Parallel Worlds

I was supposed to be at the health club swimming. I was supposed to be at school putting up bulletin boards and dissecting the Social Studies Standards. I was supposed to be folding laundry.

Instead, I was standing at the sink snipping basil leaves from basil stems. Endlessly. I should have taken pictures so you could see just how many leaves there were on my four basil BUSHES this year. Suffice it to say, I made six batches of pesto. Six food processors full.

Six containers of distilled summer, captured and preserved on this crisp hint-of-fall day.

As I snipped and washed and packed and ground and glopped and slopped, I had a lot of time to think. I thought about summer and photosynthesis. I thought about fall and endings. I thought about winter and snow.

Thoughts of snow turned to thoughts of Robert's Snow, and the enormous amazing outpouring of support for Grace Lin and her family and all those whose lives might be touched by the cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

I feel like I live in parallel worlds. In the one that is most tangible, strangers rarely reach out to strangers. Yet in the world behind and beyond my computer screen, connections that start as invisible electronic impulses become a web of heart strings that give me hope for humanity.

Details from the posting at 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast:

"This year, more than 200 well-known children’s book illustrators from around the world have been given a five-inch wooden snowflake to decorate at will. Like actual snowflakes, each design is unique. The 2007 online auctions for bidding on these hand-painted snowflakes will take place in three separate auctions, open to everyone, from November 19 to 23, November 26-30, and December 3-7. You can read here for more information.

What we in the kidlitosphere community want to do to help drive traffic to the site for this year’s auctions and help raise money for the cause is highlight at our blogs the illustrators who have created snowflakes for these upcoming ’07 auctions — as well as post the unique snowflakes they have made (one at a time at each blog, which the DFCI has graciously given us permission to do), ultimately driving as much traffic as we possibly can to the Robert’s Snow online auctions."