Happy Aloha Friday,
Today, I'm thinking about a thread—a quiet, almost hidden thread—that runs through April 4th.
Maya Angelou was born on April 4th. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4th. A beginning and an ending, tied together by fate and by friendship.
It was a speech in Harlem—King's words, his cadence, his conviction—that moved Maya so deeply she insisted on meeting him. And when they finally met, they discovered they shared the same sense of humor, the same ability to laugh even while carrying the weight of the world. Two people who understood that words aren't decoration. Words are architecture. Words are liberation.
There's a book Maya wrote, one I've read to my kids more times than I can count, called Life Doesn't Frighten Me. Basquiat's art crackles around her poetry like a live wire. Her lines are simple, but the wisdom inside them is enormous. Every time I read it, something in my chest loosens. Sometimes—frankly, all the time—it brings me to tears.
That book is one of the reasons I create. One of the reasons I write. One of the reasons I believe words can shape a life. And now I get to share that belief with my son.
And that inheritance I'm talking about? It's not abstract for me anymore.
Today feels like the right moment to share something personal.
My website, mpgink.com, is officially live. It's a home for stories, sketches, scribbles, ideas, and experiments that have been living in my notebooks and in my mind for years.
And even more meaningful: my son's book, Arlo and the Million Mile Truck, is now self-published. A story we dreamed up together. A story built on wonder, curiosity, and the belief that imagination is a muscle worth exercising.
Announcing this today—on a day tied to two people who taught the world that words matter—feels right. It feels like honoring the tradition they passed down.
Maya once said that words are things—that they get into the walls and the fabric, into the air we breathe. Dr. King showed us that words can move nations, bend history, and awaken the sleeping parts of ourselves.
Their friendship, their humor, their courage, their timing—all of it reminds me that creativity is not a hobby. It's something we inherit and pass forward. And now I get to pass that forward to my kids.
So this Friday:
Honor the words that shaped you. Honor the voices that lifted you. Honor the stories that still make you feel something in your chest.
And maybe, just maybe, write or speak something of your own.
Happy Aloha Friday. I'll see you next week.
