the hunger games

i love so much about the hunger games books. i love that an entire houston charter school is reading them 6th-8th at the same time. i love that it gets kids to love books and the imaginary world. i love that the hero is impoverished, with an unstable family, little education, and at first glance, not much hope for change for the next generation-except escaping illegally or dying.

way to go, suzanne collins. you should win a medal of some kind.

and yes, i agree with my roommate who sometimes says she's disturbed how popular such a gruesome subject has become. but in the the acknowledgements section from the author, collins talks about how she was inspired by her father's stories of war and peace and government. suzanne collins, with a young adult crazy popular book series, has brought to the forefront of trendy culture the subject of democracy, justice, and freedom. if you do not care about voting, or local policies, or current events, well, many would argue you're assisting in the breakdown of america.

katniss and her friends and family live under an oppressive, unfair government, and they are willing to die to change things. in america and many other countries across the globe, we are not at the point where it takes a life to change things. we are able to use our intellect and volunteer time and careers to influence and determine our politicians. We are able to fight for justice without dying for it. We are able to choose our fate in a much more real way than Katniss and the people of her story.

It takes a lot to get twenty-somethings - or middle schoolers - to appreciate their government, and their voice as part of it. But suzanne collins has done it, and for that, my hat goes of to her. i think her books will have positive, lifechanging effects on hundreds, if not thousands of people. And if you think i'm exaggerating, you can think about my delilah (extremely bright student from last year, often unguided and unfocused). think about when she will read this book in a few years, and how she will identify with the main character. she has dirty clothes, is often hungry, cannot speak to her father because he's dead, her mother is doing her best but not around as much as she'd like, she has no money, those around her do not have jobs that fulfill them or bring them joy - in general, struggling. but the girl in the book's story is one of triump, of perseverance through challenges (although exaggerated to the extreme), of love for her community, and for herself. the girl in the book's story is empowering, full of hope and excitement and sadness that builds character.

i hope that delilah reads it and sees the same for her life. because unlike tv shows, or even movies that i love, books stick with you: books open your mind and grow your brain and get your feet moving.

the reader cannot help but chant "go katniss go" under their breath while they read it. i hope delilah will read it and walk away chanting for herself, a similar brave girl who learns to believe in herself. go, delilah, go!

*though i love the hunger games as much as any other books i've ever read, i must say i would have rather suzanne collins released them when i was still young enough to spend my evenings (after daylight savings time, yahoo!) playing with my brother in our backyard and playing imaginary games. we would have imagined the heck out of hunger games. i would have made a great katniss, and he could have been gale and president snow and all the other characters. and, let's be honest, i would have totally made him play rue. tiptoeing around the backyard, pretending he's a young girl with birdlike features? oh yea, he'd have done it.

let hope float up

old habits. selfish desires. friends. childhood. dreams. we're never really ready to let them go. change is hard, especially the finality of death.

we're never really ready to let go.

she was on this earth for ninety-five and one half years - that's 34,800 days. but, she's been gone two months and i still don't want to let her go. my family clings to bits of my great-grandmother, and the legacy she left behind, just as we hope our spouses, our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren will do for us. i know, in the back of my mind, that i cannot bring her back, but we carry her memory forward, looking at her smile in old photos. Her bright orange comb that she used to fluff her gray hair is in my top bathroom drawer now, a few of her old dresses hang in my closet, her voice lingers in our ears. i have known for years that one day the breath would leave her body, but that does not mean we were ready to let her go.

that's where hope comes in. hope for the everlasting.

i think of the old hymn(press play at the bottom of link)

it's recently been redone by the indellible grace project (check em out) called give me christ, or else i die.

change. death. heartache. we hate them, run about in fear of facing them. those of us left behind are robbed of what -or who- once brought us joy.

mary ella, my greatgrandmother. wesley, our cousin and grandson. jaybird, our friend and dad and husband. even sam, the beloved golden retriever. i'm sure you, dear reader, have your own list of loved ones you miss so much you feel the heartache from head to toe.

but they're gone for a reason, a reason we cannot understand nor are we designed to. we trust that we are provided the strength, grace, courage, love to go on. move forward. keep breathing.

it's the same with unhealthy habits, selfish desires, negative attitudes, ungrateful hardened hearts. it's hard to let them go, easier to cling to the familiar, out of fear or even simply habit.

but that everlasting hope is bigger than our wealth, honor, earthly comfort, vain ambition (all mentioned in the hymn). i take comfort in the fact that others have taken comfort in Christ for thousands of years before me. this hymn was written in the mid 18-th century, and i love to stand on tiptoe and sing it loudly here in the 21st.

my great-grandmother's death has recently demanded i look closer at my years - i most likely will not be granted the gift of 95. what am i doing? how is my time being spent? does my life reflect the lyrics of this hymn?

