December 19, 2001

1. September 11

"Nine-Eleven” has become a shorthand reference to the shocking day when four hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center’s twin towers, into a side of the Pentagon and into a field in Pennsylvania—bringing to the U.S. numbing, outrageous examples of the terrorist mayhem that much of the world has experienced in the past. It was a nine-one-one call that shook America’s sense of security.

He always said that he was a priest first and a dean second. J. Bryan Hehir made that clear when he accepted the helm of Harvard Divinity School in 1998, declining to take the title (he is officially chair of the school’s executive body) or to live in Jewett House, the school’s stately deanery on Francis Avenue (he lives at a Catholic parish in Harvard Square). He even kept his part-time job at Catholic Relief Services, commuting each week to Baltimore.

A young man was working for a company that operated a large, total-confinement swine farm. One day he detected symptoms of a disease among some of the feeder pigs. As a teen, he had raised pigs himself and shown them in competition, so he knew how to treat the animals. But the company’s policy was to kill any diseased animals with a blow to the head—the profit margin was considered too low to allow for treatment of individual animals. So the employee decided to come in on his own time, with his own medicine, and cured the animals.

Many parents have little choice about whether or not to see--or at least buy tickets for--the movie version of J. K. Rowling's novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I went to see it with another audience in mind. If you have not read the novel but are mildly curious about all the attention Harry Potter is getting, should you see the movie instead? No. Despite some good performances and the usual array of engaging special effects, the movie seemed to me remarkably flat.