate... and so long as I consent to the whims and caprice of manipulators...I CAN'T.

As long as the sun shines and the moon lingers up in the night sky, I have all the chance in the world to be the person I want to be. But, this golden opportunity, this belief that I am a unique creation will just turn to cinders unless I find my purpose and decide to be committed to it no matter what.

Indeed, noone can hold me back but myself.

Include These Things in Your Report

1. Your topic.

2. Definition of important terms. (You may get these from other references, in case the primary reference does not provide for them).

3. Your Discussion and Illustration.

4. Ask your classmates if everything is clear.Provide answers to questions, if any.

5. Summarize.

Schedule of Reporting in English

IV-Bonifacio

Boys first, in alphabetical order (ex. Cyrus, Jellexie, Kevin will be team 1; so on)...I will not tell you who the next reporters will be; just follow the list of students of your class. Three reporters per team. One or two lessons per day depending on the length and complexity of the topic so make sure that 2 teams are ready per day. Start the report on Lesson 11: Give the pros and cons of an issue.. The first set/s of reporters will begin on Wednesday.Make sure you have visual aids. Explain the topic very well. I will give a quiz after every report.

Grading System: 97 Outstanding; 92 Very Satisfactory; 87 Satisfactory;NI 82; 65 No Report

IV-Rizal

Boys first, in alphabetical order (ex. Jerome, Roberto, Ronell will be team 1; so on)...I will not tell you who the next reporters will be; just follow the list of students of your class. Three reporters per team. One or two lessons per day depending on the length and complexity of the topic so make sure that 2 teams are ready per day. Start the report on Lesson 12: Identify the similarity between the river and human life.. The first set/s of reporters will begin on Wednesday.Make sure you have visual aids. Explain the topic very well. I will give a quiz after every report.

Grading System: 97 Outstanding; 92 Very Satisfactory; 87 Satisfactory;NI 82; 65 No Report

IV- Aristotle

Boys first, in alphabetical order (ex. Tyrone and Christian D. will be team 1; so on)...I will not tell you who the next reporters will be; just follow the list of students of your class. Two reporters per team. One or two lessons per day depending on the length and complexity of the topic so make sure that 2 teams are ready per day. Start the report on Lesson 11: Give the pros and cons of an issue.. The first set/s of reporters will begin on Wednesday.Make sure you have visual aids. Explain the topic very well. I will give a quiz after every report.

Grading System: 97 Outstanding; 92 Very Satisfactory; 87 Satisfactory;NI 82; 65 No Report

IV-Galileo

Boys first, in alphabetical order (ex. Ken and Jowen. will be team 1; so on)...I will not tell you who the next reporters will be; just follow the list of students of your class. Two reporters per team. One or two lessons per day depending on the length and complexity of the topic so make sure that 2 teams are ready per day. Start the report on Lesson 12: Identify the similarity between the river and human life. The first set/s of reporters will begin on Wednesday.Make sure you have visual aids. Explain the topic very well. I will give a quiz after every report.

Grading System: 97 Outstanding; 92 Very Satisfactory; 87 Satisfactory;NI 82; 65 No Report

Reference/s: AHEAD: Texts and Exercises in English IV (latest ed.)
Any other appropriate books, workbooks, materials, etc.

TAKE HOME ACTIVITY

Accomplish the following tasks. Due date of submission is on Friday, 31 July 2009, until 12 noon. All your answers must be HANDWRITTEN and placed on short bond papers with 1.25 by .5 inch margin (left-right).

Important: Your work should be original. Any work which is substantially similar to that of another student's work will not be graded.

For IV-BONIFACIO

1. What are the different sections of a newspaper? Define each section.
2. Make clippings of articles and tell where they can be commonly found.
3. What are the different kinds of journalistic articles? Define and give an example of each kind.
4. What is lead? What the different kinds of lead? Give examples.

For IV-RAJAH SOLIMAN

1. What are the different sections of a newspaper? Define each section.
2. Make clippings of articles and tell where they can be commonly found.
3. What is news? What are the different kinds of news articles? Define each kind.

For IV-RIZAL and IV- GALILEO
1. What are the different sections of a newspaper? Give examples of materials most commonly found per section.
2. What are the different kinds of journalistic articles? Define and give an example of each kind.
3. What is an editorial article? What are the different types of editorial? Define each and cite an example per type.
4. Give at least 4 techniques on how to begin and end an editorial. Give example of each technique.
5. Write an editorial of praise and criticism about NEHS.
6. Why do we have to protect the freedom of the press? Give examples of real situations that show violation of this basic right.

For IV-ARISTOTLE

1. What are the different sections of a newspaper? Give examples of materials most commonly found per section.
2. Make clippings of articles commonly found in newspapers.
3. What is an editorial cartoon? Give at least five examples taken from popular newspapers. Draw an editorial cartoon about NEHS.
4. What is a feature article? Give two examples.

I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King Jr.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."2

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!3

I HAVE A DREAM by Martin Luther King Jr.

Watch the actual footage of this historic speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr.



Note: The author does not intend to infringe the copyright of the above footage. Its inclusion here is for educational purposes only.

WHO IS MARTIN LUTHER KING Jr.?

(This biography was sourced from Nobelprize.org)


Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family. In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank. In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure. At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement. On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

Save the People of Darfur!

(CREATE A 250-WORD REACTION PAPER ABOUT THE VIDEO AND THE SELECTION BELOW).

While the principles of sovereign equality and self-determination are important concerns, it is also an accepted and time-honored principle of international law that international agreements like the International Criminal Court (ICC) Rome Statute must be upheld and used decisively to protect Humanity.

The President of Sudan and his confederates should face the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity now pending in the International Criminal Court. Submitting them to the power of the ICC can never be construed as an invasion of their country's sovereignty as it is admittedly an exception to the rule that "sovereignty is absolute".

