What’s the difference between a house of worship and a house of horrors? Can it be something as simple and capricious as blind luck? If so, I guess I’m one of countless lucky ones — a veteran of an area Catholic elementary school who is watching the church’s still-roiling clergy sex abuse scandal with an […]

Almost 800 years ago, the Persian poet Sa’adi offered a useful warning: Do you not see how the cornered cat Will tear out the eyes of a leopard with its tiny claws? In today’s Middle East, Iran — besieged by the more powerful United States, its economy in tatters, its military stretched thin — is […]

It happened one summer night several years ago. After work, my husband and I hastily got ready to attend a recital in the early evening. We left the house in a hurry, not wanting to be late. It was still early, just getting dark, when we returned home. The house smelled warmly of the pie […]