Regarding Rich Preheim’s review of Merle Good’s Surviving Failure: Good, as I have known him, has always tried to bridge cultural changes and interpret cultures to each other. He has attempted to open the good things of his conservative background to the outside and speak to his own. He is at a disadvantage in that his values clash with the general culture, and he is not an insider.

I have lived in the conservative Mennonite culture of Lancaster County, Pa. In such a tight society there is little opportunity to explain things without stepping on someone else’s reputation. Might this be a reason for the  “silence” as to why a bankruptcy?

To be nonresistant in a cross-cultural confrontation can be read as arrogant. To work around differing goals without triggering ire is a delicate matter. These are some of the things Good has faced in his writings and projects. Bridging is precarious.

Miriam Hess
Union, Ore.