we’re surrounded by people in life for more reasons than i can name…companionship, collaboration, friendship, sympathy…etc… sharpening. yeah. sharpening. you know, the kind of thing that makes you stronger, that refines you, that grows you more into the person you are to be. i don’t really like the sharpening reason so much. i always like the end result, i like what i become. but it’s the process of getting there, the exposure of weaknesses and the vulnerability of being wrong, the process of changing that i could do without. hmm. let me explain. in your own bubble, a world all your own,...
Read Moregert and his wife johanna have always had a heart for children. they sponsored a couple of their own for many years and even came to india to visit them. but their sponsoring organization would not let them become involved as they wanted to be. samson and lalitha also have a special place in their hearts for little ones. they began and ran the school & orphanage for 25 years. but the board was being too restrictive, they cared little for the daily needs of the children. somehow, the paths of the two couples crossed and C.H.I.L.D. was formed. 36 sponsors...
Read MoreWashington, D.C. October 3, 1863 This is the proclamation which set the precedent for America’s national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders like this. The holiday we know today as Thanksgiving was recommended to Lincoln by Sarah Josepha Hale, a prominent magazine editor. Her letters to Lincoln urged him to have the “day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival.” The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” According to an April 1, 1864 letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln’s secretaries, this document was...
Read Morejournaled 8 november, 2006 i wonder what she’s thinking and i want to hear her story. she’s one of the older girls of the orphanage, 13 she tells me, and in the 8th class. every meal she helps serve us and our water glasses never stay empty for long. with her long braids hang behind her, her dark eyes always observing and i want to know her story. we were done working for the day and unwinding before bed. i heard the children singing on the other side of the wall and couldn’t resist sneaking over to watch. i pulled up a...
Read Morejournaled 5 november, 2006 can every day really be filled with such full life? with such purpose? we awoke early to the beginning day noises on the other side of the wall. we are being housed on the second floor of the children’s home, our seven in one half and their 36 in the other. i could hear them getting ready, clothing themselves in sunday’s best. all their possessions held in one single trunk, they folded up their mats and placed them inside. carefully, they helped each other stack them up in the back room, allowing the service to take place...
Read Morejournaled 4 november, 2006 someday, when my hair has turned a silvery gray and my knees don’t bend like they used to… when i spend my tuesday nights playing bridge and i can’t remember the last time i stayed up past nine o’clock… when i repeat phrases like ‘kids these days’ and talk about what life was like before the internet… even then i’ll remember this day. it started out as quite the day of travel. we were seven, our bags were twenty-one. living in india, i hadn’t realized how much i had learned to do without. i brought my three changes...
Read Moreindia has trouble caring for the living, but it perhaps reveals more of itself in how it cares for the dead. laws can be made and unmade with a stroke of a fountain pen, but attitudes must be crafted with time and unflagging will. in india the greatest barrier to class integration may well be the attitude of the untouchables themselves. the poorest and the least educated members of society, harijans, are often the most conservative as well. at election time they may vote to shake the tree in hopes of dislodging choicer fruit, but most would never consider chopping the...
Read MoreRight about now, Jill should now be hard at work finishing up her second project trip… this one in guntur, about midpoint on India’s eastern coast, only further inland. By American standards, not far at all from her former adventures in Machilipatnam; by Indian standards, not even close. After nearly a week of travel, she first met up with her incoming US team in Chennai, then on to the site of what will by g-d’s grace become a children’s home. Tucked in along the way was an invigorating side excursion to acquaint them with an existing children’s home. Meeting its...
Read Morefrom childhood onwards, an indian is exposed to more combinations of flavors and seasonings than perhaps anyone else in the world. their cuisine is based on variety, which, in flavors, encompasses hot-and-sour, hot-and-nutty, sweet-and-hot, bitter-and-hot, bitter-and-sour, and sweet-and-salty; in seasonings, it stretches from the freshness and sweetness of highly aromatic curry leaves to the dark pungency of the resin, asafetida, whose earthly aroma tends to startle westerners just as much as the smell of a strong, ripe cheese does indians. their spice shelves often contain more than thirty seasonings. the indian genius lies not only in squeezing several flavors out of...
Read Moreas i’ve been here these past few months, i’ve especially enjoyed extra time to read. most of the books i’ve read have been set in india or written by an indian author. in their vivid use of words and articulate sentence structures, they seem to describe this place far better than i ever could. in my absence, i hope to share a few of their descriptions for which i myself could never find the adequate words. india is everything human. it is all of our history: it is the past, it is the future. if it has been thought, experienced, or...
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