The possibility of reprisals from the perpetrators and their allies is but natural. Whenever acts of those in 'power' are challenged on grounds, valid or otherwise, it is foolish to expect that such challenge will be accepted with open arms and firm handshakes.

With 400,000 death toll and 2.5 million Darfuri refugees, the violence in Darfur is beyond the grasp of logic and reason—a case beyond justification, indeed. An intervention from the international community has long become ripe. Let us act now lest we become part of the perpetration of this great evil.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Richard Bach)

YOUTUBE VIDEO

To the real Jonathan Seagull,
who lives within us all.

Part One

It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a
gentle sea. A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water and the
word for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a
thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another
busy day beginning.
But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan
Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered
his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard
twisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly
slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until
the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce
concentration, held his breath, forced one... single... more... inch...
of... curve... Then his feathers ruffled, he stalled and fell.
Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air
is for them disgrace and it is dishonor.
But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings
again in that trembling hard curve - slowing, slowing, and stalling once
more - was no ordinary bird.
Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of
flight - how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it
is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not
eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else. Jonathan
Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one's self
popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent
whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.


He didn't know why, for instance, but when he flew at altitudes less
than half his wingspan above the water, he could stay in the air longer,
with less effort. His glides ended not with the usual feet-down splash
into the sea, but with a long flat wake as he touched the surface with his
feet tightly streamlined against his body. When he began sliding in to
feet-up landings on the beach, then pacing the length of his slide in the
sand, his parents were very much dismayed indeed.
"Why, Jon, why?" his mother asked. "Why is it so hard to be like the
rest of the flock, Jon? Why can't you leave low flying to the pelicans,
the albatross? Why don't you eat? Son, you're bone and feathers!"
"I don't mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know what I
can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just want to know."
"See here Jonathan " said his father not unkindly. "Winter isn't far
away. Boats will be few and the surface fish will be swimming deep. If you
must study, then study food, and how to get it. This flying business is
all very well, but you can't eat a glide, you know. Don't you forget that
the reason you fly is to eat."
Jonathan nodded obediently. For the next few days he tried to behave
like the other gulls; he really tried, screeching and fighting with the
flock around the piers and fishing boats, diving on scraps of fish and
bread. But he couldn't make it work.
It's all so pointless, he thought, deliberately dropping a hard-won
anchovy to a hungry old gull chasing him. I could be spending all this
time learning to fly. There's so much to learn!


It wasn't long before Jonathan Gull was off by himself again, far out
at sea, hungry, happy, learning.
The subject was speed, and in a week's practice he learned more about
speed than the fastest gull alive.
From a thousand feet, flapping his wings as hard as he could, he
pushed over into a blazing steep dive toward the waves, and learned why
seagulls don't make blazing steep power-dives. In just six seconds he was
moving seventy miles per hour, the speed at which one's wing goes unstable
on the upstroke.
Time after time it happened. Careful as he was, working at the very
peak of his ability, he lost control at high speed.
Climb to a thousand feet. Full power straight ahead first, then push
over, flapping, to a vertical dive. Then, every time, his left wing
stalled on an upstroke, he'd roll violently left, stall his right wing
recovering, and flick like fire into a wild tumbling spin to the right.
He couldn't be careful enough on that upstroke. Ten times he tried,
and all ten times, as he passed through seventy miles per hour, he burst
into a churning mass of feathers, out of control, crashing down into the
water.
The key, he thought at last, dripping wet, must be to hold the wings
still at high speeds - to flap up to fifty and then hold the wings still.
From two thousand feet he tried again, rolling into his dive, beak
straight down, wings full out and stable from the moment he passed fifty
miles per hour. It took tremendous strength, but it worked. In ten seconds
he had blurred through ninety miles per hour. Jonathan had set a world
speed record for seagulls!
But victory was short-lived. The instant he began his pullout, the
instant he changed the angle of his wings, he snapped into that same
terrible uncontrolled disaster, and at ninety miles per hour it hit him
like dynamite. Jonathan Seagull exploded in midair and smashed down into a
brick-hard sea.
When he came to, it was well after dark, and he floated in moonlight
on the surface of the ocean. His wings were ragged bars of lead, but the
weight of failure was even heavier on his back. He wished, feebly, that
the weight could be just enough to drug him gently down to the bottom, and
end it all.
As he sank low in the water, a strange hollow voice sounded within
him. There's no way around it. I am a seagull. I am limited by my nature.
If I were meant to learn so much about flying, I'd have charts for brains.
If I were meant to fly at speed, I'd have a falcon's short wings, and live
on mice instead of fish. My father was right. I must forget this
foolishness. I must fly home to the Flock and be content as I am, as a
poor limited seagull.
The voice faded, and Jonathan agreed. The place for a seagull at
night is on shore, and from this moment forth, he vowed, he would be a
normal gull. It would make everyone happier.
He pushed wearily away from the dark water and flew toward the land,
grateful for what he had learned about work-saving low-altitude flying.
But no, he thought. I am done with the way I was, I am done with
everything I learned. I am a seagull like every other seagull, and I will
fly like one. So he climbed painfully to a hundred feet and flapped his
wings harder, pressing for shore.
He felt better for his decision to be just another one of the Flock.
There would be no ties now to the force that had driven him to learn,
there would be no more challenge and no more failure. And it was pretty,
just to stop thinking, and fly through the dark, toward the lights above
the beach.
Dark! The hollow voice cracked in alarm. Seagulls never fly in the
dark!
Jonathan was not alert to listen. It's pretty, he thought. The moon
and the lights twinkling on the water, throwing out little beacon-trails
through the night, and all so peaceful and still...
Get down! Seagulls never fly in the dark! If you were meant to fly in
the dark, you'd have the eyes of an owl! You'd have charts for brains!
You'd have a falcon's short wings!
There in the night, a hundred feet in the air, Jonathan Livingston
Seagull - blinked. His pain, his resolutions, vanished.
Short wings. A falcon's short wings!
That's the answer! What a fool I've been! All I need is a tiny little
wing, all I need is to fold most of my wings and fly on just the tips
alone! Short wings!
He climbed two thousand feet above the black sea, and without a
moment for thought of failure and death, he brought his forewings tightly
in to his body, left only the narrow swept daggers of his wingtips
extended into the wind, and fell into a vertical dive.
The wind was a monster roar at his head. Seventy miles per hour,
ninety, a hundred and twenty and faster still. The wing-strain now at a
hundred and forty miles per hour wasn't nearly as hard as it had been
before at seventy, and with the faintest twist of his wingtips he eased
out of the dive and shot above the waves, a gray cannonball under the
moon.
He closed his eyes to slits against the wind and rejoiced. A hundred
forty miles per hour! And under control! If I dive from five thousand feet
instead of two thousand, I wonder how fast..
His vows of a moment before were forgotten, swept away in that great
swift wind. Yet he felt guiltless, breaking the promises he had made
himself. Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary.
One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of
promise.
By sunup, Jonathan Gull was practicing again. From five thousand feet
the fishing boats were specks in the flat blue water, Breakfast Flock was
a faint cloud of dust motes, circling.
He was alive, trembling ever so slightly with delight, proud that his
fear was under control. Then without ceremony he hugged in his forewings,
extended his short, angled wingtips, and plunged directly toward the sea.
By the time he passed four thousand feet he had reached terminal velocity,
the wind was a solid beating wall of sound against which he could move no
faster. He was flying now straight down, at two hundred fourteen miles per
hour. He swallowed, knowing that if his wings unfolded at that speed he'd
be blown into a million tiny shreds of seagull. But the speed was power,
and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.
He began his pullout at a thousand feet, wingtips thudding and
blurring in that gigantic wind, the boat and the crowd of gulls tilting
and growing meteor-fast, directly in his path.
He couldn't stop; he didn't know yet even how to turn at that speed.
Collision would be instant death.
And so he shut his eyes.
It happened that morning, then, just after sunrise, that Jonathan
Livingston Seagull fired directly through the center of Breakfast Flock,
Ticking off two hundred twelve miles per hour, eyes closed, in a great
Roaring shriek of wind and feathers. The Gull of Fortune smiled upon him
This once and no one were killed.
By the time he had pulled his beak straight up into the sky he was
Still scorching along at a hundred and sixty miles per hour. When he had
Slowed to twenty and stretched his wings again at last, the boat was a
Crumb on the sea, four thousand feet below.
His thought was triumph. Terminal velocity! A seagull at two hundred
fourteen miles per hour! It was a breakthrough, the greatest single moment
in the history of the Flock, and in that moment a new age opened for
Jonathan Gull. Flying out to his lonely practice area, folding his wings
for a dive from eight thousand feet, he set himself at once to discover
how to turn.
A single wingtip feather, he found, moved a fraction of an inch,
gives a smooth sweeping curve at tremendous speed. Before he learned this,
however, he found that moving more than one feather at that speed will
spin you like a rifle ball... and Jonathan had flown the first aerobatics
of any seagull on earth.
He spared no time that day for talk with other gulls, but flew on
past sunset. He discovered the loop, the slow roll, the point roll, the
inverted spin, the gull bunt, the pinwheel.


