Lincoln in Private by Ronald C. White

 

Facing protesters over "Mr Lincoln's war," President Lincoln was preparing a reply when a congressman complimented him on so swiftly composing from scratch. Lincoln pointed to an open desk drawer filled with scraps of paper with his "best thoughts on the subject." He explained, "I never let one of those ideas escape me."

These private notes and reflections were a valuable resource for the president, and a more valuable exercise for working out and preserving his thoughts. Never meant for public consumption, his notes were open and revealing about his private beliefs and feelings.

Some of his notes had been destroyed when he moved from his Illinois home to Washington, D.C. But 109 were found after his death, deposited in a bank vault. Lincoln's secretaries Nicolay and Hay included some of these private notes in their ten volume history. 

Lincoln in Private by Ronald C. White explores ten of these private notes, contemplating on what we can learn from them about Lincoln. They vary from a lyrical description of encountering Niagara Falls to a mediation on Divine Will in human affairs.

Lincoln's ability to logic out arguments comes across in these notes. He was exceedingly well read, delving into newspapers and books from across the country, including pro-slavery sources. He thereby could counter arguments from the opposite political spectrum, understanding their position.

White takes readers through a thorough exegesis of each note, putting it in historic context as well as explaining its significance.

I am even more impressed by Lincoln. Considering his lack of formal education and rural roots, his depression and life challenges, his genius could not be contained, but, luckily for our country, found its proper application in at our most critical time in history.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Lincoln in Private: What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President
by Ronald C. White
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date May 4, 2021
ISBN: 9781984855091
hardcover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

“A fascinating tour inside the mind—and the heart—of Abraham Lincoln . . . An important and timeless work.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of His Truth Is Marching On

From the New York Times bestselling author of A. Lincoln and American Ulysses, a revelatory glimpse into the intellectual journey of our sixteenth president through his private notes to himself, explored together here for the first time

A deeply private man, shut off even to those who worked closely with him, Abraham Lincoln often captured “his best thoughts,” as he called them, in short notes to himself. He would work out his personal stances on the biggest issues of the day, never expecting anyone to see these frank, unpolished pieces of writing, which he’d then keep close at hand, in desk drawers and even in his top hat. The profound importance of these notes has been overlooked, because the originals are scattered across several different archives and have never before been brought together and examined as a coherent whole.

Now, renowned Lincoln historian Ronald C. White walks readers through twelve of Lincoln’s most important private notes, showcasing our greatest president’s brilliance and empathy, but also his very human anxieties and ambitions. We look over Lincoln’s shoulder as he grapples with the problem of slavery, attempting to find convincing rebuttals to those who supported the evil institution (“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”); prepares for his historic debates with Stephen Douglas; expresses his private feelings after a defeated bid for a Senate seat (“With me, the race of ambition has been a failure—a flat failure”); voices his concerns about the new Republican Party’s long-term prospects; develops an argument for national unity amidst a secession crisis that would ultimately rend the nation in two; and, for a president many have viewed as not religious, develops a sophisticated theological reflection in the midst of the Civil War (“it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party”). Additionally, in a historic first, all 111 Lincoln notes are transcribed in the appendix, a gift to scholars and Lincoln buffs alike.

These are notes Lincoln never expected anyone to read, put into context by a writer who has spent his career studying Lincoln’s life and words. The result is a rare glimpse into the mind and soul of one of our nation’s most important figures.

The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live

The Secret History of Home Economics promised to be interesting, but I had no idea how radical this history was, ot how pervasive its impact on society and politics. Danielle Drelinger's history is full of surprises. 

When I was in junior high, girls were required to take a semester of Home Economics classes. In cooking, I learned how to use displacement to accurately measure shortening. In sewing, we used the Bishop method to make an apron and an A-line skirt. 

I admit, I thought that Home Ec was pretty lame and meant for future housewives. And yet...I taught myself to cook from scratch and to sew, how to organic garden and bake bread, and how to follow a pattern and to make quilts. 

It turns out that there was a reason I felt that way. In the 1960s when I had those classes, the concept of home economics had been diminished from it's roots when scientists and feminists founded home economics studies. I was unaware of the impact on society the home economics had during wartime or in promoting social and advancing racial equity. And I certainly did not know that home economics also enforced a middle class, American, white life style on immigrants, people of color, and the rural poor.

As society changed, the use of home economics reflected the times. 

Drelinger introduces us to a series of intelligent women who were barred from male-dominated careers. Their used their skills in science to study nutrition to help the war effort, support government control to enforce pure foods and temperance, and they created the first nutritional guidelines.

