My wife is off on the coast of Oregon.  Curiously, I’ve had a song running through my head for the past couple of days.  This one.  The lyrics don’t apply perfectly, but close enough.

***

Many of my daughter-in-law’s relatives are in Miami.  They live there.  We’re all very concerned.  Fortunately, they’re congregating in one well-built home that’s at a good elevation:  twelve feet above sea level.  We’re all still very concerned.

***

This is a wonderful effort, a ray of light in an often very dark region:

“Morocco’s Muslim monarch is trying to preserve the country’s Jewish history — before it’s too late”

Here’s a parallel story:

“In a bid to promote diversity, Egypt plans to restore Alexandria synagogue”

I earnestly hope that these undertakings prosper and succeed.

***

And this story, set in the United States, is also very heartening:

“A Secret Weapon In The Fight Against Islamophobia”

***

Unfortunately, in some places things aren’t always going nearly so well:

“Can Anyone Stop Burma’s Hardline Buddhist Monks?”

Not even, it seems, in New York City, as this rather long but well-written New Yorker article recounts:

“The Trials of a Muslim Cop”

***

Bobbie Coray brings this article to my attention, a piece clearly written from a liberal perspective that seems relevant in the present context:

“Building Bridges of Faith”

This, too, is written from a left-leaning vantage point, but may be of interest to anybody who wants to get a glimpse of inter-religious relationships in contemporary India:

“What We Can Learn From Religious Liberty Battles in India”

***

“The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands, trusting the pony to get me home again. Sometimes I followed the sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of the persecution when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilderness to find a place where they could worship God in their own way, the members of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower seeds as they went. The next summer, when the long trains of wagons came through with all the women and children, they had a sunflower trail to follow. I believe that botanists do not confirm Jake’s story but, insist that the sunflower was native to those plains. Nevertheless, that legend has stuck in my mind, and sunflower-bordered roads always seem to me the roads to freedom.”

― Willa Cather, My Ántonia