Mary Pezzulo

The New York Daily News headline reads "Trump's MSG Event Turns into Ugly Racist Rally, Insults Puerto Ricans, Blacks, Jews." But that's not really fair. It neglects to mention that they also insulted just about everybody else in the country.

I am, of course, not the One Who said that if you welcome a child, you welcome Christ Himself. And I must admit, I feel much closer to God lately. It's much better than it used to be.

, and now it's almost over. Here's what I'm sure is going to happen on election night, 100% guaranteed. If I'm wrong I'll personally mail you a dollar if I ever get a dollar (and I never have a dollar so you're out of luck).

The baby turned course in a wide turn, rather like an airplane circling for landing, just I saw the mandrake. There was a little girl who might have been as old as four, also barefoot, in grubby leggings and a star-covered tunic, sprinting after the baby, screaming.

One year, my aunt got the idea of handing out packets of hot chocolate mix instead of candy, because it sounded so nice to warm up with a hot chocolate while inventorying your candy on a late October evening. She bought boxes and boxes of hot chocolate mix, but it wasn't enough. She kept answering the door, admiring the costumes, and dropping a packet in each bag; the children were excited at the novelty of Halloween hot chocolate, and thanked her earnestly. But the boxes dwindled down to nothing and the trick-or-treaters kept coming. When she finally ran out of hot chocolate, she handed everybody a pencil from the box of pencils on her desk. Again, the children liked that. It's fun to have a solid item like a pencil in among all the sugar that's here today and eaten tomorrow. And then she ran out of pencils. She opened her purse and started giving everybody a quarter– this was back in the days when all the parking meters in town wanted a quarter, so she had plenty. Again, the children thought this was fun. Who doesn't want a quarter? But then there were no more quarters.

What I do know is, any Catholic talking head who tells you you've got a moral obligation to vote Republican ought to be laughed into oblivion. Vote your conscience. Vote your common sense. Vote for the one who wasn't making love to a microphone this weekend. Or just leave the top of the ticket blank and vote for your local tax levees, if you must. But our country is in a very dangerous place right now, and you mustn't fall in line behind the bullies.

I do not regret doing everything I possibly could to fight to keep this from happening. I am proud that I did everything I possibly could to keep this from happening.

I haven't been in the best shape, the past few days. I can't imagine I'm alone. They're telling me the United States's democracy is finished and

Hospitality is prior to every other virtue. Hospitality is the first good thing anybody ever did, that wasn't necessary. Once, at the beginning of civilization, there must have been a human being who saw a stranger, another human they didn't know: not one that biology demanded they be nice to, not a mate or an offspring or one of their own pack, but one that might be dangerous. And instead of fighting them off or running away, that human being welcomed the stranger and gave them something to eat. And that was the beginning of good deeds. That was the beginning of good people. That was the beginning of saints.

As I rounded the corner to the backyard, I saw the yellow petals. The Artful Dodgers had torn the blossoms off my last sunflower.