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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

The Petite Easter 

Easter Sunday was quiet and sweet in Mountain View with my brother ERIC and daughter, SHEILA. Happy Easter, everyone!

I got caught up in Women's History Month this year at work. Some faculty and staff dressed as famous female historical characters and I went as Indira Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India. Don't I look like her?



To get the total mix of the past and the present, the immigrant’s children and the immigrant, the there and the here—see the new movie: The Namesake. In Palo Alto, where we saw it, the audience clapped at the end proving that director Mira Nair had created universal appeal. Jampa Lahiri’s first novel, after her Pulitzer Prize winning stories, lends itself well to this film. Kal Penn, living in the New World, has much to teach us as immigrant parents about the dilemmas of our American children. And they can learn, if they’re open to it, the pull of two countries, two cultures, two worlds and the desire to maintain contact with the past while adjusting to the present. Go see it!

It was amusing to hear the lines of William Wordsworth’s poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud” during the arranged marriage interview. How many times I repeated those lines in my head after coming to America, remembering India.

          They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Wordsworth wrote this after he went blind. I was never as disappointed as when I visited the Lake District in England one summer to find no daffodils and the lake not half as beautiful as Ooty Lake in the Nilgiri Hills in South India. I hope to see those hills again next January 2008.

The Grande Easter
was held in Portland where BILL joined his immediate family (that’s five kids and spouses and twelve grandchildren and friends) where they had tacos one night and spaghetti the next and an Egg Hunt with a hundred eggs (ignore this if you live far away and can’t understand why Americans hide fresh boiled eggs in their gardens to celebrate the beginning of Spring). Bill returned home without his cell phone or camera having lost them between the bathroom downstairs and the shower two stories below his guest space over the garage. Obviously, he was having a lot of fun!
It was great for him to be able to see everyone in one place and catch up on everyone’s travels and plans for the future. I’m still hearing bits and pieces of the stories. The camera and cell phone were found and returned.

So, here are the twelve grandkids: Iman Bruner, Hannah Bruner, Caleb Sohigian, Ryan Bruner, Nuri Bruner, Raika Bruner, Evan Aalami, Taylor Santos, Alexi Aalami, Lauren Aalami, Anna Sohigian and baby Devin Santos.






MORE PERSONAL NOTES:












Natala's new website is:WWW.NATALA.NET ADVENTURE.EXCITEMENT.DRAMA.UPDATED THURSDAY. In case you want to know the weather in Seattle, check out the webcam at Seattle Pacific U down the hill from Natala's in the Queen Anne neighborhood.
SHEILA to NYC and back betwixt the finish line on her Master's thesis. Go, Sheila! We visited the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco to see the Rajasthani exhibit of miniatures called Princes, Palaces, and Passion: The Art of India's Mewar Kingdom.

CONGRATULATIONS to JOSLYN on her engagement to AARON Stevens. Aaron is in the Coast Guard stationed in Eureka right now working as a helicopter mechanic and training to be a helicopter pilot. Joslyn has moved back to California. Here we are, Joslyn, moi, Jenny and Jasmine, in Jasmine's apartment in San Francisco. (Click on the pictures to see them enlarged.) Yes, that's Cuba!


Joslyn, Joy, Jenny and Jasmine
Aaron and JoslynJESSICA to Florida, Egypt, moving to Portland, is visiting South Africa —everywhere, anywhere but here. Maybe San Diego in August but when to Mountain View?


Excited to find an old friend has three novels published and writes poetry, too. Check out Nick Cibrario!

See my PowerPoint: To Google or Not to Google prepared for our Professional Development Day. (Click the slide show icon and then right click to move through the slides.)
Briz
Brizzy says "Hi!" Watch for pictures of his spring walk next blog. Looking for you to say hello, too!

I will be visiting my mother in Australia for the month of June. The Breeks Reunion is still on, check the Hebron Alumni site for the Class of 1957 and add your name to the list of people joining us in December 2007.

Words to the wise: “Whenever you are in such a corner that your logic fails, don’t be desperate, don’t become hopeless. Those moments may prove the greatest blessings in your life”-OSHO

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