Braun and Froio - Holiday Letter, 2007

God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay.
… tidings of comfort and joy!


Dear Family and Friends,

The hymns of my childhood have been coming to mind this week---mostly minor key music and mostly from the Marian liturgy. Today, God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen popped into my head and I’ve been humming it every since. What wonderful ideas: Rest ye merry; tidings of comfort and joy. Whether we are any more able to rest merry than they were when the lyrics were written is debatable. But given the war, global warming, and the sub-prime mortgage mess, we can be certain that we have as much need of tidings of comfort and joy as those long ago gentlemen did.

Here at the home of Braun and Froio, there continues to be both comfort and joy in abundance. After seven years of neglect and dereliction, the house next door to us has been completely renovated. Earlier this month, a new family moved in. What a pleasure it is to look at their well kept yard and hear the sounds of the younger child practicing on the piano! We’ve always known that eventually we’d have real neighbors on the north side, but it took much longer than we ever imagined it would.

We also knew that eventually Bob’s older son, Adam, would find the woman he’s been waiting for—and this year, he did. After a whirlwind romance, Adam and Amelia were engaged early this fall. Amelia is a lovely young woman and Adam has never been happier. We really enjoyed having them both with us on Christmas Eve and we hope that we’ll soon be able to report that they’ve set the date for their wedding.

Some things, however, don’t change. In August 2006, I surprised myself by taking the job of Assistant Vice President of Finance and Human Resources at Mills College (www.mills.edu). Mills is a small women’s college in Oakland, one of the oldest women’s colleges west of the Mississippi. Following my May 2007 rise to Acting Vice President of Finance and Administration and Treasurer, I surprised my colleagues by leaving Mills in October to go back to cause-oriented work. Academia may be stable and secure, but it’s a political petri dish—and not one I found comfortable in the least.

On November 5th, I became the Chief Financial Officer of TransFair USA (www.transfairusa.org), the only third party certifier of fair trade coffee, tea, rice, sugar, and vanilla in the United States. So far, it’s suiting me just fine.

Fair trade certification empowers farmers and farm workers to lift themselves out of poverty by investing in their farms and communities, protecting the environment, and developing the business skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace. Given that coffee is the second most widely traded commodity in the world and that nearly 30 million people labor in the industry, you can imagine that we have our work cut for us!

Just before I started the new job, we took a trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. It was nearly Halloween by the time we got there, so you can bet it was chilly. However, having those spectacular places all to ourselves more than made up for the cold. We breezed into the park on empty roads where summer visitors spend hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The only day we saw more than 20 people was the day we went to see Old Faithful.

Elk, bison, caribou, coyotes, trumpeter swans, and moose seemed to have nothing better to do than pose for our cameras. Way off in the distance, we even caught a glimpse of the Hayden Valley wolf pack.

Amazing as the wildlife is, what really defies description is the geology. Geysers are everywhere. Half hidden by curtains of steam, wondrous spectacles like boiling pools with iridescent rings are common. It seemed as if the only words I could say were, “Absolutely amazing!”…over and over and over. The Tetons looked downright civilized after three days in Yellowstone.

Since the tourist season was over, all of the accommodations in both parks were closed. Undaunted, we stayed in nearby towns. We went both downscale and upscale—beginning in a squeaky clean commercial strip motel in Jackson with elk hunters and their mounts as our neighbors and then moving on to a plush, amenity-rich lodge in West Yellowstone. If you happen to be in Montana and looking for a splurge, try the Bar N Ranch (www.bar-n-ranch.com). We didn’t see the grizzly tracks on the porch, but we heard about them over breakfast for two of the three days we were there.

Those of you who are familiar with Bob’s twenty-year old Dodge van will realize how happy he made the entire neighborhood by putting it out to pasture just before Thanksgiving. In its place he now has a shiny, candy-apple red, 2008 Honda Element. This is Bob’s first brand new car ever, so he’s constantly marveling at how clean it is under the hood and how great the paint looks. Truth to tell, it’s a fun ride. Also nice is the fact that I worry a lot less about his various adventures now that he’s got air bags and working seat belts. After several weeks of trying to sell his old van without success, he gave up and donated it to KQED. You know it’s bad when “best offer” doesn’t generate at least one nibble.

