Yarn Along

Today I am especially grateful for those small quiet moments, when not much is happening but everyone is doing fine. We forget how easy the balance shifts towards fear and pain and worry and how fast you can lose things and people and health. I'm trying to just appreicate the small non-events of daily life. This week I'm still working on my sock, and I read two memoirs. My Year with Eleanor by Noelle Hancock is about a young woman who gets laid off and becomes inspired by an Eleanor Roosevelt quote about facing fears. She spends a year

sky diving and volunteering at a funeral home and interviewing ex- boyfriends. I appreciated what she was trying to do, and as I learn to drive again after eleven years of not doing it, I can see how facing one fear makes it easier to try staring down another. But I felt like she focused mostly on extreme sports and physical fears while taking less risks about working for justice for others like Eleanor Roosevelt herself.

The other book I read was Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan. This was a fast-moving memoir about a young footlose traveler who spends a few weeks volunteering at a Nepaleese orphanage and becomes totally captivated by the children there. He gradually devotes his life to searching the war-torn country for their families and trying to reunite them. It was interesting to watch his transformation from partying tourist to committed humanitarian and I liked learning more about Nepal and about the children. It's unfortunate that since the scandal about the Three Cups of Tea author, I am a bit more skeptical of the accuracy of stories like this. But it's a good story so I hope it's true.