It's just too nice a day to focus on the crap

with the story of cheney's shooting of his hunting companion growing more bizarre by the minute, with the u.n. security council ready to take up the question of iran, with global islamic anger over the cartoon controversy still commanding media attention, with the documentation of dereliction of duty by bushco over katrina growing more solid by the minute, i think it's simply too nice a day to dwell on such gloomy news... here's something that brought a smile to my face and, from my current vantage point in the buenos aires barrio of nuñez, looking up through the trees at a beautiful blue, late afternoon, summer sky, dotted with white puffy clouds, reading this makes me even happier to be here... i'm not often in a mood to look past the terrible dilemma our world is in, but today i am, so deal with it, ok...?

In the northeastern Argentine province of Chaco, the poorest part of the country, the Storytelling Grandmothers programme has been so successful that the Ministry of Education has taken up the idea and turned it into national policy.

The programme, launched five years ago by the Mempo Giardinelli Foundation, is as simple as it is effective. It basically consists of elderly people who volunteer to read books to children.

"The aim of the programme is to help children live better lives, because reading makes for a better life," Argentine writer Mempo Giardinelli explained to IPS.

Originally intended as an activity for primary schools, it has now spread to hospitals, institutions for the disabled, soup kitchens that cater to children, orphanages and churches.

"This is our secret formula: affection, plus high-quality literature, equals children who read," Natalia Porta López, the programme coordinator, remarked to IPS.

The grandmothers make weekly visits to the school or institution assigned to them, and read a different story each time to their young audience.

"The whole activity is centred on the book itself as object. The grandmothers teach its symbolic value in the most loving and generous way, in order to encourage reading from the earliest age," the programme's founding document states.

"The image of a storytelling grandmother captures that beautiful, intimate moment when an adult opens a book and says to a child: 'I'm going to read you a story.' It's concrete, simple, and magical," said Porta López.

"This custom has been abandoned, so somebody has to do it. The 'storytelling grandmother' is a symbolic figure. Anyone who is interested can take on this role and reconstruct that defining moment, women or men, of any age," she explained.

now tell me that doesn't give you the warm fuzzies...

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