When Jonathan Seagull joined the Flock on the beach, it was full
night. He was dizzy and terribly tired. Yet in delight he flew a loop to
landing, with a snap roll just before touchdown. When they hear of it, he
thought, of the Breakthrough, they'll be wild with joy. How much more
there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the
fishing boats, there's a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of
ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and
intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!
The years ahead hummed and glowed with promise.
The gulls were flocked into the Council Gathering when he landed, and
apparently had been so flocked for some time. They were, in fact, waiting.
"Jonathan Livingston Seagull! Stand to Center!" The Elder's words
sounded in a voice of highest ceremony. Stand to Center meant only great
shame or great honor. Stand to Center for Honor was the way the gulls'
foremost leaders were marked. Of course, he thought, the Breakfast Flock
this morning; they saw the Breakthrough! But I want no honors. I have no
wish to be leader. I want only to share what I've found, to show those
horizons out ahead for us all. He stepped forward.
"Jonathan Livingston Seagull," said the Elder, "Stand to Center for
Shame in the sight of your fellow gulls!"
It felt like being hit with a board. His knees went weak, his
feathers sagged, there was roaring in his ears. Centered for shame?
Impossible! The Breakthrough! They can't understand! They're wrong,
they're wrong!
"... for his reckless irresponsibility " the solemn voice intoned,
"violating the dignity and tradition of the Gull Family..."
To be centered for shame meant that he would be cast out of gull
society, banished to a solitary life on the Far Cliffs.
"... one day Jonathan Livingston Seagull, you shall learn that
irresponsibility does not pay. Life is the unknown and the unknowable,
except that we are put into this world to eat, to stay alive as long as we
possibly can."
A seagull never speaks back to the Council Flock, but it was
Jonathan's voice that raised "Irresponsibility? My brothers!" he cried. "Who
is more responsible than a gull who finds and follows a meaning, a higher
purpose for life? For a thousand years we have scrabbled after fish heads,
but now we have a reason to live - to learn, to discover, to be free! Give
me one chance, let me show you what I've found..."
The Flock might as well have been stone.
"The Brotherhood is broken," the gulls intoned together, and with one
accord they solemnly closed their ears and turned their backs upon him.
Jonathan Seagull spent the rest of his days alone, but he flew way
out beyond the Far Cliffs. His one sorrow was not solitude, it was that
other gulls refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them; they
refused to open their eyes and see. He learned more each day. He learned
that a streamlined high-speed dive could bring him to find the rare and
tasty fish that schooled ten feet below the surface of the ocean: he no
longer needed fishing boats and stale bread for survival. He learned to
sleep in the air, setting a course at night across the offshore wind,
covering a hundred miles from sunset to sunrise. With the same inner
control, he flew through heavy sea-fogs and climbed above them into
dazzling clear skies... in the very times when every other gull stood on
the ground, knowing nothing but mist and rain. He learned to ride the high
winds far inland, to dine there on delicate insects.
What he had once hoped for the Flock, he now gained for himself
alone; he learned to fly, and was not sorry for the price that he had
paid. Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the
reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with these gone from his
thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.
They came in the evening, then, and found Jonathan gliding peaceful
and alone through his beloved sky. The two gulls that appeared at his
wings were pure as starlight, and the glow from them was gentle and
friendly in the high night air. But most lovely of all was the skill with
which they flew, their wingtips moving a precise and constant inch from
his own. Without a word, Jonathan put them to his test, a test that no
gull had ever passed. He twisted his wings, slowed to a single mile per
hour above stall. The two radiant birds slowed with him, smoothly, locked
in position. They knew about slow flying.
He folded his wings, rolled and dropped in a dive to a hundred ninety
miles per hour. They dropped with him, streaking down in flawless
formation.
At last he turned that speed straight up into a long vertical
slow-roll. They rolled with him, smiling.
He recovered to level flight and was quiet for a time before he
spoke. "Very well," he said, "who are you?"
"We're from your Flock, Jonathan. We are your brothers." The words
were strong and calm. "We've come to take you higher, to take you home."
"Home I have none. Flock I have none. I am Outcast. And we fly now at
the peak of the Great Mountain Wind. Beyond a few hundred feet, I can lift
this old body no higher."
"But you can Jonathan. For you have learned. One school is finished,
and the time has come for another to begin."
As it had shined across him all his life, so understanding lighted
that moment for Jonathan Seagull. They were right. He could fly higher,
and it was time to go home.
He gave one last look across the sky, across that magnificent silver
land where he had learned so much.
"I'm ready " he said at last.
And Jonathan Livingston Seagull rose with the two star bright gulls to
disappear into a perfect dark sky.

