On Day 23, #VerseLove '23, the Challenge Was to Go Historical. Find a Figure and Rewrite, As If You're In the Room Where It Happens.

I still can't shake it out of my head...the fact that both Prudence and Reuben Crandall share the same great grandfather (it's just that for them it was five times over and for me, my sisters, and my cousins, it is 11 times over). Go, incest! Go. We had kissing cousins who moved to upstate New York. 

The more I read about Reuben, however, the more I'm intrigued about what life must have been in the late 18th, early 19th century...but then I think about where we are today and I realize, we're not that far off. The nation definitely has moved forward on two trajectories. One that claims democracy and justice (for White people) and the other that claims it for all. 

It still boggles my brain (and the brains of historians) about the the many truths of Frances Scott Key and the fact that we sing this universally during so many events...I can't help but think of Reuben kept in jail after he won the trial, and the intent Key had with his arguments. I guess it makes sense as we have the same ilk amongst us today.