From The Cure at Troy, by Seamus Heaney
Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.
The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.
History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise-up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term....
This was excerpted from Seamus Heaney, The Cure at troy: A Version of Sophocle's Philocetes (Noonday Press, 1991).



Tough economic times are forcing all nonprofits, large and small, to think creatively about how to cut costs. One extremely unique example of this creative thinking was recently announced in Chicago where nine of the largest and oldest nonprofit United Way agencies agreed to form a cooperative partnership to share back-office functions for their nonprofit organizations. The nine founding organizations' combined budgets total over $300M and include the Metropolitan YMCA, Hull Housing Association, and Heartland Alliance (formerly Travelers and Immigrants Aid). 
H
ello! It is snowing quite heavily here in the Midwest as I write this to you the morning after Super-Duper Tuesday. The trees outside my window are sagging with the weight of the wet snow...