Yes, Elvis actually was in the building.

There was a swarming media scrum in front of the federal courthouse in Oxford, Mississippi, last week to cover a man accused of one the most serious crimes imaginable: the attempted assassination of the president of the United States, a U.S. senator, and a local judge. It had all the makings of high drama, but few of the locals paid it much notice.

As I squeeze into my dress blues for the first time since 2009, I think of my grandmother. She’d told my brother and me that Americans were once embarrassed to be seen in public with young men not wearing a military uniform. Then she’d shake her head, say that had been a long time ago, and ask if we wanted another bowl of Raisin Bran.

My grandmother was a practical woman and a career Navy wife, so nostalgia didn’t soak her words when she said this. Just consideration. She passed away 10 years ago. The World War II–era America she referenced has been dead far longer than that.

Never Again is the theme of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s 20th anniversary. A two-day tribute begins Sunday for the victims and witnesses of the Nazi slaughter and to the thousands of World War II veterans who will gather on the Mall in Washington, D.C. to reflect on both the past and the future.

Bill Clinton, who dedicated the museum two decades ago, is giving the keynote address. Survivor Elie Wiesel, the founding chairman, will present special awards to Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, for his singular leadership of Polish-Jewish relations following the war.

A week after her father, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, allegedly set off a bomb near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring hundreds more, 3-year-old Zahara Tsarnaev was seen happily playing on a slide in her grandmother’s backyard in Rhode Island.

Zahara is likely oblivious to her father’s suspected crimes and perhaps to her father’s death in the early hours of April 19, when he was shot by police trying to apprehend him and his brother, Dzhokhar, who ran him over with a car in a desperate attempt to escape the police.

The government-protected shorebirds of Rockaway have begun their annual nesting, just as they would if Hurricane Sandy had never swept through there six months ago.

Some of the birds have nested on an 11-block stretch of beach that the urban park rangers close off each spring as a breeding sanctuary. Others have settled in a debris-strewn patch of sand outside the preserve and just across the street from a huge housing development that was begun when such a storm as Sandy had not seemed possible.

Is volunteer work worth less than paid work? My answer is no. Volunteers roll up their sleeves every day to make New York a stronger and better place to live.

If you want something done when the going gets tough, ask a volunteer. Earlier this month, I traveled to the south shore of Long Island to talk with some of the volunteers who put self-interest aside as Hurricane Sandy devastated communities and destroyed homes.

Last week President Obama stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his predecessor to help celebrate the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and the legacy of President Bush’s eight years in office. A central part of that legacy—much criticized by candidate Obama—was the creation of Guantánamo, an offshore prison in violation of our most basic constitutional and human rights principles. Now in his fifth year in office, Obama has only perpetuated Guantánamo as a symbol of human rights denied by abandoning his promise to close the prison. Today its continued existence is literally a matter of life and death.

For nearly three months, a majority of the 166 men imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay have been on hunger strike. Men have lost over 30 and 40 pounds. Some are skeletal and too weak to move. At least 17 men are being “saved” by being strapped into chairs and force fed through a tube inserted through their noses, down their throats and into their stomachs. In the words of Tariq Ba Odah, one of the Center for Constitutional Rights’ clients, “I am tortured in the restraining chair when they fill my belly with Ensure. All my limbs are restrained and my clothes soaked from vomiting the formula mixed with water and laxatives.”

Back in March, the Transportation Security Administration announced it would rescind its longstanding prohibition against the carriage of small knives in airplane cabins. Beginning in mid-April, passengers would be allowed to carry implements with blades of up to 2.36 inches* onto planes.

Well, it's mid-April, and it's not happening. The announcement triggered strong backlash from flight attendant groups, pilot groups, and airlines, and in response the TSA has postponed the changes until further notice.