Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Daily Kos: Why they're marching - Mary Tedrow

Daily Kos: Why they're marching - Mary Tedrow


Why they're marching - Mary Tedrow

this is the second in a series of diaries about the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action that I will be posting in the runup to the the March itself on July 30. The first was

Mary Tedrow teaches in Northern Virginia. She begins a recent blog post, called Why I'm Marching. . . like this:

I was born and raised in Washington, DC.

In the summer the humidity settles down and the sky turns a sick, pale shade of yellow. The swamp the city was built on seems to rise up and sit in the air just above the traffic lights.

Mary is a gifted writer, and an even more gifted teacher of writers, having been very involved in the National Writing Project.

She describes what her childhood in DC was like, in days before air conditioning was so omnipresent. And then she offers this:

In Washington, D.C., July is a beast, but August is worse.

So, why return to Washington, DC on July 30 to march from the ellipse to the White House at a time when experience dictates that one should really just be sitting very, very still?

I will be marching because I do not want to lose another thing I bring from my childhood: A public school education.

Please keep reading.