I slept until noon today. I woke up fully recovered from the past week and ready to hit the books. Lupe and I went by the V-Dub to grab lunch (because I missed breakfast) and walked up Thayer Street to buy some necessities at CVS. On the way there, we ducked into a small clothes store and saw this ridiculous sweater that had a useless zipper.
After having a good laugh about the silly sweater, we made our way back to the dorm to pick up backpacks and laptops. Today is an extra-warm day and we didn't want to be stuck in the dorms, so we walked to the John D. Rockefeller Library to do research for our Action Plans and our Amazing Woman monologues. I chose Rigoberta Menchu because I don't know much about her except that she was an important leader in indigenous rights. She also played basketball with my mom at 2 AM many years ago, and I've heard the story several times, so her name has been in the back of my head. Now I have the opportunity to learn much more about her and spread my knowledge.
This library has five floors and a seemingly endless supply of books. It's like heaven for me! I searched "Rigoberta Menchu" on the Brown online book catalog and almost 40 books showed up just on the first page. I wrote down most of them until I got to about the tenth one, then I realized that no matter how interesting they sound, I won't have time to read all of them. Instead, I went up to the third floor and found five books that were at the top of my list. I wish I could take this whole library with me everywhere I go. I would never be bored.
I'll spend the rest of the afternoon studying and doing research. At 7 PM, we have a floor meeting or a class meeting of some kind. I like the evening meetings, but in a way, they're a pain because they make it hard to do anything recreational in the evenings. There's a poetry slam going on tonight and a yoga class tomorrow night, but we can't go because of the meetings. Oh well. I still love it here.
Irene,
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that both you and Lydia have selected Nobel Peace Prize winners as your Amazing Women.
Many winners of that award are relatively unknown or what they did was not well known. In recent years they’ve been making that award to multiple people(28) in a given year or to groups (23). I don’t want to take away from any group but when it’s given to a group it’s easily forgotten but when it’s awarded to a person, that person often becomes more easily remembered along with what they’ve done. [Gandhi was nominated five times and was never so honored but Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were also nominated and not honored.]
Were you aware that Menchu was the second youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient at 33 years of age? That’s certainly impressive. Most of the time these awards are given more for a body of work rather than any singular event. Menchu never really did anything in particular that would stand out but her lifetime activities were impressive.
It was before your time but back in the ‘80’s Michael Jackson used to run around with huge leather jackets with zippers all over them. It became quite a fashion trend for a very brief while.
I agree - awards given to groups probably don't get nearly as much publicity as those given to individuals.
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize that she was so young when she got it. I knew her birth date, and the date when she got the Prize, but I didn't put them together. I'll be sure to include that in my monologue.
Yes, 80s fashions are coming back. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.