Sarah Vowell

In death, you get upgraded into a saint no matter how much people hated you in life.

Relics are treasured as something close to the divine.

Jesus and Lincoln, Moses and Jefferson can seem so long gone, so unbelievable, so dead.

Baseball is a game of race, creed, and color. The race is to first base. The creed is the rules of the game. The color? Well, the home team wears white uniforms, and the visiting team wears gray.

Science is bound, by the everlasting vow of honour, to face fearlessly every problem which can be fairly presented to it.

Well, I actually wrote her a letter a couple of days ago congratulating her. The tone I tried to convey in the letter is, look, you are a part of a great American historical process.