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 am Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

I have a friend in her forties who probably is the last person on the North American continent

to create a Facebook account.

In her first post she joked, so this is what the afterlife will look like.

I had a similar reaction when scrolling faces of friends I had not seen in two decades.

They emerged as if out of a remembered dream suddenly smiling back on my computer screen.

There too for all the world to see where our shared obsessions and long forgotten memories.

Pictures of prom night, posters like Keith Herring's Free South Africa.

That epic impromptu trip to Atlantic City that left us unable even to buy a slice of pizza.

Our hairstyles and fashion choices, big Maritay and Francois Gerbeau jeans,

made ironically trendy again for all the complicated impact of social media on society.

Particularly felt by young people.

I find the unprecedented means of documenting human lives quite moving.

I have connected with long lost buddies from elementary school and it is amazing to have the long view of each other's journey on earth to witness how time has physically changed us.

I had always thought my friendships would last forever, but life subverts the noblest of intentions.

So kudos to all those who have stayed friends without the aid of an algorithm or social media platform.

Some record, albeit imperfect, will always exist of our having lived.

...