Anne Lamott has an op-ed in the LA Times about her trip to India and what it taught her about America. Here’s a clip from the article:

“But after a few days on the subcontinent, I came to the unshakable belief that we will have decent enough healthcare reform, and soon. What’s going to help America rebound from Bush/Cheney is what saved and saves India — love, nonviolence, a lot of help, radical playfulness and perspective. I saw Indians living in spaces the size of my bathtub, giddily colorful amid the squalor and deprivation, making themselves beautiful and focusing on what they do have.”

On an unrelated note, The Guardian just published some stats on religious studies and theology degrees from the UK. What is interesting to me is the category within which I find myself: percentage of students from outside the UK. In my experience, it seems that this category is reserved mostly for the Americans and very few Australians. I thought that surely Durham would come at the top of the list because we have so many in the department. I was way wrong. St. Andrews comes to the top of the list with 53% followed closely by Edinburgh with 52%. This may sound like a ’so what’ kind of fact, but if you glance over to the difference in cost for tuition for those unfortunate non-UK passport holders, you may see how a school can benefit economically from this phenomenon.

food for thought…