A Day of Silence

I Love a Good Mystery

In trying to decide on a post today, I toyed for quite some time with discussing three articles I read in the Washington Post and Time magazine that were on some fairly depressing topics. Before I could get around to that, thankfully, I saw this article about today being William Shakespeare's birthday. Or is it? It's not very newsworthy, but then again I love these little historical mysteries.
____________________

Is tomorrow Shakespeare's birthday?

Tomorrow could be the day to blow out the 443 candles on William Shakespeare's birthday cake - not St George's Day on Monday, which has been celebrated for centuries as both the birth and death date of England's greatest playwright.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2062290,00.html

Day of Blog Silence - April 30

I saw this notice posted at Bob's blog and wanted to be sure to include it here. With apologies to Bob for not coming up with an original explanation, let me quote from his posting on the purpose of this day of silence:

"Silence can say more than a thousand words. This day shall unite us all about this unbelievable painful & shocking event and show respect and love to those who lost their loved ones. On April 30th 2007, the Blogosphere will hold a One-Day Blog Silence in honor of the victims at Virginia Tech. More then 30 died at the US college massacre. But it´s not only about them. Many bloggers have responded and asked about all the other victims of our world. All the people who die every day. What about them? This day can be a symbol of support to all the victims of our world!"

Making Choices

RDL has a great post on her blog about making choices. Think of how much happier a place the world would be if we all made these kind of choices.

Amma

A. and I just finished watched an interesting documentary on Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, known around the world as Amma; the documentary, entitled Darshan: The Embrace, followed her on a tour around her native India as she shared her teaching with the thousands who attended her rallies. Many of you may recall her as the mahatma who traveled to the United States last year and spent hours giving hugs to the people who waited in line to see her at her different appearances. In fact, at the end of the documentary the filmmakers flash a statement which says it is estimated that Amma has given 23 million hugs around the world -- and the film of the rally which closes the documentary includes the fact that over a 21-hour period, she gave hugs to 45,000 people.

This is far from the traditional style of documentaries I have seen in the past, in that there is no running commentary or narration to explain what we are watching. The genuine affection that people feel for Amma is there, however, and her love for humanity is equally apparent. She says at one point that as a bee looks at a flower and only sees honey, and a sculptor looks at a block of stone and only sees a statue, she looks at people and only sees the good within them. It would be nearly impossible to try and explain the tremendous emotion on the faces of the people who are with her, so I won't even try -- you'll just have to watch it for yourselves.

If there's one drawback to the documentary, it's that you're left at the end knowing very little about her background. We see film clips of her from earlier in her life, and learn that she has spearheaded the construction of thousands of homes and the construction of a state-of-the-art hospital in India, and that she has received the Gandhi Prize for Peace. You don't learn more, but you're definitely left wanting to learn more -- and so while I strongly recommend you see this documentary, you can also go here and here to learn more about this remarkable woman.

KV Treasure

Talk about a remarkable story and keepsake this young man has!!

Hokie Hope

Reporters and Prison

I took a bit of time today to read through some magazines that had been cluttering our racks at home and which, for purposes of de-cluttering, I had decided to throw out. These two articles were of particular interest to me; they both deal with the imprisonment of reporters, but they are from two different decades and in two entirely different parts of the world.

"First Person: Imprisoned in Zimbabwe," by Alex Perry. An interesting story by a reporter from Time magazine who was thrown in jail by Mugabe's government because they were afraid he would write negative stories about Mugabe and his regime.

"On Not Naming Names," by Myron Farber. Farber was thrown in jail in the 1970s for contempt during a murder trial in New Jersey; he had refused to reveal all of the information and sources he had accumulated in his research of a story that culminated in bringing a physician to trial for murdering patients. The Judith Miller story of three decades ago.

Prayers for Virginia Tech

Absolutely horrific events today on the campus of Virginia Tech, and the second time in a year that violence has touched the small town of Blacksburg (about 90 miles from where I grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains). I've heard many of the news reports about what happened, and even a lot of theorizing as to why it happened, but I still cannot understand it.

33 people lost their lives in an environment that should logically be one of the safest -- a college campus. With wars being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and violence touching the largest cities of the United States, you wouldn't think that something like this -- the worst example of this type of violence in the history of the country -- could take place in a small town in southwest Virginia. 33 young men and women, some of whom I'm sure were looking forward to graduating in a matter of weeks. 33 young men and women who, when they left their dorms or apartments this morning, weren't thinking beyond the next lecture, the next exam, or the next date.

I pray for the victims, for their families, for the many others who are in the hands of surgeons and medical staff at numerous hospitals in the area. I pray for the college administrators, grief counselors, and chaplains who will have to help the thousands of other students who have been touched by this horrific event work through their anger, their grief, and their shock.

And I pray for my youngest sister, who is a graduate of that school, lives not far from campus, and has many friends in the area. As of this writing, I don't know if she knew any of the victims, but I pray that if she did, she finds comfort in a community that will most definitely come together in a show of unity -- of family -- that will be needed to cope with the feelings and stress in the days and weeks to come.

Possible Short Story

Interesting idea for a short story: Harper Lee, J. D. Salinger, and Thomas Pynchon -- three of the most reclusive authors of all time -- decide to get out of their respective houses and meet up for dinner and drinks. Now I just need to figure out HOW to write it!! Would it be a dry meeting, or would hilarity ensue? And would people even care when they noticed these three individuals out in public?