"Did it warm up yet?" asked Mary, the lady who's been a CNA in the Rugby Long-term care for over 30 years. "Yeah!" I responded enthusiastically, "The bank sign said it was zero degrees!" A beautiful afternoon: no wind, sunshine, and twenty degrees warmer than yesterday. I came home from work, determined myself to get some exercise, put on two pairs of pants, the tube socks from Brooke, my Kansas hoodie from Dara, my puffy coat, my bright gloves, my colorful scarf, and my dad's stocking hat. It was a great, exhilerating walk, but 5 hours later my legs are still tingling. It had been years since I had had numb toes...I'd sort of forgotten about that.

Perspective. It really depends on your perspective. In July I was freezing when the temperature dropped to 65 degrees. In October, I was met with a freezing northern wind chill of 20 degrees. Now zero degrees is exciting. It'll continue like that all winter, until May. It is difficult for North Dakotans to believe in global warming. It's all about perspective.

Perspective. So much depends on your perspective. Mozambicans would ask if Americans wear their clothes once and throw them away. Why else could the clothes from the second hand markets be in such good condition? They have to beat the dirt demons out of their clothes on cement washboards: though always neatly pressed, their clothes get worn-out rather quickly.

Perspective. I overheard a couple of people laughing about a law that might be passed charging a fee for every head of 80 cows a person has because their carbon emissions contribute to global warming. Indeed, in a state where the a dairy farmer's mile-deep manure pit doesn't even bother the nearest neighbors, whose yard light guages the visibility in a blizzard, two miles down the road, it's hard to imagine that 80 or even 800 cows farts would ever do anything but float up into the endless blue sky, spreading from horizon to horizon and dissipate into the natural cycle of life. It is, in any case, laughable to think about bovinal farting harming the environment, but in this state it becomes unbelievable.

Perspective. It was the perspective of at least 7 men who were seated around me on a bus ride from Beira to Chimoio that a man could not possibly live without having sexual relations several times a week. So if you can't do so with your wife...find another. It was the perspective of a young (YOUNG) woman in a back "bairro" in the village of Sena, who spoke to me while breastfeeding that it was impossible that a woman could live without a husband. She had a smile that sticks in my mind four years later and an incredulous laugh.

It is the perspective of a rural Mozambican that a meal is not a meal without 'sadza' a thick cornmeal porridge.

It is the perspective of a "Norwegian northerner" that Christmas isn't Christmas without lutefisk.

To a two-year old the dirty dishes in the dishwasher are a marvelous pile of toys. To her mother they are a dull and tedious chore for which there is no time.

And on and on it goes. Our different perspectives cause all kinds of problems--political problems, hand-slapping problems, HIV problems, warring problems, ecetera whatever. But sometimes they enrich us and make us holy.

Playing Apples to Apples at our family Thanksgiving gathering--a game all about another's perspective.