Friday, December 23, 2016

MY HAPPIEST CHRISTMAS: A Mother's Christmas Letter about Family (December 19, 1952)



While taking inventory of my 2016 Year in Review these last few weeks, I've been reflecting on how May 14, 2016 could have (should have?) been my last day on planet earth. In the wee hours of the morning (3:10-3:30 a.m.) I suffered sudden anaphylaxis. Had it not been for the extraordinary alertness of my 16-year-old daughter, I would have expired on the bathroom floor.

I woke up to confusion roughly 30 hours later in ICU. I was intubated so that I couldn't swallow. That alarmed me. And my hands were tied down to the sides of the bed. That alarmed me, too. As I became more lucid in stages, I recalled being unable to breathe and nothing more. Before that, I recalled that I had spent the last week stacking my plate with record-breaking accomplishments involving home improvement & the landscaping of my property.

But as I lay in the hospital for the next two days, I couldn't recall anything more important than my daughter who saved me and the family I almost lost. And if you've been muscled by your mortality, you know this to be true: all that ever mattered was love.
Had I not made it, I would have left a book unpublished: Little House on the High Plains: Growing Up Happy and Healthy During the Dust Bowl and World War II by Major General Carl G. Schneider USAF (Ret.). This book had been a remarkable project for my wife and me. We enjoyed the learning curve it took to wrap our heads around the time period, lifestyles, and the customs of Texas farm culture.
I want to share a piece that I thought fitting for the season. In chapter 11 the author's mother, Laura, wrote a letter, on the advent of the Christmas of 1952. She was anticipating all of her grown children being back in their little house once more:


My Happy Christmas
December 19, 1952


“JoAnn, jump right in bed while I get the hot water bottle and an aspirin.” Then I will call Mr. Neis and ask him to bring a prescription from the drug store as he comes to supper. This was the first thing that happened when I got home from school the afternoon of the 19th beginning the Christmas holidays.
We had had a very busy day at school. The gift exchange had worked out well, however. Each child had been given a generous treat by the room mothers and sent home with many good wishes for a happy holiday. When the books had been put away, the Christmas decorations taken down from around the room, flowers removed from danger of a possible freezing, and the thermostat set so for a comfortable heat in a closed room, I drew a deep sigh of happiness and closed the door on school room worries. Two whole weeks of happiness at home, just being “Mother,” and the anticipation of having all my children at home together again.
After making JoAnn comfortable, I made a quick clean-up and pick-up over the house, went to the grocery store, and got supper under way.
Scarcely had I turned around it seemed before Daddy and Joyce came into the house laughing and I looked beyond them to see Martha giving Clyde’s uniform a final check, with particular attention to the new wings just that day pinned on. Of course I said, “Greetings, Lt. Schneider,” and in return got a big hug and saw the boyish grin of pleasure spread over his face. How a mother’s heart swells with pride in such a splendid son!
After supper Daddy and I dashed off late to our Sunday School class social at the church. It was a delightful evening with old and new friends, and I went home with two gifts after Daddy gave me the box of ladies’ hose he’d drawn in the gift exchange!
When we got home our first thought was of Grace, who was coming home with Carrie Bier. When they had not arrived by midnight we turned the fires low, left the door unlocked and a light burning, and went to bed.
Martha and Grace were to sleep in our room and Daddy and I took the extra bed in the boys’ room where Clyde was sleeping. About two o’clock Grace came in. She undressed very quietly, and not looking in Mother’s room lest she disturb, went to the back bedroom to that seldom-used bed. She called softly, “Clyde, Clyde,” and was startled to hear a movement in the bed that she was so sure would be empty.
Saturday morning brought the happy reunion of four children – Grace, Clyde, Joyce, and JoAnn, as well as Martha, the soon-to-be new daughter. A quick trip to town for last minute shopping, groceries, and a Christmas tree largely took up the morning. JoAnn and Clyde chose a beautiful, tall tree and began to decorate it even before the noon meal.
As the latter was almost ready, a quick wave of excitement ran through the house as someone called from the front, “Glendon has come.” And there was the tall, sturdy jet pilot who had not been with us at Christmas time for the last three years. How glad he seemed to be at home again.
After having driven steady for the past 24 hours [from Alabama], he fell in bed as soon as he had eaten lunch.
Sunday was a happy day with church in the morning and callers [in the] afternoon. I sat with little Hal Seaman while his parents attended a rehearsal and dinner for a wedding party Sunday night but was back home in time for coffee with the family before bed time.
Again the light was left burning and the fires going because Finis would be coming in before morning. Daddy and I did not sleep very soundly and were awake when the car stopped in front of the house at 3:00, exactly 52 hours since they had left Red Bank, New Jersey. We knew he really wanted to be with us to make such a long, hard journey home. Christmas had already come in our hearts when the entire family gathered for a late breakfast on that beautiful Monday morning.

