Two friends were walking down a downtown street and happened to pass in front of a bookstore. He proposed one: “Let’s go inside. Let’s go buy a book.” “No, thank you,” the other declined the invitation. I have one”.
What a pity. There are only two ways to buy a friend: buy a dog and buy a book. “We are what we eat”, says a phrase referring, of course, to the body. If we transferred it to the mind and spirit, it would not be risky to say that we are largely what we read.
In more ways than one someone who has read Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Cervantes, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Tolstoy and Balzac, Borges, will be different from someone who has had the misfortune of not having read them. I will not say that reading makes us better. I have met well-read men and at the same time of very poor human quality. And the other way around: people of few letters but full of good feelings.
However, it is undeniable that books make us see the world in a different way. That is why bringing a child or young person closer to books is bringing them closer to life. In my city, Saltillo, there is a teacher who teaches reading to those who already know how to read, and who also teaches them to write. I once called her the “apostle of the books”, and I don’t think I was exaggerating.
It is Professor Imelda Rétiz, from my beloved Lasallian “Ignacio Zaragoza” School, where my brothers and I were; where my children were and then my grandchildren. Now -surprises of life- the excellent director of the campus is Brother José Antonio Mellado Moya, son of Lety Moya, the prettiest girl in the neighborhood of San Francisco, my classmate in Miss Maruca’s kindergarten and over the years wife of Bernardo “Nolín” Mellado, a printer of unparalleled kindness who gave us credit to make our student newspapers in his printing house and then forgot to charge us when he knew that the advertisers had forgotten to pay us.
Teacher Imelda created the program “Less Face and more Book” a decade ago, which not only encourages young people to read, but also to write. I was recently at the event in which 245 girls and boys delivered, in the presence of their parents and teachers, the books that each one of them wrote during the school year.
“High Leaves” was called this beautiful act in memory of the Saltillo writer Julio Torri. Another program has kept the teacher Imelda. This is called “Free Books”, and it consists of leaving books by established authors on the seats of urban transport buses, on park benches, on the tables of cafeterias and restaurants, each with a label that says: “ This is a free book. Enjoy it, and when you finish it, leave it in a public space for someone else to read it”, More than 5,000 books flew around Saltillo like this before the ill-fated virus arrived.
I myself found one of them on a coffee table, a beautiful edition -already widely read- of “The Little Prince”. By how many hands – by how many minds? – Will that book have happened? I don’t know, but I do know that those free books have made freer spirits. My city has a reputation for culture. It was once called “The Athens of the North”, for its prestigious schools and for the many illustrious writers it gave to Mexico.
The exemplary work carried out by the teacher Imelda with the support of the director Mellado Moya contributes to making Saltillo a place where people read and write, despite everything that in these times separates us from reading and writing. My congratulations. That seed will germinate in every boy and every girl who, thanks to the books -those they have read and the one they wrote- will be able to reach the highest leaves in their lives. THE END.
LOOKOUT
Armando Fuentes Aguirre
the cicada
The ant.
The cat and the mice.
the milkmaid
The shepherd and the wolf.
The rabbits.
The dog.
The crocodile.
The flies.
Lime.
The snake.
They all got together and gave the fabulists a good round of beatings.
-They told them- for writing about us without our permission.
Until tomorrow!…
MANGANITES
“. Our currency stands firm.”
I do not hide my thoughts.
One thought remains:
firm is our currency;
firm, very firm. in the background.
by AFA
#politics #worse