Types of rain
I am a new subscriber to the century who reads every article in every issue. I deeply enjoyed Stephanie Saldaña’s February column (“A great library of witnesses”); I felt each pang of grief and whisper of hope. I was particularly delighted by her reference to Tawfiq Canaan, the Palestinian ethnographer, doctor, and Lutheran, and his point about multiple types of rainwater. “We rarely find a holy shrine which is not directly attached to a tree, cave, spring, or well,” Canaan writes in a 1922 article in The Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society. He describes the springs, which appear suddenly in the dry country and continue to pour out their running waters for the benefit of human beings and vegetation.
My daughter Amanda Batarseh is a scholar of Palestinian literature. She comments in a forthcoming book that these springs “are a quintessential example of the land’s creative power. These sacred stories, embedded in the natural topography, give narrative shape to the life-generating forces of Palestine’s terrain.”
As a member of two ancient Palestinian families, one Christian and the other Muslim, I remember a saying from our time in Bethlehem: “This land is in our blood.”
—Jane Batarseh
San Diego, CA
Giving the Century away
This is the first letter to the editor I have sent since I started subscribing a little over ten years ago. I was then an active vicar at an Episcopal church. I loved the content, but I could not keep up with the biweekly frequency. I found myself skimming too much and falling behind. When you changed to the monthly format, I was elated. I’m retired now, so I take my time reading and digesting the entire offerings of each issue.
What struck me in the February issue was in the Letters & Comments section: the graph of the United States showing how many people subscribe from each state. Utah is not showing up very well, which saddens me. I have just given two gift subscriptions to help with that! I also share my subscription with someone when I am finished; perhaps I will offer her a subscription as well.
Thank you for all you do to provide great articles. It does my heart good when I read about something that helps me deal with our world today—especially our home country.
—Mary Sheridan Janda
Sandy, UT
