I'm Perry from Santa Barbara and I support the slowdown meeting a wide diversity of poets

and their outstanding poems takes my mind and heart to a higher place.

A truth that feeds my day away from the debilitating misinformation or the plagues us.

Join me by making a gift to the slowdown today.

Go to slowdownshow.org slash donate.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

I've a friend from my youth in North Philadelphia who is a successful hip-hop dancer, choreographer and teacher.

Rinny Harris and I don't see each other frequently, maybe once every decade.

When we do, before we fully greet each other, we give each other what I now call the look.

Here's the look.

An old friend recognizes you and suddenly stops mid-strived, leans back, then cuts their face into an expressive grimace.

Everything is inside that grimace.

Their eyes squint and lips press together.

It looks like they are in pain or that they smell something awful, but actually it's a bluesy expression of fascination.

One of disbelief, joy and affection.

They might even be studying you.

The look then continues with a quick besieging glance left and right, as if they are searching for someone else to take stock of the moment.

Then they return their gaze back to you.

The look is topped off with a hearty greeting of depths and hugs.

My friend Rinny and I grew up facing serious challenges in our neighborhood, mainly drugs and its resultant violence, which damaged the people we loved and took the lives of others.

We look on each other as survivors, which sweetens our reunions.

We reconnected it most recently after his dance company performed in the fall at a contemporary art center here in Nashville.

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