About

The idea of feeling kinship with people—not with any people in particular but with all
people, because you’re a person and so are they, doesn’t come up much outside science fiction,
when the hostile aliens land and everything goes to shit, and even the absolute smarmiest dweeb
starts to look like a friend. But occasionally the feeling comes to me, like when I’m looking at
New York City from across the river in Weehawken, New Jersey, and I think, Damn, look what
people did. I’m proud of people. And it comes to me when I look at my friend Elsa’s cross-stitch
people, arranged as they are in Alphabet …