Inside Story

Miriam Therese Winter is a Catholic sister teaching in a Protestant seminary. So it only seemed appropriate to send a cradle Catholic, editorial staff assistant Anne Wayne, and a cradle Protestant, assistant editor Julie Polter, to Connecticut to interview her. They found that their upbringings in different traditions were a real strength in generating a wide variety of interview questions-and gave them something to talk about during the (rare) moments they felt like switching to a serious topic while driving up Interstate 95. Anne, by the way, is from Perth, Western Australia-which is where she first met Winter, who was on a speaking tour of Australia last year. (Anne's sister Emily joins our CultureWatch lineup this month.) We have been watching the situation in the Middle East and considering how best to cover it for the past several months. One answer came when Palestinian Christian journalist and Sojourners friend Daoud Kuttab was arrested and held without charge by the Palestinian authorities. Jim Rice explores the issues around Kuttab's detention in "Commentary." Thankfully, Daoud was released after several days. The feature article by Jen Kilps on the real cost of higher education was inspired by many who struggle to pay their student loans and by parents who look with trepidation at what it will cost to send their children to college. We especially wanted to include it in this issue because it will be going with associate editor Bob Hulteen to the 1997 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Youth Gathering, "River of Hope," in New Orleans this July.