Here’s an e-mail I just sent to the Boston Globe:

In its October 31st  ”Nation” section, the Boston Globe has chosen to publish not, not two, but three articles concerning Muslims: “Mosque members deny FBI claims,” “Accused Muslim says spouse abusive,” and “Iraqi father held in attack on woman.” Three articles out of the six  is hardly representational of our nation. Were you just not paying attention?Or is it the Globe’s policy to further complicate the already fraught relationship between Muslims and members of other religious denominations?

Last night my husband and I were walking down Park Street  when, half a block in front of us, lights flashed, a warning bell sounded, and the crossing gates descended, signaling the approach of a commuter train. Which almost immediately roared past, furiously blasting its horn again and again.

“But they never blow their whistle here,” David commented.

“So you didn’t see that woman duck under the gates and cross the tracks?” He hadn’t.

“Those whistles were  about her, I’ll bet. And how angry she made that engineer.”

Angry. And scared.

Like so many of us right now. And accounts for, I think, “our society’s open welcome of public displays of hatred,” as a letter -to -the- editor  writer noted in this morning’s Boston Globe.

Years ago at a wedding reception at Cambridge Meeting, I met a man from Philadelphia who, apparently, lived in a recently gentrified neighborhood. He talked about his neighborhood association deciding to hang planters from the street lights on his block. “God, no!” he told the association. “I mean, why don’t you just hang out a sign saying, ‘Yuppies live here. Please come rob us.’ !”

I thought of that man yesterday as I walked home from Ricky’s, a nursery/garden center right smack dab in the center of bustling Union Square, cradling a big, gorgeous pot of flame-colored mums. Living, as I do, in a semi-gentrified neighborhood (i.e. with people like me side by side with people out of work or working several jobs just to get by) and aware, as we all are, that although the recession abates, unacceptably high unemployment stubbornly continues, what was I doing? Surely  decorating my front porch with a $9 pot of flowers both flaunts my financial ease AND begs to be ripped off.

But just before I got home, I passed a man who, judging from his accent, his clothing, and his skin color, might very well be either out of work or working several jobs to get by (Of course I could be wrong and hope I am). When he saw those flowers he smiled broadly: “Oh! How beautiful!”

Later, yesterday, I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate, give a lecture at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre  (when in an expansive mood, I consider Harvard’s campus part of my neighborhood, too.) In passing, Pamuk said something to the effect that novels set in small villages in non-Western countries show us that characters living in such places, people of color, perhaps, Muslim, perhaps, certainly people who haven’t read many books, are as “deep” as Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary and Oliver Twist. (I hope I understood him correctly!)

As John Keats reminds us:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:*

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

[*See "Bright Star" —it's quite as beautiful as the mums on my front porch.]

Quaker videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XlMkK4_kTg