This post is from two years ago. We were on one of our marathon coddiwomples, on the road for only a week of the planned five months. Our first stop was a week in Provincetown, and then it was on to Washington, D.C., for a night. We made our way down to Selma before heading out to the American West.
The original video was shorter, but I later added the footage of Selma to include all of Bobby Kennedy’s impromptu, from-the-heart speech the night Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.
I don’t usually recycle letters or videos here. I’m proud that there are 1051 letters in our Substack library for you to peruse. However, the words, the orator, and the man who inspired them are more important today, it seems, than ever.
As a gift, this is being sent to all subscribers—paid and free.
These are the original words from January 2024…
We drove from Provincetown, leaving at 4 am on Tuesday, to Washington, DC, arriving at 3 pm in that lashing rainstorm.
The storm raged into the early morning hours, so we surrendered to exhaustion and immediately went to bed. Most of the front had passed by the time we woke up at three on Wednesday morning. So, for the second year in a row, we took to the streets of DC and visited our favorite monuments for the next two and a half hours.
We did not see another soul for those first two hours, and Samwise and Emily could walk as untethered as they did on Cape Cod’s storied beaches.
There’s much to share with you about what transpired on that walk, when the sun rose with blue skies, and the following twenty-four hours, which were packed with a kaleidoscope of emotions. But I will stop here now because I want to share this stand-alone video that is perfect for this weekend.
If you could have been there, you’d understand how it felt—the emotion of the moment, the solitude in an unexpected place, the majesty, power, history, and inspiration.
Until tomorrow, when your hearts will melt.
"If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr., Christmas sermon, Atlanta, Georgia, 1967
