"We've got to listen to our children," said Maryland congressman Elijah Cummings, venturing into the midst of Tuesday's clashes Baltimore to persuade restraint from both police and protesters.
In the midst of Thursday's angry rhetoric, some senators called for a rare closed-door meeting in the historic Old Senate Chamber to air grievances and seek a resolution.
In the midst of Tuesday's election night celebration in Chicago, Sasha Obama gave her dad a friendly reminder that endeared her to supporters in the McCormick Place convention center and beyond.
Anang, another of Dita and Puji's neighbors, told me that he still couldn't understand how the family he saw interacting happily with their Christian neighbors were the same people who orchestrated a coordinated suicide attack on three churches in the midst of Sunday service.
The battles between Protestant and Roman Catholic are alluded to in these three selections, but the characters seem to experience it all from a distance, or as part of a past that sits in the midst of their day-to-day experience like a lump of dry bread in the throat, impossible to digest or ignore.
Sometimes when I am in the midst of every day work, I close my eyes and gather a vision of the attitude of that young player who was a champ doing the humdrum.
It was impossible to banish the thought, even in the midst of that day's horror and confusion, that the attacks themselves represented a movie scenario made grotesquely literal.
But in the midst of the day's chaos lies a message about the importance of black men seizing control of their beauty.
Currently, the ruling clerics of Iran are empowered and emboldened to an unprecedented level, where they are launching ballistic missiles, in the midst of the day, for the world to see.
Mothers and fathers say that we want the same thing: time to be regularly present in our children's day-to-day lives, but from my position — mired in the midst of day-to-day parenthood — I often feel as if, like my e-mail correspondent above and her potential employer, we're not speaking the same language.
Things are looking up for the Clippers, who already ditched the most notorious owner in professional sports in favor of a lively billionaire who acts as though he's perpetually in the midst of a "Saturday Night Live" skit.
