Back in mid-December, The Wall Street Journal ran a column by Diane Cole that commented on the book that is pictured above, Dear Unknown Friend.
"Writing Across The Divide" was the title of Cole's book review. Here is a brief excerpt from that review:
As Alexis Peri tells us in her surprising and perceptive study “Dear Unknown Friend,” approximately 750 American and Soviet women had engaged in [ongoing exchanges] from 1943 until well into the 1950s—not in person, but as pen pals. Ms. Peri, a professor of history at Boston University, discovered thousands of letters belonging to these correspondents while researching her previous book, “The War Within: Diaries From the Siege of Leningrad,” at the Russian state archives.
The correspondence project, jointly sponsored by the U. S. State Department and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was prompted during World War II by the unanticipated alliance forged between the two countries for the purpose of defeating Hitler. Both countries wanted to rally support and empathy for their former foe turned unlikely bedfellow. And if these new friendships should encourage converts to cross the ideological divide? So much the better for the winning side....
Ms. Peri makes a compelling case that the shared insights did reap rewards large and small—“they cracked open new books, tuned in to new radio programs, and nosed through new periodicals,” the author writes—as women of both countries exchanged encouragement and advice on managing and balancing work and motherhood, long before the term “juggling” became common. Even years after these exchanges ended, Ms. Peri suggests, the former correspondents served in memory as courageous examples for each other as they pursued love and work amid the uncertainties of the postwar world, keeping alive the fact of our shared humanity.
I think it would be great for the United States government, and cities and counties, and states, and elementary schools and high schools, and colleges and universities, to institute, on a very much larger scale, an ongoing, permanent program, encouraging and sustaining the formation of international "pen pal" relationships.
In fact, let me recommend a book I recently read, I Will Always Write Back, by Martin Ganda and Caitlin Alifirenka. This story, about an international pen pal relationship that changed many lives, was written with Liz Welch, and is truly inspiring. It is definitely worth reading.
I am thinking, though - thinking about that Cold War "pen pal" program, and how we might expand that - that it might be worthwhile to "up the ante," substantially, and to institute a really, really large national and international student exchange program, supported by our very own tax dollars. There is a lot of money in the so-called "defense" budget, and this would be a program that would be dealing with the problems of achieving and sustaining global peace.
If there is one thing that is clear to me (and to you, too, I hope), it is that we all live in one world, and that we are going to need to be able to collaborate and cooperate if we are going to have any chance of meeting the global warming challenge that is our generational assignment (no matter what "generation" you might identify with). We do, as well, have the need to eliminate the threat that nuclear war poses to everyone of us.
Below is a video link to a talk by Noam Chomsky, a talk most somber and serious. If you'll take the time to listen to it, I bet you will agree that he is right about what he says.
If Chomsky is right, all of us alive today - in every part of the world - must find ways to "change our way of thinking," and that means, among other things, that we will need to build a system of truly global cooperation. Why shouldn't the United States offer to help make that a possibility by paying for every young person (during their high school and college years - whether the young person is in college or not) to have a nine month foreign exchange visit in some other country? We, U.S. taxpayers, would bear the costs for all the students who would participate, from our country and from all the other countries involved.
We could start small, but we need to think big. We do live in one world. Let's start recognizing that reality, and lets start finding ways to establish some worldwide connections to support the worldwide cooperation that we must accomplish.
Here's Chomsky, talking about the other alternative:
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