My daughter sent me a copy of Maya Angelou's Letter to My Daughter for my birthday... so I began reading it that morning. It is not really a letter. I knew very little, actually, about this wonderful author's life, but the collection of essays drew me in. This was an enchanting read altogether, little portraits of a life both difficult and gorgeous. The 2-page introduction really is "A Letter to My Daughter", although Angelou did not actually have a daughter, just one son born of an unfulfilling encounter, but it is easy to imagine all the women of her life meriting such a letter exhorting each to "make an effort to change the things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution." She has thoughtful and forceful things to say about vulgarity, rape, America past and present, gratitude. As for "national spirit", this: "How have we come so late and lonely to this place? When did we relinquish our desire for a high moral ground to those who clutter our national landscape with vulgar accusations and gross speculations?...Didn't we dream of a country where freedom was in the national conscience and dignity was the goal?...We must insist that the men and women who expect to lead us recognize the true desires of those who are being led. We do not choose to be herded into a burning building with hate nor into a system rife with intolerance."

on the bench near the entrances