I was in Staples the opposite day taking a look at paper clips. That might be a story like the one about the child who was dying and needed to collect business playing cards, and obtained thousands and thousands and millions as his desperate parents announced he had recovered and now not wished more playing cards. But the Whitwell story goes to a different stage, a touching one, as the scholars make new mates by their venture. Two of them are Peter and Dagmar Schroeder, White Home correspondents from Germany, who visit the town and write about it. Many extra had been Holocaust survivors, who as a bunch visited Whitwell office supplies list for desk a pot-luck dinner at the Methodist church, courses at the college, and a group reception.

David Smith, one of many lecturers concerned, says he knows he is stereotyped as a Southerner, and admits that he stereotypes Northerners. In changing their perceptions about minorities, the students of Whitwell also modified perceptions others could have held about them. That America has been divided by pundits into blue states and pink states doesn’t imply there should not good-hearted individuals living all over the place; in a time of divisiveness, there is something innocently naive concerning the paper clip challenge, which transforms a silly mountain of paper clips right into a small town’s touching gesture.