MAY 7, 2004
     A phone test from a middle school where the bridge is to be launched, is done using a high end teleconference speaker phone which up to fifty people can easily be heard over. Testing equipment will prove essential -- the difference between a successful and unsuccessful bridge.

MAY 13, 2004
     First phone bridge crossed.  7:45am EST. | 5:45pm in the Ural Mts.
     The journey begins from a New England middle school science room filled with 20 students, a map of the world, a clock set ten hours ahead to Ural Mountain time, and three dozen donuts.  Despite all the preparation it has taken to get everyone ready to cross the bridge, only when the time actually arrives, does everyone sense how wonderful it is that students will so easily share a classroom with other students half way around the world.
     At 7:45am local time the U.S. students dial the number to the school in the village of Marinsk.  A faint crackling ring breaks the silence and the classroom erupts in excitement.  Suddenly a voice on the other end says, "Allo!".  The U.S. side quickly replies, "Good day, friends!" in Russian and, with that, the first bridge is crossed.
     For 40 minutes the students bantered back and forth, with slight delays between questions and answers while everyone got used to when they were supposed to speak and when they were supposed to listen. The Russian classroom 9600 miles away held 25 students, 10 parents, and five teachers.  Given that many families in the village don't own a telephone, the event was a milestone as they gathered in the school to receive their first phone call from America.

MAY 21, 2004
     Second phone bridge crossed.  9:30am EST  |  7:30pm The Ural Mts.
     A group of four grandmothers in New England and four grandmothers in the village of Talitsa in the Ural Mts. talk for over an hour discussing everything from cooking to child raising to home traditions.  The bridge is started by serving the U.S. grandmothers breakfast and discussing how to approach the call, what kind of questions would most easily break the ice and -- as will become standard practice -- how to say a few basic phrases in Russian.  The adults are more nervous than the children.

MAY 22, 2004
     7:30am EST  |  5:30 The Ural Mts.
     Four students who have pen pals call the village in which their friends live.  The four U.S. students have turned the occasion into a sleep-over party, which is fun for the girls, but we learn they have stayed up most the night and barely wake up in time for the call.  As the pen friends spoke with each other, the Russian children's brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, parents and grandparents listen on eagerly.  Eventually all the relatives are given a chance to say hello which, in one case, includes a family with thirteen brothers and sisters.  The call goes on for over an hour.  We learn the hard way with this call to check phone rates.  The other hour long calls cost roughly $40.  This call costs $300.

MAY 26, 2004
     7:30am EST  |  5:30 The Ural Mts.
     Bridge crossed between two children's theatre groups.  Putting groups together with similar interests will prove extremely successful.  Eleven members of a young people's theater group, phone six members of the Pervouralsk children's theater group called "Steps".  Two days before the event a well known Russian amateur theater group asks to be included.  The event grows so large in size, that we need to find a public meeting place with a decent one line phone connection -- as party lines are still the norm in remote locations.  A TV station is approached and asked if the call can be put through to one of their studios.  The station not only agrees, but asks if a story can be done on the event the following night on their newscast.
     In the end, the station's line proved not much better than a party line, yet the deeper connection -- the one between people -- couldn't have been clearer.  Forty young actors here and there spoke with each other for over an hour -- everyone, at times, wanting to talk at once.  One of the most memorable moments comes when one of the U.S. children asks what Russians think about America -- adding quietly that she wants to know honestly.  The station manager asks if he can start and then goes on to say that Russians know that Americans are intelligent, hardworking people -- good people, he says, who have done much to help the world.  It is only then that we realize what all these young people have accomplished: the next night a TV station in Russia is going to be airing a program on something good in America, and something good in our world. As will prove to be the case in virtually every phone bridge, it ends with cheers and applause.

