Timothy Noah and Marjorie Williams

Re: infanticide. If it isn't increasing (which is what I really want to know), my preference is not to think about it at all. Let's leave newspapers, in this instance, to the macro, and real life (your sweet visit to the barber with Willie and Alice), to the micro. To be sure, one New Jersey psychopath offing her newborn is one too many. As I used to say when I worked as an aide on a congressional campaign and was confronted by someone claiming a certain hot-button issue (say, drug use) was being exaggerated because its incidence wasn't rising: "The situation has stabilized at an intolerable level." But there really is more horror in the world than I know what to deal with.

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Moving on to a more cheerful topic, I quit my job today, after a week of negotiations with my employer regarding certain intemperate comments I made in the press about the firing of Jim Fallows as editor of U.S. News & World Report. Do not fret. As the transcendentalist Bronson Alcott (father to Louisa May) told his family during one particularly harsh and penniless New England winter, "The weather will moderate and the wood will come." (I hope I got this right; I couldn't find it in Bartlett's.)

In the meantime, bless this our Breakfast Table.

Prayerfully,

Tim

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