She Does Her Crying in Private

In an endless winter, MLB broadcasts non-stop A-Rod.

Brian Wilson sings paeans to Spring.

Since the entire starting five of our local squad are felons, basketball loses any off-season baseball attraction it might have yielded in the void, yet, in Lenten redemption, the Times features a portrait of unselfishness: Shane Battier, who excels in statistical non-records such as blocking the line of sight of a Kobe so his effectiveness diminishes just so much the Rockets win.

Instead of comparing baseball to football, ala Carlin, the Times contrasts the ease of selfishness in basketball, where there isn't an opportunity for everyone to bat.

(Except, perhaps, for a little-known Jamesian consideration, of how many games Manny costs a team by not hustling in the outfield.)

No one statisticalizes who recovers blocked shots rather than who flicks them refundably into the 5th row.

"I know it's been hard for you," says Lana in SG 38, "since Zor-el was killed, and you're focusing all your efforts on pulling your mother out of her slump, but Kara, it's okay to be selfish sometimes."

Is it?

During Lent?

The President reverses predecessor's bans on photographing coffins.

Sec-Def, the hold-over, says he welcomes an opportunity to re-think the issue.

In his review of The Republic of Suffering, Thomas Lacquer reminds it was only in the aftermath of the Civil War that the dead first demand our allegience from beyond the grave, and establish they, and they alone, own the experience.

After fourteen decades, with no end to this winter in sight, the matter continues unresolved, as evidenced by existent pain viewing a dinner at the Bunkers where Archie invites a Gold Star father for Thanksgiving dinner and Mike invites a draft dodger -

- not unlike Andersen's story of the Red Shoes who dance as if they had PTSD after the feet of the vain heroine are amputated.

The local rag reports on five couples living within a mile of each other in the Lake Anna countryside who've been married more than 50 years.

Ernest, cab driver for young women of the segregated Mary Washington campus - the endurer of racist taunts - responds by ensuring his daughters graduate from the same integrated collge.

When asked how he managed, Ernest says, "God did it."

This, the lesson, of Lent.