Quote for the Week: 5 Stories: Anonymous

One

Once all the villagers decided to pray for rain.

On the day of prayer all the people gathered,

but only one boy came with an umbrella.

That's FAITH

Two

When you throw babies in the air,

they laugh because they know you will catch them.

That's TRUST

Three

Every night we go to bed

without any assurance of being alive the next morning,

but still we set the alarms to wake us up.

That's HOPE

Four

We see the world suffering, 

but we still get married and have children.

That's LOVE

Five

On an old man's shirt was written a sentence:

"I am not 80 years old.

I am sweet 16 with 64 years of experience.

That's ATTITUDE

Books of August

A World War II story about three very different women--a New York socialite, a Nazi concentration camp doctor and a young Polish girl.  I enjoyed this book.  I read it during Hurricane Harvey when I had no phone, no TV and no internet and it kept me interested the whole way through.

Another World War II story, this one about Adele, whose famous portrait was painted by Klimpt, and her niece Maria and her experiences during the war and afterward.

No, this is not a war story.  It's about two sisters who vanish one night.  Several years later one returns with a strange story.  Will they find the other sister?  Do we care?  Not a lot, but it beat watching the bayou overflow.

I Understand

I see them everywhere:  in restaurants, elevators, the grocery store.  People scroll busily through their I Phones, even when they're talking to someone else in the real world or turning on their car ignition.  It's as if those devices were glued on and if you didn't turn them on the second you had time, they (or you) might explode.

Now, thanks to Hurricane Harvey, I understand.  

Although I live in a high-rise building and only the basement flooded, the power went out.  No electricity, no TV, no computer and, OMG, no phone. And for a few days, with most of Houston's streets under water, no newspaper. My I Phone became my outlet to the world.  Back in the day, before the storm, I used the phone to make occasional calls and as a camera, but over the last two weeks, besides calling friends, I read the news, the weather reports, listened to late night TV hosts' monologues, followed the Houston Astros and the U.S. Open tennis tournament.  At night I found music on youtube that lulled me to sleep.  I even had Siri tell me jokes--she knows a lot of them.

So I will no longer criticize people whose phones seem to be an extra appendage and who scroll through them as if their lives depended on it.  I get it now.  The I Phone was my lifeline and my fingers were just as busy as those people in elevators who walk out, still scrolling, when the elevator has reached their floor.