Three Dreams of Ann Frank

Last week, I had to go to Iowa for hospital work. I was tagged with a local family doctor. It was an eye-opener. We drove miles and miles of beautiful, lush green cornfields and soybean farms. He told me that his family always wanted him to be a farmer, but he decided to be a small-town doctor, though he still helps out his father as a part-time farmer. I laughed and said: "In our part of the world, all parents want their children to be doctors."

Most importantly, I learned that small farmers struggle in the midwest USA despite highly fertile land. They have been exploited in the same way as in any other part of the world. Small farmers can not compete with big giant corporations and are eventually bullied out to sell their farms (Ha! Walmart). The cost and maintenance of new farming machines are skyrocketing. To ease the pain of financial hardships, towns set up small weekly markets for local farmers and retailers to sell vegetables, fruits, crafts, etc. We drove to the neighboring state of Minnesota to see the Thursday market in Rochester. There was a stall of books written by local authors. I bought a storybook by Rod Starcke: "Three Dreams of Anne Frank." It was an interesting story of a young girl, Anne, struggling to write a good Fairy tale. As the story evolves, she goes through a mystical journey of three dreams named Ocean, Church, and The Tracks (of the train) - where out of her fear and fight for survival (and her deaths), she learns to help out other people At the end, she writes: "Finally! I have it right. Ellen dies and comes back in people's dreams so that she can keep comforting them even after death".

It sounds like a typical life story of any Sufi !!!

I was not expecting such a forceful story sitting at a small stall in a small town. It was just beautiful.

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