Adolescence hits boys harder than it does girls. Girls bleed a little and their breasts pop out, big deal, but adolescence lands on a guy with both feet. . . . Your body is engulfed by chemicals of rage and despair, you pound, you shriek, you batter your head against the trees. You come away wounded, feeling that life is unknowable, can never be understood, only endured and sometimes cheated.

A person does feel sheepish picking on journalists, a class already so richly despised that if a planeload of them crashed in flames, most people would smile from pure reflex.

Spending time in a church does not make you religious, any more than spending time in a garage makes you a car.

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.

It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming.

... and people are to march around the church to commemorate the event, Palm Sunday, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem and was greeted with applause and with palms. People thought he had come to overthrow the Romans, but ... no ... he had come to change THEM ... and that led to things turning bad.