Things I wanted to post about while we were offline

• I admit to having done my spiritual exercises on the bus.
• I also took out my resentment at having to be at a meeting with a school district committee by going through a language arts teacher's statement and circling all the spelling and grammar mistakes. There were eight, in less than a page. I left it there as it was when I went.
• A businessman in Texas is trying to get over his fear of rejection by asking strangers to do silly things he figures they'll refuse. I was afraid I'd read this and feel I had to try something like it myself. But it turns out lots of them unexpectedly say sure, like the cop who let him sit in the driver's seat of the squad car. So is it working? Well, he's learning a lot . . . 
• (Get ready for multiple links.) In this post, this reader asked Charlotte if she'd heard lately about anything "very cool that someone has done or is doing - something that makes me sit up and thank God for making my fellow human beings so brilliant or loving or insightful". If someone had asked me, I'd have mentioned this blog post on how the blogger's mother paints portraits of people who've died tragically and sends them to the families -- "to do something in her own small way to push back against the darkness".