Jonathan Sacks on the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sack's response to the tenth anniversary of 9/11: Let's rebuild the West's moral authority

TWO things have haunted me since 9/11. The first is the pain, the grief, the lives lost and families devastated, the sheer barbaric ingenuity of evil. The scar in our humanity is still unhealed.

The second is our failure to understand what Osama bin Laden was saying about the West. We did not hear the message then. I'm not sure we hear it now.

After the shock and grief subsided, two theories began to be heard. Firstly, this was an event of epoch-changing magnitude. The terms of international politics had been transformed. The Cold War was over. Another war had begun. The enemy was not the Soviet Union and communism. It was radical, political Islam.

The second was the opposite: 9/11 was terrifying and terrible but it changed nothing because acts of terror never do. The most important thing is not to overreact. Terror may bring dividends in local conflicts but it never succeeds in its larger political aims.

There is something to be said for both theories. But there is a third: why did al-Qa'ida attack the US? Because it believed it could. Because it thought the US was past its prime, no longer as lean and hungry as it believed it was.

Robert McNamara said the first rule in politics is to understand your enemy's psychology. As I struggled to understand 9/11 I began to suspect the answer lay in the events of 1989. That is when the narratives of the West and the rest began seriously to diverge.

In the West, 1989 was seen as the collapse of communism, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the implosion of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The Western narrative was triumphalist. It saw those events as heralding the victory of its values without a shot being fired. The free market and liberal democratic politics had won for the simplest of reasons. They delivered, while communism did not. They would now spread across the world. It was, said Francis Fukuyama, the beginning of the end of history.

There was, though, another narrative that said the Soviet Union collapsed not because of the triumph of liberal democracy but because of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan earlier that year. It had invaded in 1979 and was forced to withdraw, not because of superpower politics but because of the determined resistance of a small group of highly motivated religious warriors, the mujaheddin and their helpers. That, historically, is the event that captured the imagination of bin Laden. According to this account, the humiliating retreat of the Soviet Army set in motion a series of internal crises that resulted in the fall of a great power. If one of the world's two superpowers was vulnerable to asymmetric warfare -- the war of the few against the many -- why not the other, America itself? What 1989 represented was not the end of history but the end of a history dominated by the twin superpowers of communist Russia and capitalist America. Both were vulnerable because both were overripe and about to fall from the tree. Much excitement was felt in the West by the failure of communism. Less attention was paid to what Daniel Bell called the cultural contradictions of capitalism.

Throughout this period there were voices that few seemed to be listening to. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre in his 1981 masterwork After Virtue argued that the moral discourse of the West had broken down.

The "Enlightenment project" of a purely rational ethic had failed -- not because there was no such thing, but because there were too many. They clashed inconclusively and people were left with a sense that morality is whatever you think it is.

His minatory warning was: "The barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time." That was a scary thing to hear from one of the world's great philosophers. I soon began to hear it from other leading intellectuals also, such as Philip Rieff, Christopher Lasch and Robert Bellah.

That is what I heard in the echoes of 9/11: that all great civilisations eventually decline, and when they begin to do so they are vulnerable. That is what bin Laden believed about the West and so did some of the West's own greatest minds.

If so, then 9/11 belongs to a wider series of phenomena affecting the West: the disintegration of the family, the demise of authority, the build-up of personal debt, the collapse of financial institutions, the downgrading of the American economy, the continuing failure of some European economies, the loss of a sense of honour, loyalty and integrity.

These are all signs of the arteriosclerosis of a culture, a civilisation grown old. Whenever Me takes precedence over We, and pleasure today over viability tomorrow, a society is in trouble. If so, then the enemy is not radical Islam, it is us and our, by now unsustainable, self-indulgence.

