You know, it's always good to have a synonym just for variety.

American history is a quagmire, and the more one knows, the quaggier the mire gets.

Jesus and Lincoln, Moses and Jefferson can seem so long gone, so unbelievable, so dead.

But when I am around strangers, I turn into a conversational Mount St. Helens. I'm dormant, dormant, quiet, quiet, old-guy loners build log cabins on the slopes of my silence and then, boom, it's 1980. Once I erupt, they'll be wiping my verbal ashes off their windshields as far away as North Dakota.

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Civil War-when I really think about them they all seem about as likely as the parting of the Red Sea.

I discovered that Robert Todd Lincoln was there for each of the first three assassinations. I wanted to write about the Lincoln Memorial, so when I found out he had attended its dedication, that helped focus it further.

No one I know actually reads what I write, so thank heavens for you strangers.