They worked with business to promote new electronic appliances and created recipes for food companies. They wrote pamphlets to support food conservation and the remaking of clothes during the war.

On the dark side, some supported Eugenics and immigrants traditional heritage was ignored as they were pressured to assimilate.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live
by Danielle Dreilinger
W. W. Norton & Company
Pub Date May 4, 2021   
ISBN: 9781324004493
hardcover $27.95 (USD)

from the publisher

The surprising, often fiercely feminist, always fascinating, yet barely known, history of home economics.

The term “home economics” may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and business-people. And it has something to teach us today.

In the surprising, often fiercely feminist and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field’s history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women—and they were mostly women—became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education.

Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics’ women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages.

This groundbreaking and engaging history restores a denigrated subject to its rightful importance, as it reminds us that everyone should learn how to cook a meal, balance their account, and fight for a better world.

About the Author: Danielle Dreilinger is a former New Orleans Times-Picayune education reporter and a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow. She also wrote for the Boston Globe and worked at the Boston NPR station WGBH.

***** 

In this book I learned about an item in my collection, a J. C. Penney's publication Fashions and Fabrics that was sold for home ec teacher's use. Read about it here.

I have written about recipe books published by corporations to promote their products

• 1954 Sealtest Recipes
• American Advertising Cookbooks
• Coconut Dishes Everyone Loves
• Big Boy Barbecue Book
• Pies Men Like

Thief of Souls by Brian Klingborg

From the first sentence, I was hooked. A woman's corpse, 'hollowed out like a birchbark canoe' is discovered. Meanwhile, Inspector Lu Fei of the Public Security Bureau is alone in a bar planning to 'get gloriously drunk' on warm wine, the sound of traditional Chinese fiddle music playing in the background. Lu is smitten with the barkeep, Yanyan, a beautiful widow. Then his cell phone rings; its his night off but the unthinkable has happened in his rural, backwater township: a woman has been murdered, and her organs removed.

I will admit, when I was offered Thief of Souls, I downloaded it to look at, never suspecting I would devour it in 24 hours. The mystery is good with red herrings and a deranged murderer and interdepartmental conflicts. There are chilling scenes, and threatening scenes, and emotional scenes, and a hearty dash of wit and humor. 

But what charmed me was the location and the characters.

Lu quotes Master Kong--Confucius to us--revealing his traditional, unmodern, unCommunist values. Lu believes in love before marriage, filial piety, and most brazenly of all, he believes in justice, not convenient arrests and forced convictions. It gets him into trouble with his superiors, this insisting on finding the woman's killer when they already have a man in custody. 

As Lu follows the trail into Harbin city, he unveils corruption, is pursued by thugs, kills a man in self defense, and unearths the underground gay culture.  

Klingborg does an excellent job of succinctly explaining how Chinese police, law, and government work and readers learn about the lives of rural and city Chinese people. Central to the story are traditional Chinese beliefs about death. 

Stability takes precedence over public safety, we read, involving the suppression of information, quick, although not always accurate solving of crimes, and fiddling with the statistics. And of course, deniability is par for the course: "Our justice system doesn't wrongly convict innocent people."

I look forward to reading another Inspector Lu Fei mystery.

I was given a free galley by the publisher through Net Galley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Thief of Souls: An Inspector Lu Fei Mystery
by Brian Klingborg
St. Martin's Press/ Minotaur Books
Mystery & Thrillers
Pub Date May 4, 2021   
ISBN: 9781250779052
hardcover $27.99 (USD)

from the publisher

In Brian Klingborg's Thief of Souls, the brutal murder of a young woman in a rural village in Northern China sends shockwaves all the way to Beijing—but seemingly only Inspector Lu Fei, living in exile in the small town, is interested in justice for the victim.

Lu Fei is a graduate of China’s top police college but he’s been assigned to a sleepy backwater town in northern China, where almost nothing happens and the theft of a few chickens represents a major crime wave. That is until a young woman is found dead, her organs removed, and joss paper stuffed in her mouth. The CID in Beijing—headed by a rising political star—is on the case but in an increasingly authoritarian China, prosperity and political stability are far more important than solving the murder of an insignificant village girl. As such, the CID head is interested in pinning the crime on the first available suspect rather than wading into uncomfortable truths, leaving Lu Fei on his own.

As Lu digs deeper into the gruesome murder, he finds himself facing old enemies and creating new ones in the form of local Communist Party bosses and corrupt business interests. Despite these rising obstacles, Lu remains determined to find the real killer, especially after he links the murder to other unsolved homicides. But the closer he gets to the heart of the mystery, the more he puts himself and his loved ones in danger.