The West has expended much energy and courage fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq abroad and defeating terror at home. It has spent far less, if any, in renewing its own morality and the institutions -- families, communities, ethical codes, standards in public life -- where it is created and sustained. But if I am right, this is the West's greatest weakness in the eyes of its enemies as well as its friends. The only way to save the world is to begin with ourselves. Our burden after 9/11 is to renew the moral disciplines of freedom. Some say it can't be done. They are wrong: it can and must. Surely we owe the dead no less.

Lord Sacks is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth.

Crater Lake, August, 2011

Steve and I, August 2011

Sold on ceramic

For my birthday, I was given a lovely Kyocera knife and peeler set. I am over the moon with them!

Steve brought his Chicago Cutlery to our marriage, and has been faithfully sharpening them with a steel now for over 30 years. Kyocera ceramic knives are second only to diamonds in hardness, so they hardly ever need to be sharpened! This is a big plus for me, as I do not dare ruin the metal blades by trying to sharpen them, so I am always depending on Steve to wield the steel.

According to one source,

The hardness of the blades is measured on a scale called Mohs hardness scale. Kyocera blades are 8.2 on the Mohs hardness scale compared to steel that is 5-6 Mohs, and diamond is 10 Mohs. Under normal household circumstances, your Kyocera may take 3-5 years or more before it needs sharpening.

My ceramic knife is extremely lightweight--it's like cutting a tomato with a feather. It also allows me to shear tomatoes so that they are impossibly thin! Another plus: because it is so sharp, it does not "crush" the cells of the onion, and so it doesn't elicit the tears! This was a delight to discover, as I have suffered from onionitis for years using metal knives.

Finally, here is a most remarkable feature: you can cut an apple with a ceramic knife, and it will not brown! I know, it's hard to believe, but it's true.

Ceramic knives are not meant to replace metal knives, because they can chip, break, or shatter if twisted, pressed, or dropped. You must always use a wood cutting surface; you can't use them to cut bones or frozen foods or anything that might require flexibility from the blade. They must be carefully stored, so that their edges are protected from chipping against other utensils.

But consider how knights treated their swords. My Kyocera is my weapon of choice as I do battle daily in the kitchen!

Birthday blessings

I turned 56 last Monday, and it has been one of my best birthdays ever. And now I finally have a chance to blog about it.





Saturday D. gave Joanna her Mandarin lesson and then the two of them prepared this incredible meal:

Beijing Duck
Fried Rice with Taiwanese Sausage
Green onion bing with beef
Chinese chicken salad
Asperagas
Fresh pineapple

Later D. and I had another great long discussion about "Lost," thinking who we most identified with as a character.

Then Sunday, after church, L. and D. and Joanna rushed back to our house and prepared a delicious whole pork loin stuffed with apples, apricots and raisins, and glazed with with thickened apple juice. They also roasted chunks of parsnips, carrots, turnips and sweet potatoes, and complemented it with rosemary bread. Finally, J. brought two cakes--one chocolate, one lemon, and an unbelievably rich chocolate brownie torte with lovely ruffles of whipped cream.

B and K gave me a huge bunch of daphne in an antique vase; its scent perfumed the whole first floor as we dined. There were 13 of us around the table, laughing, discussing, wondering what the future would hold. And it felt just like birthdays when I was a kid on Theiss Road. This time, though, instead of only blood relatives, I was surrounded by family and friends in the Blood.

What a wonderful gift that is! I am humbled and so grateful to have had this foretaste of heaven for my birthday.

Roots

click on image to enlarge

My Uncle George, who is 90 years old, just sent me this collage of pictures. It features my grandfather, George Tichacek, and his wife, my grandmother, Josephine (see their wedding picture in the upper left hand corner). Especially poignant is the clipping from the Jan. 9, 1918 St. Louis Post Dispatch, announcing "G.R. Tichacek, like three brothers, weds servant." (Sixty-nine years later, to the day, our daughter Susan would be born.)

