Saturday, August 17, 2013

Move-in Day

In between bakeries, coffee shops, restaurants and take-out joints, Mark wanted to make a few other stops in DC today. In 1989 he spent the summer living and working in a halfway house in Columbia Heights. One of the places he wanted to revisit was the lower quad at Howard University. "I used to grab a blanket and a couple of pillows and escape the craziness by coming over here and reading under the trees," he told us.

I had never been to the Howard campus, and the quad was stately and beautiful and mostly quiet, despite today being "move in" day for the class of 2017. The weather is still unbelievably cool for August, and red, white, and blue balloon arches glowed in the bright sunshine and swayed in the fresh breeze.

Many, many cars were lined up way down the road and around the corner, waiting patiently for their turn to pull in and unload. As we walked by, I noted all the state license plates: in addition to DC, Maryland, Virginia, we saw several from New York, Georgia, both Carolinas, Florida, New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Tennessee, and Texas-- hundreds of kids from all over the country were here to start the next big phase of their lives, and it was really cool that this was my home town.

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