Covid-19 Life: Quilts, Books, and Spring Flowers

Happy May Day!

The trees in the neighborhood are in full bloom.

Including the crab apple in our front yard.

I have completed the second block in Barbara Brackman's Ladies Aid Sampler Quilt, the cow under the tree. Which to me looked like Ferdinand the Bull so I gave him a flower to smell.

A friend shared some teapot embroidery patterns to add to the tea cups I embroidered.

And I showed the Water Lily quilt to the quilt group when we met at the park.

Water Lily quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske

I picked up a few books at the library (they are still closed to the public, they leave the books outside on a table.) Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny is set in Michigan's Up North town of Boyne City. It was a great read, warm and charming and funny. And The Chanel Sisters by Judith Little whose Wickwythe Hall I read last year.

New on my NetGalley shelf:

The Heron's Cry by Anne Cleeves, second in the Detective Venn series; read my review of The Long Call here

Talk to Me by T. C. Boyle in which a chimp has been taught to talk in sign language

My brother and his girlfriend are walking the North Country Trail across Michigan. Last weekend's threatening clouds produced some dramatic photographs as they crossed Kalamazoo County.

And Book Club Cook Book win book A Hundred Suns by Karin Tanabe arrived.

My quilt friend Theresa Nielson shared a 1925 baby book with me and I was able to track down the family on Ancestry, with help from Newspapers.com. The family is excited to be reunited with this terrific heirloom. It included photographs and hair snippets and newspaper articles.

The vintage art work was adorable.

My family and close friends have all received their second vaccination shots. It is a relief, especially as Michigan continues to have the highest case numbers. One in eleven people in our county have had the virus. Our small town of under 12,000 has had 747 cases and 23 deaths, a huge increase in cases this spring as it exploded in the schools.

The missed doctor appointments have been made up. And today my husband donned his mask and went grocery shopping. He missed it. I prefer Shipt!

This week saw the passing of astronaut Michael Collins, who was part of the Apollo 11 crew. Many years ago I made a quilt for the mission which I called When Dreams Came True. For as a girl, we all dreamed of going to outer space. The images were from NASA photos and created with fusible applique.

Michael Collins is on the left. detail from When Dreams Came True
by Nancy A. Bekofske

When Dreams Came True by Nancy A. Bekofske

Stay safe.

Find your bliss.

National Poetry Month: Detroit Poetry

For National Poetry Month I purchased poetry books that had been on my 'wish list' for some time. 

I was interested in reading several poets with Detroit roots and who had written about Detroit.

Although I am not a native Detroiter, my family moved to Metro Detroit in 1963 when I was ten. My father found work with Chrysler in Highland Park where he was an experimental mechanic.

The poems in Made in Detroit by Marge Piercy are very accessible. The early poems recall an impoverished childhood: "rummage sales were our malls," "the furnace had been fed coal," "we survived on what no one else wanted." In another poem, she recalls job hunting, warned by her mother, "just don't put down Jew."

Her title poem, Made in Detroit, is forceful in language.

My first lessons were kisses and a hammer.
I was fed with mother's milk and rat poison.
I learned to walk on a tightrope over a pit
where snake's warnings were my rattles.

Her poem Our neverending entanglement struck home, for I had written a similar poems after the death of my mother in 1990.

We mourn our mothers till
we ourselves are out 
of breath. That umbilical cord between us, never
really cut no matter how
hard we tried in adolescence
to sever it.

I was older when I tried to sever the tie to my mother, but always in returning home I felt diminished back into the girl she still saw in me. With her death, I realized I was more tightly bound to her than ever.

I am still reading this book. Learn more about the poet at
https://margepiercy.com/bio

*****

The poems in Philip Levine's book The Last Shift are also accessible, "human centered poetry" as the Forward states. He writes about growing up and working at the Hamtramck Chevy Gear & Axle.

In an article about the book, Thomas Curwen of the Los Angeles Times wrote,

...Levine’s poems — with their pictures of the industrial Midwest animated by despair, yearning and love — suggest a more troubling truth. The working class has always been hard to see because seeing would mean confronting the struggle of their lives, a struggle of race, inequity and inequality.

“I think the writing of a poem is a political act,” Levine told an interviewer in 1974. “The sources of anger are frequently social, and they have to do with the fact that people’s lives are frustrated, they’re lied to, they’re cheated, that there is no equitable handing out of the goods of this world.”

My father never worked on the line, but I had an uncle and cousins who did work in assembly plants in the 1970s and later, and my husband worked as a welder for two summers at the Flint Buick plant during college breaks. Levine captures the experience for an earlier generation.

