As is my wont, I was wondering in an old rural graveyard. Below the name and dates on a fading headstone, the inscription read: “Buried here is a lawyer and an honest man.” And I thought: “Two men in one grave.”

On my subway rides to meet a friend for a Saturday night dinner, I saw many young women dressed for going out. Generally they were in groups of five or six. I saw no similar groups of young men, and I wondered about that imbalance. Although I did not see the same outfit on two different women, the clothing of many seemed almost indistinguishable—short skirts with low tops almost always in black (I saw two notable exceptions, one on a subway platform and one on the sidewalk both of whom were wearing what to my untrained-in-fashion eye looked to be bright red slips.) And I thought, as I have before, if that is what they are wearing, then I am supposed to check out their thighs and cleavage. I also thought, as I have before, all cleavage is noteworthy, but all cleavage is not attractive.

“Fashion. n. A despot who the wise ridicule and obey.” Ambrose Bierce.

“Only God helps the badly dressed.” Spanish proverb.

As I walked to the subway one day, I heard a street person in a doorway say to no one in particular, “Did you see that old couple who just walked by? They did it.”

In our politics and in our courts, evangelical Christianity has outsized power. I say outsized because I read that church attendance has dropped and more and more people claim to have no religion at all. On the other hand, I believe in the adage: “Faith will not die while seed catalogs are printed.”

Christopher Morley said, “You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.” I would add: You have not converted anyone by forcing them to say a school prayer.

“When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.” Prince Otto von Bismarck.

When I learn about how climate change is altering this planet and its societies, I think what I have read about Manhattan when the Dutch and English first settled there. The island and its surrounding waters were a hunting and fishing paradise with deer, bear, and fox. Whales and porpoises were off shore where 10 foot sturgeon and six foot salmon were so often taken that servants often stipulated that they would not be served salmon more than twice a week. Oyster beds were so plentiful that the mollusks were for sale out of barrels as a street food well into the nineteenth century. Man has changed that environment.

Many states are having elections for governors. These, of course, are gubernatorial elections. How did gubernatorial become the adjective for governor instead of something else?