today i made a trade-off with my brother: if we could go to the 7th Annual Summer Reading Extravaganza! at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, I would toss frisbee with him and his friends in the park.

what a great trade-off!  we had a win-win situation.  when we got to the lawn in front of CLP for...drumroll please...7th Annual Summer Reading Extravaganza!, there were white tents up, books spilling off tables, Guitar Hero bouncing off a TV, X-Box 360 being played on two screens out of the back of a tricked out SUV, library logo t-shirts being "de-constructed," balloons, hot dogs, Eat 'n' Park Smiley whale cookies, children and big huge dogs everywhere!  we were in heaven.

we thought the 7th Annual Summer Reading Extravaganza! would only be for the kiddies, just like when we were little and trekked the long, hot, (mildly unsafe) mile to the Murrysville Community Library for our summer reading program...read so many books, get a prize or a coupon for a Happy Meal at McD's.  you remember.

but, to our great delight!! there's an adult summer reading program too!  we had peaked on Cloud Nine...we both scrambled to sign up, feeling so proud to have found this treasure of our summers again...books...with a heavy dose of pure nostalgia.

ah, lazy summer days playing outside and reading to our hearts' content.  life is full to the brim.  thank you, Jesus. 



would anyone like to read with me?

what does it mean to be "connected"?

a.) "It's who you know, not what you know."  -a common saying

b.) "interpersonal relationships"
isn't this term redundant?

hhmmm...

I've been reading Amy Tan's The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings.
How eloquent she is, having a "penchant for words," as lil bro claims he himself has. 
I wonder how old she is now, meaning, how many years has it taken her to practice, refine, and master this art of writing, storytelling, and communicating?

Here's an excerpt.

    A relative once scolded my mother, "Why do you tell your daughter these useless stories?  She can't change the past."  And my mother replied, "It can be changed.  I tell her, so she can tell everyone, tell the whole world so they know what my mother suffered.  That's how it can be changed."

    I think about what my mother said.  Isn't the past what people remember--who did what, how and why?  And what people remember, isn't that mostly what they've already chosen to believe?  For so many years, my family believed my grandmother was a victim of society, who, sadly, took her own life, no more, no less.

    In my writing room, I go back into the past, to that moment when my grandmother told my mother not to follow her footsteps.  My grandmother and I are walking side by side, imagining the past differently, remembering it another way.  Together we come upon a tomb of memories.  We open it and release what has been buried for too long--the terrible despair, the destructive rage.  We hurt, we grieve, we cry.  And then we see what remains: the hopes, broken to bits but still there.

    I look at the photograph of my grandmother.  Together we write stories of things that were and shouldn't have been, or could have been, or might still be.  We know the past can be changed  We can choose what we should believe.  We can choose what we should remember.  That is what frees us, this choice, frees us to hope that we can redeem these same memories for the little girl who became my mother.

("My Grandmother's Choice", pp.103-4)

"I can choose what I should believe.  I can choose what I should remember.  This is what frees me, this choice, frees me to hope that I can redeem these same memories for the mei-mei who became...role not known yet"

Really?

Why did she use the word "should", like there's a set of expectations she needs to fulfill?

That's what we should do.
We should be a flower to every person we touch.
To every community we should bloom,
because then we shall surely enjoy life
and feel good about the fact we came
and we touched
and we did indeed bloom.

-Wangari Maathai, in concluding her address in which she spoke out against injustice
a Kenyan
a Pitt graduate student 40 years ago
the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her struggle for human rights and conservation in Kenya

taken from 11/26/06 "Born to a better day" by Michael Fuoco, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer