This spring in my Artist as Citizen course at Portland State University, we explored a book of essays called The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear. Although it seems ideally suited for the beginning of a global pandemic, my co-instructor Suzanne Savaria actually selected it months before coronavirus entered the world. The title comes from the song “Crazy He Calls Me” written by Billie Holiday:
I didn’t know about Juneteenth.
Not as a boy growing up in the late 1960’s in suburban Lakewood, Colorado. Not as a college student at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Miami in the 1980’s. Not as a young jazz musician in New York City in the 1990’s. It wasn’t highlighted on the news, or taught in school. To my knowledge, my parents never mentioned it either. They weren’t much for secular holidays. And rather than reliving the past, we were raised to look to the future.
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