"We’ve lost everything, and I mean everything. We’ve lost contact with some family members." Kenneth Cain, a New Orleans construction worker, was describing the terrible effects of Hurricane Katrina to The Los Angeles Times. When I read about Mr. Cain, I thought of a friend I k

Mary Budd Rowe was a model scientist, ever inquisitive, asking questions no one had asked before. She was a psychologist who specialized in science education. When I first met her in the late 1970’s, she had done pioneering work on “wait time,” the time teachers allow students to p

Here are two ways God works. First, God seems to clear a path so obviously that you can’t doubt God’s activity. As St. Paul wrote, All things work together for good for those who love God. Second, God seems to make achieving something so difficult that you realize that the struggle is pa

In 2001, Col. Pat Lang, a Knight of the Holy Sepulcher, a leading Middle East intelligence analyst and now a well-known television commentator, called together a small group to develop a program for the Knights to support grass-roots peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians. Among the participa

Tompkins Square Park stands out as one of the larger parks of lower Manhattan: 10 whole acres—remarkable in a city cramped for space. On weekend afternoons, I sometimes walk over to admire the beauty of the park’s trees and marvel at the diversity of the people who gather there, well-off

Walk, walk, walk says my cardiologist. And I do, mostly just as a way of getting home. But I also enjoy it, though the Manhattan tempo is so accelerated that what might be called walking easily becomes run, run, run. This adrenaline-driven tempo has transformed me into one of the legions of jaywalke