Accidental Donuts

Friends,

This week’s news about two stowaway teens falling to their death got me thinking about geography and the accident of birth. These young Ecuadorian men, were only a couple of years younger than I was when I first came to study University in the States. Like me, they hail from a mountain town –theirs smaller than mine, scenically situated near an ancient Inca temple, where my grandfather once owned a bucolic farm. We wanted the American dream, yet our fates are in stark contrast. They got to the airport by cutting their way through a fence -I entered through the main door. Their seat was to be the wheel well of the plane – my seat was… a seat. They only made it 1,000 feet in the air and had $20 to their names -both these stats were at least an order of magnitude greater for me. We may have grown-up 45 miles apart, but our access to opportunity may as well have been a hemisphere apart. Through no merit of my own, I was also a U.S. citizen and that arbitrary title gave me access to the world. No extreme vetting for me. No expensive applications, HIV tests or interviews with suspicious bureaucrats. No years of waiting to hear an arbitrary answer. No walls built to keep me out. No level playing field. No fair!

Of course this Friday, the accident of geography also means my experiment with an arbitrary location to congregate is more accessible to some than others. Those of you brave enough to venture out of your homes to Windstream’s north office temporary Friday hub (i.e .Caribou Coffee) are in for a treat: a dozen Dunkin’ donuts! (and all the coffee you can afford). Those of you working from home… keep up the good work and happy Friday!

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Donut Doodle Dandy

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Enchanted Donuts

Friends, Mix equal doses of isolation, adaptation, and time. Add a pinch of random stowaway life forms. Remove predators. The result? An eclectic collection of surprising plants and animals known as the Galápagos Islands. Here, iguanas swim and dive for food, the largest members of the sunflower family grow into 45 foot tall trees, and boulder-sized tortoises blow past the century mark with ease. Frigatebird throats of red, boobie feet of blue, moth-pollinated flowers of white. And, having been granted constitutional rights , sea lions own most park benches in town. Surrounded by an ocean teeming with fish of all shapes and sizes, the only downside of spending time in this remote Ecuadorian province appears to be the complete absence of donut shops. I suppose I too can adapt. Happy Friday!

Friday Donuts

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