Michael Hood
I have to pinch myself, even yet, after the decades of electronic miracles. I’m sitting at my iPad in Haiti, its 5:30, the roosters are trying to outdo each other as the morning light creeps in; my brain’s in Ferndale, Washington, 1958; an earnest young man named Waleed who says he’s from Homs and tried to convert me to Islam last summer, messages to make sure we’re still friends. Simultaneously, a young woman, Neina from India whose English is sparse but just got an undergraduate degree in physics, messages to say “Hye, sir.”
I disentangle my brain from that barn in rural Whatcom County, assure Waleed in Syria we’ll always be friends, say good morning to Neina, and brace myself for the goats to start screaming as feeding time draws nigh.
Am I just a geezer, or is this not intensely amazing?