For every first-class dog that entered the lifeboats, twenty-nine steerage women and nineteen children died. Emily Badman and Kathy Gilnagh seemed destined to be counted among the lost, having found themselves penned in behind a drawn gate, deep within the stern. An armed, junior officer stood on the other side. “Following orders,” he insisted. “It’s not time for you to go up.

Sometimes she makes you very sad... she touches something in you, and you’ve begun to touch back. – Bob Ballard.

Sometimes she makes you very sad....she touches something in you, and you've begun to touch back. - Bob Ballard

Watching that great ship fly up, and up, and up against the night was an awakening, a vivid flash of something like God, something more powerful than nature itself. And it is us. And we know. We who have seen.

For every first-class dog that entered the lifeboats, twenty-nine steerage women and nineteen children died. Emily Badman and Kathy Gilnagh seemed destined to be counted among the lost, having found themselves penned in behind a drawn gate, deep within the stern. An armed, junior officer stood on the other side. "Following orders," he insisted. "It's not time for you to go up.

So much learning," one of my Jesuit teachers has said, "so little wisdom." To put it another way, a civilization does become more technologically skilled and more learned about science, and perhaps even a little smarter as well, when it is permitted to grow for hundreds of years and spread itself from pole to pole; but we also have more tools to turn out as badly as our ancestors said we might.