What were some projects that you did in school that you remember very well? Do you still have it today?

I can’t remember if it was third or fourth grade, but in art class we were asked to design our own unique toothbrush holders out of clay. Mine was a decent size golden plaque with a green dragon 🐉 on it, wings outstretched. You made like a ledge at the bottom and dig out a small hole to hold the toothbrush, but not big enough for the end with bristles to pass through. I still have it in my memory box.

Also in sixth grade we had to do a report on a person from the past that was an activist for human rights, public speaker and such. Some of us had picked people who had once been slaves, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman. I did a project on Sojourner Truth. Even though back then I wasn’t especially interested in history yet, her story interested me, and haunted me. She had been born a slave, Isabella Baumfree, in New York in the late 1790s and eventually escaped to freedom with one of her kids in 1826. She became a woman’s rights activist and an abolitionist. I just remember reading about the sad story of how she tried to get her other children back, especially her older son, Peter, whom had been sold away to Alabama.