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Dis Jamaican Back at SchoolChronicles of a Displaced Yardie 13 January In Her Defense by Stephen HornJust finished this book. Excellent!!! If you happen to enjoy legal thrillers, I highly recommend this novel. And as a sucker for a love story, the added romance rounds out the story in a most satisfying manner. Everyone needs a Walter in there life. 26 September A Little Inspirationhttp://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid452319854?bctid=1199157902
The above link provides a short video clip (a couple of minutes) of a "last lecture", which is a common title for talks on college campuses today. Many universities have mounted "Last Lecture Series," in which top professors are asked to think deeply about what matters to them and to give hypothetical final talks. For the audience, the question to be mulled is this: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? It can be an intriguing hour, watching healthy professors consider their demise and ruminate over subjects dear to them. 18 April We are Virginia TechI am sure you have all heard by now what happened at Virginia Tech this week. I am fine. I wasn't on campus during the shootings. I wanted to share with you Nikki Giovanni's poem at the end of our convocation and a picture from our candlelight vigil. Please be praying for shooter's and victims' families and the survivors of the shootings.
We are Virginia Tech. We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devestated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech. The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness. We are the Hokies. We will prevail. We will prevail. We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech. 25 February Valentine's Ball and Pamper PartyThe campus ministry at James Madison University (JMU) put on their annual Valentine's Ball in Staunton last weekend. Much fun. Will from Charlottesville was my date (remember him from late 2005 - check Two and a half months in one blog, January 2006) and we won the prize of the games that they had with couples. It came down to three couples and after several tries we won. The final question question that we won on? Any couple in which someone spoke more than two languages? Yes, me - English, Spanish and patois. hahahahaha. He is a good sport - early in the game they were looking for the couple that looked most alike and we went up. hahahahaha. Will is fairly tall white male - we sure look like twins separated from birth. Anyway, after dinner and the games there was lots of dancing which was much fun. I don't have pictures this time because I forgot my camera. Again. I really am glad that journalism is not my field because I would have lost my job a long time ago. I drove the two hours back to Blacksburg that night with a full car. At the end I was singing loudly to keep myself awake. We reached back around 1:30.
Tonight us girls had a pamper party at my apartment. It was such fun! Facials, manicures and pedicures were the order of the day. Maral made this chocolate mask that tasted as good as it felt. It was a mixture of chocolate, oatmeal, cottage cheese, honey and heavy cream. After I washed it off I didn't need moisturiser and we all had a beautiful glow. My nails are cranberry now. It has been a long day because I also spent the day with Carlyn and we drove down to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to shop at a grocery store called Whole Foods that sells mostly organic, natural stuff. Dang, if I didn't spend too much there. Oh well, you only live once. Well, it's plenty of work to catch up tomorrow. I should be heading to Florida for Spring Break next week.
Oh, add we did get tickets for the Lion King musical only we don't have to go all the way to New York. It will be in North Carolina later this year. 13 February Ways to Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point a Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down.
2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don't Disguise Your Voice.
3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, Ask If They Want Fries with that.
4. Put Your Garbage Can On Your Desk And Label It "In."
5. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks Once Everyone has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso.
6. In The Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write " For Smuggling Diamonds"
7. Finish All Your sentences with "In Accordance With The Prophecy."
8. Don't use any punctuation
9. As Often As Possible, Skip Rather Than Walk.
10. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.
11. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is "To Go."
12. Sing Along At The Opera.
13. Go To A Poetry Recital And Ask Why The Poems Don't Rhyme?
14. Put Mosquito Netting Around Your Work Area And Play tropical Sounds All Day.
15. Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Fr iends You Can't Attend Their Party Because You're Not In The Mood.
16. Have Your Co-workers Address You By Your Wrestling Name, Rock Bottom.
17. When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream "I Won!, I Won!"
18. When Leaving The Zoo, Start Running Towards The Parking lot, Yelling "Run For Your Lives, They're Loose!!"
19. Tell Your Children Over Dinner. "Due To The Economy, We Are Going To Have To Let One Of You Go." 11 February Trip to DC and BaltimoreMaral, Kate and I went to D.C. and Baltimore this weekend. I got back home about an hour ago. We drove up late Friday night. After catching a few winks Cherie met us at Maral's home and the four of us drove up to Baltimore and had breakfast with some of the brothers in the Baltimore church. Good food and good conversation.
After breakfast, Cherie headed back to DC to attend a friend's wedding and Maral, Kate and I hung out at Barnes and Noble near the Baltimore harbour for a couple of hours. I really should have learned my lesson by now to know that I shouldn't hang out at bookstores because I cannot resist buying books. So, of course, when I left I had transferred a few of my dollars to B&N in exchange for a funny little book of witty quotations like:
"One of my friends asked me if a woman should have children after 35. I said that I thought 35 children is enough for any woman." (Gracie Allen), and
"The difference between a man and a municipal bond is that municipal bonds eventually mature." (Agnes Langer)
You see why I couldn't resist it. (On a side note, the movie "Wit" is an excellent one and well worth seeing.)
