Okay, I have to admit that (a) I did not know that today was Juneteenth, and (b) I further did not know that it was a holiday that was still celebrated, some 140 years later. (For those of you who know even less about the holiday than I, Juneteenth is the day that word of the end of the Civil War finally reached African Americans in Galveston and the western territories of the U.S. Which was two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation had actually freed the slaves--but no one had, you know, actually bothered to TELL THEM. You can read more about it here.)

But apparently, here in Historically Black Neighborhood, it's very much celebrated (I must not have been in town on this day last year, and I had only just signed my lease on this day two years ago). I guess I missed the parade, though George Washington Boyfriend ran into it when he went out to meet a friend for lunch. However, as I was making my way up to Staples just now to buy a new printer cable, I encountered men in smart suits with flowers in their lapels, women in big brightly colored hats, and kids looking well-scrubbed and a little ill at ease. Though many people in the neighborhood dress up for church on Sunday, the clothes were smarter today and there were an unusual number of flowers (at the Baptist church right on my corner, the folks loitering out front were carrying plants that looked kinda like unbloomed Easter lily plants). Is that a feature of the holiday celebration? Dunno.

What I CAN tell you, though, is that as my own Juneteenth celebration I'm just about to print out a draft of this chapter and start my real revisions in longhand and on the floor (I often cut up my drafts and spread the pieces out on the floor; it frees up my sense of structure and lets me try out more possibilities--you just can't get a sense of the whole work when you're dealing with a computer screen).

But before the scissors come out, GWB and I are going to run some errands and then meet Def and Stave for dinner. Mmm, Vietnamese food!