There is something beautiful that gives you the license to reflect. I reckon why this was the age you could begin to study the Kabbalah, 40 was old at one time; but I feel so young…

I am the product of the first generation that blacks and whites could marry all over the United States, and are not even going to talk about Mandela, because I was 16 when he was released from prison. I was watching Denzel play Stephen Bantu Biko and jamming to the Peter Gabriel song. And I was a speech geek, competing on saturdays, a Raisin in the Sun, Drama was my event, don’t laugh…

Asking the questions I still have now…how soon is now, already?

When you are born in a place in history in the skin you are in and the daunting dance of change, and how your existence challenges peoples core; it is taxing on your spirit.

I never was quite right…then I think, Morrissey wrote a song about that.

I was an intern to the office of Civil Rights at 16. I sat there bored off my ass doing busy work; but it looked great in my resume and I was like — what the hell are you doing in here?

I rather listen to my headphones and grab a cup of coffee on the West Bank. There is a tape at Northern Lights I want to get.

I kept thinking, Dr. King died so I could sit here and be thankful I could get into a great University?

I have vivid memories of Dr. Green at Webster open school. If you know that building the stairs that lead to the media center were massive, sort of a yellow brick road.

I remember him asking me what I thought of things, I wasn’t happy about the racial tension. He knew I felt them viscerally. He knew I had personified the civil rights movement, deep in the marrow of my bones, my blood.

See, a black girl with a white mother doesn’t get those same messages. I am a daughter of Lena Smith, Nellie Stone Johnson see I was fearless. I was in fifth grade.

I knew at that age I had an IQ of 125. You aren’t supposed to know about those things, or that Ian Curtis hung himself. Or that your teacher is sad that Marvin Gaye got shot by his father, or that those crackheads were really the reason why some fool named Oliver North was testifying and interrupting your soap operas.

Yes that all happened.

My closest friend got pregnant with twins when I was 15. I already had an experience with a neighborhood boy that I remember my room, what I was wearing, the bedspread, and I am the same size I am; it doesn’t take a shrink to see I am at the same crossroads; you had to fear sweet talk.

When my neighborhood changed, the bass, and gunshots replaced KQ92 and the odd bit of Kool and the Gang, but the shift was abrupt, harsh and echoes in my brain. And colors blood red, cobalt blue , I just got more indie, not out of fashion sense, for survival.

My parents were in their forties when I was born; I joke with my friends who are the youngest of large Catholic families that as we step into our homes time turns back two decades, and you can hear Sinatra and time is frozen and JFK is on the wall. and some had MLK fans, dusted, time passed but they still dream…those people are gone now. Those fans are just in my memory.

We had different rules from our peers, who had parents that were young enough to be our parent’s kids and they were a no go…

Those hot churches, women with hats, wisdom in their eyes, and the heartbreak of the being a grandmother way too soon…

See there was a day of broken glass and they live where the Coen brothers grew up.

If you drive around the Northside you see Baptist churches with stars of David, have you ever wondered why?

Take a look around my dear children because it happened here too.

That the very reasons you came here are the reasons we let you in, just like the Ojibwe.

I think we all need to be asking where we were when Dr. King was shot, and who you wanted for President in 1968, you would be surprised when you ask people.

So go ahead, ask your parents, your grandparents and find out your story and at those times your kinfolk were at a crossroads in uncomfortable times.

I would have been Clean for Gene.

The hipster specs vintage footage of Senator Eugene McCarthy, I pray that the Pied Piper he portends will drive the rats into the Mississippi…