A pair of columns in the Recorder’s Dec. 9 edition packed some courageous stuff. John Bos’ column used a poem by Jane Hirshfield, and Wen Stephenson’s response to it, to question the value of hope compared with despair in responding to climate woes. Despair, which the dictionary defines as the complete absence of hope. Despair, the constant wound that hope creates a scab over. I was not inclined at the time to pick at it and make another bloody mess, but I was tempted.

So it was a welcome surprise to find in Allen Woods’ column an inch away, and speaking more broadly, something of a way forward in the form of a quote from Francis Ward Weller. The gist of it: People can hold grief, which “keeps the heart fluid and supple,” in one hand and gratitude in the other, and strive for some measure of balance in our maturity. Grown-up work, for sure.

I have to wonder if the editors saw in these two pieces, as I do, something mutually reinforcing, spurring us on against complacency.

Ivan Ussach

Warwick