Sunday With Liz

Leisure

We talk about how to spend your time, and ways to enhance it.

BOSTON (WBZ) ― Leisureville
Hundreds of thousands of Americans over 55 are pouring into these new age restricted retirement communities, searching for the good life. How good is it? While we found no residents complaining, but author Andew Blechman of western Massachusetts offers a different perspective in this compelling new book called Leisureville.

Passport
As you know travel in this country is more challenging than ever. Costs are going up. If you fly, there are a number of new restrictions and regulations on your luggage. It's simply not what it used to be. That's why you might want to stop by a new store in Harvard square. Passport is where your travel needs are the priority. 

Mattapan Community Development Corporation
The subprime mortgage crisis that has toppled Wall Street is affecting everybody in this country. When and how it will be corrected, nobody really knows. One thing is sure. It makes the work of agencies like the Mattapan Community Development Corporation more important than ever. Spencer DeShields is the MCDC executive director.

Junot Diaz
It took our guest, MIT professor Junot Diaz 11 years to write The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. But the Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University thought it was well worth the wait, awarding him the 2008 prize for fiction. He tells us about the story and the process.

Just Thinking
Beading is my newest hobby in this late summer season of my life. I work with a group of women who create multicolored bracelets as a way to raise funds for a Girls school we are building in Sudan. The villagers there have been at war so long, they no longer work on many of the crafts they once cherished. So our group decided to make bracelets as a way to honor the arts of their past and our hopes for their future. We use old beads, new beads, made of glass, ceramic or clay, each one distinct in its own beauty and light. Yet the surprise comes when we string them together, whether we group them by color size or feel, each piece contributes to the whole as if it was meant to be. There is something hopeful in moving from isolation to connection, from chance to order, from chaos to creativity. While we realize we will never create enough bracelets to support all of the schools needs, or save all its children, the more beading we do, the more connected we feel to our friends on the other side of the globe. Our prayer is that the creative spirit of our small work is part of some larger work whose power is great enough to heal the world.

Sunday is proud to present Ellen O'Brien.

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