Crowdsourced Playlists

Music

On May 17, 2018, I asked my Facebook friends to help me create a music playlist. I was picky about the rules in my posting:

Help me build my ‘Names’ iTunes playlist. The rules… songs titled with just a single name; Alison, Eloise, Lola, Veronica, these all qualify. 

Anything with more than one word is out, so that means; Bennie and the Jets, Ricki Don’t Lose that Number, David Watts… sorry, all are DQ’d.

By 322 comments later, a new 225 song playlist that runs for 14 hours and 20 minutes was born, and so was a a tradition that for me helps bring the ‘social’ to social media… crowdsourced playlists.

There have been 20 more crowdsourced playlists since this original, and I thought it might be fun to pull them all together in a bit of a retrospective. I hope you enjoy them!

Foreign Tongues

Date: Sep 1, 2018
The Prompt:

OK music loving friends. Help me build another playlist. This one called ‘Foreign Tongues’. The rule is that it is a cover version of a familiar tune, performed in any language other than english. Hamba! (Zulu for Go!)

Result: 19 comments, 8 songs, 44 minutes
My Favorite Song: Ça Plane Pour Moi, Plastic Bertrand

A tougher ask to be sure

Honky Tonk

Date: Nov 15, 2018
The Prompt:

I’ve begun a playlist based on just the word/s ‘honky tonk’. (One word or two?) Suggest an addition OR another word inspired playlist

Result: 35 comments, 28 songs, 1 hour 32 minutes
My Favorite Song: Honky Tonk Badonkadonk, Trace Adkins

That was the final playlist of 2018.

Friends

Date: Feb 6, 2019
The Prompt:

I need your help with a new playlist. Share your favorite songs about friendship. I’ll share it back when finished. Thanks!

Result: 56 comments, 51 songs. 3 hours 8 minutes
My Favorite Song: You’re My Best Friend, Queen

Personal Anthems

Date: Feb 21, 2019
The Prompt:

What’s your personal anthem? The song/s that can juice you with a needed dose of inspiration or adrenaline or mojo on demand? Sure, it’s kinda personal. They’re personal anthems after all. Here’s my current playlist, an hour of pump you up gold. What’s yours?

Result: 29 comments, 24 songs, 1 hour 30 minutes
My Favorite Song: Walls Come Tumbling Down, Paul Weller

Phone

Date: Nov 16, 2019
The Prompt:

Hey Friends, looking for your help on a new hive mind playlist. The theme is ‘telephone’ and the playlist will include songs thematically related to phones and phone calls. Inspired by today’s listen to The Jam’s ‘Setting Sons’ (40th Anniversary today h/t Neal for that tidbit), the first song is ‘Girl on the Phone’. Help me build from there… GO!📞🎼

Result: 172 comments, 67 songs, 3 hours 58 minutes
My Favorite Song: Wichita Lineman, Glen Campbell

COVID Isolation

Date: 4/5/2020
The Prompt:

TLDR: Give me your COVID-19 rock block or playlist, minimum of three songs. Be uplifting, be dark, whatever you want.
More detail: Yesterday iTunes random selection while I was on a pharmacy run. The Damned “Sick of Being Sick”, The Tubes “What Do You Want From Life”, then U2 “Beautiful Day”. Deep!
My brother’s followup suggestion; “Fever”, “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” and “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It.”
You get the idea. GO!

Result: 64 comments, 94 songs, 6 hours 10 minutes
My Favorite Song: Don’t Stand So Close to Me, The Police

Pandemic! Crazy times for a list inspired by a pharmacy visit! We still had to play it on repeats if we were gonna flatten the curve right?

Transportation Tragedy

Date: July 10, 2020
The Prompt:

New playlist: cars wrecking, planes crashing, boats sinking. GO!

Result: 103 comments, 61 songs, 4 hours 21 minutes
My Favorite Song: 30,000 Pounds of Bananas, Harry Chapin

Salute to the USPS

Date: Aug 23, 2020
The Prompt:

New Playlist! To celebrate the US Postal Service, share songs about the mail! Letters, stamps, anything mail related. Include a clip if you can!