Part Two

So this is heaven, he thought, and he had to smile at himself. It was
hardly respectful to analyze heaven in the very moment that one flies up
to enter it.
As he came from Earth now, above the clouds and in close formation
with the two brilliant gulls, he saw that his own body was growing as
bright as theirs. True, the same young Jonathan Seagull was there that had
always lived behind his golden eyes, but the outer form had changed.
It felt like a seagull body, but already it flew far better than his
old one had ever flown. Why, with half the effort, he thought, I'll get
twice the speed, twice the performance of my best days on Earth!
His feathers glowed brilliant white now, and his wings were smooth
and perfect as sheets of polished silver. He began, delightedly, to learn
about them, to press power into these new wings.
At two hundred fifty miles per hour he felt that he was nearing his
level-flight maximum speed. At two hundred seventy-three he thought that
he was flying as fast as he could fly, and he was ever so faintly
disappointed. There was a limit to how much the new body could do, and
though it was much faster than his old level-flight record, it was still a
limit that would take great effort to crack. In heaven, he thought, there
should be no limits.
The clouds broke apart, his escorts called, "Happy landings,
Jonathan," and vanished into thin air.
He was flying over a sea, toward a jagged shoreline. A very few
seagulls were working the updrafts on the cliffs. Away off to the north,
at the horizon itself, flew a few others. New sights, new thoughts, new
questions. Why so few gulls? Heaven should be flocked with gulls! And why
am I so tired, all at once? Gulls in heaven are never supposed to be
tired, or to sleep.
Where had he heard that? The memory of his life on Earth was falling
away. Earth had been a place where he had learned much, of course, but the
details were blurred - something about fighting for food, and being
Outcast.
The dozen gulls by the shoreline came to meet him, none saying a
word. He felt only that he was welcome and that this was home. It had been
a big day for him, a day whose sunrise he no longer remembered.
He turned to land on the beach, beating his wings to stop an inch in
the air, then dropping lightly to the sand, The other gulls landed too,
but not one of them so much as flapped a feather. They swung into the
wind, bright wings outstretched, then somehow they changed the curve of
their feathers until they had stopped in the same instant their feet
touched the ground. It was beautiful control, but now Jonathan was just
too tired to try it. Standing there on the beach, still without a word
spoken, he was asleep.
In the days that followed, Jonathan saw that there was as much to
learn about flight in this place as there had been in the life behind him.
But with a difference. Here were gulls who thought as he thought, For each
of them, the most important thing in living was to reach out and touch
perfection in that which they most loved to do, and that was to fly. They
were magnificent birds, all of them, and they spent hour after hour every
day practicing flight, testing advanced aeronautics.
For a long time Jonathan forgot about the world that he had come
from, that place where the Flock lived with its eyes tightly shut to the
joy of flight, using its wings as means to the end of finding and fighting
for food. But now and then, just for a moment, he remembered.
He remembered it one morning when he was out with his instructor,
while they rested on the beach after a session of folded-wing snap rolls.
"Where is everybody, Sullivan?" he asked silently, quite at home now
with the easy telepathy that these gulls used instead of screes and
gracks. "Why aren't there more of us here? Why, where I came from there
were.. "
"... thousands and thousands of gulls. I know. " Sullivan shook his
head. "The only answer I can see, Jonathan, is that you are pretty well a
one-in-a-million bird. Most of us came along ever so slowly. We went from
one world into another that was almost exactly like it, forgetting right
away where we had come from, not caring where we were headed, living for
the moment. Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through
before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating,
or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand!
And then another hundred lives until we began to learn that there is such
a thing as perfection, and another hundred again to get the idea that our
purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. The same
rule holds for us now, of course: we choose our next world through what we
learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this
one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome."
He stretched his wings and turned to face the wind. "But you, Jon,"
he said, "learned so much at one time that you didn't have to go through a
thousand lives to reach this one."
In a moment they were airborne again, practicing. The formation
point-roils were difficult, for through the inverted half Jonathan had to
think upside down, reversing the curve of his wing, and reversing it
exactly in harmony with his instructor's.
"Let's try it again." Sullivan said over and over: "Let's try it
again." Then, finally, "Good." And they began practicing outside loops.


