Our Lord spoke in the Gospels of a kind of devil that could only be driven out by prayer and fasting. I find that the fiercest demons can be exorcised by the poetry of E. E. Cummings.

Does any Catholic, apart from the 0.095% of Catholics whose magisterium is Commonweal, give a flying flip about that petulant collection of progressives calling themselves, what is it, Noise of the Fretful?

An Anglican clergyman who converted to Catholicism was once asked what he missed most about his quondam communion. He answered : The liturgy in English. And if you don't get it, first read the 1928 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church. Then leaf through the "seasonal missalette worship resource" you'll find in any Catholic pew.

The Red Sox will miss Brian Daubach.

The world will miss Mister Rogers.

No public place in winter should ever be heated to a temperature exceeding 65 degrees. Ever.

An old friend moved a hundred miles west of here. I envy his residence in a bailiwick where the trees outnumber the houses by a factor of 800,000,000 to 1.

Classic rock observation : Listening to Stevie Nicks sing is a bit like making out with a Brillo pad. There are pleasanter pastimes.

Will police officers be quizzed on whether they ever made disparaging remarks about Robert Blake's ethnicity?

Sheryl Crow's T-shirt is not the answer!

I like Queen Latifah, a lot. Happy birthday (33 on March 18th)!

Few books on the craft of poetry are as enticing, exciting, exuberant, magnetizing, informative, knowledgeable and fun as the late Kenneth Koch's Making Your Own Days.

If John Kerry gets the nod as the Dem nominee for President in '04, he'll give new meaning to the phrase "Massachusetts miracle"; it'll be a miracle if he wins any state besides Massachusetts.

Peggy Noonan and Fred Reed are great columnists, an online Monday obligation. Also consistently readable : Jewish World Review. And in the Boston dailies, Joe Fitzgerald is rarely off the mark.

Another Fitzgerald, F. Scott, once had a character observe, "The rich -- they are not like us." That's how I feel about my friends in Cambridge, who listen to NPR, who drink gin martinis, who vote Green (or if they're feeling conservative, Democratic), and who are experts, all, on the plight of the working class. Nothing wrong with those martinis, though.

The actress of the age is indubitably Emma Thompson. See Wit, Primary Colors, Peter's Friends and Henry V as evidence of her formidable versatility. And Kevin Spacey always fascinates.

I do like WGBH radio. Jazz most evenings, and "SaysYou" -- the game of word and whimsy, bluff and bluster -- on Saturdays.

Saint Anthony's Shrine (Arch Street, Downtown) has apparently turned into one of those "palaces" where progressivism reigns supreme, particularly on matters sexual, inmilitancy against two millennia of orthodox Catholic teaching. Deplorable. Thank God for Saint Francis Chapel in the Prudential Center.

Keats wrote Endymion at twenty-two. And all of his great poems before the age of twenty-six. Astonishing.

Anyone else tired of hearing the name Hans Blix?

There are few things in life better than peanut butter on a day-old corn muffin. Trust me.