From: Elsa Marston <elsa.marston_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:23:39 -0600

I totally agree, Marc Aronson, about the importance of encouraging young people to get involved and stay involved in "making the world a better place." Nobody expects them to *solve* anything; but when did the inability of their elders to *solve *a problem ever stop really committed, idealistic young people from throwing their weight into it? Of course some, even after a real horizon-broadening experience, may lapse into an attitudes-as-usual once they go back to their familiar environment, and that's where some kind of follow-up would be useful. But one must hope that at least a few will make the effort to change the familiar environment, and maybe meet with some success. How else can the world get any better?

My firm conviction, in the face of all hostility, is that working together for a clearly defined purpose, one grass-roots step at a time, is the best if not the only way that we humans can make progress on intractable problems. (And nowhere is this more relevant than aspects of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. See the film "Budrus," for example )

So any book that can set forth the problem and the efforts to deal with it, the ups and downs and--hopefully--at least some sort of final "up," strikes me as a good thing.

Elsa www.elsamarston.com
Received on Wed 23 Nov 2011 12:23:39 PM CST