A long trip down memory lane

The minute RBG was released I was on the internet to find a showing in Akron or Cleveland. Of course it's in the art theaters on both ends of the freeway, but since no one in Cleveland save  Beth expressed interest, she came down for lunch and a matinee.

The film was screened in The Nightlight, a converted old warehouse in the absolute oldest section of Akron, on High Street. I idly took a picture of what I could see of the building across the street, the Sojourner Truth Building.

For anyone reading not old enough to know this piece of history, Sojourner Truth was an emancipated slave who was part of the abolitionist movement. Here on High Street, Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth gave her "Ain't I a Woman" speech in 1851, more or less under the point of the portico roof.

It's a picture I would normally have deleted, as not contributing to the advancement of the story. But I am a native of this city, and the Sojourner Truth story has always resonated with me. I'm leaving it today, because this story simply is the history that women know so well.

High Street is among the last of Akron's canal era warehousing to be converted. Market Street, Mill Street, Exchange Street, all those streets with the names of thriving business activities, are done and done and done. High Street is charming for the rough exterior left. That crossroad down there is Maiden Lane, and the covered construction is the conversion of the old streetcar barns to lofts.

We stopped for a coffee, and Beth texted Francis proof that his grandma might have been a hippie once.

Inside the theater I watched this diorama cross the screen several times before I took in the entire picture. I snapped it because that's our Goodyear blimp crossing there, over the Goodyear Airdock. The silver building is the old Akron Savings, where mom worked. I believe that's even High Street in front, and a Nightlight logo on the brick building.

If you're still here, this post actually has a point. If you enlarge the diorama, there is a woman looking straight back at me. I am looking at myself in 1980. There is a photo of me that I could overlay on that, and they will match.

RBG is a phenomenal movie/documentary. Some of it brought me to tears. I marched in those marches. I voted for those candidates. I worked for those hopes and causes. To have this record of Justice Ginsburg's achievements, and part in the progress, is priceless. A film not to be missed.

If you're still here, I'm not to the end. My last post was a dismal recitation of lost physical abilities, and mental. Lost meaning, in short. And one day later, another school shooting. I've quit Facebook; friends and not friends alike mocking us for causing it and waiting for it to happen again. That's how to add despair to despair.

I do have friends who said "I'll stand with you," and did. The three of us became forty, on the corner in below freezing weather, standing in solidarity with school students. 

After I post this I'll start a list of what I did and who I contacted for the March demonstration. The November elections are not just about reclaiming decency, it's also about turning the process over to the next generation, eighteen year old after eighteen year old.

Oh, yes. Laura stood over my shoulder until I'd ordered a Notorious R.B.G. tee for her.