Niebuhr Reinhold's Moral Man And Immoral Society

I could have been doing plenty of things on Sunday. I could have been catching up on sleep, or I could have been catching up with a friend from high school, something I don't do quite often enough. I could have been at the gym, or at a food pantry, or at CVS, purchasing gummy bears and deodorant. I could have been at the library, and come to think of it, I probably should have been at the library. The most useful way I could have spent my Sunday, probably, was by studying -- by reading a book about the job market before and after World War II, by reading a chapter in Niebuhr Reinhold's Moral Man and Immoral Society, by diagramming the many concentric, socioeconomic rings that make up urban centers in Latin America, or by, perhaps, sitting down to a few poems by Wordsworth. Instead, I found myself cutting cake.
When I asked my sister Audrey, upon my arrival a few hours earlier, whom I should expect to see at the party, she had answered, "Everyone!" with a high note of surprise in her voice, as if to add, "And all for a 2-year-old, who will likely be throwing rocks in the hallway all afternoon." Ronan has recently reached a top speed fast enough to outrun his pursuers if they don't jog as well, and in this moment, having just blown out his birthday candles, he has escaped, indeed, down the hallway to throw rocks. And I'm really shitty at cutting