Grandma T. (Josephine) had a difficult life. She was a Bernat, a people now known for their yarns. Her family made linen sheets, and I recall Grandma telling about how her father would "break in" the sheets by having the family use them. Once they got softer, they would be ready to sell. Josephine's mother died giving birth to her younger brother. From that point on, her older sister took over the household; but as soon as she could, left for America, and settled in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

That left Josephine in charge. She was a bright girl, and dreamed one day of being like the lady who ran the village post office. She even won a scholarship to continue her education, but her father forbid it. Josephine was crushed, but not broken. The Austro-Hungarian empire was on the brink of war, and when she was 16 years old, Joesphine told her father she was going to a local dance. In reality, she was immigrating with two other girlfriends.

They went to the dance, then changed out of their party clothes in a field and made their way to Graz, then Marseilles, then Ellis Island. Josephine found work as a cook's helper in St. Louis. One day, George was hired to do some interior painting, and Josephine caught his eye. Thus began (from what I can figure) a stormy marriage. Grandma was proud and independent for a woman those days, and Grandpa was quite the male chauvinist, being one of 10 brothers, and eleven years older than Josephine.

One of those brothers, Louis J., and his wife Anna are pictured in the lower right corner. Grandpa George's drafting table and his father's missal have been passed on to me. Thank you, Uncle George, for sending these photos.

The Fellowship of the Ring and Nominalism

I've been thinking about nominalism again and the way groups can either be collections of individuals or a unity of members, and my mind naturally wandered to that premiere metaphor of the church, the Fellowship of the Ring.

I began wondering, in the LOTR, at what point is the Fellowship broken? Of course, there was no better authority to answer this question than our daughter, Susan, so I asked her, and this was her wise reply:

The last chapter of Fellowship of the Ring is called "The Breaking of the Fellowship." In it, Boromir tries to steal the Ring from Frodo, Frodo and Sam flee, and the others scatter about trying to find them. Later we learn that Boromir dies and Merry and Pippin are scattered. So there are severals ways it could have been broken: Boromir's attack on Frodo, the physical separation of the members, or the death of one of the members.

However, is "breaking" the same as "ending?" In the very last chapter, The Grey Havens, when they're getting ready to sail away, Gandalf says to the hobbits, "...on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth." And in the histories in Appendix B, the last entry says that when Sam had sailed away, and Aragorn, Merry, and Pippin had died, Legolas and Gimli also sailed West together, and "when that ship passed an end was come in Middle-earth of the Fellowship of the Ring."

So a few things may be concluded:
-The Fellowship was broken by death, strife, and/or separation.
-The Fellowship still existed in Middle-earth (though in a fragmented state) so long as some of its members were living there.
-We are left with the possibility that the Fellowship still exists, but not in Middle-earth.

Steve insists he didn't write it...!

This was in this morning's Register Guard:

DEAR ABBY:

After 30 years of marriage I still don’t know how to tell my wife she can’t cook. I came home tonight to find an expensive piece of meat I had been looking forward to eating reduced to shoe leather.

In our golden years, we will be able to afford to splurge on expensive cuts of meat, etc., only rarely.

How can I nicely ask her not to go to the trouble of preparing these disastrous dishes? — Wants to Be Tactful

DEAR WANTS:

Because you can’t bring yourself to tell your wife her cooking skills need improvement, allow me to offer an alternative. Sign the two of you up for nighttime cooking classes so she can brush up on her culinary skills and, if necessary, you can take over the role of family chef after you retire. Bon appetit!

Grateful to Still Be Alive

We were in an accident on our way to the Greek festival at St. Anne's in Corvallis late this afternoon. Thank God we all are still alive. We were driving up Highway 99 past Junction City when somebody drove head-on into our lane. Steve swerved, did a 180, miraculously managed to just slip by the telephone poll, but then we hit gravel and flipped.

We were suspended upside down by our seat belts--thank God for them, otherwise we'd be fertilizer in that field. Joanna got out first, shaken but physically okay. Then Steve managed to break free; but I couldn't figure out how to get my seat belt off. Somebody clicked it and I fell down, but in the process the headrest moved and I got hit in the head with the tire iron which apparently had been thrown on top of it.

