I love public media…especially public radio. On my way home today, I listened to a new-to-me writer and critic from Baltimore named Lawrence Burney. He spoke about Gil Scott Heron and Frederick Douglass and his words arrested me…

He talked about knowing, even as a kid, when “gravity is pulled from a person”. Gil Scott Heron could do that. He described how Frederick Douglass escaped chattel slavery by embracing his functional knowledge as a person who knows about coastal community…he posed as a seamen and carried a free seaman’s certificate. Knowledge of the language and practices of the Jacks was part of what he needed. Paper in hand, is the other. His story of Escape from Slavery and its connections to the reality that there is ‘no sense in wishing’ is just powerful!