Sir, – Michael Harding’s columns, my regular “go-to space” for midweek pondering and enlightenment, have in recent weeks portrayed graphically: our togetherness in life (November 13th), where, at the doctor’s surgery “our bloods sit in a single row”; and our commonality in death (November 27th), at the crematorium, where “. . . there was no passports required in a coffin. Ethnicity, nationhood or gender don’t count in the wake of that burning”.
These are but two of many pearls in these columns, wherein he illustrates with ingenious simplicity the vulnerability, the kinship and the elegance of the human race, whether the person is from Mullingar or has travelled “. . . across two oceans, from Shenyang, a city of 10 million souls.”
These writings should be compulsory reading, especially for our political classes, who with disturbing frequency and shamelessness, surreptitiously play the “race card”. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL GANNON,
Kilkenny.