May 19, Tuesday evening -- Reading Thomas Merton

Reading The Way of Chuang Tzu, by Thomas Merton, about the Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu who was in part responsible for transitioning Indian Buddhism into Zen Buddhism.
It's for a philosophy class she's taking at the College of Alameda. She's studying to become a pediatrician! Recently she made the switch into medicine and that switch began with a poem she wrote. It was the second poem she wrote and it was about identity. She hadn't known she was a poet. The first poem she wrote, and this was just last year, was about Barack Obama and encouraged people to care and to vote. She let me read it off her phone and, though I can't do it justice here, it's on her blog and she will send her blog address so I can link to it. (here's the poem)

Favorite book -- doesn't have one. When she was young, she loved Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain; The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis; and, (of course, she said) Judy Blume and The Baby-sitters Club.

She has a seven-year-old and an eleven-year-old and they are big readers. Of what? Well, she said and held up The Way of Chuang Tzu, my seven-year-old likes stuff like this, and stories, too, like The Chronicles of Narnia.