Email 9

Date: August 25, 2002

The busy spring led straight into a frenetic summer. My plan was to stop and catch my breath. What happened? Summer is gone and there are a million things, well, one thousand things I was supposed to take care of. So much stuff is still not finished. I choose to blame some of my failure on this summers soggy heat sapping my strength, the rest of the blame lies in my habitual fear-procrastination mode.

Yet here I am less than two weeks from the start of the second phase of my journey. On Tuesday September 3rd, Petra Williams and I take off on a one-hundred-mile walk to Edinboro, Pennsylvania. Wow. Ive been training with a backpack. It is all new and awkward, I am struggling to get the heft of the backpack properly coordinated with my pace and walking sticks. But Petra is an experienced hiker (the Appalachian Trail with her husband Eric, six months Maine to Georgia) and I place myself in her competent hands.

I need your help. Again. Could you please fill out the enclosed card so that I have your accurate and up to date contact information, especially your email. I plan to keep in touch along the way. THANK YOU.

This walk will take us through:

Willoughby, Ohio Andrews School for Girls Tues. 9/3
Mentor, Ohio Wed. 9/4
Painesville, Ohio Phillips Osborne School Thurs. 9/5
Lake Erie College
Geneva Township, Ohio Fri. 9/6
Ashtabula, Ohio Sat. 9/7
Hubbard House
Kellogsville, Ohio Sun. 9/8
Albion, Pennsylvania Mon. 9/9
Edinboro, Pennsylvania Tue. 9/10

I will complete my personal journey in the spring of 2003. During the Easter break I will start in Edinboro, PA. and walk to St. Catharines, Canada, my maternal grandmother, Margaret Fletcher Diggs birthplace.

This summer I was invited to Baylor Medical School in Houston, TX. and addressed 120 students. I met Coretta Scott and Martin Luther King III at the SCLC conference and was given a Trailblazer Award at the Womens Luncheon. I got to meet and spend time with my hero, Doris, Granny D, Haddock. I spoke at a Cleveland City council Reception given by Fannie Lewis and Frank Jackson, to a group of 35 teachers who flew in from California to do an Underground Railroad bus tour across Ohio from Ripley to St Catharines, Canada . I gave talks at: Euclid Community Concerns Annual picnic; Cleveland State Universitys Black Studies Department reception; Akron, Ohios UNITY WALK parade; Hiram Colleges new students convocation. What a wonderful whirl.

I set out to praise the heroic American slave, and I am. We all are! YEA!!!!