Result: 39 comments, 13 songs, 45 minutes
My Favorite Song: Please Mr. Postman, The Marvelettes

Remember when our corrupt orange president tried to interfere with the election by slowing down the mail? Fuck that guy. And here’s to the mail carrier’s, greater Americans and public servants than HE ever could be.

Election Day

Date: Nov 3, 2020
The Prompt:

My friend Bryan suggests an Election Day playlist is needed, and that’s an excellent idea! Give us your favorite political songs, especially looking for mention of campaigns, candidates, voting! It may provide some useful distraction through today’s long wait! Share the video link if you can find one!

Result: 26 comments, 10 songs, 41 minutes
My Favorite Song: Elected, Alice Cooper

Another you’ll have to repeat to get through your wait in line at your polling station.

Country Drunk

Date: Nov 25, 2020
The Prompt:

Playlist time! My thought was I’m gonna make a playlist of country music drinking songs, then the rational part of my mind asked, “How’s that different from tuning in to any country station on the radio?”. Fair point rational mind! So I had to refine and go with ‘FAVORITE country drinking songs”. My playlist so far is this, what would you add?

Result: 45 comments, 44 songs, 2 hours 33 minutes
My Favorite Song: Beer Never Broke My Heart, Luke Combs

Country Cheat

Date: Dec 30, 2020
The Prompt:

Seeking your help on a new Country Playlist! The ‘Country Drunk’ playlist turned out so well, it needs a companion I’ll call ‘Country Cheat’. Please share all your favorite country music songs about cads and cheaters… go!

Result: 60 comments, 34 songs, 2 hours 1 minute
My Favorite Song: Stay, Sugarland

Swear It!

Date: Jan 10, 2021
The Prompt:

New Playlist! And this one’s gonna be good. A lot of “bad” words have crossed my lips of late, and partly inspired by the Netflix series “History of Swear Words”, I want a playlist of songs with swearing. And not just in the lyrics, give me songs that swear in the title. Don’t be shy and cute with asterisks and such, and just share the best fucking ones. 🤬

Result: 115 comments, 63 songs, 3 hours 36 minutes
My Favorite Song: Fuck You, Wesley Willis

Celebrating Mom!

Date: May 7, 2021
The Prompt:

Time for a new crowd sourced playlist, and this time we’re honoring Mothers! Please share any songs about Mothers, Moms, motherhood, etc. Bonus points if Mother or Mom is in the title, but not a requirement. Share a link to a video or online version so we can listen. We’ll get this built so we all can play it on Sunday.

Result: 90 comments, 52 songs, 3 hours 6 minutes
My Favorite Song: Loves Me Like a Rock, Paul Simon

Ages

Date: Jun 20, 2021
The Prompt:

OK Friends, it’s playlist time! And it’s one for the ages! Give me songs that mention a specific age in the title or lyrics. I’ll seed the list with “I’m Eighteen/Alice Cooper”, and “When I’m 64/The Beatles”. Thanks for helping me grow the list!

Result: 104 comments, 58 songs, 3 hours 36 minutes
My Favorite Song: I’m 18, Alice Cooper

Beaches

Date: Aut 8, 2021
The Prompt:

OK Facebook, summer’s not over yet and it’s time for a new playlist. Please give me your favorite songs about the ocean, waves, and beaches! GO!

Result: 79 comments, 62 songs, 3 hours 42 minutes
My Favorite Song: Theme from “The Endless Summer”, The Sandals

Space

Date: Nov 18, 2021
The Prompt:

New playlist time! Prepping for an early morning alarm in hopes to catch some lunar eclipse action, I’ve been inspired to seek a new playlist. The theme, Space. Give me your favorite songs about celestial things. Go!

Result: 66 comments, 43 songs, 3 hours 5 minutes
My Favorite Song: Space Oddity, David Bowie

Sun & Moon

Date: Oct 29, 2022
The Prompt:

Need a new playlist! Songs with titles that include ☀️ or 🌚! GO!!

Result: 101 comments, 83 songs, 5 hours 23 minutes
My Favorite Song: Sun and Moon, Miss Saigon Soundtrack

Flying

Date: Sep 28, 2023
The Prompt:

Hey Facebook! It’s time for another crowdsourced playlist. There’s an airshow coming to town this weekend, and so I’m looking for tunes about planes and flying. Go! 😎

Result: 88 comments, 49 songs, 3 hours 14 minutes
My Favorite Song: 99 Luftballons, Nena

City Songs

Date: Oct 29, 2023
The Prompt:

It’s time for a new crowdsourced playlist, and this one is called ‘City Songs’. I want songs that have a city name in the title. A city mention in the lyrics isn’t good enough, it must be in the title. Bring it on!

