Today’s ride took me through the mist down to Harbor East for a dip in the pool before heading back up the hill to the library for an oral history presentation about the Civil Rights movement (yes, it has earned all caps) in Baltimore. It wasn’t raining, exactly, but the air was all water, and so were my glasses after just a couple blocks of riding. Through it, I saw this scene at Central and Eastern, old brick building dwarfed by the Legg Mason monument to its own capitalist success and the condos behind it, where Legg Masoners can afford to live, layers of urban development stretching to the horizon, and I wanted heritage programs that taught me not what used to be here, but why it isn’t here anymore and instead we’ve got this. A quick swim and lunch and back up the hill for stories. I love stories, and these were new ones, to me, including one by a woman who gave birth to a perfect baby boy she wanted as much as you wanted your child, but hers was taken away because a white woman giving birth to a black baby was a crime. It took two years to get that baby back. And she’s still here, telling her story on stage-it just wasn’t that long ago. So many people have put their lives right at the knife edge for me to have had a day like this one. Thank you, and fight on.