 I'm Columbia City Councilwoman Tanika Isaac Devine, and today I wanted to share with you another book from Together We Can Read. Together We Can Read is a partnership between the City of Columbia and Richland School District 1, where every single year we recruit community volunteers to go into every single third-grade class in Richland School District 1 and share with them a book that has a relationship to Columbia or South Carolina. Usually there's a local author or the story is about a local person that not a lot of people know about. Unfortunately this year during the coronavirus pandemic we were unable to go into the schools and read because school is out. But we wanted to take this opportunity to share with you the books that we have shared with Richland School District 1 students over the years. So today I want to share with you another amazing book that we have shared with students in Richland School District 1 and it's about Dave the Potter. Dave was an enslaved person here in South Carolina. He was in Edgefield, South Carolina and he used his talents to become a potter and he which molded the dirt into clay and made vessels. And on the pottery he also would write his poetry and share it with those people that would buy his pottery. It's a wonderful, wonderful story and it's my pleasure to share it with you right now. Dave the Potter is written by Laban Carrick Hill and is illustrated by Brian Collier. So let's get started on Dave the Potter. Dave the Potter, artist, poet, slave. To us it is dirt, the ground we walk on, scoop up a handful, the gritty grain slip between your fingers. On wet days, heavy with rainwater, it is cool and squishy, mud pie heaven. But today it was clay, the plain and basic stuff upon which he learned to form a life as a slave nearly 200 years ago. It's just a pot, round and tall, good for keeping marbles or fresh cut flowers. But today it was a pot large enough to store a season's grain harvest to put salt and meat and to hold memories. Each one began out of the clouds of dust, clotted clumps of clay, ground in the pug mill and carried wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow to Dave's spinning potter's wheel. With a flat wooden paddle large enough to row across the Atlantic, Dave mixed clay with water drawn from Big Horse Creek until wet and stiff and heavy. That's what he made his pottery out of. He threw the clay sometimes 60 pounds at once and nobody knew how or where it would land except for Dave. Dave kicked his potter's wheel until it spun as fast as a carnival's wheel of fortune. Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Dave's hands buried in the mounted mud and pulled out a shape of a jar. You see how he molds it? His chap thumbs pinch into the center, squeeze inside against his fingers outside. As the wheels spun round and round, the walls of the jar rose up like a robin's puff breast, but only so far before its immense weight threatened to collapse. The jar grew so large, Dave could no longer wrap his strong arms around it. If he climbed into the jar and curled into a ball, he would have been embraced. And did he stop his potter's wheel and roll long ropes of clay between his dry, caked palms. Dave mounted these coils of clay one by one on the half-finished jar. He ran his wet fingers along the sides to smooth it all together, kicking the wheel with his heel of his foot. The shoulder and rim shrug upward as the jar took shape. Dave knew was there even before he worked the raw mound of his wheel. Pretty pottery bowl. When the clay dried, Dave pounded wood ash and sand to mix a glass-like brown lace to withstand time. But before the jar was completely hardened, Dave picked up a stick and wrote to let us know that he was here. I wonder where is all my relationship, friendships to all, and every nation. That is the end. I hope you enjoyed Dave the Potter and I look forward to sharing with you another book from Together We Can Read very soon. Thank you. Stay safe and continue to enjoy and love upper reading.