Then we went to see the musical "Wicked". Excellent! Fantastic! Wonderful! I loved it. The plot is about the story behind the two witches in the Wizard of Oz. The musical was adapted from the novel of the same name. The singing was superb. And the set! Just so great. It inspired us that we should splurg and make a trip to see the musical "The Lion King" on Broadway some time this year. Maral wanted us to go to a restaurant in DC called Sweet Water to have ribs for dinner but the wait was 90 minutes so we didn't bother.
This morning we went to the Northern Virginia church and I got to see my friends that I had run into the last time I was in DC. But I also got to see Supatra that I haven't seen since I graduated from MIT 16 years ago! That was such a great surprise. Anyway, after church we went to Sweet Water and had ribs for lunch with some of the other singles from that church and headed back to B'burg. It was a great weekend. Now I just have to stay up very late tonight and tomorrow to try and catch up on all the reading I have to do for class this week.
Baptisms are great!A friend of mine became a Christian the other day. I had met Crystal quite randomly on campus one day before our weekly Bible discussion group and had invited her to attend. She couldn't come that evening but visited a few weeks later and before long she wanted to study the Bible and know more about what God expects of her. The main thing I appreciate about her is how eagerly she started to change things in her life that she knew were not pleasing to God. It really was amazing to see God moving in her life through his book. She got baptised last month. No Left TurnsYeah, I know that I haven't written anything about myself lately but I'll keep you entertained with this funny story ...
This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Well worth reading. And a few good laughs are guaranteed.
My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet. "In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it." At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh, bull----!" she said. "He hit a horse." "Well," my father said, " there was that, too." So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the VanLaninghams cross the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.
My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines, would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.
My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that. But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one."
It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first. But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown. It was a four- door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.
Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother. So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, and a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying once.
For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.
Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)
He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then he'd head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."
After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio.
In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored.") If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream.
As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?" "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre. "No left turns," he said. "What?" I asked. "No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in, happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided; never again to make a left turn."
"What?" I said again. "No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights." "You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support.
"No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works." But then she added: "Except when your father loses count." I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing. "Loses count?" I asked. "Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again." I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked. "No," he said. "If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week." My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90. She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102. They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom --the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.) He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.
One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide- ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news. A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer."
"You're probably right," I said. "Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated. "Because you're 102 years old," I said. "Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day. That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night. He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet." An hour or so later, he spoke his last words: "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have." A short time later, he died.
I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long. I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life or because he quit taking left turns.
Fleur here again: Maybe you should take time to express how much you love one of your beloved. 01 February The Cowboy Boots(Anyone who has ever dressed a child will love this one!)
Did you hear about the Texas teacher who was helping one of her kindergarten students put on his cowboy boots? He asked for help and she could see why....
Even with her pulling and him pushing, the little boots still didn't want to go on. By the time they got the second boot on, she had worked up a sweat. She almost cried when the little boy said, "Teacher,they're on the wrong feet." She looked, and sure enough, they were. It wasn't any easier pulling the boots off than it was putting them on. She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get the boots back on, this time on the right feet. He then announced, "These aren't my boots." She bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream, "Why didn't you say so?", like she wanted to. Once again, she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off his little feet. No sooner had they gotten the boots off when he said, "They're my brother's boots. My Mom made me wear 'em." Now she didn't know if she should laugh or cry. But, she mustered up what grace and courage she had left to wrestle the boots on his feet again. Helping him into his coat, she asked, "Now, where are your mittens?" He said, "I stuffed 'em in the toes of my boots."
(She will be eligible for parole in three years....) 22 December Hurricane Katrina Relief - Day 4Sam, Raquel, James and I decided to return home a day early. It was predicted to rain all day today and we would not get any work done at the site. Sure enough it started to rain from last night and it was very loud on the zinc roof of the camp. We packed last night and headed out right after breakfast this morning. There isn't much to say about a 14 hour drive. James drove for the first 10 hours and I drove the last four. Sam and Raquel slept most of the time. I read a whole novel (I had brought several novels with me for the trip and everyone was rather taken aback at how fast I got through them - one per day, either after work or during the drive there and back. I realise that it isn't only Jamaicans that don't read much.) Someone in a black 4x4 pickup almost ran us off the road - James was quick to point out that it was a woman. Since I was driving and my quick thinking allowed me to maneuver to avoid an accident, it is break even for women drivers. In the late afternoon we were all awake and started singing, playing games and chatting. We got back at 9:30 last night. |
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