I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives by Caitlin Alifirenka, Martin Ganda and Liz Welch.

How many of you ever had a pen pal? When I was in junior high, I had a pen pal from Spain, and I tried to write to her in Spanish, while she attempted to write to me in half English and half Spanish. It was fun while it lasted, but after a year or so and half a dozen letters from each of us to the other, it was over. That’s only one reason why the pen pal friendship of American Caitlin Alifirenka and Zimbabwean Martin Ganda is so remarkable—remarkable enough to inspire a book. Their pen pal correspondence began when the two were twelve or thirteen years old, middle school, and it only ended, or turned into an “in person” friendship when Martin was able to come to the United States to attend Villanova University.

However, I’m getting ahead of the story. When Martin Ganda, resident of one of the worst slums in Muatare, Zimbabwe and also number one student in his class, received Caitlin’s first letter, he was honored and excited to be able to answer it and initiate a pen pal letter exchange. At first the two teens were far apart, not only in miles but in cultural understanding. Martin knew the U.S. for its white people, the television show The A-Team, and the WWF (World Wrestling Federation). Caitlin knew that Zimbabwe was “exotic and difficult to pronounce.” The two young people had no idea how far apart they were economically even as they became closer and closer friends through their letters.

Just as Martin could not imagine a country where the table was filled with food for every meal and and teens like himself drive their own cars, Caitlin had no concept of the poverty of Chisamba Singles, the area where Martin lived. She didn’t understand that Martin had to work for days, even weeks, just to buy the paper and stamps to send her letters, and she had no idea that asking him for a photograph was like asking for the moon—too expensive and out of reach. As their friendship developed, finally Martin began to share about his deteriorating living conditions, and Caitlin responded as a friend would respond—with concern and help.

There are some scenes in Caitlin’s life, probably meant to show that she was a normal all-American teen, that I would have preferred to do without, no matter how “honest” they were. While she was struggling to find the right way to help Martin and his family financially, Caitlin also was acting like a “typical American teen”, dating and breaking up with multiple guys, participating in girl drama, drinking and possibly experimenting with smoking pot (the last was unclear, but mentioned in connection with her boyfriend). I wanted to shake her during these interludes just like she wanted to shake her friends who didn’t understand her long-distance friendship with Martin.

Nevertheless, the story of Martin and how he and Caitlin changed each other’s lives was inspiring and intriguing. It made me want to do better about helping others out of my riches, relative to the rest of the world.

If you are interested, after reading I Will Always Write Back, in finding a way to help someone in a third world country or even in in our country, I can recommend the following charities and child sponsorship opportunities:

Kazembe Orphanage. My friend, Amy Morrow and her husband Tom are the directors and parents at Kazembe Orphanage in northern Zambia, and they need people to sponsor children. They currently have 30 (or maybe more) children in residence at the orphanage.

Compassion. Your contribution of just $38 a month connects a child living in poverty with a loving, church-based Child Sponsorship Program.

World Vision. World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice. Motivated by our faith in Jesus Christ, we serve alongside the poor and oppressed as a demonstration of God’s unconditional love for all people.

Samaritan’s Purse: Operation Christmas Child. Be a part of changing children’s lives all over the world in Jesus’ Name through the power of a simple gift with Operation Christmas Child. National Collection Week for shoeboxes is the third week in November.

Remembering Inez: The Last Campaign of Inez Mulholland, Suffrage Martyr, Selections from The Suffragist, 1916 by Robert P.J. Cooney, Jr., editor.

This is an odd little book. Edited by the author of a comprehensive and adult-focused tome about the women’s suffrage movement, Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement, this 90-page gem is billed as a “brief tribute” which “pays homage to this fallen leader and her last campaign.” The introduction has a brief biographical about Ms. Mulholland, but the first part of the book is made up of the text of her famous speech, “Appeal to the Women Voters of the West”, in which she asked the women in western states where women’s suffrage was already in place to vote against Democrat candidates for national office because those Democrats had promised women the vote but had not done anything to make that happen. In particular Inez Mullholland railed against presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson, who said that, although he supported woman suffrage, he could not do anything about votes for women until the women themselves convinced the majority of Democrats to back their right to vote.

The rest of the book is a series of articles and obituaries from The Suffragist, a weekly publication of the National Woman’s Party. Inez Mulholland died in 1916 at the age of thirty. She died of pernicious anemia, a “martyr” in the eyes of her fellow suffragists. I doubt that she and I would have seen eye to eye on many issues.

However, I was reminded of the current political and social controversies as I read of the dehumanization of women that Mulholland and others preached so forcefully against.

“There are people who honestly believe—honestly believe!—and they are not only Democrats—that there are more important issues before the country than abortion suffrage, and that (it) would be very becoming on our part to say nothing more of the matter, to retire at this time and take the crumbs from the table—if there are any. Now I do not know what you feel about such a point of view, whether it finds sympathy among you,—but it makes me mad!
Have infants women no part in the world’s issues? Have they we no brains? Have they we no heart? Have they we no capacity for suffering? Have they we no needs? Have we hopes? To believe that they we have no right to breathe part in the determining of national events is to believe that babies in the womb women are not human beings.
Now there are people that do not believe that babies women are human beings . . . But I believe, and every woman of spirit and independence believes, that babies women are human beings, with a definite part to play in the shaping of human events.”

