tutu

Photo by Alicia Anstead

This is why we’re luckier than a sack of shamrocks to be on this fellowship. This photo was taken a few hours ago at the Copley Plaza Hotel in downtown Boston. The large-headed white guy in the back row is me. The gray-haired gentleman in the center of the frame is Desmond Tutu.

Yeah… nice night.

On Friday we got an e-mail address to leave Tuesday night open, that we had a chance at meeting someone special but it wasn’t locked in yet. (All the scheduler would tell us is that it wasn’t Barack Obama.) Only this morning did we get a note telling us the meeting was on — and revealing our guest.

Nieman conversations are generally off-the-record, so I’ll just say that Tutu is inspiring, hopeful, a compelling speaker, a believer in God’s wisdom, and — this was a surprise to me — REALLY funny. He cracks himself up, and cracked us up too.

Anyway. None of this is to brag or name-drop or anything. It’s just to say that one of the things this year provides is an occasional dose of magic. And none of us get enough magic in our lives.

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