I recently watched the Lynyrd Skynyrd documentary, If I Leave Here Tomorrow, a history of the band before and after Free Bird, Sweet Home Alabama and that horrible plane crash in a Mississippi swamp. It's very moving, but I was rather taken aback by the frequent display of the Confederate flag in archival concert footage. The Confederate flag, for all those who claim it's about "States Rights", essentially represents slavery, the subjugation of one people by another.
On a cold winter's day in 2003, I looked down at the adorable face of the new kitten my best friend had bought me as a birthday present. We'd been tossing around names on the drive home from the RSPCA; I wanted to name him something starting with an X or a Z, but I wasn't sure what. The workers at the shelter had put the kitten in a box for the trip home. Far from cowering in fear, the little guy kept sticking his head up through the gap, trying to get out. "I just feel like his name is Xander", I said as I gave in and cuddled all 600g of him to me, not quite knowing where that name had come from. Working out the expected life span of an indoor cat and my newly minted age, I reflected "wow, I'll have him till I'm nearly forty", although surely I would never get that old.
We both exceeded expectations.
