I�ve been reading e-mail after e-mail this morning from assorted academic mailing lists detailing what various universities around the country are doing to help hurricane refugee students. The Tennessee state university system has offered to take students of schools shuttered by the hurricane with no application and no charge for the entire academic year. All they need to do is show up. A number of schools in Texas are doing the same. Harvard is taking up to 25 graduate students, fully funded, through an expedited application procedure. And ilmomof3 wrote today of Arizona State accepting them too.

We haven�t heard much about the academy�s response to the hurricane on the news, because when food and water is lacking, worrying about finishing one�s education in a timely fashion seems kind of frivolous. But I nevertheless found these gestures kind of inspiring. This is, after all, what academic institutions can best offer in the way of immediate help. Here�s hoping their long-term contributions will include advising changes in the numerous policies that contributed to the horrors of this situation.

oltremare wrote earlier about the search for finding a personal connection to this tragedy, something I remember feeling after 9/11 also. Giving money doesn�t seem quite good enough, even if you know that�s what�s needed most. We feel the need to do penance, to be a part of it, part impassioned empathy, part survivor�s guilt. As a former development director for a not-for-profit, I know how much easier it is to translate funds into action than donations of goods or even time. And so I write checks and make my donations of clothing and food and time to a local shelter for homeless women and children that I know needs and wants those things and will put them to good use.

AJ is working on his community building even more locally than that. He has taken a shine to M., the little girl who moved in next door last month and who will be in his nursery school class starting next week. AJ and I had been playing on the deck outside his room with his pirate ship boat when M. came running across our yard and up our stairs to say hello. The two of them played for a good two hours without a single argument or fight. They ate lunch together at AJ�s miniature table and tore around their yard in their bare feet. They were separated reluctantly at nap time, with kicking and screaming on both sides mitigated only by parental twirling.

0 people said it like they meant it