Mandela towers over our times  I was driving down a highway in
Oregon last week when I caught sight of a face on a distant
billboard.  The face grew larger as the car sped forward. It was
a familiar face, with a familiar furrowed brow, a familiar gleam
in the eye, a tender but somehow sorrowful smile I'd seen
before.  I was startled. It felt like a visitation. I felt that
I'd conjured this man's face out of a desire to know him before
he dies, this man who has been in my head every day for weeks.
Then, zoom, Nelson Mandela was behind me.  I didn't know who put
Mandela on the billboard next to I-5, or when or why, but it
made me feel someone had burrowed inside my brain, inside our
collective brain, someone who knows how much Mandela, in what
may be his final days, has invaded the minds of so many people.
Hero is a word we toss around as loosely as confetti, so I won't
use it for Mandela. But it's not a stretch to say that he is,
justifiably, the most respected public figure alive today.  The
fact that he ma