One evening the gulls that were not night-flying stood together on
the sand, thinking. Jonathan took all his courage in hand and walked to
the Elder Gull, who, it was said, was soon to be moving beyond this world.
"Chiang..." he said a little nervously.
The old seagull looked at him kindly. "Yes, my son?" Instead of being
enfeebled by age, the Elder had been empowered by it; he could out fly any
gull in the Flock, and he had learned skills that the others were only
gradually coming to know.
"Chiang, this world isn't heaven at all, is it?" The Elder smiled in
the moonlight. "You are learning again, Jonathan Seagull," he said.
"Well, what happens from here? Where are we going? Is there no such
place as heaven?"
"No, Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place, and it
is not a time. Heaven is being perfect." He was silent for a moment. "You
are a very fast flier, aren't you?"
"I... I enjoy speed," Jonathan said, taken aback but proud that the
Elder had noticed.
"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you
touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a
million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit,
and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being
there."
Without warning, Chiang vanished and appeared at the water's edge
fifty feet away, all in the flicker of an instant. Then he vanished again
and stood, in the same millisecond, at Jonathan's shoulder. "It's kind of
fun," he said.


Jonathan was dazzled. He forgot to ask about heaven. "How do you do
that? What does it feel like? How far can you go?"
"You can go to any place and to any time that you wish to go," the
Elder said. "I've gone everywhere and every when I can think of." He looked
across the sea. "It's strange. The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake
of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of
perfection goes anywhere, instantly. Remember, Jonathan, heaven isn't a
place or a time, because place and time are so very meaningless. Heaven
is..."
"Can you teach me to fly like that?" Jonathan Seagull trembled to
conquer another unknown.
"Of course if you wish to learn."
"I wish. When can we start?".
"We could start now if you'd like."
"I want to learn to fly like that," Jonathan said and a strange light
glowed in his eyes. "Tell me what to do,"
Chiang spoke slowly and watched the younger gull ever so carefully.
"To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is," he said, "you must begin
by knowing that you have already arrived ..."
The trick, according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to stop seeing
himself as trapped inside a limited body that had a forty-two inch
wingspan and performance that could be plotted on a chart. The trick was
to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number,
everywhere at once across space and time.


Jonathan kept at it, fiercely, day after day, from before sunrise
till past midnight. And for all his effort he moved not a feather width
from his spot.
"Forget about faith!" Chiang said it time and again. "You didn't need
faith to fly, you needed to understand flying. This is just the same. Now
try again ..."
Then one day Jonathan, standing on the shore, closing his eyes,
concentrating, all in a flash knew what Chiang had been telling him. "Why,
that's true! I am a perfect, unlimited gull!" He felt a great shock of
joy.
"Good!" said Chiang and there was victory in his voice.
Jonathan opened his eyes. He stood alone with the Elder on a totally
different seashore - trees down to the water's edge, twin yellow suns
turning overhead.
"At last you've got the idea," Chiang said, "but your control needs a
little work... "
Jonathan was stunned. "Where are we?"
Utterly unimpressed with the strange surroundings, the Elder brushed
the question aside. "We're on some planet, obviously, with a green sky and
a double star for a sun."
Jonathan made a scree of delight, the first sound he had made since
he had left Earth. "IT WORKS!"
"Well, of course, it works, Jon." said Chiang. "It always works, when
you know what you're doing. Now about your control..."
By the time they returned, it was dark. The other gulls looked at
Jonathan with awe in their golden eyes, for they had seen him disappear
from where he had been rooted for so long.
He stood their congratulations for less than a minute. "I'm the
newcomer here! I'm just beginning! It is I who must learn from you!"
"I wonder about that, Jon," said Sullivan standing near. "You have
less fear of learning than any gull I've seen in ten thousand years. "The
Flock fell silent, and Jonathan fidgeted in embarrassment.
"We can start working with time if you wish," Chiang said, "till you
can fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the
most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready
to begin to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love."
A month went by, or something that felt about like a month, and
Jonathan learned at a tremendous rate. He always had learned quickly from
ordinary experience, and now, the special student of the Elder Himself, he
took in new ideas like a streamlined feathered computer.
But then the day came that Chiang vanished. He had been talking
quietly with them all, exhorting them never to stop their learning and
their practicing and their striving to understand more of the perfect
invisible principle of all life. Then, as he spoke, his feathers went
brighter and brighter and at last turned so brilliant that no gull could
look upon him.
"Jonathan," he said, and these were the last words that he spoke,
"keep working on love."
When they could see again, Chiang was gone.
As the days went past, Jonathan found himself thinking time and again
of the Earth from which he had come. If he had known there just a tenth,
just a hundredth, of what he knew here, how much more life would have
meant! He stood on the sand and fell to wondering if there was a gull back
there who might be struggling to break out of his limits, to see the
meaning of flight beyond a way of travel to get a breadcrumb from a
rowboat. Perhaps there might even have been one made Outcast for speaking
his truth in the face of the Flock. And the more Jonathan practiced his
kindness lessons, and the more he worked to know the nature of love, the
more he wanted to go back to Earth. For in spite of his lonely past,
Jonathan Seagull was born to be an instructor, and his own way of
demonstrating love was to give something of the truth that he had seen to
a gull who asked only a chance to see truth for himself.
Sullivan, adept now at thought-speed flight and helping the others to
learn, was doubtful.
"Jon, you were Outcast once. Why do you think that any of the gulls
in your old time would listen to you now? You know the proverb, and it's
true: The gull sees farthest who flies highest. Those gulls where you came
from are standing on the ground, squawking and fighting among themselves.
They're a thousand miles from heaven - and you say you want to show them
heaven from where they stand! Jon, they can't see their own wingtips! Stay
here. Help the new gulls here, the ones who are high enough to see what
you have to tell them." He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "What
if Chiang had gone back to his old worlds? Where would you have been
today?"
The last point was the telling one, and Sullivan was right The gull
sees farthest who flies highest.
Jonathan stayed and worked with the new birds coming in, who were all
very bright and quick with their lessons. But the old feeling came back,
and he couldn't help but think that there might be one or two gulls back
on Earth who would be able to learn, too. How much more would he have
known by now if Chiang had come to him on the day that he was Outcast!
"Sully, I must go back " he said at last "Your students are doing
well. They can help you bring the newcomers along."
Sullivan sighed, but he did not argue. "I think I'll miss you,
Jonathan," was all he said.
"Sully, for shame!" Jonathan said in reproach, "and don't be foolish!
What are we trying to practice every day? If our friendship depends on
things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time,
we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have
left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the
middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once
or twice?"
Sullivan Seagull laughed in spite of himself. "You crazy bird," he
said kindly. "If anybody can show someone on the ground how to see a
thousand miles, it will be Jonathan Livingston Seagull." He looked at the
sand. "Good-bye, Jon, my friend."
"Good bye, Sully. We'll meet again." And with that, Jonathan held in
thought an image of the great gull flocks on the shore of another time,
and he knew with practiced ease that he was not bone and feather but a
perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all.