Steve's 4-Runner is history. Absolutely totalled. Really, it was a miracle we weren't hurt worse. David Yu rescued us and brought us home, where we rested a bit and sized things up. Steve's shoulder was hurting more and more so I insisted on driving us to Sacred Heart's ER. Fortunately we didn't have to wait long to be admitted.

Steve's left shoulder is badly sprained, and he can't move his left arm more than halfway up. They've told him to ice it, and to expect it to feel worse tomorrow and Monday. I've got a nice goose egg and a blue welt under my arm and across part of my chest from the seat belt, probably both the impact and then being suspended. They've given us both Vicodin; but I don't want to take it unless I absolutely can't function, and Steve says he doubt it will do much for him, as he is pretty resistant to opiates. He intends to preach tomorrow morning.

This year, we all got a present for Steve's birthday: life. Thank God!

Far-flung Family

Joanna is in Beijing, Susan is in Toronto.

Maybe Steve and I should go to Crete!

Good news for Susan!

Susan has been accepted into Massey College at the University of Toronto! We are so pleased for her. It's the nearest thing she can get to reduplicating her Best Semester experience at Oxford... ; )

Massey College is an academic home for 60 of the University of Toronto's graduate and professional students, called Resident Junior Fellows, and another 60 to 70 non-resident Junior Fellows. Resident junior fellows can live in college for up to three years, and then become non-resident junior fellows for a further two years. In addition, the College hosts visiting academics, generally on sabbatical leave, who are called Senior Residents...

The college also strives to preserve an Oxbridge-type atmosphere by mandating the wearing of gowns at dinner, and incorporating regular High Tables — complete with after-dinner snuff — into its schedule; and balances this with very active outreach programs. The mandated goal of the college is to demonstrate through its corporate life the interconnectness between all learning. The College has been referred to as the All Souls of Canada. (Wikipedia)



We are concerned, however, about the snuff, and hope that Susan will be able to adjust to the orange floors and blankets.

Grateful...

I am

• grateful for the sucessful VCC youth garage sale a week ago yesterday, which net us over $2500. This will help the CHIC budget


• grateful for the Alaska Christian College team that was with us this weekend, and the work that God is doing through ACC in their lives


• grateful for another good Worship in the Park and Potluck


• grateful for Joanna's good SAT results


• grateful for her induction into Honor Society last Thursday.


• grateful for the chance to teach the online Inter Disciplinary Studies class, "Ideas matter: Engaging World Thought and Culture"


• grateful to be able to partner with a woman seeking faith in Christ, as we cleaned the church together Friday


• grateful to be hosting the VCC reading group this Friday night, for "The Great Gatsby"


• grateful for the incredible cool weather and bright sunshine

But I am also exhausted. So much still to do...blogging is going to have to take a back burner for a while.

Of Chicken Kiev and a Greek Tango

Another hour and Mother's Day 2009 will be history. I have been blessed for the past 22 years to have been among the ranks of mothers being honored on this day.

For many, it is a day of mixed emotions, or worse. For them, I pray God's comfort and peace. I am not without some lingering pains: my Grandma Pete died on a Mother's Day over two decades ago, and there were half a dozen Mother's Days where my own mother didn't know my name, thanks to Alzheimer's Disease.

But today, I awoke to a vase of coral and ivory roses on the kitchen table, plus a big pot of spanish lavendar and another of bog rosemary--gifts from my husband, Steve, and daughter, Joanna. After church they made me dinner, and what a dinner! Chicken Kiev, asparagas and rice pilaf. This was no frozen meal: Steve and Joanna made it from scratch, with lots of butter and garlic and parsley. But the most important ingredient was love.

My friend J. is newly divorced. She went to a concert last night and heard a song, "Greek Tango" sung by Constantinos Yiannoudes. It is a very sad song, wondering what happened to the love two people once shared. Here are the words:

Truly it is terrible. I have to admit
Your old love for me does not concern you anymore.

