Nelson Mandela's Inaugural Speech:

 "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. 

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. 

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. 

We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?'

Actually, who are you not to be? 

You are a child of God. 

Your playing small doesn't serve the world. 

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other  

people won't feel insecure around you. 

We are all meant to shine as children do. 

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is  

within us.

It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. 

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people 

permission to do the same. 

As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence  

automatically liberates others."

 - Marianne Williamson, quoted by Nelson Mandela in his inaugural speech to South Africa

Sweet right? The future is in our hands, my friends.

Brilliant Justine, truly brilliant. I will start trying to compose something to compare with your good posts. But I love it, and thank you for giving everyone a reminder of what we started and hope to continue.

A Little Bit of Poetry

I am taking a Creative Writing class this semester so I thought I would share some of the stuff I have written. I have been in the class for less than two weeks so this is all I have done so far (these are emulations by the way) but since I am reading them at our Midnight Special tomorrow night, I thought I would share. I would love feedback if you have it!

Eight Ways to Look at an Egg

I

Concealed in its white shell

May be life

Or just someone’s meal

II

It rolls in directions

Indefinable at its start

And cannot align itself straight

Without assistance

III

Invisible against white

Its unique ellipse

Save for its catching

Of all shades through light

IV

One of those common frustrations

Since never tasteful without salt

V

That unconvincing children’s rhyme

Where it magically grew a face and a name

Yet no sufficient limbs to keep it propped upon its wall

VI

Plenty of variety

Whether scrambled, fried, or boiled

VII

The reason you must never ever

Lick clean that brownie-battered bowl

(But you do anyway)

VIII

And vaguely resembles

A crisp—

White—

Perfectly peeled—

Potato

And...

That is no place anyone should live. The heat

Is only the first thing you feel.

It bites the flesh and taunts the pores

Until it climbs so high, you no longer

Feel its torture as your desiccated lips

Beg for moisture.

The people here are entirely lost,

The men in their drunken swagger—

Bidding on cows and the first prize goat carcass

The women squabbling over their phones,

Though they never use them,

While their children run about without shoes.

And therefore I have left that place

So that I may come home.

Final release from the

Worries I there carried.

Bless the clear, cold water

Which runs free from the tap

And comforts my tongue.

Calm my feared heart

And provide reprieve.

But my mind has not forgotten:

A prison to those who must

Forever dwell in its dark horror.

Yet to me its mem’ry

Swells my soul

And I find myself free

From my own torments.

A Little Nelson Mandela, anyone?

Our awesome English teacher, Claire, wrote this epic tale of our encounter with Nelson Mandela while in South Africa. Yes, it is the Nelson Mandela I am speaking of.

Here it is. The Story (deserving of a capital S, even).

I thought that my life as a history teacher had reached its pinnacle a few weeks ago when the girls spontaneously reenacted the Battle of Blood River on the actual battle site (I literally asked Heather how it could possibly get any better), but I have to admit that this recent event may have trumped it.

Yep; it's big. But you probably already know how it ends. If you're so anxious you can't wait for the punchline, skip down to the * * *. Only if you're really anxious. It's got a pretty good lead-up...

Our story begins on a fairly normal Traveling School day: we were driving from Durban to the largish city of Umtata, and we had made arrangements to camp about thirty kilometers outside Umtata, in the small traditional Xhosa town of Qunu (famed for being the childhood home of Nelson Mandela). It was cold and windy: really cold, really windy. Maybe, just maybe, if our collective karma points were sufficient, we could sleep in the rondavels there. We crossed our fingers. When we arrived, we found that we could, in fact, sleep in the rondavels.

Excellent.

Umtata is home to the official Nelson Mandela museum, so we awoke early the next day planning to learn all about one of the most famous men in the world. We discussed who he was and what he did, and then we decided to spend the day contemplating the 'genesis of greatness' (not my phrase, unfortunately; it is coined on the back of his autobiography), and we piled into the truck.

And as we were driving back out our little dirt road, Japhet driver slyly asked me, 'Did you know that he's around here?'

I did not know that he was around there. No one knew that he was around there.

WHAT?

So I did the only logical thing to do: I leaped out of the truck and sprinted back down the little dirt road to ask the woman of the complex what exactly was going on. She told me that Nelson Mandela (yes, THAT Nelson Mandela) was in town ('town' being an exaggeration), that he was meeting up with the ex-president of Zambia (Kenneth Kaunda, another legend), and that she knew where they were. At this moment, just for divine effect, I imagine, three police cars drove by, sirens blaring.

WHAT?