Fletcher Lynd Seagull was still quite young, but already he knew that
no bird had ever been so harshly treated by any Flock, or with so much
injustice.
"I don't care what they say," he thought fiercely, and his vision
blurred as he flew out toward the Far Cliffs. "There's so much more to
flying than just flapping around from place to place! A... a... mosquito
does that! One little barrel roll around the Elder Gull, just for fun, and
I'm Outcast! Are they blind? Can't they see? Can't they think of the glory
that it'll be when we really learn to fly?
"I don't care what they think. I'll show them what flying is! I'll be
pure Outlaw, if that's the way they want it. And I'll make them so
sorry..."
The voice came inside his own head, and though it was very gentle, it
startled him so much that he faltered and stumbled in the air.
"Don't be harsh on them, Fletcher Seagull. In casting you out, the
other gulls have only hurt themselves, and one day they will know this,
and one day they will see what you see. Forgive them, and help them to
understand."
An inch from his right wingtip flew the most brilliant white gull in
the entire world, gliding effortlessly along, not moving a feather, at what
was very nearly Fletcher's top speed.
There was a moment of chaos in the young bird. "What's going on? Am I
mad? Am I dead? What is this?"
Low and calm, the voice went on within his thought, demanding an
answer. "Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to fly?"
"YES, I WANT TO FLY!".
"Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to fly so much that you will
forgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day and work to help
them know?"
There was no lying to this magnificent skillful being, no matter how
proud or how hurt a bird was Fletcher Seagull.
"I do " he said softly.
"Then, Fletch," that bright creature said to him, and the voice was
very kind, "let's begin with Level Flight...."

Part Three

Jonathan circled slowly over the Far Cliffs, watching. This rough
young Fletcher Gull was very nearly a perfect flight-student. He was
strong and light and quick in the air, but far and away more important, he
had a blazing drive to learn to fly.
Here he came this minute, a blurred gray shape roaring out of a dive,
flashing one hundred fifty miles per hour past his instructor. He pulled
abruptly into another try at a sixteen point vertical slow roll, calling
the points out loud.
"...eight... nine... ten... see-Jonathan-l'm-running-out-of-airspeed..
eleven... I-want-good-sharp-stops-like yours... twelve...
but-blast-it-I just-can't-make... - thirteen... these last-three-points...
without... fourtee ...aaakk!"
Fletcher's whipstall at the top was all the worse for his rage and
fury at failing. He fell backward, tumbled, slammed savagely into an
inverted spin, and recovered at last, panting, a hundred feet below his
instructor's level.
"You're wasting your time with me, Jonathan! I'm too dumb! I'm too
stupid! I try and try, but I'll never get it!"
Jonathan Seagull looked down at him and nodded. "You'll never get it
for sure as long as you make that pull-up so hard. Fletcher, you lost forty
miles an hour in the entry! You have to be smooth! Firm but smooth,
remember?"
He dropped down to the level of the younger gull.” Let’s try it
together now, in formation. And pay attention to that pull-up. It's a
smooth, easy entry."


