The next time we “see” each other in the newspaper it will be 2018!
It’s 28C in the Durban area and negative 13C in Indianapolis as I write.
We did have a white Christmas.
Distance, weather, and many gross and subtle cultural differences separate me from you, but writing “You and Me” for all these years and getting loads of mail, has served to connect me to you and hopefully you to me.
This column will begin it 17th year in March 2018. By grace alone its impact has spread from the Mercury to a loyal and growing readership in about 160 nations.
Thank you Mercury readers. Thank you Mercury leadership and administration.
You have helped me write myself well (or at least well-er) and afforded me a platform to reach lots of people.
May you all have a happy and safe New Year.
In closing for 2017:
Yesterday I referred to my father’s idiom, Don’t carry your fish in a violin case. It stimulated questions.
Allow me illustrate:
In 1994 my dad and I visited a bookstore in Indianapolis where he saw a sign announcing “Books by the Yard (meter)”. It dawned upon him that people buy impressive looking books for show.
“That,” my boy, he said, “is carrying fish in a violin case.”
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