2016 was the year I needed my father's counsel the most. I've been shell-shocked. I've never understood the world less, and never felt more vulnerable. I decided to spend the holidays communing with my late father by unsealing a musty box of his letters and professional correspondences. Meticulously organized by my mother after his death in 1991, it contained detailed CVs, postcards, field notes from his myriad UN postings, and a touching mass-letter he sent to friends 50 years ago this week in 1966.