Result: 293 comments, 181 songs, 11 hours 34 minutes
My Favorite Song: To Live and Die in LA, Wang Chung

2024 Eclipse

Date: April 4, 2024
The Prompt:

OK music lovers. I read about an Eclipse playlist on Spotify made by an AP reporter, but I know WE can do better. Songs should mention the Sun, the Moon, Eclipses, or generally meet this notion of looking skyward at a celestial event. We need it by Monday for our Eclipse watching music, so GO!!

Result: 153 comments, 129 songs, 8 hours 40 minutes
My Favorite Song: Standing Out in the Universe, Paul Weller

I owe a great debt of gratitude to all who have indulged my whims and played along. There are many among my Facebook friends who embrace these challenges with a fervor that really delivers. I won’t attempt to credit all by name, as I would surely overlook and insult someone, but you know who you are and I thank you. It’s good Facebook fun that I hope to continue as the music moves me.

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Fluorouracil Face

Guide to Life, Science

A routine visit to a new dermatologist recently brought on more than I expected. I try to get examined annually, and sometimes there’s a mole to be lopped or frozen off (I descend from a mole-y people). Sometimes it’s for cosmetic reasons, sometimes it’s because of concern they could grow into something more serious. My goatee serves primarily as a way to avoid nicking either of my two chin moles for the umpteenth time.

Anyway, my fresh faced new dermatologist who looked about the same age as Doogie Howser (Google it kids), told me that I had many precancerous skin cells on my face, and he recommended a treatment with Fluorouracil. This cream attacks fast dividing cells that could/would eventually become skin cancer. A Fluorouracil treatment is a pre-emptive strike against such possible skin cancer.

Well, I still believe in science and expertise (even when given from 14-year old doctors), and so I said, “Sure, let’s do it!”

I didn’t really realize what I was agreeing to. My Doctor said it would be like getting a severe sunburn on my face, with dryness, itching, peeling, oozing, and naturally PAIN! My googling led to a story about Facebook posts from an Irish woman who shared her experience with the same treatment that was eye-opening and certainly gave me some pause. Regardless, I still figured the treatment would be better than the alternative. And there’s never really a good time to self-administer some painful disfigurement, so why not in December? Get it done and behind you before the New Year! That was my thinking.

To daily administer a cream to your face that you know is going to bring pain, suffering, and disfigurement is one thing, but it’s a thing that gets harder and harder to do each day, especially as conditions worsen (twice a day for three weeks was the full program). In the final week, looking into the bathroom mirror at my tortured face, and then to glove up and administer another dose of THE STUFF THAT IS CAUSING THE PAIN, SUFFERING, & DISFIGUREMENT is a terrible mental challenge. It’s like an eye exam testing your vision by showing you different sized letters on an eye chart, only this process tested my will by it’s daily requirement to spread more Fluorouracil on my increasingly suffering face. Madness!

The experience also tested my vanity. My focus on the appearance of my face could only make it more difficult for me to face others. The pain I was going through fueled a poor mood to match my inflamed face! Nobody would do this by choice right?

Ah right… him. Of course, and proving my point. ONLY AN IDIOT would do this to themselves day after day, and intentionally! Still, I’ve been feeling more like THIS guy!

To humanity’s credit, at least among those who I’ve encountered over these difficult few weeks, my worries that I might receive the below kind of reaction were unfounded. For friends and family, I gave them fair warnings. For co-workers, I kept my camera mostly off. But strangers had to take me as I came, and I never felt a stare, or a double take, or received a question about my appearance. So thanks to all of them for that, it was appreciated.

Anyway, enough talk about pain and feelings, let’s get to the photos! TRIGGER WARNING: there are disturbing photos of my face below (even the ‘before’ shot), so scroll on if you wish, you’ve been warned.

Mon, Dec 4 – The ‘before’ shot
Mon, Dec 11 – 1 week done
Monday, Dec 18 – 2 weeks done
Monday, Dec 25 – 3 weeks and full treatment done!

