If you could be anyone,</br>would you choose to be yourself? - Naomi Shihab Nye

In these days when "trade" is an amplified word, with the images of appliances and factories and skills flying back and forth across a border, I prefer to imagine cultures trading invisible riches.

Give up the annoying question, "How long does this have to be?" Just wonder-how long does it need to be? Then try to find out.

during the Gulf War, I remember two little third grade girls saying to me - after I read them some poems by writers in Iraq - 'You know, we never thought about there being children in Iraq before.' And I thought, 'Well those poems did their job, because now they'll think about everything a little bit differently.' They'll feel closer to that place in a different way. (2002)