An unusual post today because it is written on Martin Luther King Day, on which:

–Offices are closed, rendering it nigh on to impossible to get the kind of information needed to write responsibly about what’s going on in the world, or the state;

–A certain amount of reflection is in order, especially considering what is schedule to happen the day after Martin Luther King Day this year. To be astonished-pleasantly astonished-by this coincidence, it is not necessary to be starry-eyed about the incoming President.

It may help to be old enough to remember when a black teen-ager was murdered for (perhaps) whistling at a white woman,  to remember when people were killed on bleak country roads for having the temerity to help their fellow-citizens register to vote,  to have come upon a diner early one summer morning-not even in the Deep South, but in New Mexico-with a big, hand-lettered sign on its front door reading, “No Dogs. No Blind. No Colored.”

Not that long ago, in the great scheme of things. And today a man who would not have been allowed into that diner becomes President of the United States.

Any year, just as one ought to read the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July, one ought to read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” on Martin Luther King Day. In case you forgot, or couldn’t find it, here it is.

Even with all those offices being closed, I thought that rather than take the day off myself, I’d recount my one meeting with King. Not only because it’s appropriate, but because it reveals something about my attitude toward the news business, which readers of this site are entitled to know.

One evening in 1967 I was assigned to cover a speech King was making at a great big synagogue in Great Neck, Long Island. There would also be a post-speech reception, to which the press was invited, at the home of the president of the congregation.

I sat in the back, left as soon as the speech ended, and made the short drive to the reception. Hardly anyone else was there yet. In fact, no one was there yet except the catering staff, the hostess (who was of course a-twitter with making sure all was in order), Martin Luther King, Jr., and moi. So we had to make small talk.

At which, it turns out, he was not very good. No surprise, when you think about. Men who change the world usually have more serious matters on their minds than the techniques of chit-chat.

What it meant, though, was that I had to make small talk. Desperately trying to think of something to say (I was 26 years old) it occurred to me that in his speech he had warned the audience that America must not become “a nation of observers.”

A reporter is an observer.

So I said that, and asked, “we shouldn’t become a nation with no observers at all,, should we?”

Well, no; it was worse than that. The above sentence is English. I think what I actually said, in my nervousness, was, “We shouldn’t become a national completely devoid of observers, should we?”

Completely devoid of? What kind of way is that to talk?

Anyway, he thought a moment, and said, “I think you’re right. I suppose it depends on one’s temperament,” pronouncing the word with its middle A-temper-a-ment-which I had never heard before and have not heard since.

It wasn’t all that profound a statement, but I’d never heard the idea put quite so succinctly before. Yeah, that’s it, I realized. I am temperamentally (under any pronunciation) suited to be one of the guys on the sidelines, the disinterested observer casting the same skeptical eye on all the participants out on the field.

Or as my (sadly, now late) buddy Jerome Holtzman, the Chicago Tribune’s great baseball writer, put it, “There’s no cheering in the press box.” I don’t know whether Jerome invented the term, but it’s associated with him because he used it as the title for one of his books.

“We watch the game,” Jerome once said. “We’re supposed to understand the game. We wear these credentials around our necks that let us go onto the field during batting practice and into the clubhouse after the games so we can talk to the players and coaches and managers. But we don’t root for either side.”

A nice summing-up of the reporter’s credo.

After another minute or two, to my great relief, a few more guests arrived, many of them heading right toward us.

“Well, thanks,” I said. “It’s been good talking to you.”

“Yeah,” he said, suddenly less formal. “You too. Take it easy. Keep observing.”

And so I have.

Happy Inauguration Day.