If you’re a glutton for punishment, you can see every one of the daily shots here. I may even continue the daily photos, just to track how long it takes me to return to normal (It will likely be several weeks). Surely when it’s all done, my face will be someone closer to this original state right?

Anyway, my wish in sharing these pictures of myself in this painful ordeal is to share some of the best advice anyone can repeatedly offer; be sure to slather yourself in high-SPF (and reef friendly!) sunscreen whenever you’re going to be out in the sun for long. That sexy looking tan won’t last, and the price you might pay one day for it is severe!

Merry Christmas!

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The Ocean Needs More Friends

Guide to Life

The ocean makes up most of our planet, and plays a crucial role in our health and survival. Unfortunately this precious resource has been abused by humans for far too long. And now, more than ever, the ocean needs more friends.

Join us as we rally 1 million friends of the ocean to fight plastic pollution and climate change so our ocean, waves and beaches are protected for generations to come. Sign our pledge today and become a friend of the ocean.

#TheOceanNeedsMoreFriends

Music Credit: The White Stripes – We’re Going To Be Friends

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The Wood Splitter

Home

On a recent visit to with my parents, my father introduced me to a genre of YouTube videos that he has recently enjoy featuring people building remote log cabins from scratch in the woods. We started with The Outsider, which followed a father/son team in their building of a remote cabin deep in the woods somewhere in Canada. But with the help of auto-play and YouTube’s suggestions, we weaved our way through many others including Bush Radical & Girl in the Woods, a married couple who each share their outdoor skills on their own channels, Nik Rijavec whose cabin build in Slovenia is amazing (especially how he incorporates some massive tree roots in the interior). And Outdoor Boys, where a father and his young sons build, not a real cabin, but a fun outdoor shelter that any kid would enjoy camping in. These are but a few examples, you can really go down a rabbit hole when you start following this path.

On my return home, I didn’t have an off grid cabin to build. But I did have some wood to split, and some lost wedges to free from a failed previous attempt to do so. And inspired by these videos I’d been watching, I thought I’d give a try at recording my own little outdoorsman video. My woodpile came from a pine tree that used to stand next to our house, that I’ve written about before here in this blog. And I realized I couldn’t go right into trying to split more wood without providing some of the tree’s backstory first, which I did with old photos and narration. Anyway, that’s the setup. Without further ado, here’s my own small homage to this genre of YouTube video that my Dad introduced me to. If you’ve nothing better to do for 14 minutes and 10 seconds, I invite you to give it a watch.

Things to watch for; me bashing my left knee with the sledge, and tapping a more fragile area with the handle.
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Remembering Cicada Stout

Beer

It was a warm spring night on May 15, 2013. The high temp that day had reached 85•, ten degrees higher than the historical average for that day. And that must have been good enough to get the ground temperature up to 64•, the temperature at which an underground army of cicada nymphs would emerge. And emerge they did!

  • Look closely for climbing nymphs
  • Bustin’ out!
  • Pick a good spot
  • To hang
  • out and
  • spread those wings

As predictable as the arrival of cicadas is, so is the return of articles pointing out that they can be safely eaten. And as it happened, at the time I was in an active phase of home brewing. I had brewed three beers since the previous fall, a honey ale, a winter warmer, and a commemorative IPA for the inauguration. So naturally, inspiration struck! Sure, you can eat a cicada. But how would they in a beer? And thus emerged the inspiration for Cicada stout.

I documented all the steps along the way of brewing. A few I shared on YouTube at the time, but many other videos documenting this brew have never before been by the public, UNTIL NOW!

What type of beer should I brew with cicadas? I chose a stout intentionally. With no idea really what kind of flavor a cicada might impart (and honestly little interest in finding out), a nice heavy Irish stout is an excellent choice that can mask any off flavors from the brewing process (or from weird ingredients).

So, where to start? Well, you’ve gotta catch some cicadas of course. The good news is, that’s not hard to do. cicadas are very slow movers, and clumsy fliers. But chasing bugs is no work for adults, I was a brewer dammit! So I recruited a few great kids from the neighborhood, and paid them to round up a bunch of cicadas for me. Which, as you can see, they did.

