“Memory is the scribe of the soul.”
– Aristotle
As we wind down this month of March, also known as the National Woman’s History Month, I’ve been thinking a lot about Ida B. Wells. She was a woman to remember. Born into slavery in 1862 in Holly Springs Mississippi, she lost her parents to the yellow fever epidemic in 1878 and became the sole…
We can’t know everything. But we can yearn to learn more. I recently learned of Mr. Lewis Howard Latimer—an inventor, writer, and leader. Born in Massachusetts in 1848, he was the youngest son of slaves who escaped from Norfolk, Virginia, near my hometown. His family decided to split up and scatter to protect itself from…
In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this year, I am re-reading King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” I’m haunted by his words. Most of us came to admire King for his oratory skills. But King’s superpower was his wordcraft, wielding prose as a sword or a torch or a paintbrush, rendering a better…
My mother could not sing, never hit one right note, never had any musical training whatsoever. But still, she sang with all of her heart and soul and with any improvised microphone laying around within reach. A spatula, a large spoon, a baton, a borrowed cane. It didn’t matter. She just needed a prop for…
Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder. J. Richard Lessor, author, social worker (often attributed to Henry David Thoreau) There I am in my five-year-old glory, having already captured…
If you’re a man in the early 1970s with a baby blue VW bus, you’re going places. If that baby blue VW bus has calico curtains with gingham trim, you’re going in style (or you have a wife who thinks it’s stylish). If the back of that blue van is covered in stickers from camping…
