Faith

A brisket the size of Kansas and laced with fat was always lying in a thick gravy. At my grandmother's house, that hefty brisket was synonymous with Rosh Hashanah, just like the weighty matzo balls that never quite floated in Gertrude Goldberg's chicken soup. My sister and I found ingenious ways to dispose of both the brisket and the matzo balls that involved sleight of hand - and napkins. Never mind the details. The gefilte fish was made from live carp kept in Grandmom's bathtub until the moment came for cooking.

TURNED OUT the Eagles didn't have to make a tough decision about whether to put Jason Kelce on the new, recallable injured reserve, which can only be used once per season. When team orthopedic surgeon Dr. Peter DeLuca got a good look Tuesday morning at Kelce's right knee with his arthroscope, the partial tear of Kelce's anterior cruciate ligament was severe enough and placed in such a spot that DeLuca felt a reconstruction would be needed. "His knee was much looser than it was on the field [Sunday]

Question: I am a stay-at-home mother of four who has tried to raise my family under the same strong Christian values that I grew up with. Therefore I was shocked when my oldest daughter, Emily, suddenly announced she had "given up believing in God" and decided to "come out" as an atheist. She said she was "happy" in her decision and it just "felt right. " She no longer wishes to attend church, speak to the pastor, or participate in family prayers. I love my daughter but I am troubled.

TAMPA - Democrats have not yet unveiled the stage design for the football stadium in Charlotte, where President Obama will accept the party's nomination Thursday for a second term, but you can take one thing to the bank: no Greek columns. Those trappings of the 2008 convention in Denver were mocked then, but similar grandiosity now would just look cruel, with both the country and Obama in a difficult place. The public mood is somber, with supermajorities of Americans telling pollsters they think the nation is on the wrong track.

Orlando R. Barone is a freelance writer in Doylestown It recently came to my attention that my granddaughter might be a pagan. And I might be responsible. With the Catholic bishops hot on the trail of wayward nuns, is there hope for her? Sydney is 9 and an avid reader, so I innocently purchased for her the popular Percy Jackson series, for which I took out a small second mortgage. Percy turns out to be a Greek demigod with ADHD, which is apparently a good thing if you are a demigod.

Live, Kitty Pryde is a walking paradox, a wound-up ball of nervous insecurity who can summon the bravado it takes to command those in her crowd to bow their heads in prayer to Justin Bieber. ("Dear Bieber, please stop singing about sex. ") Makes sense. She's a walking paradox in everyday life, too, a teenage, white-as-snow redheaded Claire's employee from Daytona Beach, Fla., who, depending on your view, is either hip hop's unlikely savior or the final nail in the coffin of the once-proud genre.

LOW ENROLLMENT numbers nearly caused the demise of four high schools in the Philadelphia Archdiocese earlier this year. But, invigorated by a fundraising campaign, the schools remain open and, officials announced Tuesday, will be under independent control this fall. The Faith in the Future Foundation will manage the Archdiocese's 17 high schools and four special-education schools starting Sept. 1. Edward Hanway, interim CEO of the foundation, said Tuesday that it would focus on increasing enrollment.

FORK UNION, Va. - Amid the padless pandemonium of summer-camp drills involving 100-plus players, few reacted to Christian Hackenberg's shouted signals Thursday night, the quarterback's confident utterances muffled by the competing noise on Fork Union Military Academy's isolated practice fields. Curiously though, beyond this remote Shenandoah Mountain institution that has served as a football finishing school for talents like Mike Quick, Eddie George, and Vinny Testaverde, the high-schooler's every signal is being intensely scrutinized.

TO ME, the most striking thing about Paul Ryan, second only to his piercing blue eyes, is the way he makes competence look downright sexy. He doesn't traffic in the tired rhetorical flourishes common to lesser intellects, or rely upon the divide-and-conquer tactics used by demagogues like Harry Reid. Ryan uses math to seduce those who are open-minded enough to listen, showing what is truly in our country's fiscal interest. He doesn't spout the language of class warfare that his friends across the aisle speak fluently, but instead shows how 1 plus 1 will never equal 3, no matter how much some people want those entitlements to keep swelling like Lake Pontchartrain after Hurricane Katrina.

Henry Scott's first day of school will be a big deal. And not just because the 6-year-old is planning on "learning new things, like math and how to read," in first grade. Henry's first day matters because his parents could have sent him to private school. They could have moved to the suburbs. They could even have sent him to the highly regarded Independence Charter School in Center City, where he had a spot waiting. But Jill and Mark Scott chose E.M. Stanton at 17th and Christian Streets, their neighborhood public school, for Henry.