Isabel Allende and 826 Valencia just produced a new student quarterly called Waiting to Be Heard. I helped proofread, and one student’s words struck me as particularly poignant. Ben Schuttish writes:

“President George W. Bush learned [war] from his father when his father was president, and now he is taking what he learned and applying it to the war in Iraq… Instead of immediately declaring war, President Bush should have used his brain to think of some other options first. He couldn’t help it though, because war was what he had been taught by his father. This is wrong.”

Best parts of A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham:

“I was my father’s daughter. i wanted to be loved by someone like my tough judicious mother and I wanted to run screaming through the headlights with a bottle in my hand. That was the family curse. We tended to nurse flocks of undisciplined wishes that collided and canceled each other out. The curse implied that if we didn’t learn to train our desires in one direction or another, we were likely to end up with nothing.”

“He had big square hands and face blank and earnest as a shovel.”

“I tried to make myself stop caring about what I looked like. As she started in the with scissors, I reminded myself that our lives are made of changes we can’t control. Letting little things happen is good practice.”

“Woodstock is what towns were supposed to become before the old future got sidetracked and a new one took its place… I appreciate the kindness of its quiet streets and the people’s cheerful determination to live in ways that are mainly beside the point.”