9/11 Serendipity

I received this as part of a message this morning:

3 bedroom House for Rent- Belmont, MA We are taking a year-long sabbatical from summer '07 through summer '08 and would like to rent our house to a wonderful family or couple. 8 rooms: 3 br, 2 1/2 baths; kid-quiet, friendly neighborhood; excellent school district, close to playgrounds, library, 1 mile from Belmont Center. For further information, please contact Audrey Ades.

Always a dreamer, I got curious about what this person did to be able to take a year-long sabbatical. So, I started searching the web to see what I could find out. It didn't take long for me to discover that Audrey Ades was a therapist working in Boston. Since this was not an academic position, I still wondered if the word "sabbatical" was being used to refer to a leave of absense from an academic job, so I looked further -- as in the next listing on Google. It was a reference from the Johns Hopkins Magazine which said:

Paul and his wife of 10 years, Audrey Ades, adopted their son from Korea last May.

Interesting, so I clicked on the link and discovered that there was a lot more to this Google reference than I initially realized -- because Paul Friedman had died on 9/11.

Suddenly, this story took a left turn into 9/11. Not that I should be surprised, but I realized the profound effect 9/11 still has on our national psyche. I forgot about finding the academic connection to sabbatical, who the "we" in the original article referred to, but rather proceeded to find out more information about Paul Friedman, who he was, how he died. There is also a nice article on the Remember: September 11, 2001 web site

I wonder how long we will continue to run across these connections. I suspect for the rest of my life, and then some. Like the Sinking of the Titanic, Pearl Harbor and ... 9/11.

Have a wonderful sabbatical, Audrey.