Readers write: Seeing the good, a fig tree saga, and more

Seeing the good

It has become my practice over the years, when some “disaster” or difficulty comes into my experience, to look for the blessing. Every difficulty eventually reveals some blessing as part of its unfoldment, and so I like to expect and look for a blessing, no matter how difficult my experience.

Several of the articles in the July 27 issue of the Monitor Weekly illustrate how much this pandemic has brought us all together, and moved us to appreciate one another and work for one another – and so has actually united us in ways that would not otherwise have occurred. 

In the article “‘What we do is help’: Not for the first time, Mexican neighbors band together for the pandemic,” I read how informal workers in Mexico have worked together to bless one another, for instance. 

In “Farm to food bank: Moving farmers from ‘dump’ to ‘donate,’” I learned how German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have worked together toward financing aid in response to the pandemic in Europe. 

And in the cover story “Out of global upheaval, a new Olympic spirit,” I saw how Olympic athletes all over the world have been united as they find ways to prepare for the next Olympics; they now seem to appreciate one another more than before. 

Thank you for highlighting these blessings flowing from the pandemic. We are waking up spiritually and learning to work together in support of one another as a result of it, and so are coming closer together. Regardless of what happens, God is at work in all of us so beautifully!

James Raynesford
Lakewood, California

A fig tree saga 

Mary Ekstrand’s Home Forum essay, “Too many figs! Or so I thought,” in the June 15 Monitor Weekly brings back memories of the 1950s when my grandmother was determined to grow fig trees at her home in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

The species of fig she desired could not withstand freezing weather – rather an obstacle in Bridgeport. Now, we had read that the Rockefeller family grew citrus on its New York estate by bringing the trees into heated greenhouses every winter. Our family was somewhat lacking in Rockefeller resources and required a less costly solution. 

So we employed an alternative (back-breaking) technique: Each autumn, these rather large trees were dug up and buried in deep trenches below the frost line. In late spring when the danger of frost had passed, the trenches would be opened and the trees stood upright for another growing season.

Unlike Ms. Ekstrand’s overly productive Seattle fig trees, the Bridgeport trees were quite stingy with fruit and evidently did not like the ritual of being dug up and buried every year.

After many years of this exercise, we suggested to my grandmother that the trees should, by now, be acclimated to New England winters. We skipped the burial ritual that year – and sadly that was the end of the Bridgeport figs.

Harry Melkonian
Vaucluse, Australia

Quality writing

Ryan Lenora Brown’s article “99 days, 4 lives, 1 pandemic: South Africa in lockdown” in the Aug. 10 Monitor Weekly is one of the best news stories I’ve ever read. Is it too much to praise it as a kind of diminutive journalistic “Ulysses”? May all your writers achieve such transcendence of the medium and with such relevant social importance.

Stephen Rose
Hudson Valley, New York