And here’s what 50 cicadas in a bowl looks like. Ten more got added, so 60 cicadas came inside to meet their fate.

Cicada Salad?

The next step, clearly, is to kill and clean them. How to do this? Boil them! So that’s what I did.

So now you’ve got a bunch of wet, steaming, dead cicadas. BUT, they are also sanitized! What next? Let them dry out, you can’t work with a mushy cicada.

17 years underground, for this?!

Then pluck off their heads, wings and legs!

The cicadas were the only unique ingredient in an otherwise pretty standard home brew recipe kit.

And Voila! Roasted cicadas!

Now, there didn’t seem to be much purpose in using cicadas as an ingredient, if you don’t bother to taste that ingredient by itself. Right? So yeah, I ate a cicada. And I had seconds!

So when do they get added to the wort? I decided to treat them like a finishing hop, and add them to the end of the boil.

After that, the remaining steps were all pretty typical for brewing. Chill your wort, pitch your yeast, and wait patiently for the wonderful magic of FERMENTATION! Just 24 hours later…

You can’t judge a beer by its label. But you can judge the label itself, for how good a job it does conveying to you the taste adventure that the beer inside is offering. My buddy TJ, a stellar artist who collaborated with me over many years in making beers, drinking beers, and labeling beers, really hit it out of the park with the label he created for Cicado Stout “Brewed Two” (see what we did there?!)

Final steps, drink, share, repeat, until you run out of Cicada Stout. A fine fine beer I’m very proud of.

Why write about this now, eight years later? Well, here we are in 2021 and there’s another brood about to emerge. This year, it will be Brood X. I wonder what they’ll taste like? And I hope someone will try them in some beer (and share one with me!)

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Bringing Old Photos to Life

Genealogy, Photos, Technology

Today I saw the below tweet from a genealogist that I follow, describing a new free photo enhancement feature from the Heritage.com genealogy website. In addition to choosing to enhance, and to colorize a photo, the new tool can identify a face in you photo, and bring it to life with some simple animation. And it’s really very very cool.

So I thought I’d give it a try. These are my GGG Grandparents Vitus DeDera and Rose Bicek on their wedding day, September 21, 1912. Vitus was 21, and Rose was 20 on their wedding day. And as is common in photos of the era, smiles as we know them today were rarer. This wedding photographer didn’t shout out ‘say CHEESE’ before snapping this shot.

I’ve written about Vitus (Victor) and Rose, and what I’ve learned about their courtship here in my blog 15 years ago.

When I uploaded the above 109 year old photo to Heritage.com and asked it to ‘animate’ it, the tool first enhanced the photo, creating a much sharper image, and it then identified each face in the photo and asked me which one I wanted to animate. Not to play favorites, I naturally did them both. And here’s the results.

Vitus Dedera – animated

Rose Bicek Dedera – animated

Pretty cool, and a little bit unnerving isn’t it?! It’s amazing what a few blinks, a tilt of the head, and some lip movement can do to breathe life into a static image. Freaking realistic! And in the context of this photo, where I imagine Victor and Rose, holding still in their pose for this important photo, pondering their future lives together, their animated expressions convey a thoughtfulness that feels very genuine to me.

Of course, this technology would, I assume, work on any photo. But modern day moving images aren’t quite as, well, eye opening are they (see videos, animated gifs (hard G)). It’s in bringing old photos to life that I see the magic in this tool. It makes me think of the portraits on the walls of Hogwarts, or the Mirror of Erised in which young Harry Potter could see his dead parents as they were in life. Cool stuff, I’m gonna be making LOTS of these!

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A Mojito Love Story

Guide to Life

“Will it be a regular mojito?”, she asked. “No my darling,” I replied. “It will be raspberry, and it will be fabulous!”

“Will the mojitos be raspberry?”, my love asked. “No my darling,” I replied. “They will be mango, and they will be magnificent!”

“Will the mojitos be mango?”, my love asked. “No, mi amore.”, I replied. “They will be passion fruit and kiwi, and they will be magical!”

“Will the mojitos be passion fruit and kiwi?”, my American woman asked. “No, my lady liberty”, I replied. “They will be watermelon and blueberry, and they will let our freedom ring!” 🇺🇸

“Will the mojitos be watermelon?”, my reason for living asked? “No, mon amie,” I replied. “They will be peach mojitos, and they will be peachy!”

