"True friends are like diamonds"

In many ways, Shirley L. Arora and Wolfgang Mieder have had quite similar professional careers. They became folklorists and proverb scholars by way of literary studies, with the former becoming Professor of Spanish and Folklore at the UNiversity of California at Los Angeles and the latter working as Professor of German and Folklore at the University of Vermont. They have delighted in teaching and caring for their many students, they have made their scholarly contributions, and they have served their profession and their universities, with Shirley Arora rising to chairperson of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Wolfgang Mieder occupying that position in the Department of German and Russian. In addition to their frequent meetings at national and international conferences, they have kept in touch with each other for three decades by way of visits, phone calls, and letters. THeir letters document details of their personal and professional lives, showing the significance of a supportive friendship for scholarly work. Their correspondence represents primarily a documentation of their dedicated and diligent work as paremiologists and paremiographers. Shirley L. Arora's special interest has been Spanish proverbs, notable those Spanish proverbs and proverbial expressions being used by the large Hispanic population int eh greater Los Angeles community in California. Wolfgang Mieder's work has been concerned with the German proverbial tradition, but both of them have also enjoyed working on Anglo-American proverbs and on international concerns of paremiology. The 338 letters contained in this volume are thus a touching testimony to their common interests, their constant assistance of each other, and their shared commitment to the study of regional, national, and international paremiology on a synchronic and diachronic as well as comparative basis. Many of the publications that they worked on during the past thirty years are mentioned in these letters, making the human story of their work come alive as a sincere and unedited document of two colleagues and friends with much respect, admiration, and affection for each other and other proverb scholars.