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Showing posts from January, 2017

The River Sings and Sings On

Picture it: January 1993. I was in ninth grade. I had big ugly glasses and hair that I'd yet to learn how to control. Bill Clinton and I had run our campaigns at the same time and won — me for class president, Bill for the Real Thing. It was the first time I really cared about who we elected president and I could not have been more excited. Even back then, I was the liberal black sheep in an otherwise very white-sheep neighborhood. I was sick that Inauguration Day. I don't remember what I had, maybe a stomach ache. Whatever the malady, it was enough to allow me to stay home, but not enough to keep me away from the television. With my big hair, white headband and giant glasses, I not only watched in awe as the man I respected more than almost anyone in the world took the oath of office, but I also heard a woman deliver a poem that would change my life. I'd always loved to read, but Maya Angelou's delivery of her Inaugural Poem made me realize for the first time the tru