Recently I had the opportunity to spend the weekend with storytellers and storylisteners who lived in several different places in the United States. It made me realize that no matter how much we are alike, we are also very different. I guess that being an American means we have the right to disagree, and that we can agree to disagree, and that’s good.

In a conversation with a woman from California, I told her about a photograph that I had seen at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. It was taken in the 1990s and the photographer was standing on the sidewalk between the two towers of the World Trade Center. The picture is maybe 18 inches wide but about five feet tall. As you view it, you feel that you should be craning your neck to look up. I saw the photo as a profound instrument of respect for the builders of the towers, all of the people employed there, and the many who died there.

The woman I was talking to had lived for several years in New York, and she told me, very politely and very sincerely, that she could never look at such a picture. The whole scenario was just too tragic. While I felt that the site should become a memorial to the people who died, she responded, &uot;Oh, that will never happen. Real estate is too valuable in New York. There is too much of a demand, and that much space will never be used as a memorial garden.&uot; I was surprised that she was so objective and so matter of fact.

In another conversation, I talked to a man on the Ely, Minn. City Council. You remember reading in the newspaper about the resolution against the war in Iraq that was passed recently and then later rescinded. He said that everyone in the town was intensely either for or against the resolution, and the few people on the city council were in a quandary about the discussions held, the phone calls they received, and the letters, and comments heard as they walked down the street or stopped somewhere for coffee. Ely is a small community, and everyone knows everybody else. There was nowhere to go to escape the anger on both sides of the issue.

Another conversation revolved around the possibility of ghosts inhabiting old buildings, or making themselves known to people. Here again, there were some real believers and some vehement nonbelievers. The believers cited &uot;true&uot; examples, specific situations, and friends involved, and the nonbelievers poohooed the ideas. That conversation included lots of laughs and joking, however it was every bit as intense as the other issues I mentioned.

My friend Michael is full-blooded Irish and I am full-blooded German, and while for both of us the immigration occurred several generations back, while we have many basic common beliefs, we also have a totally different way of approaching many ordinary everyday situations. Oftentimes, neither of us has any explanation other than the German/Irish thing, or a male/female thing.

Our storytelling weekend closed with Stories of the Sacred at a Lutheran Church. It was a powerful morning, with people sharing their moments of soul searching or vulnerability, sometimes with humor, and always with creativity and intensity. It too was a morning of differences. There we were all gathered together &045; Protestants, Catholics, Jews, older people and babies, storytellers and storylisteners, from several different states, and many different ethnic backgrounds. We were together as one, sharing what we believed and listening to each other.

I wish that our world leaders could share such a moment. Is that such a crazy idea?

Bev Jackson is the executive director of the Freeborn County Historical Museum.