One Drop

I always like to read biographies, whether or not I've ever heard of the subject, just because I find people's lives and experiences to be very interesting.  Anatole Broyard was a literary critic (although I've never heard of him) who died in 1990.  Shortly before he died, his children were told their father was bi-racial, a fact he'd hidden from them all their lives.

Bliss Broyard, his daughter, wanted to find out about her family's history and the story of whiteness and blackness in her ancestry, and perhaps understand why her father denied his African roots and presented himself and his family as white.  As an interested genealogist, I liked that part of the story.  In addition, my husband's step-grandfather was of mixed race and as I've looked at documents marking his life, I see he called himself both Colored and White at various times.  One Drop takes a hard look at "passing" and why it was done in a historical context, as well as why her father's family passed.

I'm almost done with the book and hope the author discusses her own feelings of finding out she is bi-racial.

A friend's visit to Holland

Today at our book club it came up that one of the young adults had just gotten back from a trip to Germany and the Netherlands.  One of the elderly members is a Dutch immigrant who really misses Holland.

She eagerly asked the younger woman where she had visited.  The younger named two places.  The older asked if the younger had had any pastries, cookies, or other Dutch goodies.  No, not really.

source

I was frustrated!  This elderly woman was eager to relive a bit of her past years by listening to the younger tell about what she had experienced, but the information wasn't forthcoming. 

 I have to remember some folks are good with a few words.  I love a torrent of them.



The Cat in the Hat's visit and a guest reader in the first grade classroom

The celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday seems to be really wide-spread this year in the USA. E's teacher is a particularly big fan of his work so I expected a big celebration, but C's teacher is making a fairly big deal of it too. E's teacher set up a schedule of parents to come in and read to the class. We could bring in our own Dr. Seuss book to read or read one of hers. Since I know she plans to get through every single book he wrote I figured it would help her schedule to just read whatever she put in my hand. This one was something about McElligot's pool which is a new one to me but easy to read and fun for the children. You can see E was pretty happy with the visit from the Cat in the Hat. And now you can see why I like to be in charge of the camera--I delete all the pictures of myself I don't like!