"As we put together this special issue, we talked at length about the cover. We considered a number of options, including babies gurgling with laughter and kids screaming with delight. But we ultimately decided against those images. Babies often beam, we thought, and kids regularly get the giggles—sometimes to the point of annoying the rest of us—but adults laugh too little.

How many people do you see laughing while wandering the streets of New York, Amsterdam or London? In our daily lives, everything has to have a purpose and lead to concrete results. A bit of laugher is quickly considered a waste of time. Meanwhile, photos abound of radiant faces in the midst of abject misery in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Still, Eric Siry, our creative director, wasn’t looking for an African smile when he found the photo of the woman who now beams from the cover of Ode. He decided to search the photo agencies’ immense databases in the "news" category."

"Last year, Sarah Hussein Obama, the Kenyan woman on the cover, made the news laughing with good reason: Her grandson had just been elected President of the United States."--Copyright Ode magazine