Thoughts sparked by reading broadly...

All too often these missives, this emptying of pockets, begin with "it has been a while" and this is no different. Again my thinking turns to reading and self-reflection. In rereading Robertson Davies' "Deptford Trilogy" I recognized that in many ways, although the books are quite dissimilar, (my favorite book being "A Confederacy of Dunces") the aspect that has drawn me in to these texts might be the "six degrees of separation" that I perceive to appear in both texts. I have often experienced the phenomenon and I am sure many of us have has well, whether we realize it as such or not. Both books involve characters who seem to find their lives intertwined in strange and seemingly unpredictable ways. In a recent discussion with some friends I shared a story about a close friend, Ted, who invited me to go along on a trip to see his then girlfriend, now wife, at the Y camp where she worked for the Summer. He had been there before and had shared with some staffers that I seemed to "know everybody" and always made connections. One staffer scoffed at this and when I met him he, rather insolently, said "Ted tells me that you know everybody". As I recall my response was "I know a lot of people and I find that we usually have people in common", or something to that effect. He, again, somewhat snottily, said "yeah right". I then asked him, "where do you go to school?" they were all college students at the time. He responded, the University of Southern Maine, to which I replied, "do you know John Z and Terry Y" and he said, "oh yeah, they were RAs..oh my god you did it!". The aforementioned pair were fellow grad students in my program, and I knew they had both come from USM. The point of this is not self-aggrandisement or to point out some sort of personal parlor trick, but to indicate that my affinity for these texts lies largely in my own experience. I can only attribute my experience to a self-diagnosis of thinking in "set theory". The Boulean Logic in my head allows me to think of others in common experiences or common communities. the two books are very much place based one in rural Ontario, the other in New Orleans, but the active characters have networks beyond their geographic or social circles. Again, my point in sharing this. I wrote once before that a very dear friend had once called me "the least judgemental person I know", and that touched me deeply. I'd like to believe that focussing on the individual, not their status, position, or station, alloes for a kind of intimacy that, while possibly making myself vulnerable, shows a willingness to "know" them. Truly know them. No one needs to be confessional about it, but if you and I have both come from blue-collar industrial backgrounds in Western PA or Eastern OH, we have a common bond somewhere. If we both have gone to colleges in New England, we may have places and possibly people, in common. Having worked my entire life in Higher Education I have been fortunate to meet many people in various capacities. Knowing who thay are is not name-dropping as much as it is "common experience finding". My takeaway from this is; if we all spent more time seeking what we have in common rather than what divides us, makes us different, we would live in a more civil, more understanding society. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.