How quickly the days went until Christmas Eve morning when we wakened to find a beautiful blanket of snow covering the earth and what fun it was to go downtown and see the gaily lighted windows, the throng of busy shoppers…

What struck me in this letter was something I've always seen but have never felt until recently, and that is Mothers love their children. Forever and always. Unconditionally. Because mothers give birth to children they have never seen, they love their children when they are gone just as much as when they are present. And they will love them just as much when they leave this earth.
At the time of this letter, I'm sure Laura didn't know that she only had only seven more Christmases. But that's no matter, because she loves her children now just as much as she loved them before they were born. That's what Christmas means to me this year.
Mother.
***
Little House on the High Plains can be purchased in Paperback & Kindle on Amazon:

Connect with Carl Schneider on Facebook



Wednesday, July 20, 2016

2016 THE BULLY WITHIN: A Journey of Consciousness by Dale Crowe [Where Boxing Meets Spirituality]

Traitmarker Books 2016 New Author Feature
View this email in your browser
Dale Crowe's The Bully Within
A JOURNEY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Imagine answering someone who inquired the whereabouts of a Dale Crowe with, "There never was a Dale Crowe." Now imagine responding that way if you were Dale Crowe. To most ears, that sentence would sound like a nonsense statement or an evasive manuever. For Dale Crowe it is neither.

Dale means "valley" in Hebrew. That's fitting, because I've felt squeezed between two mountains for most of my life. After going to war with that duality for almost 40 years, I've learned that there never really was a Dale Crowe... Saying that there's no real Dale Crowe sounds like a riddle. But it's actually a truth that means a lot to me.

Dale Crowe & His Maternal Grandparents
The Bully Within: A Journey of Consciousness is the autobiographical, play-by-play transformation of former, up-and-coming crusierweight boxer, Dale Crowe: the transformation from a bully into an enlightened man. The Bully Within is a book about spirituality, not boxing. In it, Dale seeks to answer his own riddle. From the first page of the prologue, he paints in detailed brush strokes the deceptively benign beginnings of his volatile past:

I was born in Ohio and grew up with my mother, stepfather, and grandparents. The deaths of my grandparents and the absence of my father introduced me at an early age to issues of loss and abandonment. When I was very young, I was a class clown. But after meeting my father at age thirteen, I wanted to model myself after him, and I learned to box partly to impress him. I rose through the ranks of amateur and professional boxing, but not until my life came crashing around me did I return to the root issues of loss and abandonment and learn to deal with them.

Those losses opened a chasm of loneliness. The combination of Dale's losses with his loneliness found him seeking larger and larger doses of ego-driven attention from an early age. It's the voice of Dale's ego pockmarking page after page in increasingly sinister, 10-point-font stocatto that Dale exposes to the light the gremlin that taunted him. It's the bully that began with him...

Who's gonna stay around you very long? New school soon? New friends?
You better find a way to matter. What if nobody even likes you? 


... and grew with him...

Everything you got is because of boxing. You don't fit into any other role. You've failed at everything else. Better get your ass back in that ring, pal, if you like what you got. You better fight to keep it. 

It was this bifurcation of Dale's identity, this objectifiction of Dale's personality, and this normalization of the voice in his head that convinced Dale from an early age that one part of him was bully and the other part was Dale Crowe.
Dale Crowe (second from the right)
While much of the book chronologically catalogues the stair-step accomplishments of Dale's boxing career (ESPN, Fox Sports, The Oprah Winfrey Show), Dale focuses on specific vignettes that were catalysts in the uncontrollable growth of his ego. By structuring the story like this, Dale allows the reader to see the bully operate from a wide angle. Dale wanted to write the kind of book that he wished he would have read as a child that would had described his internal fears against the stark relief of machismo culture. It might have made a difference. It might have diverted him from a life of violence.

Growing up, I wasn't a big reader, but I did love stories. I was mesmerized by action heroes on television and in the movies. When my life slowed down and I started looking for answers, I found new heroes - heroes who introduced me to peace and wisdom and truth in their writings. I could ask no greater honor than to lead a reader into the path I've found by honestly sharing my life in a book.

