Groups here in the U.S. were protesting "anti-American protests" in France by calling on MacDonalds and other fast food chains to change the name of their hottest selling item to Freedom Fries.  News reports, of course, included any number of more sophisticated French products from cheese to wine.

     It reminded me of when Uncle Vanya was nearly kicked out of the communist party for anti-Soviet behavior.  He loves to tell the story.  There had been a very important Komsomol [Young Communists] conference that all young people were required to attend.  Uncle Vanya noticed part way through the opening speech that everyone was sleeping.  Carefully considering the situation (and to help him think better) he began to bang his desk like a bongo drum while singing under his nose, as they say in Russian.  At the time, his favorite song was Chattanooga Choo-Choo.  It woke everyone up, including the lecturer.  No one had any idea that Uncle Vanya knew all the words to Chattanooga Choo-Choo.  It was the end of the conference, of course, for Uncle Vanya, but his friends were always grateful to him that he never took anti-Soviet behavior too seriously.
     There's no question that singing helps.  Despite the anti-American protests, my phone bill alone is proof of the fact that people prefer talking to one another and caring about one another.  The very day the flap over the preferred phraseology for petite pomme de terres was threatening to destroy our strongest link to the French, three of us were sitting in my kitchen huddled around a small, white speakerphone carrying on a conversation with five people 8750 miles away huddled around their large, bright red speakerphone in Siberia.  It was 11 a.m. here and 9 p.m. there.  They were sitting at the wooden table that's stood under the window at the end of Nikolai's room since he was a boy.  He sat there every Saturday morning to write letters for his grandmother who was illiterate.  He sat there to do his school assignments, many of which, no doubt, we would have considered anti-American Soviet propaganda.  And now he was sitting there with his friends waiting for our call.  They had been anticipating it all week.  It was an "event" in the midst of a cold winter.  With the heavy inside shutters closed, and the two wall lamps filling the room with soft, yellow light, it is a very pleasant and cozy place to be.
     One of Nikolai's friends is in charge of the switchboard at his factory, and so he was able to get a hold of a speakerphone for the occasion.  Given the distance, the connection was amazingly good.  Still, given that none of them spoke English, and my two friends spoke no Russian, what normally would have been a twenty minute conversation took over two hours as I labored to translate everyone's comments.  No one seemed to mind.  At one point, the exchange was so warm and touching that I looked up to see that Dean had tears in his eyes.  Just then, Nikolai's mother came into the room.  She had turned 80 the day before.  Even her soft voice came through well over the phone.  We told her we had a surprise for her.  We then broke into a jovial rendition of Happy Birthday.
     It wasn't as familiar to them as Chattanooga Choo-Choo still, there's no question, singing to one another in these times helps.  They burst into applause when we finished, reminding us, for a moment at least, that taking love seriously, even in the midst of protests against potatoes and people, can bring amazing warmth when our world seems at its coldest.

Copyright 2003 Access to Ideas.  All rights reserved.  For permission to reprint contact the Editor at books@worldpath.net

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