A Desert Compass
I read the article “Elegy” by Kathleen Hill (September) with a mix of delight and misplaced nostalgia, as the nostalgia is not mine. My parents met in Zinder in the early 1970s and maintained a mostly written correspondence with Fr. Guy Romano until his passing a few years ago. My childhood was peppered with anecdotes, goatskin wall hangings, and songs in Hausa—so much so that it inspired me to launch my own nonprofit organization, Akoma Ntoso Foundation. The foundation provides medical and educational support in nearby Ghana, now that Niger, sadly, is too politically unstable to safely engage in outreach programs. It was in Niger where my parents’ love story began, where my father, a Peace Corps volunteer, met my mother, a Spanish missionary. Together, with the calls to prayer as their soundtrack, they started a beautiful family. I still have my childhood boubou, Niger Bend Tuareg bangles, and several crosses of Agadez. And, most importantly, I have my love for a desert that I have not trodden but that has been my compass for the past fifty years.
Celina Moore
Boca Raton, Fla.
The Tea Leaves of History
With his erudite and accessible review of two recent books exploring the psychological terrain and creative work of various European intellectuals and artists prior to both world wars, Costică Brădăţan clearly whets our curiosity (“Before & After,” September). For we sense that if only our predecessors had been better at reading the cultural tea leaves, so many lives could have been spared. Yet, as the writer acknowledges, this task is daunting.
Concluding his review, Brădăţan underscores our burden today with some key rhetorical questions. He asks, for example, “And what about those of us who see the danger now? What exactly are we doing to avert it?” Because surely future generations will be wondering the same things about us. Then, in a final, wistful reflection that recalls the speaker in T. S. Eliot’s classic poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the reviewer muses, “Then again, what do we really know about the dangers of our own time?”
Well, may I suggest: quite a bit? And alas, they seem to be mounting. As Confucius warned us, residing in “an interesting time” may be somewhat unfortunate, and it’ll take many hands indeed.
R. Jay Allain
Orleans, Mass.
An Invaluable Gift
I am a British Protestant Christian living in Scotland. I discovered Commonweal some five or six years back and have become an avid and eager reader of every edition since. I know of no publication anywhere quite like this one and I am enormously grateful for the intellectual and spiritual stimulus I experience time and again when reading your pages. Your journal quickens my prayers for the emergence of what Robert Schreiter has described as “the new Catholicism” in which all of us who confess the Lordship of Jesus might gladly share. Thank you for this invaluable gift to the Body of Christ; please keep it coming.
David W. Smith
Kirkintilloch, Scotland