JUNE 9, 2004
     10:00am EST  |  6:00pm the Caucasus
     The first bridge built with a backdrop of some risk.
     While N-- is staying briefly in the mountains, in a town in the Caucasus where a close friend is now living, he tells him to gather several families together the next evening in the home of a neighbor who has a telephone.  He then calls J-- and tells her to gather an equal number of people.
     It is a daring idea as the bridge is being built against a backdrop of some of the worst anti-American sentiment in history.  Yet, it is precisely for that reason that N-- feels strongly about the potential.  If there is even a slight possibility that the bridge can help both sides begin to feel even a bit of empathy for one another (both of whom know what it means to be hated), the bridge will be worth it.  And if that empathy can be nurtured, it might be possible to take the next step: that of understanding something more about each other than meets the eye.
     The night before the bridge, J-- contacts the director of a children's group.  She knows virtually nothing about Chechnya, but has long known the importance of helping children feel needed and is deeply committed to strengthening community, be that one's own, or the world community.  She responds instantly.  By nine the next morning she had six families looking at a map of the Caucasus and learning to say the Muslim greeting, Salaam a`lay-kum.
     Whatever it was that people felt, it was not what they expected, for it temporarily left behind material histories and modern-day differences.  However briefly it came to light, something new was felt by two groups of people talking over a fragile telephone wire 7000 miles apart from one another.  Once felt, it was impossible to go back to what you had not known before.
     The group of 9 children and 11 parents in the Caucasus was made up of both Chechens and Russians. The following are excerpts from the conversation:

     "My name is E--.  I am a father.  There are nine beautiful Chechen children and their parents here in the room with us.  This is a wonderful experience for them.  We have a map of America in front of us.  We're glad to see where you are."

     "Hello from America!  My name is H--.  I'm a senior in high school.  I just want to thank you for letting us call you and trusting us to be your friends. We want to be friends.  At least I do.  I feel honored to be able to speak with you. . . . "

     "Thank you, friends.  My name is M--.  I too am finishing high school.  It's a miracle to think that people in America would call us.  It is the most important thing that has ever happened to us. I'm going to tell my neighbors that I talked to people in America.  Thank you for believing that we are not all bandits. . . . " 

     "My name is M--.  I am a mother of seven.  I pray each night for my children and I will include your children too.  I would be grateful if you would keep our families in your prayers because we too want peace for our children.  In this we are all the same. "

     "I am a mother too.  This bridge is more valuable than anything I could give my child.  It is as important as all he will learn in school next year.  Thank you for giving our children a chance to understand each other.  We know what it is like to be hated.  We don't believe everything we hear.  We know you are a nation of good people.  We hope you believe that about us too. . . .  I too am a Chechen mother.  You who are mothers in America don't know the suffering we have known.  Your prayers matter very much to us -- more than you know."
 
     Something unplanned and unexpected happened that day for which there is no easy human explanation.  Whatever it was that allowed the call to happen as it did, it touched both groups deeply.
 
JUNE 26, 2004
     A phone bridge scheduled between mothers has to be cancelled. It is a lesson in planning things very carefully; the coordinators checking and rechecking the feasibility of the bridge before confirming it with the participants. A cancelled bridge, we learn, leaves feelings that are worse than if the bridge had not been planned at all.

JULY 8, 2004
     More children learn of the bridges and ask to participate.

JULY 20, 2004
     Phone bridge repeated with the July 8 group of children to N--.  This is a learning bridge. A time for the U.S. students to ask N-- about life in Russia.  The children are encouraged to speak freely and honestly, assuring them that there are no offensive questions if the motive is understanding and learning.

AUGUST 25, 2004
     A Rotary Club in New England learns of the phone bridges and asks to learn more.

