The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.
(Carl Sandburg)
NicheGeek.com offers a wonderful example of the latter choice from the Middle East:
About five years ago, Stef Wertheimer came across Gamila Hiar, a Druze woman with no formal education who had learned the ancient art of making soap from wild herbs and olive oil as a child. At the time, Hiar was supplementing her family's income, producing about 500 soap bars a week, from a corner in a room underneath her house in Pqi'in, a village in the Galilee region of northern Israel.
Hiar, now 68, ended up at Tefen Industrial Park, a bold philanthropic enterprise located about eight miles from the Lebanese border. Wertheimer, the founder of Iscar Metalworking, established Tefen in 1985 in order to encourage entrepreneurship in one of Israel's most undeveloped and low-income regions, with a population split largely between Arabs and Jews.
(Thanks to Ben Cunningham for passing this along).
