This mornign I received an email from a 6th grade teacher whose letter I will quote:
During our reading of your book, Number the Stars, we also researched
the causes and effects of the Holocaust, watched a very powerful
documentary called, "Paper Clips", and perhaps you'll recall that we
decided to take on a project of our own. Since October we have been
collecting shoelaces, measuring them, and tying them together with the
goal of collecting 6,000,000 centimeters of laces to represent the
6,000,000 Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. We have collected over
5,000,000 centimeters so far (that's just a little over 30 miles of
laces) and hope to meet our goal by mid April. Our plan it to build
large shoes that we will wrap the laces around and then have displayed
at the Minnesota State Fair in August. I've attached a couple of
photographs of the project for you to see of some of our progress. Our
goal is that this monument will honor the victims of that horrible
event, and will serve as a statement to the world that intolerance,
prejudice, racism, and hatred have no place in our world if we are to
have any chance of living in peace with one another.
I just wanted to share this project with you because I thought you might
mention it in your travels and conversations with others who might like
to send shoelaces to us. We are at:
Rush Creek Elementary School
8801 County Road 101
Maple Grove, MN 55311 763-494-4549
It is always such a pleasure to hear of and from imaginative teachers like Doug Greener in Maple Grove who do more than just assign a book, and whose students will always remember what they have learned in his class.
I am just back from a weekend in San Francisco, having escaped Boston's snowstorm, though I returned to find my yard deep in snow and the just-blooming crocuses buried. March is always full of surprises. But another, nicer-than-a-blizzard surprise was (another photo coming) was the constant doorbell yesterday, each time a delivery person with flowers. Flowers and flowers and flowers! It was my 70th birthday and I can't think of anything nicer for an old lady than to be in a house filled with flowers!
My daughter-in-law, Kate, has the same birthday...March 20th. Son Ben tells me he got an e-mail yesterday at his office: "Dear Dad, Mom would like Chinese food and chocolate tonight for her birthday. Love, Rhys." (Rhys is my youngest grandchild, now in kindergarten).
An email this morning from Bob Weide, film director friend, who tells me he has just cast Kirsten Dunst...age 24...in a new movie he's doing. Relevant only because he remembered that 12 years ago, he was working on the screenplay of THE GIVER and had thought then that Kirsten Dunst would be right for the part of Fiona. She was then 12. That's how long this movie has been in the works! I was 58 when Kirsten Dunst was 12, and now I am....well, enough about me! I think I'll go smell my flowers again.
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