Grace, Magnanimity Remembered

On a day when I was utterly shaken and dispirited by the assassination of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and by the further evidence of humankind's violent, self-destructive urges, I wanted to post something to balance out my gloom, something that made me both happy and humbled to read.

From the December 23 online edition of The New York Times, here is Darcey Steinke's poignant remembrance of a kindness that was not originally appreciated when she was, in her own words, "a skinny, eye-rolling 21-year-old with literary pretensions" as an American exchange student in Ireland, but is, today, a source of great gratitude to her:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/fashion/23steinke.html