SEPTEMBER 25, 2004
     9:00am EST  |  5:00pm in the Caucasus.
     For the first time the phone bridge is used as a true peace bridge.
     A tragic school massacre in Beslan, in which over 300 children perished, shakes the region and the world.  Just weeks after the tragedy, our close Chechen friend goes to a large high school and tells them about the bridges and the impact on the children.  The school is encouraged to consider doing a bridge for the sake of affirming something good about the people of the region.  The director welcomes the idea and arranges for the school to participate.  Over 200 people, representing six nationalities, gather in the school auditorium.  The link is made by amplifying a speaker phone.  The students who are able to speak English pass a microphone from hand to hand reading short speeches of gratitude ''to our friends in America'' and mini-reports on everything from the history of their region to what they know about the Boston Tea Party.  Occasionally, their reports are abandoned and unrehearsed words of gratitude ''for giving us the opportunity to show you our best'' pour over the line.  They even sing and dance for us.
     Days later, when photographs from a newspaper article arrive over the internet, we see that they had dressed in their best clothes for the occassion, despite the fact we couldn't see each other.  The point, however, was that we had given them an opportunity to do their best.  That, in a word, was the significance of the bridge.  The event was covered by a regional television station, and the next day the regional newspaper ran a story with the headline, ''Bridge of Friendship to America''.

SEPTEMBER 29, 2004
     A Russian Club is formed at the request of a group of students who have been regularly participating in the phone bridges. They want to learn the language as well as more about the culture and traditions of Russia.  It is the first sign of the impact the bridges are having.

OCTOBER 30, 2004
     Important step forward.  The phone bridges are sponsored by a private academy.  Not only does the academy wholeheartedly take hold of the idea of the bridges, even further, the connection with the school gives our Russian and Chechen friends something vital -- something no amount of money can buy:  trust and respect.  If the academy is, in every sense of the word, worlds away from Russia, that does not keep the prep schoolers from being gripped by the sound of voices thousands of miles away.  As the bridges continue from the school, the students send us moving letters of what they mean to them. Two examples will be recorded in the Log Book:

     Every time I participate in one of the phone bridges I am amazed! I can't believe what I'm wit-
nessing.  This is such a great opportunity to break down barriers on both sides, for we as Americans, have just as many preconceptions about people from other countries as they have about us.  I think that it is incredibly important for myself and for my classmates and peers to hold a true understanding about other people and cultures.
     All my life, the United States has held a great amount of power.  I can't remember what it was like when the Berlin Wall was still standing, but I know from conversations with my grandfather, that the opportunities for connections these bridges have offered me are ones I would not have had twenty years ago.
     I love knowing that there are people the world over who also believe in doing such things.  Each bridge has been different and special in its own way and I sincerely thank all those who have opened their hearts and minds to the concept of 'bridging' the gap between different countries, cultures, peoples, and worlds.  -- R.
 

     I'm enjoying the phone bridges as much as the Chechen children.  They are giving a gift to us to be willing to talk with Americans and to be so open.  I'm glad they were so positive when they talked about the phone bridges because this all seems kind of unimportant when you think about the war all around them.  Thank you for helping us do this.
    I believe our phone calls will have a huge impact even when we don't see it right away.  It's like a math theory my brother told me about.  If a butterfly flaps its wings at the right time there will be a huge hurricane, but in another universe where the butterfly didn't flap its wings the hurricane never happened.  Who knows how long the effects of our phone calls will go on.  These children might grow up to be important
leaders who realize they have more options than war to fix their problems.  -- B.
 

NOVEMBER 2004
     While J-- and N-- work in Russia, they carry a cell phone with them allowing people to call at any time and join the Expedition.  Ten calls come in during the course of their work, reaching them in a school, in the market, in private homes and on the road.  Calls come from seven states in the U.S. and two additional countries: England and Thailand.

DECEMBER 18, 2004
     A planned call is made to the village of Marinsk in honor of the village's founding 225 years ago.  The call adds greatly to the village's celebration.  Words of heartfelt thanks are expressed and songs sent over the fragile phone line.  The usefulness and impact of these calls continue to our own surprise.  The bridges create an amazing amount of goodwill in these villages where overseas calls are still a rarity.

