This morning, as I do every morning, I went to the Carolina Cafe, on the first floor of my condo building, for a decaf coffee and poppyseed muffin and the opportunity to spend a few quiet moments doing the NY TIMES crossword puzzle. But the Monday puzzle is always dead easy [it gets harder as the week progresses], and I had finished it even before eating the first half of my muffin. Casting about for something to occupy myself with while I ate the second half, I turned to the Op Ed page. Douglas Copeland, a playwright, had a silly little column of made-up words about this and that, one of which, however, really enchanted me: "Rosenwald's Theorem: The belief that all the wrong people have self-esteem."
Then I plowed through Paul Krugman's column, which managed to make me angry about the US Government's lack of response to China's manipulation of the renimbi [I can't even pronounce "renimbi."] But at the bottom of the column was this absolutely lovely piece of Found Art: "Ross Douthat is off today." My heart swelled. I thought to myself, Ross Douthat is off every day! How wonderful that the NY TIMES has finally recognized that fact.
These are hard times. You take your pleasures where you find them.
