The Joy of LIFE!

Using the local library searching engine, I exhausted it to find books with titles of "life" and it found a book called The Joy of LIFE - From growing up to growing old, a celebration of life's fun and wonder. It's a book filled with photographs and was edited and written by Philip B. Kunhardt Jr. and published in 1989.

In the opening, the editor said "Joy is contagious. It can spread like a forest fire, whipped by a high, hot wind. Joy can be shared in a crowd. Or it can be savored all alone. Joy can bellow. Or it can fall soft as a kitten's tread. Joy can excite. Or it can comfort. Joy can be sensuous. Or it can spring from the intellect. Joy can bewitch. Joy can be sweet. Or it can be zesty, euphoric, giddy. It can teach. It can heal. It can lay to rest old pain. In a world so darkened by suffering and uncertainty, joy can brighten our heavens and make life worth living all over again."

The book segregated in different chapters, and the first chapter, The Beginnings, it said "In the beginning there is darkness. Then, rising over the bleak lip of the moon comes Earth, aswirl with the water and the air that make life possible on our great blue planet. Rising too, out of the darkness of the womb, comes a new life. And with it comes new joy, new pain, new hopes and dreams, new mystery."

There are two photos attracted my attention.

It's description as: At the winter quarters of Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus in Venice, Florida, student clowns are put through a yoga exercise called the "lion" to rid them of their inhibitions.

During World War II, in the summer of 1944, a 25-year old US tank gunner befriended a weeping 10-year old on the streets of te crumbling old Italian village of Passiano. He visited her home and met her family. Something about her haunted him and when he had to move on, George Fortin told little Nina Farano, "When you grow up, I'll come back and marry you and take you to America." At the end of the war George went back to work in a textile mill in New Bedford, Massachusetts, but he kept in touch with the Farano family and the little daughter with the "dark, lovely eyes" that he remembered from her Communion picture. After wooing the budding beauty by letter, George finally proposed and, now 31, he returned to Passiano and married his Nina, one day before her 17th birthday.

Wow! The Joy Of Life! Let's enjoy the joy of life ... and allow it to spread.