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In the Urbana Library across from Lincoln Square, browsing the 694.6 shelf is certainly worthwhile. About the time you read this, 694.6 SEI, Kiyosi Seike's The Art of Japanese Joinery, and 694.6 ROW, Amy Zaffarano Rowland's Handcrafted Doors and Windows, will have been reluctantly returned to their often undisturbed resting place. Please treat yourself to a look at the etched glass depiction of prairie coneflowers and western quail in their native habitat on the cover of the latter, and, as an example, the dramatically displayed woodwork of the 8th century Sutra Repository, Toshodai-ji, Nara, Japan, in the former. It is unlikely that you will put either book down without marveling at the capacity of human beings to add their skill and touch to the artistry of our natural environment. How refreshing, and how wonderful! How irrelevant are nationality, religion, time, and place! In violent contrast, all of us were shocked, grieved, and humbled by the extraordinary sight of the collisions and then collapse of the World Trade Center twin towers: the killing of so many innocent and unsuspecting people like you and me, and the assault on our human dreams and visions. What has happened to the lives and dreams of the architects, the engineers, the steelworkers, the electricians, the interior decorators who created this modern monument? What has happened also to the thousands and thousands of surviving Trade Center workers, their families, and their friends from many, many countries around the globe? Have we come to see those twin towers as a microcosm of our built world? Have we in the United States-we too in this relatively quiet academic community-seen what we as friends and acquaintances can build, not destroy? A recent headline in The WEFT Review, the newspaper for Champaign's community radio station at FM 90.1, suggests: "Create a Cohesive Society: Make Friends." Let's continue to use the windows and doors of our Cosmopolitan House at 307 East John Street to build ever larger community through widening bonds of friendship. Above all nations is humanity | May peace be with you! |