Elisabeth's Birthday After Party

Good Morning An der Wietze

(I don't have pictures to fit this topic, so these will have to do for now!) Today is Tuesday. John’s alarm rang at 5:20 or so, and he pushed snooze as usual. When it rang the second time, we heard another sound after he turned it off--Henry crying for us. He has been having a hard time getting to sleep lately, and wakes up easily in the morning. We’ve tried a towel at the bottom of the door to hide the light, and even stuffed the keyhole with tissue paper. He still manages to hear something. John turned on Henry’s cd again and tucked him in and told him he could get up when the CD ended, which would be about an hour. I slept for a few more minutes, then got up to start the day. I have not adjusted to coffee here yet. For a while we had a good Starbucks stash, and there is a Starbucks by the main train station in Hannover, but it is so expensive. I thought I should try out some different kinds here. A new friend of mine who is German and lived in California for 20 years...

Bonn Ami

Beethoven in Bonn On Saturday we saw a little bit of Bonn, the former capital of West Germany. In the morning we visited the Beethoven House where Beethoven was born in 1770. We walked around the tiny house for almost two hours, listening to our audio guides. Our son, Mr. Numbers, made sure he listened to every track on his guide, all 32. Elisabeth stopped periodically to draw pictures: the organ Beethoven played in a nearby church, two of the pianos he owned. She said she wanted to go home and write music. I was moved by the account, in Beethoven’s own words, of his hearing loss and his intense inner struggle. We heard portions of his 5th and 9th symphonies as he would’ve heard them at the time they were first performed. It was a barely audible muffled sound. Though Beethoven wanted to take his own life, he felt he could not, because of his burning desire to to the work he had to do, to write the music that was in his...

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

I first heard Bryan Stevenson, defense attorney and founder of Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) on a podcast with Oprah Winfrey . I felt like I was sitting in a living room talking with a friend. I was immediately grateful for the stories Bryan told and for the honesty with which he told them. I was humbled. Growing up, I had put people in boxes--in categories in my head--if you're in jail it's because you're a bad person. If you do drugs, you must be a bad person. But when I learned about my older brother's drug and alcohol addiction and how that changed his life, the boxes I put people in began to shift and crumble, and that shifting has changed my life. Listening to Bryan Stevenson continued to shift the boxes--why are some people on death row, why are so many of them black and brown. Why are so many of them from impoverished backgrounds. Just Mercy tells the story of how Bryan Stevenson founded Equal Justice Initiative to provide legal representation for those w...

Laurel Elisabeth Stevens

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