That enlightenment came four years after Dale went to prison.
Dale Crowe vs. Michael Moore Fight (ESPN)
ON VIOLENCE

Violence takes center stage in American media. From mass shootings to murders and rapes to killings by and of law enforcement officers, we seem to hear about a new tragedy before we've had time to process the old ones.

We send out thoughts and prayers to the families of victims far too often. From Columbine to Charleston to Orlando to Dallas, the venues of shootings and the names of the killers become infamous. As a result, ordinary Americans congregate in large numbers with the understanding that anywhere can be a target: a school, a movie theater, a shopping center, a bar, or a city street.

And that's not even to mention the family violence or random violence that fails to make the headlines. According to Gun Violence Archive, as of July 17, 2016, 7,458 people have died and 15,450 people have suffered injury in 28,932 incidents. And according to theNational Coalition Against Domestic Violence"nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States." Though mass shootings grab the headlines, the violence that occurs behind closed doors may do the greatest damage to the fabric of society. CASA reports on the link between child abuse and incarceration:

The new study draws a strong link between prior abuse and violent crime. Among male inmates in state prisons, 76 percent who were abused and 61 percent not abused had a current or past sentence for a violent offense. Among female offenders, 45 percent of the abused and 29 percent not abused had served a sentence for a violent crime.

Abuse is far from the only factor contributing to the likelihood of a violent life. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice reports that "nationally, 7.3 million children have at least one parent in jail or prison. Sadly, 70 percent of these kids are doomed to follow in the same footsteps as their parents becoming imprisoned at some point in their lives".

In fact, self-control plays a major part in whether victims become perpetrators. "Self-control is key to a well-functioning life, because our brain makes us easily [susceptible] to all sorts of influences. Watching a movie showing violent acts predisposes us to act violently. Even just listening to violent rhetoric makes us more inclined to be violent. Ironically, the same mirror neurons that make us empathic make us also very vulnerable to all sorts [of] influences".

So the direction of society in great part depends on how well individuals dealing with pain and violence can control the impulse to commit violence:

"Reasons for committing a crime include greed, anger, jealousy, revenge, or pride." Uncontrolled negative emotion, the choice food of the ego, acts like a cancer on society, killing the innocent to feed itself.

Children who grow up abused, impoverished, or without a stable family structure carry a burden other children do not. It is harder for them to make positive choices and to halt the cycle of pain and violence.
Dale Crowe 

THE MESSAGE

It was in prison that Dale eventually was able to relate his loss and loneliness to the bully that he had become:


Outside events damaged me because of how I allowed them to make me feel on the inside. As a child, that's understandable. But as an adult, it shouldn't be. These days, I choose how I will experience any given situation. My past does not define my choices. As long as I operate in truth, I am satisfied with the outcome. My inner self is pleased, though my ego might not be. Why? Love. The ego needs past and future. I can be love in the present moment.

Dale's learned that his obsession with the past and future did not allow him the ease and joy of simply being in the present. This new understanding introduced Dale to a series ofkundalini events: impromptu "ego-burning" opportunities that allowed him pratical ways to further distance himself from the false chasm of "Dale Crowe the Bully" and "The Other Dale Crowe." In prison he began to look at the young men flowing through the prison doors. He wanted to show them that stoking that negative emotion would only hurt them. He wanted to tell them that they didn't need to hold on to the pain inside them and identify with it:

During my ten years in prison, I've seen a lot of bullies. I've seen men do violence to each other because they hear non-stop violence inside themselves. I try to help those who will listen to understand bullies - how to avoid suffering violence, doing violence, and allowing violence to reign within them. I know from experience that within every violent person is an inner self longing for a different life.

Dale's realization of the harm caused by his inner bully impels him to share that realization with others. While his first world traces the arc from his suburban childhood through the world of professional boxing into the adjacent world of crime, violence, and drugs and into prison, Dale's second world allows him to confront his inner torment and learn to live at peace with himself, the world, and God. And he wouldn't trade anything for that world.

So there never was a Dale Crowe. There never was an other. "Dale Crowe" is an identity and a history that one part of the divine essence inhabits.That divine essence exists in unity and love, and realizing its presence importance keeps the collection of wrongs, wounds, pain, and negative emotion that belong to the "other" Dale Crowe from causing more hurt and sorrow in the world.

