Rockin' Youngstown University

Wednesday morning we wake up early, pack up our gear, and bid farewell to Ann and Jessica and their great old Victorian three story house, which has been our base camp for the past week. I have one last shower in the claw footed tub with its rubber tube and showerhead and we say goodbye to Puma. We pick up Ariel and turbulently speed away to the gas station to fill up before getting on the road to Younstown, Ohio. We drive to Youngstown where we arrive at the university to vigil. We meet up with Ray, the teacher who we met at the Ani Difranco concert in Columbus, where he was tabling for Air America with his wife. We have a police escort onto campus and park the truck outside the student union. We set up a big Codepink table and talk with lots of students and faculty. Then we have a Codepink event where Sam talks about the history of Codepink, how to start a Codepink, and her travel stories and general activism insight. She talks brilliantly and I am so inspired by her clarity of thought, her fierce courage and dedication, and her ability to express the urgency of the issue while remaining calm and positive. She begins a conversation about having a Codepink in Youngstown and right there the Codepink chapter begins with two fabulous female students. We show the short film on women voting and some scenes from our interviews through the South. Afterwards, Ariel and I talk with Ray’s kids about how it is to be home-school and what they like to do, read, etc. We all go over to a campus café for coffee and sandwiches and Ray, upon reading and buying a copy of the Salt Reader, gives me a big bag of salt rocks.

We say our goodbyes and get on the road, New York bound.
We spend the rest of the day driving, and driving, and driving. Ariel passes out and Sam and I continue to listen to the Red Tent. The drive seems sticky with the intensity of the Biblical women’s narrative, my own fiery anger about the historic role of women and my own relationships, and the odd hours of sleep we get intermittently throughout the night, as we continue to drive, stop at undistinguished rest stops, and pick up and drive again. We are also driving into New York now, and this is the final leg of the journey. Even the fire colors in the fall trees lining the Pennsylvania roads are not enough splendor to quench the burning sensation in my chest as we approach the concrete jungle I have spent the last four years of my life living in.