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April 23, 2005
ordinary people
there's hope after all...
...even as nightline is investigating whether or not keeping it real has gone terribly wrong. this evening's show: "streetcred." i don't have the energy to listen to al sharpton discussing the ills of hip-hop. not tonight, al. i'm in too much of a good mood.
...and even as i discover that there are still "white only" neighborhoods, my spirit refuses to be weighed down.
i asked the students in my class if they'd be interested in donating some items for a care package that i was putting together to send to my sister. she's stationed in afghanistan at the moment. my family tries to send her something on the regular, so that she'll always be getting some love from home. my youngest sister talks to her daily via email. and i must admit that i'm slacking in that department.
my sister told us that some of the soldiers hardly receive any care packages, if at all. so, i thought it would be a great idea to get something together. a couple of weeks ago, i mentioned this in class, and the students came thru. i mean in a big way.
when i tell y'all that they brought so much stuff, i mean they brought so much stuff. like so much stuff i couldn't carry it home on the shuttle bus.
and now my faith has been restored. i'd like to write more about it, but i don't want to take away from the magic. it does make me smile on the inside, though. from the moment i learned that my sister was going to afghanistan, i've been feeling kinda helpless. and i guess part of that is because i'm the oldest and always want to protect my two younger brothers and two younger sisters. but this sister is so far away, and the evening news or the nightly tallies about how many soldiers we've lost, how many civilians we've lost, don't help my sense of being the oldest. but now i feel like i'm doing something. and it feels good. you should try it. just do something. even if it's something seemingly small...it'll make all the difference in the world. i know that it has to me and the students in my writing course this fall semester at syracuse university.
poem for the day
or rather quote for the day
from The Fire Next Time
Jame Baldwim
Love takes off the masks that we fear cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word love here not merely in the personal snese but as a state of being, or a state of grace--not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.
Posted by emnorris at April 23, 2005 04:50 AM