Winning Words 6/3/10
“We are all alike on the inside.” (Mark Twain) One thing I like about our community is it’s diversity … religious, ethnic and political. Last week I was at a party with a number of Africans. Even though we’ve lived as “neighbors” in WB for a few years, I had never met them. What a pleasant experience to talk with them and to learn about their food and customs. One family recently joined our church. ;-) Jack

FROM PRJS ON VACATION: I certainly hope that you don't cavort around with Norwegians!!! FROM JACK: Aren't Swedes and Norwegians the same, outside and inside?

FROM MOLINER CF: Mark Twain was a knotty fellow FROM JACK: I once belonged to the Knothole Gang which was organized for kids by the Moline Plows, a Cubs' affiliate in the Three-Eye League. Does that make me knotty, too?

FROM LIZ IN ILLINOIS: My mother used to lament that there is a McDonald's in every little town across the country (world now)-- that we were losing some of the "regionality" of the "old days." Her point: diversity is what makes life interesting. I agree. FROM JACK: I wonder what she'd think of the little Dairy Queen in Moline which has expanded worldwide, too? I like to be able to get a Big Mac in various communities and know that each will taste the same. That's just me.

FROM RI IN BOSTON: We are all overwhelmingly alike physically on the outside too, with the exception of a few details. The closer one gets, and the deeper the relationship gets, it becomes clear just how appealing some others are. FROM JACK: Diversity (or lack of it) is in the eye of the beholder. MORE FROM LIZ: My friend, John, a native QC homosexual and Democrat, calls himself an "armchair traveler." He is more worldly than any of the "well-traveled" people I've met, including those I met while in college in D.C.-- people whose parents held such worldly positions as VP @ DuPont. Diversity is where you seek it...

FROM TS IN MICHIGAN: We are all alike on the inside. too bad more people don't believe it FROM JACK: "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind." I always admired the way you took your son's soccer team to Cuba to play soccer with the boys there. I'm sure that both groups gained an appreciation that we are alike on the inside.

FROM SG IN TAMPA: I like to think that way,too, but we do have to acknowledge history to know that there are exceptions. Yesterday our eighth grader was in a play about Anne Frank, and then I am also reading Laura Bush's Spoken from the Heart where she describes her father and his experience in liberating Germany and a death camp. FROM JACK: I don't think that MT was saying that everything (including the mind) is the same. I see his "words" as a reaction to the racial prejudice that was so prevalent in his day. Currently, Rand Paul seems to be resurrecting the issue. BTW, since many Germans during WW 2 were Lutherans, the leap of logic has been made by some that Lutherans are Nazis. MORE FROM SG: The bottom end is that we all have to be the best that we can be.

FROM ML IN ILLINOIS: i like mark twain. he helped me view the world in a "bigger" sense. my mark shares this point of view. he read huck finn to beth and thom at bedtime when they were very young. he wanted them to strive for adventure, the river and those who may come into life no matter what their color or economic stature. good quote! thanks! FROM JACK: Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were social commentary dressed in adventurous clothes.