By the end of three months Jonathan had six other students, Outcasts
all, yet curious about this strange new idea of flight for the joy of
flying.
Still, it was easier for them to practice high performance than it
was to understand the reason behind it.
"Each of us is in truth an idea of the Great Gull, an unlimited idea
of freedom," Jonathan would say in the evenings on the beach, "and
precision flying is a step toward expressing our real nature. Everything
that limits us we have to put aside. That's why all this high-speed
practice, and low speed, and aerobatics...."
...and his students would be asleep, exhausted from the day's flying.
They liked the practice, because it was fast and exciting and it fed a
hunger for learning that grew with every lesson. But not one of them, not
even Fletcher Lynd Gull, had come to believe that the flight of ideas
could possibly be as real as the flight of wind and feather.
"Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip," Jonathan would say, other
times, "is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see.
Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body,
too..." But no matter how he said it, it sounded like pleasant fiction,
and they needed more to sleep.
It was only a month later that Jonathan said the time had come to
return to the Flock.
"We're not ready!" said Henry Calvin Gull. "We're not welcome! We're
Outcast! We can't force ourselves to go where we're not welcome, can we?"
"We're free to go where we wish and to be what we are," Jonathan
answered, and he lifted from the sand and turned east, toward the home
grounds of the Flock.
There was brief anguish among his students, for it is the Law of the
Flock that an Outcast never returns, and the Law had not been broken once
in ten thousand years. The Law said stay; Jonathan said go; and by now he
was a mile across the water. If they waited much longer, he would reach a
hostile Flock alone.
"Well, we don't have to obey the law if we're not a part of the
Flock, do we?" Fletcher said, rather self-consciously. "Besides, if
there's a fight we'll be a lot more help there than here."'
And so they flew in from the west that morning, eight of them in a
double-diamond formation, wingtips almost overlapping. They came across
the Flock's Council Beach at a hundred thirty-five miles per hour,
Jonathan in the lead. Fletcher smoothly at his right wing, Henry Calvin
struggling gamely at his left. Then the whole formation rolled slowly to
the right, as one bird... level... to... inverted... to... level, the wind
whipping over them all.
The squawks and grackles of everyday life in the Flock were cut off
as though the formation were a giant knife, and eight thousand gull-eyes
watched, without a single blink. One by one, each of the eight birds
pulled sharply upward into a full loop and flew all the way around to a
dead-slow stand-up landing on the sand. Then as though this sort of thing
happened every day, Jonathan Seagull began his critique of the flight.
"To begin with," he said with a wry smile, "you were all a bit late
on the join-up..."
It went like lightning through the Flock. Those birds are Outcast!
And they have returned! And that... that can't happen! Fletcher's
predictions of battle melted in the Flock's confusion.
"Well sure, O.K. they're Outcast," said some of the younger gulls,
"but hey, man, where did they learn to fly like that?"
It took almost an hour for the Word of the Elder to pass through the
Flock: Ignore them. The gull who speaks to an Outcast is himself Outcast.
The gull who looks upon an Outcast breaks the Law of the Flock,
Gray-feathered backs were turned upon Jonathan from that moment onward,
but he didn't appear to notice. He held his practice sessions directly
over the Council Beach and for the first time began pressing his students
to the limit of their ability.
"Martin Gull!" he shouted across the sky. "You say you know low-speed
flying. You know nothing till you prove it! FLY!"
So quiet little Martin William Seagull, startled to be caught under
his instructor's fire, surprised himself and became a wizard of low
speeds. In the lightest breeze he could curve his feathers to lift himself
without a single flap of wing from sand to cloud and down again.
Likewise Charles-Roland Gull flew the Great Mountain Wind to
twenty-four thousand feet, came down blue from the cold thin air, amazed
and happy, determined to go still higher tomorrow.
Fletcher Seagull, who loved aerobatics like no one else, conquered
his sixteen point vertical slow roll and the next day topped it off with a
triple cartwheel, his feathers flashing white sunlight to a beach from
which more than one furtive eye watched.
Every hour Jonathan was there at the side of each of his students,
demonstrating, suggesting, pressuring, guiding. He flew with them through
night and cloud and storm, for the sport of it, while the Flock huddled
miserably on the ground.
When the flying was done, the students relaxed in the sand, and in
time they listened more closely to Jonathan. He had some crazy ideas that
they couldn't understand, but then he had some good ones that they could.
Gradually, in the night, another circle formed around the circle of
students a circle of curious gulls listening in the darkness for hours on
end, not wishing to see or be seen of one another, fading away before
daybreak.
It was a month after the Return that the first gull of the Flock
crossed the line and asked to learn how to fly. In his asking, Terrence
Lowell Gull became a condemned bird, labeled Outcast; and the eighth of
Jonathan's students.
The next night from the Flock came Kirk Maynard Gull, wobbling across
the sand, dragging his leftwing, to collapse at Jonathan's feet. "Help me,"
he said very quietly, speaking in the way that the dying speak. "I want to
fly more than anything else in the world..."
"Come along then." said Jonathan. "Climb with me away from the
ground, and we'll begin."
"You don't understand My wing. I can't move my wing."
"Maynard Gull, you have the freedom to be yourself, your true self,
here and now, and nothing can stand in your way. It is the Law of the Great
Gull, the Law that Is."
"Are you saying I can fly?"
"I say you are free."
As simply and as quickly as that, Kirk Maynard Gull spread his wings,
effortlessly, and lifted into the dark night air. The Flock was roused
from sleep by his cry, as loud as he could scream it, from five hundred
feet up: "I can fly! Listen! I CAN FLY!"
By sunrise there were nearly a thousand birds standing outside the
circle of students, looking curiously at Maynard. They didn't care whether
they were seen or not, and they listened, trying to understand Jonathan
Seagull.
He spoke of very simple things - that it is right for a gull to fly,
that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever stands against
that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or superstition or limitation
in any form.
"Set aside," came a voice from the multitude, "even if it be the Law
of the Flock?"
"The only true law is that which leads to freedom," Jonathan said.
"There is no other."
"How do you expect us to fly as you fly?" came another voice. "You
are special and gifted and divine, above other birds."
"Look at Fletcher! Lowell! Charles-Roland! Judy Lee! Are they also
special and gifted and divine? No more than you are, no more than I am.
The only difference, the very only one, is that they have begun to
understand what they really are and have begun to practice it."
His students, save Fletcher, shifted uneasily. They hadn't realized
that this was what they were doing.
The crowd grew larger every day, coming to question, to idolize, to
scorn.


"They are saying in the Flock that if you are not the Son of the
Great Gull Himself," Fletcher told Jonathan one morning after Advanced
Speed Practice, "then you are a thousand years ahead of your time."
Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They
call you devil or they call you god. "What do you think, Fletch? Are we
ahead of our time?"
A long silence. "Well, this kind of flying has always been here to be
learned by anybody who wanted to discover it; that's got nothing to do
with time. We're ahead of the fashion, maybe, Ahead of the way that most
gulls fly."
"That's something," Jonathan said rolling to glide inverted for a
while. "That's not half as bad as being ahead of our time."


