Jess Leblanc - July 03, 2019

Tina Bollman recommended Jess to participate here. We met at her home that she is in the middle of selling and as I pulled up she and her son, Henry, were in the yard picking up pine cones. We chatted in the driveway for a few minutes and then ventured into the home that is now staged for selling and absent of all of her and her family's possessions. I can only imagine that felt a bit strange for Jess. Nevertheless, it didn't take us long to get comfortable with each other and start talking about the nitty gritty.  We met on July 3rd and I tend to feel pretty fired up around the 4th of July. I don't need to get into all the details here, but I dislike the holiday because of what we've deliberately chosen to ignore and how we've chosen to rather grotesquely celebrate the day. I'm on a roll of asking more poignant questions, anyway, but today I chose to dig even deeper, or maybe even pry, with Jess.  We talk about racism and slavery and wrongful incarceration and our president and the #MeToo movement and uprisings and revolution. Not to spoil the surprise, but we didn't come up with the answers. I am going to continue believing that talking about it is a good start, though.