This evening, I finally managed to catch up on unread emails. I have dozens of them that I need to respond to. With that, my blog reading has gotten way behind. My Bloglines account has nearly 10,000 unread blog entries for me to get through. Many of them will end up unread. With that sort of backlog, it is easy to come to the question, ‘why read blogs?’

This evening, I read a blog entry that asks a different question that seems to me to be intricately related. In Gina Coggio’s most recent post, A Message for Woodbridge she writes about having her students respond to a question that a student teacher at Amity was asked, “If slavery happened so long ago, why do we still have to study it?”

Posts like that are a great answer to “why read blogs”, and I hope you all go out and read her post. Kim went to Amity and I discussed the post with her and Miranda. Miranda was very aware of how the effects of slavery continue on to this day.

Yet for me, there is a greater issue. My ancestors were early settlers of this country. They came here fleeing persecution and seeking economic opportunity. I don’t think any of them ever owned slaves, although one ancestor was captured during the French-Indian wars and taken as a captive to Canada where she was sold as a slave and I suspect some of them may have come over as ‘indentured servants’.

We all grow up with our hurdles to overcome. We all grow up with our family histories of oppression. Yes, some cases are far worse than others, but it is a shared part of the human condition. By reading about slavery, by reading about the holocaust, by reading about the genocides that continue to this day, we can all become a little more human, a little more understanding.

We are all in this together, whatever our skin color, family histories, economic conditions and whatever other variables you want to throw in.

Gina’s posts have connected me a part of our country I would not have connected with otherwise. Global Voices connects me with parts of our world that I would not have connected with otherwise.

So, I will read through the blogs, searching for posts that connect me with the folks around me. I hope you will too. If you find some moving posts, be sure to let me know.