DECEMBER 31, 2004
     At least two dozen calls are made to old and new friends in every corner of Russia, the first starting at 4 in the morning and continuing until noon.  After that, it will be impossible to get a call to connect over the over-crowded phone lines.  The year ends with a huge phone bill -- the only troublesome part of these bridges. Yet, the amount pales compared to the amount of goodwill, and the number of lives that have been changed as a result of them.

 

FEBRUARY 15, 2005
    It has been almost nine months since the first bridges to the Caucasus.  We decide to try to do what we see as one of the most needed bridges of all: one between children in America and children in Grozny. While many know the name Grozny and associate it with war, what is less known, is that it was once a thriving multicultural city.  The war has gone on long enough to result in a generation of children that know no other norm.  If they are to know anything of a world outside their own, they have to at least have some contact with that world -- contact they hopefully will not forget.  Could such contact encourage them to turn away from fighting and war?
    At least for a few people the phone bridge will be nothing short of a miracle if it can be pulled off.  Admittedly, that appears to be overstating a phone call, unless you think about what it would be like to have lived your whole life knowing nothing but war.  Put another way, the desolation of Grozny is as inconceivable to American children, as a warm voice from the other side the world is to Chechen children.
     N-- contacts officials in the region to get approval of the plan, and to secure the use of the government press center, which will guarantee a good phone connection.  All the children on the U.S. side who have done bridges before will participate.  The bridge will be hosted once again by the academy.  More than forty students, professors, and parents agree to meet at seven the next morning.
    N--, K--, and T--, leave for Grozny.  They will get there late in the afternoon and begin to check out the room and work with M-- who is to conduct the bridge.  They all face the tough question of deciding who will participate.  The Grozny children will not be told about the bridge until the last possible minute in case there are problems.

FEBRUARY 16, 2005
    7:00am EST. | 3:00pm Grozny, Chechnya
    The Grozny children do not believe the news when they were told.  It is simply beyond the realm of possibility.  It sinks in only when the telephone rings and they listen to their first words from America, "Are you there?  Are you there?  Can you hear us?"
    (It is only later, when the film footage from Grozny arrives in our office, that we see all that happened on the other side.  The film reveals that as a group of children in the U.S. leaned into the table, straining to catch every word spoken, children a world away were doing the same.  As one group got all choked up, or laughed, so did the other.)
    The U.S. children have prepared a song to sing in Russian.  For their part, one of the youngest students shares a poem she has written in English as their gift to us.  The Grozny children talk about their traditions and the word of their elders as being law.  The U.S. children talk about baseball.  They talk to each other with amazing freedom and ease.  Laughter comes easily to both sides.  The call comes to an end all too soon.  The U.S. children suddenly call out "We love you!".  Only later, the film shows a guard in the background holding an ominous machine gun.  At the children's words he smiles and chokes up a bit -- though neither he, nor the camera men, realize that he has slipped into the edge of the picture.


GROZNY TELEVISION INTERVIEW FOLLOWING THE BRIDGE:

     M--:  I want to ask you only one question.  Tell me your honest impression.  Do we need to pursue such bridges in the future?  And further, what do you think, do we know how to form a dialogue with others, and could there be any result from such a dialogue?
    Girl:  My name is U.  I'm in the 11th grade and I'd like to say that my impression was wholly favorable.   I hope in the future we can continue this relationship.  It will begin to help us communicate with others.  That is, we understood each other, we heard each others' voices.  Again I'd like to say, Yes!  I totally welcome this bridge!
    Boy:  My name is A.  I'm in the 10th grade.  It was, right away, a storm of emotion.  I'm glad we could talk with American children understandingly, that is, to have an understandable dialogue, to see how they view the world.  Thank you.
    Boy:  My name is B.  I'm in the 10th grade.  It was not, it was such, it was, well, something I'll never forget as long as I live.  It was interesting to me to hear what they thought about our republic, about our culture, well, just what they thought about us.  You would have to say that this is progress.  Thank you very much.
    Girl:  In general, I really liked it.  It was interesting.  It gave me a big, well, I just don't have the words for it.
    Boy:  Of course after talking with children in America like us you'd have to say it was very interesting.  It was interesting to know what they think about us.
    Boy:  My name is T.  I'm really glad such a link happened.  I never expected that in America people would give such attention to us.  I was amazed and, of course, we have to continue these bridges, and continue to talk with one another and write one another.  These bridges could help us show the world our real face and help them discover what we are really like.
    Boy:  My name is U.  I'm in the 12th grade.  I really liked this dialogue with American children.  We learned more about their culture, their ideas, and their dreams.  We also learned that even though war has come to our republic, they still want, and think about coming to our republic.
    N--:  For thirty minutes we clearly had a good conversation.  It seems to me that by the intonation of their voices they were truly glad to get to know you.  Yes, they gave you this time together, but you too gave them this opportunity. //  END OF INTERVIEW

