the biggest threat to the religious experience may well come from organized religion itself.

In Manhattan last month I heard a woman borrowing the jargon of junkies to say to another, 'Want to do some chocolate?'

We evolved as creatures knitted into the fabric of nature, and without its intimate truths, we can find ourselves unraveling.

Because IQ tests favor memory skills and logic, overlooking artistic creativity, insight, resiliency, emotional reserves, sensory gifts, and life experience, they can't really predict success, let alone satisfaction.

Smell brings to mind... a family dinner of pot roast and sweet potatoes during a myrtle-mad August in a Midwestern town. Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years.

Which is crueler, an old man's lost memories of a life lived, or a young man's lost memories of the life he meant to live?

Adult bats don't weigh much. They're mainly fur and appetite.