Day 3689: Blankets and a search.

"Transgression": junk mail collage, digital.

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2GN2S ... 

Prestatyn girl makes homeless blankets from crisp packets ...

Alyssa, from Prestatyn, Denbighshire, UK, flattens them out, cleans them and uses an iron to fuse them together into a single sheet. During the past year, she has made more than 200 blankets using almost 10,000 waste crisp (chips) packets. The blankets have been given to organizations which support homeless people. Each take an hour to make, but Alyssa said the effort was worth it because it helps homeless people and stops the packets from being thrown in the bin.

"Each packet has to be opened out so it's flat and then washed in the sink. Then you take four of them, put them under a piece of baking paper, and iron them so that the heat fuses them together. Finally, you sandwich the crisp packets between two thin sheets of clear plastic, and you use the iron again to seal that in place."

Her finished products are made up of various brands of crisp packets

She explained the finished blankets look very similar on one side to the silver blankets given to marathon runners after they cross the finish line. The idea originally came from a woman in East Sussex called Pen Huston, who has now set up a company called the Crisp Packet Project to make blankets and survival bags and to support others around the UK who are doing the same.

"You wouldn't think you could turn a crisp packet into something so helpful, but homeless people like the blankets because they're really lightweight and waterproof. "Crisp packets are really hard to recycle, so this is a new way to stop them going in the bin."

Alyssa and her mum put the blankets into a bag along with other essential items like gloves, socks and toothpaste. The packs are given to homeless shelters  or support organisations such as The Salvation Army and Hope Restored. Some have also been sent to Ukraine.

Alyssa's mum, Darlene, said: "she makes the blankets after school - it certainly keeps her away from her phone. She's passionate about the environment, and the homeless support organisations have been very positive about the blankets."

 

Author Spends Decades Trying to Find Woman Who Taught Him How to Read

   Jamil Jan Kochai moved to America from Afghanistan when he was a baby and grew up in a household that only spoke Pashto and Farsi. Struggling in an English-speaking classroom, Kochai was met with ignorance and a lack of empathy by his kindergarten teacher, who punished him for not understanding his directions in English. As the family moved several times, including a summer back to  Afghanistan, Kochai forgot the small amount of English he had learned.

On his first day of second grade, he recalled only remembering 10 letters in the alphabet. He says he was “way behind and on track to be left back.” That is until he met his teacher, Ms. Lung. “I could see he was sharp as a tack, but it was hard for him,” Lung states. “Not only did he have to deal with forgetting all the English that he knew, but he had to deal with the kids who couldn't understand him.” Almost every day after school, Lung would sit with Kochai to give him extra lessons on reading and writing to ensure he would keep up with his class. By the end of the year, Kochai had learned to read and write, even going on to win awards a year later for his excellent reading comprehension.

Sadly, Kochai lost touch with the teacher after the his family moved several more times. “All throughout highschool and college,” he explains, “I tried to find Ms. Lung, to thank her for everything she'd done for me.” He called his old school, scoured social media, exhausted Google, and visited his old school’s district office—all ending in dead ends. He couldn’t come up with her first name. “She'd always just been Ms. Lung to me.” By mid-20s, Kochai gave up his search.

He recently decided to share his story on Twitter about this woman who completely changed his life.

Reunited during the pandemic, they could only speak by phone. My father always used to say in Pashto that every child is a rocket filled with fuel and all they need is a single spark to lift off into the sky. Ms. Lung, he said, was my spark. Throughout my life, I've been blessed to encounter a series of remarkable teachers that have given me their time and consideration and knowledge, but everything really began with Ms. Lung. And I thought it was important that people hear her story, and that they know how much one teacher, in one year, can change a child's entire life.

 

I finished at Stanford, and I published The Haunting of Hajji Hotak. It was a hectic time and we lost touch. But then, last night, after my reading, Ms. Lung's husband, Allen, rushed up to me, introduced himself, and brought me over to Ms. Lung, and seven year old me finally got to hug my 2nd grade teacher again. We chatted and smiled and cried a little. I signed her book and tried to write on the page what I couldn't express with my voice. I took down their numbers and invited them for dinner.

 

Jamil Jan Kochai is the author of 99 Nights in Logar, a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. He was born in an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, but he… More about Jamil Jan Kochai.  Instagram | Twitter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A fun 3-minute video, Perception, here.

 

Just because ...

 

Anhinga

 

 

Smiles for Sunday ...

 

  

    

  

  

 

 

 

 

                             Thanks for coming by today