FEBRUARY 16, 2005
    10:00am EST. | 6pm in the Caucasus
    Another phone bridge is made with the same children in the U.S. to a group of Chechen refugee children and their families.  Again it is deeply touching.  These two groups of children will call each other several times in the coming year, write letters to each other and send care packages to each other.  Soon after this bridge we receive an e-mail from one of the fathers:  "We wait with impatience for the next phone bridge.  Each bridge is a small promise that we truly are one family on this small planet."

FEBRUARY 21, 2005
    An e-mail arrives from N-- to the children, parents and faculty members that participated in the bridge.  The note says: "You only have one childhood.  It can never happen twice.  You only have one chance to give children happiness while they are children.  The students who participated in the bridge gave the Chechen children one day of happiness beyond what they ever dreamed was possible.  It will be the strongest impression they have of their childhood."

FEBRUARY 22, 2005
    An e-mail now arrives from Nikolai.  He is temporarily working in Germany and wants to organize a phone bridge between World War II veterans: U.S., Russian, and German.  It is the 60th anniversary of the end of the war and there will be a major celebration in Russia.  Nikolai has found two remarkable veterans (one Russian and one German) who are eager to participate.  A Rotary Club in New England is contacted and asked if they would be willing to participate.  They agree and begin to contact veterans in their community.  This bridge will take almost a month of preparation.

MARCH 16, 2005
    7:30am EST.  |  1:30pm Germany
    The day for the veterans bridge arrives.  Despite all the preparation a disaster almost happens.  There has been a mix-up on the time zones and the calculation of when the call is to be placed.  The Russian veteran (who is now living in Germany) is waiting at his home while Nikolai speeds across the German country side to collect the German veteran.  We reach Nikolai by cell phone in his car.  He has a flash of inspiration.  He tells us to start the call with, Semon, the Russian veteran.  He will get there with Helmut, the German veteran, as soon as he can.
    We don't realize at the time that this will make the call even more powerful.  As the two veterans are meeting for the first time, it turns out to be an extremely emotional meeting -- an emotion which we hear in their voices, their warm embrace being left to our imagination.
    Semon is a former officer with more than twenty medals to his credit, and who is impressively fluent in German and English.  Helmut was eleven when he joined the organization called "Hitler Youth".  It was, of course, decided by his parents and the times in which they lived.  When he turned eighteen, Helmut then became one of the millions of boys swallowed up in World War II.
    There was not much more than a year left to the war.  Yet, before he knew it, Helmut was captured and taken to a prison camp in Mala`dyechna -- a small town in Belarus between Vilnius and Minsk.  Then, on July 13, 1944 he was brought before a firing squad to be executed. Watching was a Russian officer, a woman, whose job was to give the order to shoot.  He never knew what caused her to do it, but she told them to hold their fire.  The lanky boy with wavy blond hair, pale skin, and large blue eyes stood in disbelief.  The moment did more than save his life.  It changed it.
    When Helmut returned to Germany five years later, he set off on another journey to learn all that he had not been taught about Russia. His lifelong search was driven by the desire to understand the character of a people who had produced a woman that could be moved to such compassion toward an enemy who had killed so many of her "sons".
    Helmut married and gave his children Russian names.  He diligently searched the rest of his life for the woman who had saved him -- but in vain.  He even returned to Mala`dyechna and actually found people who
recalled the incident.  Yet, no one was willing to speak to him about it openly.