It happened just a week later. Fletcher was demonstrating the
elements of high-speed flying to a class of new students. He had just
pulled out of his dive from seven thousand feet, a long gray streak firing
a few inches above the beach, when a young bird on its first flight glided
directly into his path, calling for its mother. With a tenth of a second
to avoid the youngster, Fletcher Lynd Seagull snapped hard to the left, at
something over two hundred miles per hour, into a cliff of solid granite.
It was, for him, as though the rock were a giant hard door into
another world. A burst of fear and shock and black as he hit, and then he
was adrift in a strange sky, forgetting, remembering, and forgetting;
afraid and sad and sorry, terribly sorry.
The voice came to him as it had in the first day that he had met
Jonathan Livingston Seagull,
"The trick Fletcher is that we are trying to overcome our limitations
in order, patiently, We don't tackle flying through rock until a little
later in the program."
"Jonathan!".
"Also known as the Son of the Great Gull " his instructor said dryly,
"What are you doing here? The cliff! Haven't I didn't I.., die?"
"Oh, Fletch, come on. Think. If you are talking to me now, then
obviously you didn't die, did you? What you did manage to do was to change
your level of consciousness rather abruptly. It's your choice now. You can
stay here and learn on this level - which is quite a bit higher than the
one you left, by the way - or you can go back and keep working with the
Flock. The Elders were hoping for some kind of disaster, but they're
startled that you obliged them so well."
"I want to go back to the Flock, of course. I've barely begun with
the new group!"
"Very well, Fletcher. Remember what we were saying about one's body
being nothing more than thought itself....?"


Fletcher shook his head and stretched his wings and opened his eyes
at the base of the cliff, in the center of the whole Flock assembled.
There was a great clamor of squawks and screes from the crowd when first
he moved.
"He lives! He that was dead lives!"
"Touched him with a wingtip! Brought him to life! The Son of the
Great Gull!"
"No! He denies it! He's a devil! DEVIL! Come to break the Flock!"
There were four thousand gulls in the crowd, frightened at what had
happened, and the cry DEVIL! went through them like the wind of an ocean
storm. Eyes glazed, beaks sharp, they closed in to destroy.
"Would you feel better if we left, Fletcher?" asked Jonathan.
"I certainly wouldn't object too much if we did..."
Instantly they stood together a half-mile away, and the flashing
beaks of the mob closed on empty air.
"Why is it," Jonathan puzzled, "that the hardest thing in the world
is to convince a bird that he is free, and that he can prove it for
himself if he'd just spend a little time practicing? Why should that be so
hard?"
Fletcher still blinked from the change of scene. "What did you just
do? How did we get here?"
"You did say you wanted to be out of the mob, didn't you?"
"Yes! But how did you..."
"Like everything else, Fletcher. Practice." By morning the Flock had
forgotten its insanity, but Fletcher had not. "Jonathan, remember what you
said a long time ago, about loving the Flock enough to return to it and
help it learn?"
"Sure."
"I don't understand how you manage to love a mob of birds that has
just tried to kill you."
"Oh, Fletch, you don't love that! You don't love hatred and evil, of
course. You have to practice and see the real gull, the good in every one
of them, and to help them see it in themselves. That's what I mean by
love. It's fun, when you get the knack of it.
"I remember a fierce young bird for instance, Fletcher Lynd Seagull,
his name. Just been made Outcast, ready to fight the Flock to the death,
getting a start on building his own bitter hell out on the Far Cliffs. And
here he is today building his own heaven instead, and leading the whole
Flock in that direction."
Fletcher turned to his instructor, and there was a moment of fright
in his eye. "Me leading? What do you mean, me leading? You're the
instructor here. You couldn't leave!"
"Couldn't I? Don't you think that there might be other flocks, other
Fletchers, that need an instructor more than this one, that's on its way
toward the light?"
"Me? Jon, I'm just a plain seagull and you're... "
" ...the only Son of the Great Gull, I suppose?" Jonathan sighed and
looked out to sea. "You don't need me any longer. You need to keep finding
yourself, a little more each day, that real, unlimited Fletcher Seagull.
He's your in instructor. You need to understand him and to practice him."
A moment later Jonathan's body wavered in the air, shimmering, and
began to go transparent. "Don't let them spread silly rumors about me, or
make me a god. O.K., Fletch? I'm a seagull. I like to fly, maybe..."
"JONATHAN!"
"Poor Fletch. Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they
show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you
already know, and you'll see the way to fly."
The shimmering stopped. Jonathan Seagull had vanished into empty air.
After a time, Fletcher Gull dragged himself into the sky and faced a
brand-new group of students, eager for their first lesson.
"To begin with " he said heavily, "you've got to understand that a
seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the Great Gull, and
your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip, is nothing more than your
thought itself."
The young gulls looked at him quizzically. Hey, man, they thought,
this doesn't sound like a rule for a loop.
Fletcher sighed and started over. "Hm. Ah... very well," he said, and
eyed them critically. "Let's begin with Level Flight." And saying that, he
understood all at once that his friend had quite honestly been no more
divine than Fletcher himself.
No limits, Jonathan? he thought. Well, then, the time's not distant
when I'm going to appear out of thin air on your beach, and show you a
thing or two about flying!
And though he tried to look properly severe for his students,
Fletcher Seagull suddenly saw them all as they really were, just for a
moment, and he more than liked, he loved what he saw. No limits, Jonathan?
he thought, and he smiled. His race to learn had begun.


--1973

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard David Bach (b. June 23, 1936, Oak Park, Illinois) is an American writer. He is widely known as the author of the hugely popular 1970s best-sellers Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions: The Adventures Of A Reluctant Messiah and others. His books espouse his philosophy that our apparent physical limits and mortality are merely appearance. He claims to be a direct descendant of Johann Sebastian Bach. He is noted for his love of flying and for his books related to air flight and flying in a metaphorical context. He has pursued flying as a hobby since the age of 17.
Bach espouses a consistent philosophy in his books: Our true nature is not bound by space or time, we are expressions of the Is, we are not truly born nor truly die, and we enter this world of Seems and Appearances for fun, learning, to share experiences with those we care for, to explore—and most of all to learn how to love and love again.