The first round of Bingo was underway when an unrestful noise began to claw its way into the proceedings. The residents of the nursing home where I volunteer shifted uneasily in their chairs as it crept closer, a thin screech that frayed the nerves. Soon the caller could scarcely be heard over the noises coming from an ancient woman in a wheelchair, who could no longer walk or talk. Screech she could, and did, effectively breaking up the game until one of the attendants wheeled her out of the dining room and down the hall toward sedation.

"He's only human!" I hear it everywhere: from the man on the street, the irate talk-show caller, the little old librarian, the check-out clerk. As a defense it's not exactly ringing; as a judgment it doesn't stimulate deep thought or spirited debate. But who dares to refute it? "Has your life been a model of good behavior? Would you want the world to know all your dirty little secrets?"

June is the month of weddings-but movies frequently seem to undercut marriage, often in subtle ways.

When I was in high school, the crowd I ran with was smitten by the movie version of Camelot. This, as any theater buff knows, is a musical based on the King Arthur story, particularly the fatal love affair of Guinevere and Lancelot. The segment of the movie that romantically inclined girls were most likely to remember occurred soon after intermission: a montage reviewing how the two met and fell in love, played out against a voice-over of the show's most popular song.

If economics is the dismal science, grammar may be the abysmal science-the black pit of syntactical minutiae that has swallowed many a preadolescent. Breathes there a lad with soul so dead who never to his teacher said, "Why do we have to learn this stuff?" What do parts of speech and sentence structure have to do with finding a job or filling out a tax return or living life? Only this: The study of grammar reveals the operation of a most amazing gift.

The three-day homeschool convention had rolled around to its Saturday-afternoon finale, and the large room was respectably full. Over half the participants had stayed for the whole enchilada, from the opening remarks to the final address delivered by the convention's featured speaker. After stuffing their minds and goody bags with handouts and brochures, tips and advice, convention-goers now looked for motivation: a challenge to pull it all together and make their next homeschooling year the best ever.