    The Rotary Club has nearly 25 people in attendance, six of whom are veterans invited from the community.  They are truly thrilled with the opportunity and feel a part of something very right and needed in the world.  They feel as if they are taking part in a moment of healing between nations.  It is obviously a small thing -- but that such a thing is possible, is huge.
    When the phone bridge is over, Helmut and Semon talk for several more hours while Nikolai quietly films them.  Helmut is obviously eager to tell his story, not only because it was what has shaped his life, but out of a yearning to pay his debt to the woman who saved it.
    At one point, the film shows his getting up to do a funny, little dance imitating the Russian villagers.  As the story unravels he gestures and laughs, rocking and swaying in his chair until, suddenly,at the very end, he flushes with emotion.  Sixty years later he remembers the names of all the villagers in Mala`dyechna who had shown him kindness -- particularly the girl named Lahra who taught him Russian.  He is moved to tears thinking of it.
    He explains that before he reached Mala`dyechna, the road from Crimea took him to Stalingrad.  German forces attacked Stalingrad in August 1942.  Yet, it was not until November that Russia was able to mount a counteroffensive.  When it did, it was one of the most decisive battles of the war and the most costly.  On a bitterly cold day in February 1943, the Russians claimed victory.  Yet, they had suffered more casualties in that battle alone than had all the allied forces combined in the entire course of the war.  The destruction left behind was not something words, or even pictures, could describe.
    When Helmut begins this part of the story, he shuts his eyes.  The next moment he clasps his hands together and then brings them up, covering his forehead.  At times he stares out past the heads of Nikolai and Semon -- as if standing once again in Stalingrad:

     "Those years from 1944-1946 were the lowest point in my life.  The conditions in all the camps were a literal hell.  I am speaking also about how I felt inside.  I realized for the first time, that I had arrived in Russia having never considered the other side.
     "I was in Stalingrad the day the war ended.  If anyone had tried to describe the destruction left behind I would not have believed them.  It was simply impossible to comprehend what we had done to that city.  Can
you imagine how I felt?  For the first time, I saw and understood that people lived here.
     "The day the war ended we were all working [prisoners of war were put to work rebuilding the cities that had been destroyed] when, all of a sudden, the sirens went off.  We could not imagine what was happening.  Then a jeep arrived.  There were three Russian officers. One of them got out, climbed on top of a platform and shouted to us, 'Comrades!  The war is over!'
     "He said it twice.  The first time in German . . . and the next in Hebrew.  Had anyone else uttered those words, they would not have had such an impact.  But the officer was Jewish!  It was as if he had physically struck us to the ground, what I felt that moment was so . . . was so . . . .[he did not finish the sentence, but only looked down.]
    "To hear those words from a Jewish man was so . . . important . . .so . . . even necessary, 'The war is over!'
    "For me it was truly the end of the war at that very moment [although he remained in Russia as a prisoner of war for four and a half more years.]  To be so young and be a part of that momentous wave of history was amazing.  I survived the war and saw it from the other side at that moment."

APRIL THRU SEPTEMBER
    The phone bridges continue on and off through the spring and summer.  The big event is that three friends from Russia, with whom the group in the U.S. has now long conversed, will arrive in the fall to meet each other in person.

DECEMBER 2, 2005
    The bridges take another major step forward.  We discover Skype which will now enable us to make calls for free as well as make conference calls and move toward the day when we can make video calls.

DECEMBER 14, 2005
    10:00am EST  |  6:00pm The Caucasus
    We cross the first bridge using Skype.  The small room in the U.S. is packed with 24 people, yet the connection quality is excellent.  The bridge is a "holiday bridge" to learn about each other's traditions and celebrations.  Having a theme proves very successful.  Each side prepares holiday songs to sing to the other.

