A Guest Entry

Life has been busy and full lately: I haven't had much time for reading or writing of any sort. Perhaps you've noticed (or not) my lack of recent blogging; my journal has been receiving a similar dearth of ink. Even having someone comment daily on my non-blogging hasn't helped. All of my good intentions - and occasional thoughts of "I should blog about this" - haven't amounted to much. I'll be back here before too long: the writing urge will overcome my tiredness one of these days. But for now, thanks to those who check in every so often just to see if there's anything new. Slowly, slowly, it will come.

And in the meantime, mostly because it amuses me in the grandest sort of way, I thought I'd share a piece written by my youngest sister, Rachel. She recently found a box of old photos and school papers. Sorting through it tonight, she came across an essay she wrote at the beginning of fifth grade. Titled "Pillars in Person," it required her to write about a person who demonstrated the school's six pillars of character: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, caring, fairness, and citizenship. Our school system enacted the Character Counts program when I was in middle or high school: the thing that I remember best about it is that our book covers contained the same typo for years, "repsonsibility" instead of "responsibility."

But here, dated 1 September 2004, and written in her very best cursive handwriting, is my sister's essay. Clearly she paid a bit more attention to the character pillars than I ever did...

Pillars in Person

My essay is about my older sister Kristina. She is 18 years old and her birthday is in November. She is taking classes at Messiah College in Pennsylvania this year.

Kristina is a very caring person. She often baby-sits my brother Nathan and I to help out my mom. She also forgives people very easily. For exampale [sic] if we keep bugging her while she is trying to do her homework she will say "will you please stop" instead of yelling at us. She shows this in many examples here is one, if we have a homework assignment we do not understand she will help us with it.

Kristina also shows that she is a good citizen by encouraging us that we can do anything we set out to do! She also shows this trait by respecting my mom even when she doesn't like what my mom wants her to do. She also shows this by not littering even if it's very tempting.

Also Kristina shows that she practices the character pillar of trustworthiness by never cheating in card games such as Bridge and Spades. She shows this trait also by never lying about grades or anything else. She never breaks promises, and is usually on time. Kristina is the best example of a person I know showing these character traits.