AS: They were young men. Thoreau, I believe, is about a year out of college.

He's 22 and they

want to explore they want to, they want to learn from doing. And so they build a boat and set off
on the river and it's you know it's not unexplored; it's not breaking new territory, but it's two in
many ways amateurs going out and learning about the place they live in and learning about
themselves at the same time. AS: Thoreau, in describing his boat, says that of a true boat that it
must learn from the water and from the air. The part of the boat under the water, the hull, is the
fish. So where a fish has fins is where you would put your paddles, where you would put your
dagger board, where the tail of the fish is is where the rudder should go. And from the birds we
learn where our sails should be, what the top of the boat should look like. And I think what
Thoreau is getting at is that the boat is not of the water or of the air, it's of both. It was connected
to everything.

My Facebook feed has been a shitstorm of panic since Jan 22 as the tyranny and the bullshit of
the Trump administration unfurls at a rapid pace. I think that I keep thinking that if people read
about it, or just SEE it, that they will understand that we are in very dangerous territory as a
democracy. Like my all caps insistence that we are in a constitutional crisis will wake people up.

While Jibrin's lack of credibility given his part in the 2016 budget padding saga tarnishes his
message (messenger is equally as important as the message, if not more in our climes), there is
no doubt he was in uncharted territory for a northern politician. Some of what he said were as
ridiculous as it gets (e.g. proposing the president's wife Aisha Buhari for a cabinet position in
government), however in making a case for the president to exit the stage before the end of his
term he was going against the grain of popular sentiment in his part of the country. The Buhari
mythology is still strong; Mai Gaskiya is still revered by the talakawa as seen with the prayers
for his good health and return to the country, as well as the jubilation when he arrived back after
49 days in the UK. Also, bearing in mind that if the president steps down the mantle will pass to
his vice president Professor Yemi Osinbajo (a southerner), the north will feel cheated again by
fate.