this week i

saw the exceptionally talented julian lage while eating overpriced, tasteless blues alley food.

laughed at statistical overload.

infinite looped madeleine peyroux, track three the best on careless love and track four the best on dreamland.

headed to the ocean to camp, to sleep..


..to disconnect.

drove through his birthplace of talbot county and read the narrative of the life of frederick douglass, an intensely intelligent human being.  he discusses hypocrisy..

between the christianity of this land and the christianity of christ, i recognize the widest possible difference

there is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.


..teaching himself to read..

when i met with any boy who i knew could write, i would tell him i could write as well as he.  the next word would be, "i don't believe you.  let me see you try it."  i would then make the letters which i had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that.  in this way i got a good many lessons in writing, which it is quite possible i should never have gotten in any other way.


..physical and mental anguish of slavery..

memory was given to man for some wise purpose.  the past is...the mirror in which we may discern the dim outlines of the future and by which we may make them more symmetrical.

the banishment of all light and knowledge

awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood.  no words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose...i never shall forget it whilst i remember any thing.

..and the glory of escape.


in coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than patrick henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death.  with us it was a doubtful liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed.

fugitive slaves 'are among the heroes of our age.  romance has no storms of more thrilling interest than theirs.  classical antiquity has preserved no examples of adventurous trial more worthy of renown.'



5/12/11