Editorial Writing: Andrew Malcolm

As 10,000 of the nation's librarians assembled in Philadelphia this weekend for the American Library Assn.'s meeting, Helen Myers slowly trooped four icy blocks down Green Street from her home in little Ellisville, Ill., to the crumbling shack she's stubbornly maintained since 1966 as her community's lone beacon for reading in a world of glazed TV watchers.

It's not a big story, as combat tales go. Nor is it all that surprising, as much more than Saddam Hussein statues fall in Iraq.

In desperate need of new midway freak shows to draw American TV viewers to mock and laugh at others, CBS is designing a reality series to plunk down some rural Americans in a fancy urban wasteland and see how they stumble. "The Real Beverly Hillbillies" should be a laugh riot. Friendly people out of their element trying to fit into a bewildering new place; it might just work today. Earnestness is so yesterday.

OK, mes amis, this is guerre.

Throughout history, even in the caves of Neanderthals, legend says children have maintained they are so full it would be impossible to swallow one more bite of mastodon spleen or even a single Green Giant pea. Yet, miraculously, seconds later, the same youngsters can profess discovery in their stomachs of a little-known dessert compartment, which is, by good fortune, quite available for filling with cookies, cake or ice cream. Parents suspicious of such timely, documentation-free claims should note now that, in fact, such a compartment has been found by British researchers. It's just not in the stomach; it's in the brain.

OK, pick up your wife, hold her above your head with one arm and prance lightly about the room like a proud stallion, only smiling. Then gently set her down and wave softly as she glides away. Now say she felt like a feather. In Russia they apparently have weak male dancers because the renowned Bolshoi Theater has fired a prima ballerina for needing, shall we say, a plus-size tutu. She reportedly weighs -- prepare to gasp -- 110 pounds. That's 1,760 ounces, 6% of a ton.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, familiar customs have become a vital if invisible part of modern life. In a time when just as you get used to every new set of rules, everything changes again, old customs provide a predictable comfort -- even more than telling off Tom Brokaw or Judy Woodruff in absentia. We know our customs will arrive on time, unlike, say, the cable guy.

Bad news on the afterlife front. A national poll finds most Americans believe there is a heaven, a hell and life after death. Worse, nearly two-thirds of Americans figure they're going to the good place.

True, it's been just three decades -- barely sufficient for Americans to experience seven different presidents and for the Earth to whirl 30 times around the sun at 18 miles per second -- since the arrival of wacko airplane hijackers caused airports to scrutinize purses, pockets and packages of everyone boarding a commercial plane. And it's been less than three years since simple box cutters enabled zealots to do their awful 9/11 deeds.