Differences and Distinctions

Growing old if not up in the Space Age, I’ve learned a couple of things from the NASA astronauts and their travels and travails: Tang does not mix well with vodka (unless you have a blender it gets lumpy) and the farther out into space you go, the more alike those of us down here all look.

Actually, thanks to science we know that we live on the third planet from the Sun, and the fourth smallest in our solar system. That’s important to keep in mind because for a relatively small place, there sure are a lot of us, about 7 and a half billion. So when we talk as we often do in moments of frustration or anxiety about going to the ends of the earth to get some peace and quiet, we should realize there’s probably already somebody there, looking for the same thing.

Actually far less grand than a search for inner peace but infinitely more valuable and useful is working on the  ways and means to tear down walls and build bridges between and among us. We can’t just talk the talk; we have to make sure we are walking the walk.

Next Tuesday from 5 to 8 PM, we have that opportunity thanks to the Norwich Rotary’s Celebrate Diversity event at Howard T. Brown Park. Heinz claims to have 57 varieties of pickles but Norwich households ask for them in close to three dozen different languages. And as different as we may be, diversity may be the one thing we all have in common.  

Celebrate Diversity offers food and entertainment representing Norwich's cultural diversity. Last year’s event offered Lebanese, Cape Verdian, Greek, Indian, Italian, Jamaican, Thai, and Vietnamese cuisine from restaurants throughout the city and region and organizers say this year will be bigger and better. 

Tickets can be purchased in advance for $20 each through Bonnie Hong, drceo@aol.com, or at the event Tuesday for $25. It’s not just food and fun as the Lotte B. Scott Diversity Award will also be presented.

At a time when national headlines about Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown starkly underscore how great the degree and depth of separation is in so many communities, next Tuesday you can help redefine the conversation we should be having across the country about what kind of a nation we wish to be. 

As Robert Palmer sang, “It Takes Every Kinda People” to make what life’s about. That means each of us, and all of us, have some heavy lifting to do on a daily basis to assure our world, our nation and our community is a place with dignity and respect for all of us who live here.

There’s strength in unity, flavored with the spice in diversity, defined I read the other day, as “points of difference,” “unalikeness” and “multiformity.” Sounds like a nearly perfect description for Tuesday’s Celebrate Diversity which falls on the first day of autumn. Perhaps Mother Nature is signaling change is good and is already on the way. It can happen.    

-bill kenny