A SUDDEN CONNECTION

Dear Spike:

Snowing again today. Nine inches, maybe more.

The roads haven’t been plowed yet, so your mother decided to walk to work. We’re upstairs watching this amazing white world from the window in my office (which over the past few months has come to more closely resemble your office.)

A few short and random thoughts on this beautiful winter morning:

• Over the past few days, I’ve spoken to or corresponded with several friends whom I have not seen in some time. I’ve made an effort this year to reengage those friends with whom, for whatever reason, I have lost contact — and there’s a long list. I’m glad I’ve done this. It’s been especially rewarding to share with them your story and to hear about their lives, their families and their journeys.

• I think I may have made a new friend in Kenya this week. He’s a fellow journalist who wrote me in response to an article I penned regarding America’s use of Third-World mercenaries to defend its military and diplomatic bases in Iraq. Seems we’ve got a lot in common and we’ve begun to correspond.

• A song comes to mind... “Make new friends but keep the old,” I think it goes.

• I heard on the radio this morning that machete sales are up in Kenya. And though I’ve never even met my new friend in the flesh, I felt a sudden connection to that place, where candidates for parliament and the presidency have been stirring ethnic divisions in an attempt to win more votes.

• I’ve had similar experiences when reading or hearing reports from many of the places I’ve traveled and many more where I have friends. It is often a woeful experience, but I feel very privileged to be connected to this world in this way.

• Another song comes to mind (and probably won’t leave my head all morning now) “it’s a world of laughter, a world of tears, it’s a world of hope and a world of fears.”

• Outside it looks as though someone has shaken a snow globe, with tiny flakes swirling about in the air up, down, left, right. The trees look like cotton bushes. The street is like a long, flat sheet of white paper.

• It looks like we’re going to have a white Christmas. And so will those we know and love in places like Herat, Afghanistan; and in Frankfurt, Germany; and in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

• Yes, it’s a small world after all.

Love,
dad