“Will you put peaches in the mojitos?”, my Darling asked. “No, my Darling. Clementines!”, I exclaimed, “and soon they’ll be gone forever, but not lost. We’ll know just where they went.”

“Will you put Clementines in the mojitos?”, my adored asked. “No, you silly woman,” I replied. “I put the lime in the coconut, and pineapple too, in the mojito. Drink ‘em bot up and you’ll feel good in the morning!” 🥥 🍍

“Where is our charcuterie board from @americanfarmhousedesigns ?” my love asked. “I’m using it for the mojito photo!”, I replied. “Will they be coconut pineapple mojitos” she queried? “No sweetness,” I replied, “They will be strawberry and I will dedicate them to batman!” “Who?” she followed up. “My friend @igotitdude he made the board, and we once called him batman. I don’t remember why. But it must have been something beautiful like YOU my dear!”

It was only Saturday when my love asked, “Why are you making the mojitos today darling?” “Because I need it now!”, I replied lovingly. “Will they be strawberry?” “Berry berry baby!”, I shouted with affection. “But which berry?”, my daughter wondered aloud. “Blackberry and raspberry baby!”, I screamed adoringly to my almost 30 year old baby! “And I made enough for ALL of us!”

“Will the mojitos be berry berry?” my love asked. “No my sugar plum, they will be plum plum!”. “Sugar plums?”, she wondered aloud. “Black plums and red plums”, I answered adoringly. “And they will be plum-tastic!”.


“Will the mojitos be plum”, my wife of 33 years asked? “No darling, I replied. It will be a regular mojito.”, I responded passionately. “What’s in a regular mojito?”, she asked. “Love baby, mojitos are always made with LOVE!”

WTF is this all about, really??

OK, let me explain. My wife and I enjoy a drink. A good beer, a nice cocktail, it can bring some extra spice, some joie de vivre to life (redundant no?). We like mojitos! Mojitos are easy and awesome, and lend themselves to experimentation. And we have a mint plant on our front porch step. So all summer long, I made mojitos. And very early on, I heard voices when doing so. No, I’m not a nutjob (as far as YOU know), but the voices in my head as I made mojitos were of a romanticized hollywood-ish dialogue of a dashing leading man and gorgeous film starlet, discussing the mojito that I was making.

So yeah, look at it that way, my weekly binge drinks was just a response to the voices in my head. I’m OK with that. Nevertheless, I make an awesome mojito.

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John Lewis Memories

Guide to Life

I’m enjoying reading the memories and memorials being shared for John Lewis this morning. I have three.

At the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston, I shared a few minutes with Rep. Lewis while he waited for his scheduled satellite time for an interview at the Democratic News Service where I was working. It was just him and I, and though I can’t recall what small talk we shared, I’ll never forget how genuine he was. He was completely unrushed (not a typical description of any Member of Congress), and in the moment, as if those few moments with an anonymous staffer were as important as his upcoming interview.

I’m proud of the fact that in 2008, my team at NGPVAN built his campaign website. I see they still host his current site today. So I likely still have a few keystrokes somewhere in johnlewisforcongress.com

And most recently, in 2016, my walk from the Metro to my office at Winning Connections would take me past Rep. Lewis’ home on Capitol Hill, and I would sometimes see him leaving for work in the morning. I’m not typically the type to pester a public figure who’s just going about their life, but my daughter had recently given me the first volume of the graphic memoir of his life ‘March’ as a gift, and walking past him on the sidewalk, I stopped to say hello, introduce myself, and tell him about the gift. “What is your daughter’s name?”, he asked. “Katie”. “Well thank Katie for me, and I hope you enjoy the book.”

The book opens on January 20, 2009 – Barack Obama’s first inauguration day, with Rep. Lewis waking early on a cold morning for what will be a historic, but still long and hectic day ahead. At his office on Capitol Hill, met by a mother who brought her two young boys to the inauguration, and took them just to see John Lewis’ office, she’s surprised both at getting the opportunity to meet him personally, and his unrushed generosity of his time, as he shares his story with her boys. It would be easy to doubt that setup, but having experienced it myself, I knew it to be genuine.

Rest in Power John Lewis. And thank you for what you made of your time on Earth.

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