The ill-fated AirAsia flight on the eve of this New Year—could it be the story of this civilization? Flying high and unperturbed . . . until stricken by a raging storm . . . and all the desperate maneuvers notwithstanding the innocent go down? Not unlike the brutal Paris terrorist attack Wednesday on the unsuspecting editorial team of the satirical paper Charlie Hebdo. Many recognize that resilient though this civilization is, there will come one day the crisis that will break its back.

“Not even J. R. R. Tolkien could dream up rings as precious as these.” So began the story of the Salvation Army red kettle outside Boston’s North Station a couple weeks ago. The  ringer hadn’t noticed that one of the passers-by had dropped into the kettle a letter with two objects tucked inside. When the charity emptied the kettle late that night, they found the letter, from a widow. Recalling her late husband as an especially giving soul (particularly during the holidays), the anonymous widow donated both her diamond engagement ring and wedding band.

Looks like everybody’s in the giving mood this Christmas. Two days before the deadline this week, Congress voted to approve a $1.1 trillion spending bill to avoid another disconcerting government shut-down. “Deck the Halls.” A few billion here, a few billion there, and suddenly with the proverbial speed of jolly old St. Nick’s “wink of his eye and a twist of his head” $1.1 trillion ends up on our national credit card. Not that we Americans should be surprised.

The national conversation has been boisterous and divided in the aftermath of the grand jury findings announced in Ferguson, Missouri, last week. Ever since the shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown by  white police officer Darren Wilson last August, the reaction of Americans has generally split along racial lines. So it was over the death of Trayvon Martin nearly three years ago, as well as over the verdict in the O. J. Simpson trial two decades ago.

The sellout crowd at Xavier University’s 10,000-seat arena was on its feet a few days ago. The object of their ovation, a 19 year old freshman on Division-III’s Mount St. Joseph college basketball team. But what’s so special about a young woman scoring a basket on a left-handed layup in her first college basketball game? After all, it’s been done a thousand times before. But the difference for Lauren Hill is that she has an inoperable brain tumor and just months to live. Lauren’s battle against pediatric cancer somehow jumped the wall between private struggle and national outpouring.

Eighty years ago two wealthy friends, New York banker Henry Graves Jr and Ohio automaker James Packard, both watch collectors, were in a friendly race to see who could come up with the world’s most complicated watch. But Graves clearly won the bet when he commissioned Swiss watchmaker Patek Phillipe to design what became known as the Supercomplication—a 1.5 inch thick gold pocket watch that took eight years to craft. Complicated? Are you kidding!

I don’t mind admitting that putting our little just-turned-one granddaughter Ella on a plane this past Sunday wasn’t just about tears, but also about an ache in the heart that I really hadn’t expected. After all, Karen and I knew this day would be coming sometime. Having our son Kirk and Chelsea just three miles up the road from us these past few years has been a parents’ delightful bonus. But when Ella was born a year ago, we were joyfully ushered into the glorious dimension of grandparenthood.

The story won’t go away, will it? Because this killer virus doesn’t seem to go away. Now Dallas is jittery all over again with the announcement that a second nurse who treated the deceased Liberian Ebola-infected patient is herself infected with Ebola. And now a whole new network of family, neighbors, associates must be staked out to determine if this infected nurse accidently infected one of them as well.

What a pre-dawn moment of glory! Did you remember to check out the total lunar eclipse Wednesday morning before sunrise? When I stepped out under the stars, the heavens were literally ablaze in white pinpoint. With no ambient light from the eclipsing moon and not a cloud above, it truly was a spectacular vista high overhead. And as the moon slowly bore more and more of earth’s shadow (or, as the earth crossed more and more into the blazing light of the unrisen sun), the moon’s white turned to a dull orange, not unlike a frosted incandescent bulb with a fading element inside of it.

Apparently it was quite a heated grilling last Tuesday at the House Oversight Committee’s Q & A with Julia Pierson, director of the Secret Service. Two recent lapses in White House and presidential security have certainly raised a non-partisan ruckus in Congress. And perhaps justifiably so. On September 16 a knife-carrying intruder leaped the White House fence and raced past guards, all the way into the East Room of the White House, an unprecedented breach of security.