World Beginnings

  One of my favorite activities in the school year was Week Without Walls, WWW. This was a time for students to learn and experience beyond the classroom. Teachers were in charge of planning the trip and there was a learning focus, to most of them. One that will stay with me forever, not my trip, was building bathrooms in Bali. We tend to think of Bali as an exotic vacation but there is extreme poverty off of the glitzy tourist paths and the students came back changed forever. It is important to point out that these students are extremely privileged, living in a rarified world of drivers, maids, cooks and gardeners. They’ve never cleaned anything in their lives.  Unsurprising, to those who know me, I always focussed on local animal shelters. My last year in Beirut our project was to build cat shelters for a woman who was feeding and caring for about thirty cats in a vacant lot across from her house. Students raised money through bake sales to buy all of the supplies, Then alon...

Winona, Mississippi   is a sleepy little town nestled between I55 north and Highway 82 about 120 miles south of Memphis. No one would have ever imagined that beacons of equality lived among the roughly 5,000 black and white residents in the late 1960’s MS racial tensions were as hot as the relentless sun, when the Mule Train, or Poor People’s March, set out from Marks, MS   bound for Washington DC in June, 1968. This was the brainchild of Robert Kennedy and put into action by Martin Luther King who had visited Marks earlier in the spring. Dr. King chose the town as the starting point for this historical march; famously stating “because it was the poorest town in the poorest state”, and symbolic of the Civil Rights struggle. The route was jam packed with the National Press and hundreds of law enforcement officers. At every town the marchers were met with angry whites and proud blacks. This was still the era of “White” only drinking fountains and public toil...