She sent her friend to guide us, and we embarked on a most ridiculous chase. (Cue to racing, adrenaline-inducing background music.) Imagine, if you will, a truck the size of a large U-Haul making its excited way toward Nelson Mandela over the winding dirt roads of rural South Africa. Seventeen female faces plastered to the windows of this truck. The screams. The exclamations. Four teachers marveling at how this could possibly actually be their job. Thirteen girls marveling at how this could possibly actually be their lives.

And then the truck stopped.

We were in a tiny parking lot in the middle of nothing but rich and rolling hills, and 300 yards away from us, a group of about fifty people were massed around what looked to be a memorial of some kind. We sat in the truck and waited. In silence. Absolute silence. We were far enough away to be unobtrusive, but we were there, nonetheless. And as we sat in our pulsing silence, a small black car, escorted by a few police cars, passed our truck. We could just make out the shadowy figure sitting in the back seat.

'That's Nelson Mandela,' everyone felt the need to whisper at least twice.

The car passed us, joined the mass, and then. Oh, then. A white head, THAT white head, emerged from the car. 'That's Nelson Mandela,' we all whispered again, just for good measure.

And then a policeman told us we could go closer, if we wanted to.

IF WE WANTED TO?

We quickly (still magically silently) disembarked and virtually tiptoed our way toward the famous white head. We got to the group, and people moved to let us in. And then we just stood there, all of us wearing the typical Traveling School outfit (some kind of fleece, mildly stained pants, and flipflops), and watched. There he was. THERE HE WAS. He spoke to a few reporters, and moved to his car. We were on one side of his car; he was on the other. NOTHING between us but his sleek black car.

We stood ten feet away from him.

Him, NELSON MANDELA.

* * *

WE STOOD TEN FEET FROM NELSON MANDELA.

* * *

And he stood there, and we stood there, and the surreality of it all was overwhelming. Astounding. Inspiring. Bewitching.

He got in his car. Throwing decorum to the wind, we waved frantically. (The windows were tinted. We have no idea if he waved back. We've decided that he did, though. He seems like the kind of man who would wave back.) The car departed.

And that was that.

Unbelievable.

Just thought you guys might want to know the full story...

In high praise of serendipity,

Claire

In Honor of Words

Distressingly Incomplete

(Claire’s List of Books to Read Before You Die)

So, here’s the deal. I’ve put together this list, and it will never be complete. Such is the way of things. There are books that are on here because they are classics and everyone should read them. There are books that are on here because they make me smile. There are books that are on here because they make me cry. I guarantee that you will hate at least one of them. I guarantee that you will love at least five of them. Such, also, is the way of things. Send me your thoughts, send me your suggestions, send me your anythings.

But above all, find the words that speak to you. Enjoy.

