Tragedy & Kindness

It's been a very difficult week here. Last weekend one of the young people in our family's circle of friends was killed in a tragic accident. No drinking or drugs. An accident. Nobody's fault. But he's still gone. His life cut short before he even finished high school.

This is where the kindness kicks in. Teens amaze me. They often get such bad coverage in the media. I teach younger kids, but I know a lot of teens (including my kids and their friends). Kids across our city came together and did some pretty incredible things in honour of this young man. Many of them brought me to tears. Strength, honour, compassion, love and kindness.

These are the teens we write for. These are the teens we write about. These are the kids who come together, who help out the family, who are creative and compassionate even in their grief. They've written tributes, messages, poetry and songs. They've helped each other even as they've felt lost themselves.

When we write YA, we have to remember the depth of feelings of this age group. To portray them honestly, we have to include their capacity for love and kindness. Their resiliency.

Our hope.

If you've got one, give a teen a hug today.

Tragedy & Hope

The Olympics opened this weekend in an amazing ceremony out in Vancouver. Sadly, the day also marked the loss of a luger from Georgia in a tragic & horrific accident. His fellow Olympians decided to march in the ceremony anyway and received a standing ovation from the crowd. Such a sad, sad time. The silence of 60 000 people reached around the world and into many hearts. My thoughts and sympathies are with his family.

The rest of the ceremony produced many moments of beauty. Of course, as a Canadian, I'm a little biased. Just a little. :)

A few of my favourite moments: the whales in the floor, the amazing 1st Nations dancers, the angelic voice of KD Lang soaring through the stadium, the 8 fabulous people carrying in the Olympic flag and 5 amazing athletes lighting the cauldron.

Hope. That's the best part of the Olympics for me. Hope for people to get along, hope for a clean competition, hope for governments to follow the lead of the athletes, and hope for the future.

I've still got a couple of blog awards to accept and pass along, but I'll leave that for the next post. I'm playing around a bit with the blog. I've put all of the awards on another page. At this point Blogger won't let me add any more links to my blog roll or any more "Gadgets" to the side bar. I thought maybe the page was too long, so I moved the awards to another page. But so far it hasn't made any difference.

There are a few blogs I'm following that I haven't been able to add to the roll. My apologies to those people. I'm trying to remedy the situation, but it may take me a bit to figure out. Blogger doesn't seem to like me very much :( It took months before I could upgrade the blog and get it to give me a toolbar with a picture icon on it so I could add photos. Hopefully this doesn't take as long to fix or figure out! Does anyone know if there is a limit to the number of blogs you can add?

Did you have any favourite Olympic Opening Ceremony moments? Or any favourite comments from Twitter? @SmartBitches & a few others had me in stitches throughout the night.

And a happy Valentine's Day to you all :)