You hastily give me a typical "good evening."

You do not even give me your small beautiful hand.

As if it wasn't true

As if your tears never flowed for me.

As if it wasn't true

In those past years, when you lived for me

and I lived for you.

Each one hates the other.

And you have forgotten

all those sweet kisses you gave me.

And all our love is buried

in a drawer with yellowed letters.

As if it wasn't true,

as if your tears never flowed for me.

As if it wasn't true

In those past years, when you lived for me

and I lived for you.

Today J. taught Ephesians 4:30-32 to the high school group. It took great strength. The kids sat rapt, knowing that she spoke from her own experience. She compared a mother's love to Lord's. He is the source of all love, trust and intimacy. "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption," Human love may fail. Even a mother's love will someday come to an end, but God's love is constant and true.

This could have been one of those painful holidays. Though J. will never again celebrate her wedding anniversary, God is good: her son presented her with a vase of flowers early this morning, sat beside her in worship, and thanked God for her during the open prayer time. Like all wise and good children, he knew that the most important ingredient is love.

Matthew 18:3-5

And he said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes a humble place—becoming like this child—is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

Happy Birthday, Susan!

Today is Susan's 22nd birthday. We celebrated it a week ago, while she was still with us, and skyped her this afternoon. Nevertheless, Toronto is so far away! She seems to have had a pleasant enough day, with Greek pastries for breakfast, a trip to a street market with a couple of Canadian friends from the Classics department, and lunch at a Thai restaurant. For that I am grateful.

I remember the days when her birthday meant My Little Ponies, mermaid dolls, Stickies, and pinatas. God has been so good to give us the gift of this precious daughter. May He continue to bless her with life and health and opportunities to learn and grow.

Dec. 18, 1920

Today would have been my mother's 88th birthday.

Hers was not an easy life. Ruth Gertrude Ekstrom's parents, Marta Petterson and Karl Ekstrom immigrated from Gotland (the Swedish Baltic island) after losing two children in the 1918 influenza pandemic. They prospered in America, only to lose everything in the depression. Her father died of stomach cancer when she was 15, so she and her mother moved in with her aunt and uncle's family in Chicago. Her older brother Ragnar--who had become an excellent swimmer after his grueling battle with polio--drowned in Lake Michigan one fine summer day as the extended family was vacationing at Bethany Beach.

After graduating from high school, she moved with the family to St. Louis, where she went to work at Cluett, Peabody. Later she took a secretarial position with Hammer Dry Plate, where she met Raymond Tichacek. Then came the war. Her mother developed congestive heart failure, so she devoted herself to Martha's care. Shortly after her mother died, Ruth and Ray were married in 1953 by a justice of the peace, as neither my father's Catholic priest or my mother's Southern Baptist preacher would do it.

I came along a year later, followed closely by my two brothers. . Momma finally had found her vocation. She loved children. She would gather us up in her ample lap for hugs, or sneak up behind me as I was curled over homework and give me a kiss on the top of my head. Her hands were strong, stubby and warm: perfect for kneading limpa and caressing kids.

Momma loved to bake but she hated to cook. She would make wonderful cardamom coffee cakes and spritsar, but her Beef STRAG-a-noff was a family joke. Every Sunday we would return from church at 12:30, and she would begin frying eggs and bacon for my father; then four hours later she would again be frying chicken wings and french fries, his favorite dinner. Maybe that's why she hated cooking?

For years she worked at home, as our mom and as secretary -accountant for my father's bindery repair business. She cared for her aunt and her mother in law in their old age. She was faithful and active in her church, teaching a women's Sunday School class for years, as well as participating in WMU at Concord Baptist Church, and leading the WMU at Hanley Road Baptist Church. I remember her typing into the wee hours of the night on Saturdays, preparing her lesson, and my father complaining, "Come to bed! Are you trying to rewrite the Bible?"