Now imagine living your entire life never knowing there never was a Dale Crowe. That's the predicament of the billions of people who walk this globe. That's the predicament of the inmate and the warden alike, the CEO and the employee alike, the parent and the child.

And that's the reason Dale Crowe wrote this book.

The Bully Within Paperback
The Bully Within Kindle
Dale Crowe
Traitmarker Books is a Nashville-based publishing & publicity service for cause-authors.
Our authors own their copyrights and are free negotiate with publishers & marketing companies. 
A Bully Within is available for reviewers upon request.

Copyright © *|2016|* *|Traitmarker Books|*, All rights reserved.
*|New Author Feature|* *|Dale Crowe|*

To contact the publisher, email traitmarker@gmail.com
MAILING ADDRESS
*|2984 Del Rio Pike Franklin, TN|* *|37069|*
Invisible Doesn't Mean Unimportant

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THE BULLY WITHIN: When Boxing Meets Spirituality [A 2016 New Book Release]

Traitmarker Books 2016 New Author Feature
View this email in your browser
Dale Crowe's The Bully Within
A JOURNEY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Imagine answering someone who inquired the whereabouts of a Dale Crowe with, "There never was a Dale Crowe." Now imagine responding that way if you were Dale Crowe. To most ears, that sentence would sound like a nonsense statement or an evasive manuever. For Dale Crowe it is neither.

Dale means "valley" in Hebrew. That's fitting, because I've felt squeezed between two mountains for most of my life. After going to war with that duality for almost 40 years, I've learned that there never really was a Dale Crowe... Saying that there's no real Dale Crowe sounds like a riddle. But it's actually a truth that means a lot to me.

Dale Crowe & His Maternal Grandparents
The Bully Within: A Journey of Consciousness is the autobiographical, play-by-play transformation of former, up-and-coming crusierweight boxer, Dale Crowe: the transformation from a bully into an enlightened man. The Bully Within is a book about spirituality, not boxing. In it, Dale seeks to answer his own riddle. From the first page of the prologue, he paints in detailed brush strokes the deceptively benign beginnings of his volatile past:

I was born in Ohio and grew up with my mother, stepfather, and grandparents. The deaths of my grandparents and the absence of my father introduced me at an early age to issues of loss and abandonment. When I was very young, I was a class clown. But after meeting my father at age thirteen, I wanted to model myself after him, and I learned to box partly to impress him. I rose through the ranks of amateur and professional boxing, but not until my life came crashing around me did I return to the root issues of loss and abandonment and learn to deal with them.

Those losses opened a chasm of loneliness. The combination of Dale's losses with his loneliness found him seeking larger and larger doses of ego-driven attention from an early age. It's the voice of Dale's ego pockmarking page after page in increasingly sinister, 10-point-font stocatto that Dale exposes to the light the gremlin that taunted him. It's the bully that began with him...

Who's gonna stay around you very long? New school soon? New friends?
You better find a way to matter. What if nobody even likes you? 


... and grew with him...

Everything you got is because of boxing. You don't fit into any other role. You've failed at everything else. Better get your ass back in that ring, pal, if you like what you got. You better fight to keep it. 

It was this bifurcation of Dale's identity, this objectifiction of Dale's personality, and this normalization of the voice in his head that convinced Dale from an early age that one part of him was bully and the other part was Dale Crowe.
Dale Crowe (second from the right)
While much of the book chronologically catalogues the stair-step accomplishments of Dale's boxing career (ESPN, Fox Sports, The Oprah Winfrey Show), Dale focuses on specific vignettes that were catalysts in the uncontrollable growth of his ego. By structuring the story like this, Dale allows the reader to see the bully operate from a wide angle. Dale wanted to write the kind of book that he wished he would have read as a child that would had described his internal fears against the stark relief of machismo culture. It might have made a difference. It might have diverted him from a life of violence.

Growing up, I wasn't a big reader, but I did love stories. I was mesmerized by action heroes on television and in the movies. When my life slowed down and I started looking for answers, I found new heroes - heroes who introduced me to peace and wisdom and truth in their writings. I could ask no greater honor than to lead a reader into the path I've found by honestly sharing my life in a book.

That enlightenment came four years after Dale went to prison.
Dale Crowe vs. Michael Moore Fight (ESPN)
ON VIOLENCE

Violence takes center stage in American media. From mass shootings to murders and rapes to killings by and of law enforcement officers, we seem to hear about a new tragedy before we've had time to process the old ones.

