SCOTT SIMON

History happens all around us.

When they mention great little things in life, they usually forget flossing.

Adoption is rewarding. But the process, as we have already detailed in some particulars, can be expensive, exhausting, and hard to sustain on a dream, much less a whim.

Exactly who is this God character who is said to be all-powerful yet needs to hire lawyers to take us to court? Isn't he miffed when someone he had always considered to be a true follower turns to the legal system rather than to prayer? Why would the faithful risk making God look ridiculous by losing a trial on Earth when he is certain to win every trial in heaven?

Charlie Hebdo were the licensed anarchist clowns of the society.

Senator Sanders, of course, has campaigned for Hillary Clinton. But what about his legions of supporters?

I became a pedant of the form. I did my graduate work in art history and particularly in the history of French satirical cartooning. And that made me aware of what a rich and resilient tradition this seemingly scabrous sacrilegious magazine still represented in French life.

I was a kid and it was kind of scabrous, and it wasn't the sacrilege that bothered me so much as the obscenity that challenged a 14-year-old American. But over the years, I came to have a keen appreciation of Charlie Hebdo and what it did.

There are times when the adoption process is exhausting and painful and makes you want to scream. But, I am told, so does childbirth.

Reading will put you into the minds and hearts of others. It might help you understand why other people do what they do sometimes.

As the race for president tightens, Hillary Clinton's campaign hopes to win over millions of people who voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries.

Janis Joplin didn't just sing a song, she took it over. She swallowed it whole, then sent it back through her gut and her heart.

It's not the cost (although that pinches), or the time (though that grinds). After a while, it's the sheer galling indignity of being asked to prove, pay, and prove all over again that you're a worthy parent. Any true parent will tell you that that is impossible to prove in advance.

Fidel Castro takes up so much space in the Cuban mind. It's hard for us to imagine as Americans - isn't it? - how much of everyday conversation he's dominated for 50 years.

Fifteen-year-old girls produce children with sixteen-year-old boys in the backseat of cars and in the stairwells of apartment buildings. Why can't two loving adults who have contemplated parenthood and are prepared to offer love, patience, and devotion come up with enough chromosomal matter to stick together and create a child?

In the wake of the deaths of the satirists, Je suis Charlie, I am Charlie, became a slogan of solidarity for free expression around the world.

Despite the reams of paperwork, obstacles worthy of a horse show, and a wait that can rival an elephant's gestation, adoption feels no different on the inside.

Srebrenica's not simply another reminder of man's inhumanity to man, but how intelligent people can always come up with intelligent reasons to do nothing.

In journalism, when we want to get a story over the jumps, we refer to it as a universal experience, but it almost never is. There is one universal experience, that's death. That is something we are all going to experience at some distance in the lives of loved ones, strangers and friends, people around us and certainly our own.

AR-15s, in particular, are often called America's gun. They're some of the most popular rifles in the country, especially when it comes to sports shooting.

Charlie Hebdo mocked everyone. They mocked the left. They mocked the right. They mocked, above all, the extreme right, the extreme right of Le Pen's. If anything could identify their politics, they were kinds of anarchists.

Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton, but he won more than 12 million votes in the primaries and was respectfully and elaborately saluted by Hillary Clinton, whom he has endorsed.

So: this is where we are going to become parents. You walk into the building as a couple, and leave a few minutes later as a family. You walk in recollecting long romantic dinners, nights at the theater, and care-free vacations. You leave worrying about where to get diapers, milk, and Cheerios.

Fidel Castro rhetorically championed the poor. He also held the Cuban economy in a kind of arrested state. He called for racial equality but often cracked down - but did crack down on the press and dissidents and Cuban gays.

Almost every continent in the world, including our own, has refugees. But how often when we hear the word do we pause to remind ourselves what being a refugee means?