Dear Friends of Kaniv, Ukraine
As the year comes to a close, we would like to thank you for your very generous support of our sister city Kaniv, and to share with you some of the very inspiring gifts we have received through our communications with them. This year we had the honor of hosting Anatoliy Leontyev, the president of the Kaniv Friendship Association. Through emails with Anatoliy and Mayor Ihor Renkas we have gotten a closer look at the reality of life in wartime and the incredible courage and dignity that has come to characterize the Ukrainian people.
War is the great destroyer of life and property but the one thing that war cannot destroy is the hope of the human spirit. That indomitable spirit has been Kaniv’s gift to us. As Anatoliy said in a recent letter “In the dark hours, bright people are clearly visible”.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower founded Sister Cities International almost 70 years ago because he saw firsthand the devastation of the 2nd World War. His vision, and the Sister Cities International Mission is “To promote peace through mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation – one individual, one community at a time”. Together we are fulfilling that mission and as we work with all seven of our sister cities, we all make the world a safer, more peaceful, and more beautiful place for ourselves and for our children.
As our New Year’s gift to you, we would like to share the music of Anatoliy’s son, and Ukrainian composer Serge Leontyev. The piece,The Paper Birds Suite, is one of hope, based on the Japanese story of the Paper Cranes . (Click here to listen)
To hear more of Serge Leontyev’s music go to his website: https://www.youtube.com/@SergeLeo91/videos .
Finally, I would like to share with you an excerpt from a poem that has inspired me through the years:
WHAT IS HOPE by Rubem Alves
“. . . Let us plant dates
even though those who plant them will never eat them.
We must live by the love of what we will never see.
This is the secret discipline.
It is a refusal to let the creative act be dissolved
in immediate sense experience
and a stubborn commitment to the future of our grandchildren.
Such disciplined love is what has given
prophets, revolutionaries, and saints
the courage to die for the future they envisaged.
They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope.”
From all of us at The Sonoma Sister Cities Association, we wish you a peaceful, hopeful, happy, and prosperous New Year.
Sincerely,
Kaeti Bailie
Chair, Sonoma/Kaniv Sister Cities Committee