Momma always loved to decorate for Christmas, but one year the artificial tree looked odd, as if she had lost the directions for how to put it together. Then immediately after Susan was born, she came to Nebraska to help us out. It became clear to Steve that something was wrong: she couldn't remember her phone number and had to ask him to dial it so she could talk to my dad. Then on a shopping trip, she wanted to return an item, and couldn't remember her address for the return form. Counting money was a challenge as well.

These behaviors alarmed Steve and me, but not my family in St. Louis. They said we were overreacting; but they were in denial. It took several painful years and my father's death for the truth to finally be faced. Alzheimer's is a cruel disease: as bad as it is for the patient, it is even worse for those who love her, and can cause them to react in ways that are not always in the patient's best interest.

Today is not the day to tell that part of Momma's story. Today I prefer to remember visiting her in the skilled care center, watching her nap and gradually rouse. By then she had forgotten my name, and called me "Nice Lady." But that afternoon God gave her a brief respite, and she looked directly at me with her brilliant blue eyes, speaking with great conviction: "Beth, it is so important to love the Lord!" Thank goodness He doesn't reserve holy days only for liturgical churches, because that hot St. Louis summer afternoon we were given Epiphany. Then the clouds gathered again and her confusion returned.

She died four years ago on Valentine's day. I miss her so much! But how can I begrudge her the gift she now enjoys of knowing Jesus, and being known by Him? Someday we will no longer need Advent, because the image of Revelation 21:3 will be a reality. We will not need to fast when the Bridegroom has come. But right now, right here, it is Advent, so I sing in fervid expectation:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

O come, thou Wisdom from on high,
who orderest all things mightily;
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.

O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free
thine own from Satan's tyranny;
from depths of hell thy people save,
and give them victory over the grave.

O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer
our spirits by thine advent here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death's dark shadows put to flight.

O come, thou Key of David, come,
and open wide our heavenly home;
make safe the way that leads on high,
and close the path to misery.

O come, Desire of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid thou our sad divisions cease,
and be thyself our King of Peace.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Joanna reads Frost

Joanna, our high school junior, has finally finished the Walt Whitman unit in her lit class, after much agony and gnashing of teeth. Today they moved on Robert Frost. Curled on the sofa, she opened her homework packet. "Listen to this," she called to me. "'Frost describes freedom as moving easily in harness. That's like what we have in Christianity!"

She settled deeper into the cushions and began reading poetry aloud to me as I worked in the kitchen. "This is good. I can go into Christmas with this," she declared.

Back From Seattle: Susan's SPU Graduation

From the SPU News:

The SPU Class of 2008 graduates on Saturday, June 7. A total of 1,127 students will receive bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees, each poised to use their gifts and energies to engage the culture and change the world in a host of ways.

Here is just a sampling of the things new SPU graduates will be doing:

• Designing a sustainable electrical energy source for rural African villages.
• Interning with the Arab League in Cairo. (Alissa Walters, Gary's daughter!)
• Developing technology at a NATO undersea research center in Italy.
• Working as an investment financial analyst in New York City.
• Assisting Sudanese refugees in the Middle East.
• Caring for veterans as a surgical intensive care nurse.
• Earning a Ph.D. in molecular biosciences.
• Interning at an interior design firm.
• Providing transitional housing for homeless Seattle families.
• Serving as an air force officer.
• Writing firmware and software for mini-computers.
• Entering a pre-veterinary studies program.
• Teaching English in France.
• Working as a translator in Mexico.

And one graduate is going on to the University of Toronto, to continue her studies in classics.

Here is our daughter Susan on the right, with a friend on the porch of her apartment. She's wearing all her "academic bling," as she calls it. The red stoles signify they are in the Honors program; the three cords signify "summa cum laude," and the medal on white ribbon signifies they are members of Mortarboard.



Here's Joanna, with flowers from Pike's Place for her big sister.

Proud Papa.





