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6:36 p.m. - Wednesday, Jul. 11, 2012
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I studied music and religion here. In one of America's oldest colleges. I used to love the smell of the practice rooms at midnight. Some of my sweetest memories are of this time and place. I can still feel the pulsing of the warm brass vibrating up through my body. I was wedged behind the tuba on a cold winter's night. With candles burning and snow falling. And Latin pouring from my lips. It was here that I discovered the places of peace along the riverbank.

I came to the riverbank today, years from the nights of warm brass. I came because the library had a book I needed. I don't study music and religion any more. Capricorns tend to be practical . . .

I set my computer in the shade of one tree and leaned in the lap of another with my feet dangling in the cold water and "A Different Mirror" spread open across my thighs. I'm interning for a social justice teacher planbook. My task is to find dates of important events to include in the book. Not the bullshit we learned in school. The real shit. For example, the 2013-2014 school year marks the 150th anniversary of General Sherman's "Special Field Order Number 15" - in which the Union Army set aside large chunks of Georgia and South Carolina for freed slaves. Little did they know, the government was just looking for temporary caretakers. After President Andrew Johnson pardoned the Confederate planters who used to own that land - federal troops marched in and took back the land from the freedmen, destroying the property titles and restoring the land to the planters.

For a long time the only emotion I could easily identify was anger. I think that's what makes me a good radical educator. A teacher activist. Anger can be useful. If we didn't feel angry, would we feel compelled to change our circumstances?

I poured over pages of history in the cool relief of the water running over my ankles and the shade of the tree over my head. I leaned against the tree and put my hand against the trunk. As if I could feel its heart beating. I felt the energy of life flowing beneath my fingertips and was grateful to be there. Watched the ducklings swim by, the birds flying in and out of the branches, the draganfly stopping to rest on the rock under my legs.

I'm happy to be here. I feel that now.

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