Excerpt - One Quotation from Leslie Noyes Mass's 'Back to Pakistan"

"Our philosophy is very simple," says the deeply committed Muslim pragmatist.  "Our philosophy is that, God forbid, if one day a war erupts between India and Pakistan and it is perceived as a Hindu-versus-Muslim war, I want the child who has studied in a TCF school to protect his Hindu neighbor from anybody who may want to harm him."  Ateed Riaz as quoted by Leslie Noyes Mass. [1]

Our world does not change by itself.

I, you, and we change it, one thought, note, statement, and action at a time.

However, some may have a greater impact than others as regards the realms of positive change, and there should be no question that Pakistan's Citizens Foundation [2] and such as Ateed Riaz and author and professor Leslie Noyes Mass have made use of their own lives to create that greater impact.

"In 2000, inspired by her father, Leslie Mass decided she would turn a lifelong fantasy into reality. At the age of 59 she began to train for a grueling journey -- a thru-hike of the 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail." [3]

My literary encounter with what one may call contemporary "fearless women" -- more accurately, I'm sure, heroic women -- started with photographer Deborah Copaken Kogan [4], who hooked up with the Mujahideen dressed like a boy and covered the insurgency against the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

One day I'll look over my library for more of the same right stuff and let you know here what I've found.

In the meantime, those online and blessed with what I might call a "normative human temperament" have a New Earth bounded firmly by intelligent rapid global communications (in English, no less) and perhaps as signaled by Ateed Riaz's statement, an ethic as common and recognizable in Rome or Tel Aviv as it may be or may become in Karachi.

Cited Reference

1. Mass, Leslie Noyes.  Back to Pakistan: A Fifty-Year Journey.  P. 60.  New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011.

2. The Citizens Foundation.

3. Mass, Leslie Noyes.  In Beauty May She Walk: Hiking the Appalachian Trail at 60.

4. Deborah Copaken Kogan. 

Other Reference

Linden, Caroline.  "The Citizens Foundation: Education Leads to Success."  Global Management Summit.

The Citizens Foundation, USA.

Zehra, Batool.  "Generation Next."  The Express Tribune, May 16, 2010.

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