Our Hearts

 We enjoyed a great evening at Mary's home and she treated us by preparing her "Green Pizza".  Delicious!   

We had a lively conversation around our book for this month, "Our Missing Hearts" by Celeste Ng.  We enjoyed this book and the author's ability to craft words and phrases.  From the author's website: "Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can pretend to ignore the most searing injustice. It’s a story about the power—and limitations—of art to create change, the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact.  

On trees: "They carry their histories inside them.  Peel back enough layers and they explain everything."  

On librarians: "Information.  Passing it on.  Helping people find what they need...Librarians, of all people, understood the value of knowing, even if that information could not yet be used."

On words: (father) "...words carried secrets, the stories of how they came to be...mysterious ways they connected... despite the chaos around them, there was logic and order to the world; there was a system, and that system could be deciphered..."  (mother) "...the magic was not what words had been, but what they were capable of; their ability to sketch, with one sweeping brushstroke, the contours of an experience, the form of a feeling."

On what living is: "...an infinite list of transgressions that did not weigh against the joys but that simply overlaid them...all the small moments that made up the mosaic of a person, a relationship, a life."

 On love: "...when are you ever done with the story of someone you love?  you turn the most precious of your memories over and over, wearing their edges smooth, warming them again with your heat.  You touch the curves and hollows of every detail you have, memorizing them, reciting them once more though you already know them in your bones."

Chris Peek is supposed to be our next host but she has not yet returned from AZ.  Chris Mallon is after Chris P but will be away and is not able to host us at this time.  So Judy Bell will be selecting our next book and we will set up our next meeting - maybe later in April (?) via email.