Monday entry

I slept an hour later than usual today, totally wiped out after yesterday, which included Leny, finishing two stories to send off. Then I did a really quick nordic walk, cleaned myself up, went to the Newark Museum for a gallery walk-through to prepare for my teacher training job there– that was fun! They have a new contemporary India exhibit opening tomorrow that promises to be really exciting– photos and installations mostly.

Then hurried back to prepare remarks for the forum last night, then to a lovely small dinner with the speaker and a few others at Les Saisons, Art and Libby Christensen’s bed-and-breakfast on Elmwood Avenue.

Then the forum, which I moderated. I had a sensation of channelling Carol and Audrey and others as they asked me to introduce people who'd just come in, etc. An interesting feeling, but I wasn’t listening to the words said as much as surveying the crowd and making things happen. Even if I didn’t attend as closely as I could to what was said, it felt like a good forum-- the Coalition's first big one since 2005-- more than 150 people, and this with no high school students required to come. They ususally add another forty or fifty to the crowd. We had the News-Record and the Star-Ledger there, mayor of East Orange and South Orange, also an Essex County freeholder. Good representation of political people, then, even though there was a school board meeting in process and some other meetings-- the youth task force maybe. So this was a grown-up but very attentive and interested good audience, including people I hadn't seen in years, lots of very quick conversations, some who’ve been around a long time but hadn’t really participated with the Coalition.

Professor john a. powell was inspiring, speaking about the spiritual value of integration– which I’m not sure I held onto, but at the moment was totally inspired by. Maybe inspiration is what we needed at this moment, though, with lots of bad news, as from Tuscaloosa. Professor powell insists that the spring Supreme Court decision has a silver lining, and perhaps another silver lining is that people may be realizing integration is under attack.