I have a friend that has a knack for buying great gifts. My sense of it is that she doesn't just buy things that are "cool", she finds a gift that contains in some way the essense of the person she is buying for. Even though we live in a time of wasteful and often shallow consumerism, "things" can still hold great meaning and I hope that they always do. We own "artifacts", things that, if they carry on after we are gone, will hold meaning. They will hold in some small way our history, our essense and may hold great importance to those we leave behind, even those that may follow generations after.
Along the strange and winding path of my brain, I thought about my friend and her gifts, our own artifacts and their place in family history and sometimes world history while my wife and I laid in bed last night and listen to a radio documentary about a suitcase that belonged to a little girl who perished in the concentration camps of Eastern Europe during World War II. It was a powerful story. Too good not to share...
Link: Hana's Suitcase [via PRI's To The Best of Our Knowledge]
Link to same story different narrative: Hana's Suitcase [via CBC]