...Remember
at eighteen, brother, at Cadillac 
Transmission how no one
knew what we were drilling holes into or why except
of course for $3.85
an hour.

More Than You Gave is filled with images that were very real to me."An ordinary Tuesday in ordinary times," he mentions psoriasis, which my mother suffered from. And notes "the teenage Woodward Ave. whores;" one once tried to get into my dad's truck while he was waiting to pick up a work friend. And White Owl cigars, my dad's brand in the 1960s. "It could be worse," he writes, they could work "at Ford Rogue where the young get old fast or die trying."

I recall the obligatory annual school trips to the Rouge River forge, described by Levine:

One spring day 
the whole class went by bus
to the foundry at Ford Rogue 
to see earth melted and
poured like syrup into fire. 

A Dozen Dawn Songs, Plus One looks back across "2,000 miles and fifty years" and ends,"Oh/to be young and strong and dumb/again in Michigan!" 

And in Godspell he writes, "A lifetime passes/in the blink of an eye/ You look back and think,/That was heaven, so of course it had to end."

And in the final poem, The Last Shift, he sees the Packard Plant in the moonlight, the 1903 Alfred Kahn complex that spread over forty acres. After it closed in 1999, and scrappers stripped it, the Packard Plant came to symbolize Detroit's decay.

Levine was Poet Laureate in 2011. Read more about Levine's poetry and the Gear & Axle factory at https://detroitartsculture.wixsite.com/detroitstudies/chevy-gear-and-axle

*****

The poem I wrote after my mother's death appears below

A Mother's Love

        I had thought, once, that death
would finally free me.
No more hand- me-downs, no more
the worried call to see if I was home safe,
no more being a child.

I was wrong.
For in your dying, mother,
I am imprisoned more deeply than ever.
I am made, finally and again,
completely thine, like the baby
you loved beyond all understanding.

Your continual habit of giving
made me want to shake free.
It is the discomfort of those loved
too dearly to bear.
It is the knowledge of never being
good enough to deserve it.

And so I discover I am not freed,
but bound more tightly in the cord
of your love.

   

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

As a reader I am inspired by stories that set my imagination afire, bring chills to my spine, tears to my eyes, and comfort in this baffling world. Great Circle is that kind of novel. 

As a genealogist, I am fascinated by the hidden stories of my ancestors. I can never learn enough to fully flesh out the details of their lives. What it was like to leave their homes and reinvent themselves in a new land? What lead to the seduction that left them unmarried mothers? How did they face the devastation of a child drowning in the canal they had to pass every day? I only know that they survived, for a while, and then they died, taking their secrets with them. As someday, I will, too.

Life throws us into despair--all of us. We give in and give up, or we resist and struggle to the surface of the water, take another breath, and reinvent our life in the after-world. Sometimes there is freedom in reinvention. Sometimes it saves us.

Great Circle is one of those massive reads that sweep us across time and history, a long journey into character's entire lives. They are orphaned or neglected and unprotected by unreliable adults, and make their way as best they can. They lose loves and are loved by monsters. Dreams are fragile and come with a cost. Again and again, they must reinvent a life with a new name or in a new place or with a new love or the end of a love.

First, there is the story of orphans Marian Graves and her brother Jamie who run wild with neighbor boy Caleb, their adult caretakers unreliable. When barnstormers pass through, Marian becomes obsessed with the idea of flying. Caleb cuts her hair so she can pass as a boy to earn money towards flying lessons by secret moonshine deliveries.

Barclay was a criminal, and he was rich, and he was used to getting what he wanted. And he wanted Marian from the first time he saw her as a girl. She entered into a dreadful bargain: he would pay for her flying lessons, and she understood the unspoken agreement that someday she would be his.

Trapped into an abusive and controlling marriage, Marian escapes, disappears into Alaska, reinventing herself as a bush pilot. When WWII broke out, she volunteers for the British Air Transport Auxiliary, ferrying warplanes. She meets Ruth, who becomes her great love, and Ruth's gay husband Eddie. But it is Caleb she still turns to when broken.

After the war with its many losses, Marian is offered financing to fund her dream of flying around the world, pole to pole, she only trusts Eddie to be her navigator. After Antarctica, they are believed to have been lost at sea.

Then there is Hadley, also an orphan and abused by her uncle, who became a beloved child actress, and has a breakdown at age 20. Now, she has a change to reinvent herself in a movie about Marian's life, based on the journal Marian left behind at Antarctica before she disappeared.

