Last night in my car, I was listening to an NPR reporter interviewing the French doctor who helped treat the 24 shot Parisians who were taken to the emergency room at his hospital.  The reporter said, “I imagine this was more gunshot wounds than you had ever treated in a single night before. I guess one a night would be more normal.”  The French doctor gently replied, “One a year would be normal. This is not the United States.”

Last year, for the first time in 72 years, I visited the Statue of Liberty, a gift from America’s first allies, the French people.

I always thought it was a bit hokey, and there are so many more interesting things to do in NYC. But I was absolutely blown away, not so much by Lady Liberty herself, but by all the powerful things she symbolizes.

Then we went on to Ellis Island to learn about all the detentions and hoops immigrants had to jump through to be admitted, even in those days. It was much easier to sort the wheat from the chaff according to the guidelines then.

“Give me your tired your poor, ” but especially give me your good, your honest, your hard-working, your healthy.

And, in those days, if you were a woman, even a woman with children, you had to be met by your husband or brother to move on, but not a one of those women was found to be wearing a suicide vest.

Lady Liberty still holds her lamp above the golden door.  Sadly, today, that lamp has, of necessity, turned into a traffic signal.

Imagine there’s no countries.  It is’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for. And no religion too. Imagine all the people.  Living life in peace  .  .  .