I have just returned from one of those errand-running mornings that gel around the "Why is this happening?" question: as in "Why do the lenses keep falling out of my son's new glasses?" and "Why is my blood test weird when I'm not sick?" and "Why has the drugstore instituted a new check-writing policy in which you don't have to actually write on the check but you still have to tear it out of your checkbook so the clerk can scan it?"

Needless to say, I have done no writing, but I have, on the bright side, visited an apple orchard and gotten a good laugh from a sober NPR radio commentator's mention of the tent that Libya's President Qaddafi has pitched in White Plains, New York.

I'd like to pitch a tent in White Plains myself, especially if it were the sort that features in Son of the Sheik, which is a silent movie starring Rudolph Valentino, and now I'm sure you're starting to picture just what his tent might look like. Whatever you're imagining, it's all true.