The parallels should have been obvious even without my strikeout substitutions. We dehumanize and deny basic rights to others at our own peril. Inez Mulholland is remembered partly for her poignant question which was taken up as a banner slogan by the woman suffrage movement, “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” I would ask, “Mr. President and citizens of this country, how long must babies wait for the basic right to live?”

The author has a website where you can find out more about Inez Mulholland.
Read more here about the dehumanization of persons, propaganda to that end, and the will not to believe.

Place Hacking: Venturing Off Limits by Michael J. Rosen.

“Place hacking” is not a term found in my New Oxford American Dictionary. One definition of “hack” is to gain unauthorized access. And that’s about what place hacking is: gaining unauthorized access to a place, like a bell tower or an abandoned mine or the sewers of Paris or even a state dinner at the White House. The author defines place hacking as “recreational activities that explore an adventure in off-limits spaces.” Yes, place hacking often involves breaking the law, and it can be dangerous.

Leaping from the Eiffel Tower in a wingsuit. Scaling Shanghai Tower, one of the world’s tallest buildings. Camping on the roof of Philadelphia’s abandoned Eastern State Penitentiary. These scenarios are real examples of explorations, adventures, and infiltrations of the built environment. Thousands of people around the globe engage in the recreational activity of place hacking: climbing, wading, jumping, or even ironing their way into prohibited or obscure spaces.

There’s a whole list of warnings and disclaimers near the beginning of this attractively designed, 72-page book about people who do crazy things. I wouldn’t give this book to a teenager who’s already inclined to break the rules and indulge in dangerous, exploratory behavior, but for the teen who wants (needs?) to experience some vicarious adventure, it might be just the right fit. Of course, the one who’s already place hacking and venturing off limits probably wouldn’t slow down long enough to read even a 72 page book.

Anyway, I thought the book was interesting, although I would have liked to know more about what makes the “place hackers” tick. Their answer to the “why” question was some variation on George Mallory’s famous reason for climbing Mt. Everest: “Because it’s there.” I would have liked a little more probing into why people might want to iron (clothes) on the side of a cliff or explore an abandoned subway tunnel. But maybe the target readers won’t care about the why, but rather just be fascinated by the how and where.

“BECAUSE IT’S THERE… EVER­EST IS THE HIGH­EST MOUN­TAIN IN THE WORLD, AND NO MAN HAS REACHED ITS SUM­MIT. ITS EXIS­TENCE IS A CHAL­LENGE. THE ANSWER IS INSTINC­TIVE, A PART, I SUP­POSE, OF MAN’S DESIRE TO CON­QUER THE UNIVERSE. ~George Mallory, in response to the question ‘Why climb Mt. Everest?’”

Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones.

Mr. Dreher told me to read Dreamland, and so I did. Click on the previous sentence link to read a synopsis. Or read an excerpt from the book here. I found the story to be fascinating and very sad.

“We need to tell young people the truth. Drug addiction is an epidemic, and it is taking too many of our young people,” Carly Fiorina said during the recent Republican debate. “My husband Frank and I buried a child to drug addiction.”

Deaths from overdose of prescription painkillers (opioids) are rising, and Dreamland shows how opiod abuse, if it doesn’t kill you, can lead directly and tragically to heroin addiction. The book also chronicles the rise of a Mexican drug business model that sells “black tar heroin”, specifically targeting mid-size Midwestern towns and cities where opioid (especially Oxycontin) abuse is already a problem. The book looks at the complicity and duplicity of the drug companies who sold these pain killers by emphasizing their supposed non-addictive qualities while knowing that patients were becoming addicted. Quinones also writes about the lives of young men from the Mexican state of Nayarit who come to the United States to take part in the family business of selling and delivering black tar heroin and get hooked on another “drug”, easy money and all the Levis, yes, blue jeans, that money can buy.

I was fascinated and appalled to read about the problem of heroin addiction and overdose that is manifesting itself yet again in American towns and cities. I remember the seventies when heroin addiction was enslaving and killing the hippies and the the wannabe hippies of my generation. I read The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson and other books of the same ilk, and I knew then that drug abuse was something that I never wanted to see “up close and personal,” certainly not in my own life or in that of my family.

Yet, I still have people, members of my own family, who tell me that marijuana isn’t like those other illegal drugs. Or alcohol is OK in moderation, and of course, they would never, never drink to excess. Or they can experiment with other drugs, cocaine for example, and still remain in control. I say they are playing with fire—and very likely to get burned. To extend the metaphor, if you need a little fire, perhaps a prescription painkiller for a limited time and for a specific purpose, to do a job, you had better be careful to use as directed and not become engulfed in the flames. Apparently, a lot of people are becoming enslaved to drugs, and many of them are dying of drug-related causes. I am willing to draw the lines sharp and clear in order not to become one of their number.

For me:
No alcohol. (it tastes nasty anyway)
No marijuana. (never tried it, not interested)
No illegal drugs of any kind.
Very few and limited prescription drugs, only when needed.

Your lines may be different, but please draw some and find your joy somewhere else besides in substance abuse or greed. If you’ve already become enslaved, Jesus is still in the business of rescue. Get some help, and turn to the One who resurrects dead people.