Editorial November 4, 1996 Issue

Where we all come together

William E. Moody

On the ferry heading back from Block Island, I saw it again. The wonderful diversity and individuality. You can see it on a subway, too. Or at a soccer game. Or in a grocery market. Or over at Copley Square in Boston on a summer evening when everyone has come out to listen to the free concert.

People from all walks of life and backgrounds are brought together at times and places like these. Wonderful people, really. It's the father with his four-year-old daughter sitting next to me on the ferry. Or the woman from a small town in New Hampshire who's been going out to the island with her husband and children for the past eleven years. (She was married on the island, she tells my wife.) Or the young deckhand who makes the twelve-mile crossing from Pt. Judith, Rhode Island, six times a day on the big boat.

People who have never met before, who know nothing about each other, come together like this all the time. Maybe we share only a nod or a smile or perhaps just glance at one another. Sometimes we might strike up a conversation. Lifelong friendships have started like that. Usually, though, we just intersect briefly and then go our own ways.

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