Passing the baton
Thursday March 15th 2018, 10:41 pm
Filed under: History,Knitting a Gift,Politics

The first of the two skeins of Debbie Bliss Rialto in butter is done. The knitting is dense, the yarnovers are few so as not to give baby fingers much to snag and pull on, and I could almost stop here. Nah, it needs that second one, I don’t get off that easy.

Meantime, I didn’t say yesterday because I was still trying to process the experience into words: around ten a.m. Wednesday, I happened to be driving past a school that’s on the main drag and it looked like the entire student body was out there on the sidewalk protesting.

I gave them a huge smile and thumbs-up from the other side of the road and they all cheered and waved their homemade signs. It felt very much like a celebration of the right of the people peaceably to assemble to petition the government. Their civics and history teachers aced this.

I remembered the day my mom was driving me from near DC to Baltimore for the Maryland State Piano Competition when the March on Washington to protest the Vietnam War had been the day before. There were hikers with backpacks along the freeway, where pedestrians were never supposed to be, and every now and then they would turn and hold up a cardboard sign at the oncoming traffic naming the city or town they eventually hoped to get back to. Some of them had a very long way to go.

Hitchhiking was common in those days and on that hour’s drive and back I saw no sign of any cops hassling those kids: they had come together to change history for the better for all of us by demanding their voices be heard–and they succeeded.

Those just older in my generation didn’t want to shoot at other people’s kids in Vietnam. Our kids want the shootings of kids and others here to stop. They are in the right, and they are making themselves heard.

Right here and all across the country. I am so very proud of them all.


4 Comments so far
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I’m proud of them too but would be even prouder if they started including those kids who feel unaccepted and marginalized to the point that they want to kill.

Comment by Jody 03.16.18 @ 4:50 am

Good point Judy!

I’m glad you were able to show your support.

Enjoy the continued process of this new knitted gift. Mind your hands…

Comment by Suzanne from Montreal 03.16.18 @ 6:55 am

It’s really too bad that the schools that are punishing students aren’t instead using the experience as a civics lesson. There are so many productive and interesting conversations that can and have occurred. Though, I suppose the lack of support from school administration is in itself a life lesson…

Comment by Deb 03.16.18 @ 4:04 pm

I too have been so proud of the kids who are protesting…even here in Winnipeg 1200 high school students did a walk out to commemorate the lives lost in Florida and to advocate for gun control and activism. The school administrations who do not support these students are really dropping the ball on teaching what it means to live in a peaceful democracy.

Comment by joanne 03.16.18 @ 5:35 pm



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