"Lord deny me what thou wilt...In Thy Grace alone I trust...Give me Christ or else I die"

"May God, the source of all hope, fill you with all joy and peace by means of your faith in Him."
Romans 15:13

love, crob

you can pick your nose - but you can't pick your siblings. can you pick your siblings' nose?

when he had trouble sleeping at night, we became bunkmates. when i needed a student while i was playing bossy teacher, he was there. when i needed someone to vent to about our crazy parents, he was there.

drives me up the wall. infuriates me. baffles me. but, none of us are perfect and i have the same affect on him. recently, i was missing him at an event for the rodeo committee we're on together. about thirty minutes after admitting this out loud( (mistake!), one of his closest friends asked if i had seen the picture of his helmet.

what are you talking about? then someone showed the helmet pic. this:

my brother had gotten some huge air "shredding the nar" while snowboarding.

moral of the story: wear a helmet. maybe avoid jumps. and appreciate your siblings. you just never know when they might get concussed & never make it back to texas.

(i'm exaggerating. he's already back in texas and is fine. i still have to share half of my inheritance with him. punk.)

i know i'm hard on my brother, and sometimes he thinks i think he's pond scum (to quote my best friends wedding) but really, i love him and would be a wreck if his already oversized head had anything serious happen to it.

so, today, please. tell your siblings that you love them, and remind them to do things like, wear helmets, look both ways before the cross the street, wash their hands after handling raw meat, get a flu shot, wear SPF 30 or higher, and anything else that could help one avoid death.

safety is not his mantra.

after a long hiatus...

We are most alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. thorton wilder

I haven't written much since the middle of summer, as my brain and heart and body winded down from the windstorm that was the past two years.

Looking back, I often wrote from a place of overwhelming emotion - those times i wanted to jump for joy, or curl into a ball, breaking under the weight of the world. some days, i longed to twirl under twinkle lights, kick up my heels, hug someone, my smile was huge!Oh, the delight in seeing a light bulb go off inside a child's head! I also wrote from a hardened place, a witness of poverty or abuse, struggle after struggle. Often, it was gut-wrenching mixture of both. I learned more about humanity in those two years and did more growing up than i had dared imagine.

i won't go into detail of the joys and trials of my time with teach for america and as a Title I teacher here - you can find that scattered in the archives of this blog. i just reference those times to explain my hiatus from blogging - i've had a bit of writers block, i suppose. a vacation. i've wondered, what to share with the world now? my ramblings? a few recipes i found? tales of my new "desk job"? it all seems meaningless compared to where i'd been.

i cannot tell you how much i appreciate the friends/roommate/parents asking "what's up with the not blogging." because let's be honest - my blog could be shut down by al gore (the inventor of the internets) at any moment and it would not be a tragedy. it would not go out loudly, but likely evaporate as quietly as it came about, with a post about a jog around the white house and an encounter with the secret service.

still, it's nice to know i have some readers and in some way i might provide laughter or some other entertainment through writing.

without further ado, here we are: the first of hopefully many more regular posts. you might notice me mentioning a very cute boy from time to time, but don't expect this to turn into a crazy-girl-finally-met-a-crazy-dude and that's all she's going to talk about now. quite the contrary. (although, yes, i am currently following a fella around these days and he doesn't seem to mind. much.)

what better way to start than with a few new entries to the quote book, from an actual book called "happily grateful." i found it in a stationary shop that i wandered into with aforementioned boy. yes, he makes my heart happy, long before i knew he could tolerate a stationary shop for longer than five minutes. (but not that much longer.)

Every single day do something that makes your heart sing. Marcia Weider

All the really great things in life are expressed in the simplest words: friends and family; purpose and meaning; love and work; caring and community; appreciation and gratitude. Dan Zadra

Never squander an opportunity to tell someone you love or appreciate them. Kelly Ann Rothaus

fasten your seatbelts, folks. you may be in for a bumpy ride.