Dear Sir,

As I fly over Bermuda and look down, I think of Shakespeare’s words: “This precious stone set in the silver sea.”

It has sometimes been less happy on the ground. I was born to Bermudian parents in the United States, so when I came home, immigration officers looked askance at my passport and asked when I became a Bermudian.

On the advice of a lawyer, I had a rubber stamp affixed to avoid that.

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II included You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught, a telling and controversial song, in the 1958 film South Pacific:

“You’ve got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made,

And people whose skin is a different shade,

You’ve got to be carefully taught.”

Considering our dependence on those who arrive to help us, we should not turn the worthy away.

ROGER SNAPE

Pembroke