Children First

I had mentioned in an earlier post the Search Institute's research on 40 assets which help children thrive. In comments, some wondered what, if anything, we adults can do to help. I wanted to point to the website Children First, which is the response developed by the city of St. Louis Park (where the Search Institue is located) and how they try to implement the 40 assets in their community. See, e.g., the response by business, the city, education, faith communities, and health care providers. I am impressed by the Search Institute not only because of their mission, but because they have decades' worth of empirical data which demonstrates that their approach works. One tangible result: St. Louis Park has been named one of the 100 best places in the country for young people to live.

Romeo and Juliet

Fiona is studying Romeo and Juliet at school, and so this past Sunday for our family night I suggested we pull out the old VHS copy of Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet and watch it. We broke halfway through and finished it tonight.

I adored that movie when I was Fiona's age. I first saw it, I think, at about the age of 8 or 9, and we had the LP with excerpts of the music and speeches. I listened to it over and over again, dozens, perhaps hundreds of times. I suppose it might have been the Titanic of my generation: beautiful young lovers, doomed love. It was the film that started my love of Shakespeare, which I have nurtured ever since. I became curious to know whatever happened to Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, and I did a web search and ran across this page. She looks astonishingly like her younger self, but oh my goodness, he is unrecognizable. Reading between the lines, the story of their lives since seems rather sad. One shining moment of beautiful youth, passion burning incandescent . . . and then the long slow years since then, when potential and beauty fades. If we are very lucky, however, we might have love to console us when the bloom of youth and beauty is gone.