Juneteenth celebration

Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States and is celebrated annually on June 19th to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States.  Here at my senior center, we will have a special celebration today sponsored by our African-American neighbors.  Genies, who lives above me, ordered wristbands like these to give people, and I'm still deciding which of my shirts or blouses to wear today.

Added later:  I decided to wear BLACK jeans with a short YELLOW shirt over a longer GREEN shirt (so green showed at the neck, arms, and bottom) with a RED hat on my head.  Genies also gave out pins to wear on our shirts.

An encounter, a book, and a surprising coincidence

When I joined a group at a table in the Café, I noticed that Genies was wearing a T-shirt that said, "Kind people are my kind of people."  Genies is my kind of people!  And this is a perfect segue into what I'm reading now on my Kindle.

The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life ~ by Piero Ferrucci, 2016 (10th anniv. edition), nonfiction, 352 pages

This book challenges us with the promise that generosity and decency are the secret to a fuller, more satisfying life.  Kindness is the key to our own happiness.  Ferrucci has added a chapter on harmlessness to chapters on virtues such as mindfulness, empathy, gratitude, generosity, and joy — plus new techniques, meditations, and exercises.

Now comes the curious happenstance:  I typed up this blog post and set it to post just after midnight.  I read both fiction and nonfiction, sometimes alternating back and forth.  After writing about nonfiction, I was in the mood to get back to my novel while things were still fresh on my mind, so I picked up the mystery I'd been reading on Donna's Kindle:  The Consequences of Fear (Book 16 of the Maisie Dobbs mysteries).  Almost immediately I came across this sentence:  "If I look back, Maisie, I think kindness is the most important thing" (p. 56).  Kindness, again!  What are the odds?

Word of the Day

hap·pen·stance / noun (North American) = coincidence.  Example:  "It was just happenstance that I was at that point in reading the book."