Day of Unity 2006

A good Day of Unity to everyone.

This day marks the joining of Ukrainian lands, and the image most associated with it is a chain of people holding hands across the country — an act first performed on a very large scale in 1990 and repeated in various forms since.

I like the symbol because of what it requires. A chain works only if every person holds on to two others. There is no version of it where one section can manage alone, and no version where a gap does not matter.

That is a reasonable thing for a country to remind itself of once a year in the middle of a cold January, and it is a reasonable thing for a foreigner to admire without needing to add anything to it.