James Russell Lowell, enjoying a sunny June day sometime in the 1840s, must have just experienced days of New England rain when he wrote “Oh, what is so rare as a day in June?” I remembered his poem when I heard of the death of the great Nelson Mandela. My answer to Lowell’s question, on this sad day, is – “a great political leader.”
Mandela’s ideas and character, forged in the fiery crucible of apartheid, were refined on Robben Island, where he learned that treating a bitter, angry jailor as a human being might produce a blanket for the night.