Title	Author
The Oresteia	Aeschyleus
Emma	Austen, Jane
Pride & Prejudice	Austen, Jane
Sense & Sensibility	Austen, Jane
Ocean Sea	Baricco, Allesandro
Regeneration	Barker, Pat
The Feast of Love	Baxter, Charles
A Short History of Nearly Everything	Bryson, Bill
The Good Earth	Buck, Pearl S.
Possession	Byatt, A. S.
Ender’s Game	Card, Orson Scott
My Antonia	Cather, Willa
Don Quixote	Cervantes
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay	Chabon, Michael
The Canterbury Tales	Chaucer, Geoffrey
Heart of Darkness	Conrad, Joseph
Corelli’s Mandolin	De Berniers, Louis
A Tale of Two Cities	Dickens, Charles
Great Expectations	Dickens, Charles
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water	Dorris, Michael
Crime & Punishment	Dostoevsky, Fyodor
The Brother Karamazov	Dostoevsky, Fyodor
The Brothers K	Duncan, David James
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius	Eggers, Dave
Middlemarch	Eliot, George
Absalom, Absalom	Faulkner, William
The Sound and the Fury	Faulkner, William
Bridget Jones’ Diary	Fielding, Helen
The Great Gatsby	Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Madame Bovary	Flaubert, Gustave
A Room with a View	Forster, E. M.
A Lesson Before Dying	Gaines, Ernest
Cold Comfort Farm	Gibbons, Stella
Memoirs of a Geisha	Golden, Arthur
Lord of the Flies	Golding, William
The Princess Bride	Goldman, William
Ordinary People	Guest, Judith
Snow Falling on Cedars	Guterson, David
The Scarlet Letter	Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Catch 22	Heller, Joseph
A Farewell to Arms	Hemingway, Ernest
For Whom the Bell Tolls	Hemingway, Ernest
The Histories	Herodotus
The Iliad	Homer
The Odyssey	Homer
High Fidelity	Hornby, Nick
A Thousand Splendid Suns	Hosseini, Khaled
A Prayer for Owen Meany	Irving, John
The Cider House Rules	Irving, John
Remains of the Day	Ishiguro, Kazuo
The Portrait of a Lady	James, Henry
On the Road	Kerouac, Jack
Pigs in Heaven	Kingsolver, Barbara
A Separate Peace	Knowles, John
Interpreter of Maladies	Lahiri, Jhumpa
To Kill a Mockingbird	Lee, Harper
Inherit the Wind	Lee, Robert E.
The Call of the Wild	London, Jack
Life of Pi	Martel, Yann
All the Pretty Horses	McCarthy, Cormac
Blood Meridian	McCarthy, Cormac
Lonesome Dove	McMurtry, Larry
Fugitive Pieces	Michaels, Anne
Paradise Lost	Milton
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal	Moore, Christopher
Song of Solomon	Morrison, Toni
Lolita	Nabokov, Vladimir
The Things They Carried	O’Brien, Tim
The English Patient	Ondaatje, Michael
Once a Runner	Parker, John L.
Bel Canto	Patchett, Ann
The Chosen	Potok, Chaim
His Dark Materials Series The Golden Compass The Subtle Knife The Amber Spyglass	Pullman, Philip
Atlas Shrugged	Rand, Ayn
The Fountainhead	Rand, Ayn
Where the Red Fern Grows	Rawls, Wilson
All Quiet on the Western Front	Remarque, Erich Maria
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues	Robbins, Tom
The Human Stain	Roth, Philip
The Harry Potter Series	Rowling, J. K.
The God of Small Things	Roy, Arundhati
Shalimar the Clown	Rushdie, Salman
The Satanic Verses	Rushdie, Salman
Love Story	Segal, Erich
Antony & Cleopatra	Shakespeare, William
Hamlet	Shakespeare, William
Romeo & Juliet	Shakespeare, William
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn	Smith, Betty
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich	Solzhenitsyn
Of Mice & Men	Steinbeck, John
The Grapes of Wrath	Steinbeck, John
Arcadia	Stoppard, Tom
The Joy Luck Club	Tan, Amy
Anna Karenina	Tolstoy, Leo
War & Peace	Tolstoy, Leo
The Aeneid	Virgil
The Color Purple	Walker, Alice
The Age of Innocence	Wharton, Edith
The House of Mirth	Wharton, Edith
Mrs. Dalloway	Woolf, Virginia
To the Lighthouse	Woolf, Virginia

Who We Are

We are a group of high school girls who all traveled to Southern Africa for our fall semester of 2007 with the Traveling School. Four countries in all: South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Zambia. We traveled with our teachers and completed our schoolwork while driving around all these countries in a huge beige safari truck.
While in Cape Town, South Africa we were inspired by a youth group called Generation for Change. These students of middle to high school age lived in the Capricorn township and participated in various service projects in the community: the soup kitchen, the library and the schools or crèches (like our daycares). They also exercised their individuality through self-expressions like dance, poetry, and acting. Such talents are used to unite the youth and, by extension, alleviate the struggles of a community ridden with poverty, drugs, violence and HIV/AIDS. After four days of aiding them with their service projects and sharing our own talents, they encouraged us to create our own Generation for Change in the United States. And thus, Generation for Change-US was born.
While we realize that we do not face the same problems in our communities as our Cape Town counterparts we also recognize that there is still much to be done in our own. Over the course of our four days with Generation for Change in South Africa, we discovered a general pattern of our communities having what they lacked and visa versa. Our communities harbor youth organizations, regulated crime rates, community centers, and etc, while their community had beautiful communal ties, a great sense of social responsibility, and strong interpersonal relationships.

Given the prevalence and near necessity of technology in our American lifestyles, we have allowed ourselves to settle for less than we are capable of and thus fail to discover the passions hidden within us.
Therefore, we created a mission statement for our own Generation for Change:

“Inspiring our generation to discover passion through self-expression and utilize it to promote positive change in the community. By expanding from local involvement to national and global awareness, we lift the hopes of others for this generation to stand as one.”

Our G4C is meant to unite the youth within individual communities and to educate them about larger, global issues in order to create greater unity within the nation and even the world.
You think it’s a large dream? Well, we agree with you. The changes in our society, that may seem negative, can be turned around into beneficial ones. For example, many technological advancements (such as the internet and mobile text messaging) may have stripped us of our face-to-face communication; yet they have also provided us with means of influence. Take the simple fact that you are reading this right now on a website that high schoolers created. We have the power to create positive change no matter how small it may seem.