miniZibaldone

If I Live to be 100 Neenah Ellis  Excerpt from chapter 3 "Mona Breckner: 'I Tried to Do My Part'" Now her many nieces and nephews and their many children look in on her regularly, celebrate holidays with her, call her on the phone.      "They're my family now and they're very, very precious to me," she says seriously. "One niece feels as if I were her mother. We're very close."      She is around young families enough to have a strong opinion about what's wrong with the American family today.      "I think that women are not taking responsibility for family life as my parents did. My mother had a great deal of influence on my life, and I never could thank her enough for the feeling that she raised me with —the sharing feelings that I have about everybody. I think there's something lacking today. I think it's partly because the mother's attention has been pulled aside by the suffrage deal and the...

Sophie Scholl and the White Rose Annette Dumbach The Jewel in the Lotus Allen Edwardes  Grand Fathers Nikki Giovanni  On the Nature of the Universe Lucretius  After This Alice McDermott  A Need to Testify Iris Origo  Strangers and Sojourners Michael O'Brien  A Season in the West Piers Paul Read    Practical English Handbook Watkins/Dullingham Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass  

  From an address Grandparents are so important in the family. Grandparents have memory; they have wisdom. Do not leave grandparents to one side! They are very important. [...] Take care of peace in the family: we all know there is quarrelling in the family. When there is no quarrelling in a marriage, it seems abnormal. What is important is that the day not end without making peace. [...] One must learn this wisdom of making peace. You have made war during the day? Is your war still hot? Don’t let it become cold, because the “cold war” of the day after is more dangerous than the “hot war.” Understood? Make peace in the evening, always! The Jubilee is to be lived also in the domestic Church, not only in great events! What’s more, the Lord loves one who practices mercy in ordinary circumstances. I wish you this: that you experience the joy of mercy, beginning in your family. [full text]