The white and
maroon ribbon is the SPU President's Award. Each year it is given to one undergraduate and one graduate student for academic excellence and for embodying the ideals and values of Seattle Pacific University. None of us knew she was receiving it until we opened our programs! She was called up to the platform, and her smiling face was broadcast on both the jumbo screens of Qwest Field.



Proud Mamma.




Celebration dinner at Costa's Opa in Fremont, with Aunt Helen and Uncle Randy! Saganaki, horiatiki salad, avgolemeno soup, souvlaki, domades,kota lemonati, moussaka, spanikopita, galaktoboureko, bakalava---what else would you give a classics/linguistics major upon her graduation?

Off to UT--Canada, that is

Our daughter Susan has been accepted and is going to the University of Toronto this fall for graduate studies in Classics!

Please join us in prayer...

A couple of weeks ago our daughter Susan, a senior at Seattle Pacific University, got good news: she had won the American Graduate Scholarship, which pays $50,000 a year for the first two years of graduate studies in the humanities, contingent upon being accepted to one of 25 internationally respected institutions.

Then she got the bad news: neither Princeton nor Cornell accepted her. She asked for her application to be reconsidered. Princeton flatly refused, Cornell thought about it but had to say no. Apparently they had made their first offers and didn't want to upset the delicate balance. Then came the clincher: the University of Toronto, from which she was still awaiting word, wasn't on their top 25 list.

Upon hearing this, a dear friend wrote:

"Oh, what difficult news! But what wonderful grace! God has promised to direct our paths, and He will. Watch and see."

Well, He does seem to be up to something. Today Susan heard that she has been accepted by the University of Toronto for their MA program in Classics, with strong encouragment to consider continuing on in their Ph.D program. Funding is available for the second year, but she needs to pay for the first year.

Please join us in praying that perhaps the AGS might reconsider their preferred institutions, on the basis of the following:

The Times Top 50 Universities for Arts and Humanities, 2007

1. Harvard University US 100.0
2 University of California, Berkeley US 96.5
3 University of Oxford UK 94.4
4 University of Cambridge UK 92.3
5 Yale University US 84.3
6 Columbia University US 83.3
7 Princeton University US 80.1
8 University of Toronto Canada 79.5
9 University of Chicago US 77.6
10 Australian National University Australia 75.9
11 Stanford University US 74.7
12 McGill University Canada 71.3
13 University of California, Los Angeles US 68.4
14 University of British Columbia Canada 67.2
15 University of Sydney Australia 66.6
16 Cornell University US 64.4
17 University of Melbourne Australia 63.9
18 Peking University China 61.2
19 University of Michigan US 60.3
20 Duke University US 58.6
21= National University of Singapore Singapore 57.6
21= Johns Hopkins University US 57.6
23 New York University US 56.7
24 University of Tokyo Japan 54.7
25 Massachusetts Institute of Technology US 54.4

(etc)

Cooking-impaired

Some people are color-blind. Some people are tone-deaf. I am cooking-impaired.

Another chapter in the Continuing Saga:

Last night I was grilling chicken. When I came out after 15 minutes to check how the breasts were doing, the right burner was out, so that the two breasts on the left were coming along nicely and the two on the right were stone cold. Aaargh!

Tonight I wanted to make a lovely meal for Steve and Joanna. Fridays are long days for them both, so I thought Beef Stroganoff would be nice. I had 1.5 lbs of beef, a lb. of clean white mushrooms, butter, onions, garlic, sour cream and a nice dose of sherry. After frying up the firm white mushrooms and onions, I left the beef to simmer in the liquid for half an hour, just as the recipe said. Alas, before the time was up, I began to smell something burning. I lifted the lid and presto--blackened beef glued to a sticky black base assaulted me.

I give up. I really shouldn't be doing this, and I can't wait until I don't ever have to enter a kitchen again. Pavlov was right. Negative reinforcement helps eliminate behaviors. My negative reinforcment rate in the kitchen is running at about 9o%.

So I have an idea: you cook, I'll clean! Or better yet, forget cooking. I'll bake, and we can survive on chocolate chip cookies.