A Wonderful Picture Book, Right on Time

From Different is Special Denise Molini

“Those people are DIFFERENT!” Hmm, love them or kill them? Foolish though the question may sound, this is is no joke.

My friend Denise Gibel Molini has written, illustrated, and posted online a wonderful picture book called Different is Special. Like Obama, she is the child of an interracial marriage. Her father was Afro-Cuban, and her mother white and Jewish. She found herself suspect by both “groups,” and fully welcome in neither. She wants a better world for her children. For herself. Her friends, even “enemies.” She wants a better world.

With Richard and Evelynn

The book is posted on her web log, The Power of Being. Please take a look: http://www.thepowerofbeing.net/2008/10/08/different-is-special/

Denise is one special soul, and a great friend. I wrote of her a while back, at http://www.growingintothemystery.com/2008/02/meet-my-dear-friend-denise.html . She is a “sensitive” who feels things deeply, and who loves people. So, she is suffering.

But agony is always a question calling for the answer of redemption, and Denise keeps doing what she can to make the world a little less hateful and hate-filled place. She has another blog as well, called The Growing Field, in which she continues to slug away at similar themes. Take a look, for example, at http://the-growing-field.blogspot.com/2008/01/value-of-man.html

Why do I feel Different is Special to be especially timely? Consider the following mailing I received from the G.O.P. a couple of weeks ago, probably because I live in generally conservative (and pro-Republican) Little Havana. This REALLY bothered me. Actually (and I have to say exactly this, unfortunately) made me want to projectile vomit:

Be American. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Vote Republican.

What exactly are the many messages at play in this ad? Probably very few that its publishers would “cop” to, but it’s clear that its essential purpose is to stir up fear amongst the people, by any means necessary, and to somehow throw “into the mix” a message that different is dangerous.

It’s all so tiresome. Exactly how stupid does the Republican party believe us to be? Just a little more than we actually are, I believe. They will see, come November.

I am ready for a change that means something, and I am a proud American and want to be prouder still. And I am not alone.

Please tell your friends about Denise’s book!!