DECEMBER 17, 2005
    9:00am EST  |  7:00pm the Ural Mountains
    We do a second holiday bridge (again using Skype) connecting another group of families in the U.S. with the very first village we spoke to over a year ago.  Both groups have prepared excellent questions and much is learned about each other's traditions.

DECEMBER 19, 2005
    9:00am EST  |  3:00pm Germany  |  5:00pm Moscow
    For the first time we do a four way bridge.  In addition, the bridge is an impromptu event, unexpectedly bringing together people who have touched each other's lives without ever having the chance to meet or talk to one another.  It is one of the most real and powerful bridges we have yet to do.  The story involves two sisters in the U.S. and a young boy from the Caucasus.
    When the older sister, Grace, who was a life-long grade school teacher, passed on a couple of years ago, she left what was for her a large sum of money, $800, to help a young person get a higher education.  Despite her best efforts, however, her younger sister Carolyn sought in vain to find a recipient for the gift as the several schools she contacted did not return her call.  She sadly assumed the amount wasn't enough.  After a year of meeting no response, Carolyn contacted Access to Ideas.
    Would the sum help a Russian child, she asked?  Nikolai immediately agreed to help, and called our Chechen friend, M--.  M-- and his family, like many Chechens, have moved several times to escape the turmoil in the region.  A higher education is an unimaginable dream for most Chechen children.  M-- eagerly agreed to help.  In the meantime, Carolyn's sister-in-law, Julia, heard the story and offered to contribute yet another $500 hoping that it would make the gift go even further.

    M-- is living in a region of the Caucasus where peoples of different cultures have succeeded in preserving a peaceful co-existence despite the strife that swirls around them.  Yet, soon after we contacted him, violence suddenly struck in the city in which he is living.  For several days after the attack we heard nothing.  M-- finally called back and said he knew what should be done with the sisters' gift.
    When we told Carolyn his idea, she was thrilled and we all felt that things had worked out the way they were meant to.  M-- told us of a boy who, several years before had lost his entire family.  He was barely a teenager at the time and was taken in by his one remaining aunt.  E-- had become well known in the area for his courage and joy, and his determination not to give up.  He managed to graduate from high school with highest honors.  But even so he had no hope of getting a coveted higher education.  And then M-- showed up at his door one day and told him of three American grandmothers who wanted to help him.  The stunned boy before him was not Chechen, but Kabardinian.  "Let us make this a gift of peace and goodwill," he said, "from these grandmothers whose hearts were filled with love for children and their world."
    M-- got E-- enrolled in an institute in Moscow and found a family to house him.  The money was sufficient to pay for two full years of his education.
    Then on this wintry morning of December 19th, Carolyn's phone rang. Nikolai was again in Germany, and M-- and E-- together in Moscow.  After a pause, Carolyn heard E-- say in broken English, "Hello, Grandmother". E-- expressed his sincerest gratitude for the hope he had been given and promised to do his best.  He promised to write.  Through her tears, Carolyn assured him that she knew he would succeed.
    Nikolai was the last to speak. "We only thought we lived far apart. When people touch each other's hearts we realize how very close we feel to one another, and how close we are."

DECEMBER 31, 2005
    The list has grown longer of people to call on New Year's Eve: old and new friends in more corners of Russia. People will be called in the villages where we have done library projects, in the Caucasus and calls will be made to our "neighbors" in the village of Mwesee where our organization was given a home.  Two unexpected highlights.  One call to the Caucasus results in a mini concert played over the phone -- professional musicians who play and sing wishing us the best in the New Year.  The other surprise is a call made to the Ural Mountains. Our friends have gathered together and have bought firecrackers to set off at midnight.  They anticipate our call.  Several friends hustle out into the snowy outdoors while another friend holds the phone out the window. A box of flares is sent up.  The explosions and laughter come through loud and clear. It is amazing how much can be done over the phone with a little imagination.