We send out thoughts and prayers to the families of victims far too often. From Columbine to Charleston to Orlando to Dallas, the venues of shootings and the names of the killers become infamous. As a result, ordinary Americans congregate in large numbers with the understanding that anywhere can be a target: a school, a movie theater, a shopping center, a bar, or a city street.

And that's not even to mention the family violence or random violence that fails to make the headlines. According to Gun Violence Archive, as of July 17, 2016, 7,458 people have died and 15,450 people have suffered injury in 28,932 incidents. And according to theNational Coalition Against Domestic Violence"nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States." Though mass shootings grab the headlines, the violence that occurs behind closed doors may do the greatest damage to the fabric of society. CASA reports on the link between child abuse and incarceration:

The new study draws a strong link between prior abuse and violent crime. Among male inmates in state prisons, 76 percent who were abused and 61 percent not abused had a current or past sentence for a violent offense. Among female offenders, 45 percent of the abused and 29 percent not abused had served a sentence for a violent crime.

Abuse is far from the only factor contributing to the likelihood of a violent life. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice reports that "nationally, 7.3 million children have at least one parent in jail or prison. Sadly, 70 percent of these kids are doomed to follow in the same footsteps as their parents becoming imprisoned at some point in their lives".

In fact, self-control plays a major part in whether victims become perpetrators. "Self-control is key to a well-functioning life, because our brain makes us easily [susceptible] to all sorts of influences. Watching a movie showing violent acts predisposes us to act violently. Even just listening to violent rhetoric makes us more inclined to be violent. Ironically, the same mirror neurons that make us empathic make us also very vulnerable to all sorts [of] influences".

So the direction of society in great part depends on how well individuals dealing with pain and violence can control the impulse to commit violence:

"Reasons for committing a crime include greed, anger, jealousy, revenge, or pride." Uncontrolled negative emotion, the choice food of the ego, acts like a cancer on society, killing the innocent to feed itself.

Children who grow up abused, impoverished, or without a stable family structure carry a burden other children do not. It is harder for them to make positive choices and to halt the cycle of pain and violence.
Dale Crowe 


THE MESSAGE

It was in prison that Dale eventually was able to relate his loss and loneliness to the bully that he had become:


Outside events damaged me because of how I allowed them to make me feel on the inside. As a child, that's understandable. But as an adult, it shouldn't be. These days, I choose how I will experience any given situation. My past does not define my choices. As long as I operate in truth, I am satisfied with the outcome. My inner self is pleased, though my ego might not be. Why? Love. The ego needs past and future. I can be love in the present moment.

Dale's learned that his obsession with the past and future did not allow him the ease and joy of simply being in the present. This new understanding introduced Dale to a series ofkundalini events: impromptu "ego-burning" opportunities that allowed him pratical ways to further distance himself from the false chasm of "Dale Crowe the Bully" and "The Other Dale Crowe." In prison he began to look at the young men flowing through the prison doors. He wanted to show them that stoking that negative emotion would only hurt them. He wanted to tell them that they didn't need to hold on to the pain inside them and identify with it:

During my ten years in prison, I've seen a lot of bullies. I've seen men do violence to each other because they hear non-stop violence inside themselves. I try to help those who will listen to understand bullies - how to avoid suffering violence, doing violence, and allowing violence to reign within them. I know from experience that within every violent person is an inner self longing for a different life.

Dale's realization of the harm caused by his inner bully impels him to share that realization with others. While his first world traces the arc from his suburban childhood through the world of professional boxing into the adjacent world of crime, violence, and drugs and into prison, Dale's second world allows him to confront his inner torment and learn to live at peace with himself, the world, and God. And he wouldn't trade anything for that world.

So there never was a Dale Crowe. There never was an other. "Dale Crowe" is an identity and a history that one part of the divine essence inhabits.That divine essence exists in unity and love, and realizing its presence importance keeps the collection of wrongs, wounds, pain, and negative emotion that belong to the "other" Dale Crowe from causing more hurt and sorrow in the world.

Now imagine living your entire life never knowing there never was a Dale Crowe. That's the predicament of the billions of people who walk this globe. That's the predicament of the inmate and the warden alike, the CEO and the employee alike, the parent and the child.

And that's the reason Dale Crowe wrote this book.

The Bully Within Paperback
The Bully Within Kindle
Dale Crowe
Traitmarker Books is a Nashville-based publishing & publicity service for cause-authors.
Our authors own their copyrights and are free negotiate with publishers & marketing companies. 
A Bully Within is available for reviewers upon request.