Hadley goes on a quest to learn about Marian, discovering the truth of what happened on that great circle trip from pole to pole.

Marian's story gives Hadley a sense of freedom and control. And, and it can free us, too, showing us how to live with courage even in the darkest of times. How we must know what we want, and to always work for our dreams.

This past year has been a horror show of death and fear of death, political clashes and unimaginable chaos, outbreaks of hate and violence. We know full well the disappointments and pain of this world.  

A story can help us to heal. To know we are not alone, that there is a way to get through the hell and live into a moment of joy and moments of grace that can be enough to live on. This is the gift of literature. 

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Great Circle
by Maggie Shipstead
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Pub Date May 4, 2021  
ISBN: 9780525656975
hardcover $28.95 (USD)

 from the publisher

An unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost—Great Circle spans Prohibition-era Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, New Zealand, wartime London, and modern-day Los Angeles.

After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There--after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes--Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles.

A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marian's disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian's own story, as the two women's fates--and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times--collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.

Buses Are A Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider by Charles Person

Look around. What injustice do you see? What change needs to happen? Get on the bus. Make it happen. There will be a cost.~from Buses are a Comin' by Charles Person

"We intended to be the change," Charles Person writes in the prologue of his memoir Buses are a Comin'. 

Sixty years ago, Person walked away from a college education, walked away from the safety of his family's love, and boarded a bus headed for the deep south. He and his companions, black and white, old and young, male and female, were determined to challenge the illegal practice of segregation on the buses.

Person wanted the dignity, respect, and the privileges that whites took for granted. He could have chosen safety. But he heard the call to "do something" and answered it. The Supreme Court had ruled against segregation on the buses, but Jim Crow ruled the south. 

He was eighteen when he donned his Sunday suit and joined the Freedom Riders. Over the summer of 1961, four hundred Americans participated in sixty-three Freedom Rides.  Four hundred Americans put themselves into harm's way because they believed that "all men are created equal."  

Person mentions the well-remembered leaders of the Civil Rights movement, but they are not the only heroes. This is the story of the people who did the hard work, whose names are not on city street signs. The students, ministers, homemakers, writers, social workers, people from across the country who believed in E pluribus unum.

One of the heroes in the book is Jim Peck, a wealthy, white man who was severely beaten by white supremacists and still got back on the bus. It baffled Person how a man with everything would give so much for the rights of another.

Person's voice and personality come through the memoir. It is the story of a young man finding his purpose, committing himself to nonviolence, knowing he would face jail and beatings and death. 

I have seen the documentaries and I have read the history. But a memoir brings something new to the story. Person's first hand account is moving, his words have  rhythm and lyricism, his story takes us into hell, and finally, into hope. 

If they could stand up to power, we can, too. Every generation has its purpose.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Buses Are a Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider
by Charles Person; Richard Rooker
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date: April 27, 2021 
ISBN: 9781250274199
hard cover $26.99 (USD)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Person is one of two living Freedom Riders who remained with the original Ride from its start in Washington, DC to New Orleans. This historic event helped defeat Jim Crow laws in the US. A sought-after public speaker, Person maintains active contact with schools, museums and the activist community. He lives in Atlanta.

Richard Rooker is an English and history educator, writing coach, and longtime personal friend of Person. He is an active board member of the Indiana Historical Society.

from the publisher

A firsthand exploration of the cost of boarding the bus of change to move America forward—written by one of the Civil Rights Movement's pioneers.

At 18, Charles Person was the youngest of the original Freedom Riders, key figures in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement who left Washington, D.C. by bus in 1961, headed for New Orleans. This purposeful mix of black and white, male and female activists—including future Congressman John Lewis, Congress of Racial Equality Director James Farmer, Reverend Benjamin Elton Cox, journalist and pacifist James Peck, and CORE field secretary Genevieve Hughes—set out to discover whether America would abide by a Supreme Court decision that ruled segregation unconstitutional in bus depots, waiting areas, restaurants, and restrooms nationwide.

The Freedom Riders found their answer. No. Southern states would continue to disregard federal law and use violence to enforce racial segregation. One bus was burned to a shell; the second, which Charles rode, was set upon by a mob that beat the Riders nearly to death.

Buses Are a Comin’ provides a front-row view of the struggle to belong in America, as Charles leads his colleagues off the bus, into the station, into the mob, and into history to help defeat segregation’s violent grip on African American lives. It is also a challenge from a teenager of a previous era to the young people of today: become agents of transformation. Stand firm. Create a more just and moral country where students have a voice, youth can make a difference, and everyone belongs.