July 28, 2009

Westchester County, which lies directly north of New York City, is well known for its many classic suburban communities where cars line up at train stations at 6 p.m. each day to pick up returning executives and money managers. Through the first half of this decade, it was difficult to find homes for less than $1 million in such Westchester towns as Rye, Larchmont, Scarsdale, Chappaqua and Bedford.

After moving out of the Bronx neighborhood where she grew up and finding a corporate job in Manhattan, Alexie Torres-Fleming decided it was time to return to the Bronx. She got involved in neighborhood issues, and in 1994 she founded Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice. The community organizing group works on environmental and social issues. Last month the group celebrated one of its major successes—the opening of Concrete Plant Park, a seven-acre greenway in the South Bronx.

On a visit to Israel last year a colleague suggested that I visit Kibbutz Metzer, a community founded by Argentinean Jewish émigrés in the 1950s. So along with my Quaker traveling companion and one other American, I hired a taxi and drove north from Jerusalem for nearly two hours to the interior of the country.

No! blurted the expert on Japanese Buddhism. He was a member of a group of interreligious and interdisciplinary thinkers charged with coming up with a consensus statement. His no was prompted by a proposal from the Vati can’s representative, who wanted the group’s discussion of human dignity and human rights to include at least some words about God. Why the Buddhist no? The scholar explained that while Bud dhists are religious, they do not believe in God.

Back before pop diva Lisa Loeb became a household name, she and Elizabeth Mitchell performed together at Brown University. While Mitchell didn’t achieve Loeb’s fame, she possesses no less talent—and on her album for children, You Are My Little Bird (Smithsonian Folk ways), she demonstrates how the simplest music-making can be the most moving.

The sweet and thrilling Pixar animated feature Up is a paean to the possibilities that remain in a life shadowed by loss and disappointment. It’s about resurrecting buried dreams and using the judgment acquired over a lifetime to modify those dreams.