Copyright © *|2016|* *|Traitmarker Books|*, All rights reserved.
*|New Author Feature|* *|Dale Crowe|*

To contact the publisher, email traitmarker@gmail.com
MAILING ADDRESS
*|2984 Del Rio Pike Franklin, TN|* *|37069|*
Invisible Doesn't Mean Unimportant

unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences 

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

WRITER & AUTHOR THARINI PANDE: Scurry's New Neighbor & the Importance of Calling Each Other by Name

Inspirational Writer & Author
Tharini Pande (www.tharinipande.com)

Names are important.

Just recently, my wife has changed her morning routine. She used to walk down our almost quarter-of-a-mile gravel driveway to retrieve her daily newspaper, walk back, pour herself a cup of tea, sit down at the diningroom table and dictate to me the noteworthy parts of the newspaper while I mind-mapped in one of my journals or worked on my laptop. This routine would last from 8:00 a.m.-9:30 a.m. until recently when we woke up to the reality that, while informative, this arrangement did more to stifle our chi than, say, listening to caustic talk radio for positive inspiration.

 Our driveway

The reason we stopped reading the paper in the morning was because it set a pretty depressing tone for the rest of the day. As writers and publishers, my wife and I naturally channel and assume the thoughts and positions of others. Additionally, we have a vested interest in topics currently popular, like veteran issues, cause marketing, business trends, and immigration. It's a high level of functional empathy we experience that can be both intermittently exhilirating and exhausting. You just don't know until it happens. But one factor that made it easy to switch up my routine of newsgathering was the refugee crisis. Especially the children. 

Other than suffering, acceptance of one's mortality, or having children, I'm not sure of any better teachers to help dislodge the meaningless, petty, and untried doctrines to which we intellectually subscribe but which becomes ugly when manifested in the physical world. I have children: six of them. And lately when challenged by religious, political, and social idealogues whose gut impulse is to speak in damaging ways about the least of these, I've ended such conversations with the sentiment I'm a parent. I don't have the luxury of principles. So when I saw the image of the three-year-old Syrian boy who was found washed up and face-down in the surf on a Turkish beach, I couldn't help but to feel a jolt of primordial pain.

The Grayson Children

During this last year as the refugee situation has taken up more and more space in our daily newspapers and news outlets, I was working with the author Tharini Pande (www.tharinipande.com) on her first children's book Scurry's New Neighbor, illustrated by Lex Avellino (http://www.alexanderavellino.com/). The story has a simple storyline, reminiscent of Aesop's Fables, but in expanded form. 



Scurry is a squirrel that, living up to his name, darts about gathering food around his tree. One day he realizes that a beautiful bluejay has built a nest in his tree. Fearful that the bluejay not only has invaded his space but might also compete for his finite food resources, Scurry doubles his efforts to scurry about and hoard all the food that he can. More anxious than anything else, Scurry finds himself overworked, caught in a rainstorm, tired, and hungry. But just when he is about to go to bed miserable, the bluejay invites him into her nest to share berries. Needless to say, the selfish squirrel is caught off guard but accepts the offer.

Blue-wy: Call me Blue-wy.
Scurry: And call be Scurry.
Both: I think we are going to be great neighbors.

I told Tharini in a phone call that after several dozen times of reading her book, it finally clicked with me why the book's message meant so much to me. It was because the relationship changed when they learned each others' names.

So I learned the little Syrian boy's name. His name was Aylan Kurdi. I also learned that his 5-year-old brother's name was Galip, and his mother's name was Rehan. All drowned. And as much as it pained me to learn their names (others might say that I've unnecessarily burdened myself by learning their names), it makes Aylan, Galip, and Rehan that much closer. Like neighbors.


Aylan and his brother, Galip

So that's one major reason my wife and I don't read the newspaper in the morning anymore. Too many nameless faces and too many tragic histories that our hearts, unable to take it all in at a respectable human level, become that much more hardened to the plight of these humans. To our plight. Now, we learn about their stories after our work for the day is more than over. We converse about it in the evening, and it often plays out in our dreams. But then we wake up again the next morning, feeling more energized to work on their behalf, especially when we know their names.


To learn more about Tharini Pande and her book Scurry's New Neighbor, go to website www.tharinipande.com or drop her a line on her fb page at https://www.facebook.com/authortharinipande/

"Wringing in the Sheaves" | A Student Tribute for Aubrey Bruce Wring (May 4, 1943-July 15, 2023)

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