Checking my emails this morning I came across an email from Pat Starnes a member of Active Rain.  It read:

You've received a contact message from your Contact Form on the ActiveRain network.

Message details:
From: Pat Starnes
Email: pats@mcintoshandassoc.com
Subject: you've been tagged

Michelle, you've been tagged! Please follow this link:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/800351/Attacked-by-the-newest-MeMe-Virus

Thanks! Hope you play along.

Pat

Well, always up for a challenge, I immediately grabbed my nearest book and began to thumb through the pages.  A book I purchased years ago as a conversation piece to put on the coffee table, but somehow it ended up shuffling its way over to my office and has been sitting in a pile of books and magazines atop my desk. As I began to flip through the book, I saw the faces of some of the many immigrants who passed through Ellis Island on their journey into our great nation.  As I approached page 56, the picture on the page caught my attention, a picture of a young mother and her three children.  A boy probably no older than 10 and 2 little girls under the age of 4.  The uncertainty shown in the eyes of this family are very prominent in this photo.  I can only imagine putting myself in this mothers situation, and think of what it might have been like for her and her family to have left their homeland and traveled so far, for a NEW beginning, but yet the unknown!  The fifth sentence of this page reads:

They would be fed on the ship, be given a breakfast the following morning, at which time a lighter would come to take us over to Ellis Island. And so there was this slight feeling among many of us that, "Isn't it strange that here we are coming to a country where there is complete equality, but not quite so for the newly arrived immigrants?" 

Once on Ellis island, the immigrants typically had many more long waits, and the best they could hope for was a two-to-three hour ordeal. As they entered the main processing hall, they were invited to leave their baggage in storage on the main floor of the building while they went through the inspection process. They carried the identification papers that had been prepared for them when they boarded ship in Europe, and manifest tags referring to their ship were fastened to their clothes.

I found it very compelling to continue reading and learning more about the immigrants and their process of coming through Ellis Island.  The many struggles and stories they had to tell.  I'm so glad that         Pat Starnes challenged me to pick up the nearest book, this really has been a great meme!  I am excited to read other Active Rainers sentences from page 56, I'm sure this can get very interesting!  So to continue on with the tradition of the challenge, I am asking the following people to grab the book nearest them and share whats inside!

kat De Long

Ginger Foust

Randy Prothero

Elizabeth Nieves

Fernando Rosado

Directions for your tag:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next two to five sentences.
5. Do NOT search for your favorite book,you must use the first book you see after reading this.
6. Tag five more people                                                                                                                   

HAVE FUN!