Sweetpea’s Garden

Hello Friends. I am so sorry that I have neglected you all this week. I had no intention of doing so, but wow has this week gone by fast. So I will start with our new Friday tradition, and work backwards in the week. This will be a long post

What are your favorite baby gifts? And I mean to both give and, for those of you with kids, to receive.

Since I don’t have kids, I’ll skip the receiving end (but do love to know what’s hot with the mommy set, since I literally have a dozen friends having babies this year).

My stock baby gift regardless of gender are books.  My top three (that generally are gifted as a trio) are: Oh the Places You’ll Go (Dr. Seuss), Love You Forever (Robert Munsch), and The Giving Tree (Shel Silverstein). I also love to give the starter of a charm bracelet for a little girl. I know these are hopelessly old fashioned but I loved mine, and think it is a sweet idea to pass to the next generation. (I have no such cute idea for boys - sorry!)

As usual, comment away!

Now, for what I should have posted earlier in the week.

TBT: Rwanda, Long-lost Cousins, and Seashells

So, when I last posted I was in Pawley’s Island, South Carolina (can’t believe that was a week ago already!).  I was there for a gathering of people interested in partnering with the Mustard Seed Project to find sponsors for the students of the Sonrise Primary and High School, in Rwanda. Back in the summer of 2005 I went to Rwanda to visit this school. I had an amazing adventure and was forever changed. When I lived in DC, I worked with seven friends to start and manage the Sonrise High School sponsorship program. It was very hard to step away when we moved to Houston, but this was my opportunity to step back in to the fray. (BTW, if you are interested in the details of sponsorship, let me know.) So this weekend in SC with friends old and new working for Rwanda is my first beautiful thing.

Right before I left for SC I got a phone call from my second cousin (I think) Maureen, who lived in DC in the late 90s.  Sweetpea and I had gotten together with her a few times back then and lost touch. Well Maureen was in Houston last weekend and we overlapped on Sunday night. So Chris picked me up from the airport and off we went to dinner with Maureen and had a blast. We really do have a fun family - even in its many extensions!

And lastly, while in SC, I had a brief opportunity to do on of my favorite things - walk along a white sand beach and pick up seashells. I have a collection from my travels far and wide, and added to it last weekend. There is something very peaceful at the beach, which I love.

So I guess I’ll stop here for today. I will actually be home this weekend (and so will my other half) so we are going to spend a very domestic weekend getting into stuff at the house. Updates will be forthcoming.

Oh, one more thing. A neighbor from home-home (a.k.a. Binghamton), and good friend and colleague to my parents died last night of a massive heart attack. Steve was about in his mid 60s maybe. Longevity, it seems, is skipping Dads generation. So if you are the praying kind, offer up one for Steve and his family. He was a good man, with a hearty laugh and mischievous (in a good way) smile, and will be missed.

Below is a meme that sprite and randomduck both posted last month while I was in St. Paul. I didn’t have a chance to do it then, but I saved it, figuring I would get to it at some point, which, it turns out, is today.

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These are the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users (as of Oct. 1). Bold is for books you’ve read. Italics for books you’ve started but haven’t finished. Strikethrough is for books you found unreadable. Leave the ones you haven’t read as they are. Put an asterisk before each book you want or plan to read.

Continue reading ‘Reading List?’

Any of you who keep track of my sidebar items from Goodreads.com will see that What is the What is no longer listed. You may also notice that it has not moved to the “recently read” list below. This is because, at long last, I have admitted to myself that I am never going to finish that book. It’s not that it’s not good–it is–but because I can’t cope with the subject matter, which is genocide in Sudan. Not the current situation in Darfur, but an earlier instance about 20 years ago.

And I think that’s why I can’t deal; because I can’t understand why, time after time and in nation after nation one people will willingly visit atrocities upon another, in the name of land, or civilization, or ethnic purity, or whatever they want to call it. I literally cannot make one bit of sense out why–in less than a century–we’ve gone from the Holocaust to the Khmer Rouge to Darfur to everything in between. The idea that this type of inhumanity exists just crushes me.

So yeah, I can’t finish the book. I read a chapter and it makes me want to cry. I read two, and it enrages me. I read three, and I am full of despair.