The first good rain fell shortly before the Element arrived, so before it was a week old, it was on the road to Bob’s various mushroom spots. The hills above Guerneville were picked clean by the time he got there. Closer to home, he and our friend Richard got lucky. They each brought home a skillet’s worth of young chanterelles. Let’s hope that’s a harbinger of things to come.

It has been a rich year for us, one full of all the small pleasures and joys life can offer. We continue to be grateful for the many gifts the universe pours out for us and we think often of all of you. Then, as now, we send every wish for good things in abundance.

Keep well, and rest merry.

With much fondness,

Joan and Bob

The Power of Correspondence

Synchronicity has always fascinated me, particularly when I see it at work right in front of my nose. I was reminded of that on Monday, when I opened the mail box the day after my last post. I started visibly when I saw that the front page story of the Women for Women International newsletter was a letter from the founder, Zainab Salbi, about the power of the correspondence we have with the women we sponsor. Her letter felt so much like a response to my posting, that it took me a minute to realize it was nothing more than a timely coincidence. Because it's such a moving letter, I post it here as a bookend to my own piece, My Nigerian Sisters.

The Power of Correspondence
http://www.womenforwomen.org/documents/FinalFall2007Newsletter.pdf

As I walk up the front stairs of my home and see bills and junk mail poking out of the corners of my mailbox, a feeling of annoyance overcomes me. I open the mailbox and throw away half of the envelopes and go on with my evening. But I did not always feel this way about mail…that it is a nuisance and a chore. I remember my childhood in Baghdad – where most of the bills were never mailed but were hand delivered. A worker at the electric or water company would come to your house, read your meter, and hand you a bill stating how much you owed. When we heard the sounds of the horse and carriage clopping down the street coupled with a man yelling "Nafud! Nafud!" ("oil" in Arabic), we came out of our houses to purchase the much needed commodity to cook and heat our homes.

The delivery of mail was a completely different matter. One only received mail from loved ones, friends, or colleagues. Receiving mail provoked a personal feeling of excitement and joy to hear from the friend who had thought of me and reached out with a letter. I still feel that excitement when I receive a personal letter in my mailbox, with a hand-written address and a stamp. It reminds me of the moments of excitement that I felt as a child in Iraq. That excited feeling of someone reaching out to you from far away is very real for the women we serve through our Sponsorship Program.

According to the Country Directors, 90 percent of the women in our program have never received a personal letter in their lives. And in a culture and a context where personal letters are unusual, the impact of receiving one is far more important than many of you who write the letters to your sponsored sisters can imagine. For a woman to receive a letter in this context implies power and importance, which has a direct impact on her self-esteem. The woman realizes that “someone cares about me and I have a friend abroad."

I have had the privilege of witnessing the delivery of your letters delivered in the field.

Letters are delivered once a month when the women meet in their groups of 20 and attend their rights trainings. When a letter from you is delivered to your sister, the other women in her group huddle around, looking at the pictures you sent of your family or your garden, updating each other on how you and your family are doing, the health of your mother, the education of your child, your new pet. They care about the day-to-day occurrences of your life, like you are a member of their families. Even when a sister receives a simple note or greeting card with a poem inside, her days brighten and fill with hope. Your sisters keep your letters in the most precious places they have, under a pillow, in a jewelry box, with their children’s birth certificates or school degrees. A simple letter — which I know sometimes can be hard to write as you wonder what to say — increases your sister’s joy and her connection to the beauty of humanity, to your humanity.

Berra Kabarungi, our Rwanda Country Director, once quoted a Rwandan participant who had received a letter from her sponsor. The participant said, “If I can get a letter from someone so far away who says that they love me, and they have never even met me, who am I not to love my neighbors?”

In a country torn apart by war, that message of love that you can provide directly can affect the reconciliation of a community. In an interview with Honorata, former participant and current staff member in the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo), she told me that despite the atrocities she suffered when she was taken as a sex slave for many months, receiving a letter from someone who says that they cared restored her faith in humanity and meant that what happened to her mattered and was not ignored.

The next time you sit down to write a long letter or short note to say hello to your sister and to tell her that someone from far away cares, remember that your words will elicit a smile on your sister’s face and that behind that smile there is power…the power of keeping hope alive, the power of believing in humankind, and the power to have the courage to build peace.
--Zainab