Sunday Reading

Eli Saslow with football as an escape: Ne'emia Vitale usually needs only a few minutes to walk home from football practice, following a one-lane street bordered by tin-roof huts and long trails of rotting litter. But today, he stalls.

He kicks up loose gravel with his size 13 flip-flops and shoos the wild dogs and chickens that rove near his feet. After sprinting and tackling for three hours on a field dotted by lava rocks, Ne'emia's Oakland Athletics T-shirt is sodden with sweat and streaks of blood. He chugs tap water out of a used plastic Gatorade bottle, which he picked out of a trash heap a few minutes earlier and rinsed because he had no other container from which to drink.

Brooke Hauser behind the scenes of Miss New York Chinese: GOOSE-PIMPLY in a turquoise string bikini and silver heels, Stacy Wang stepped up to the microphone in a back room of East Manor, a dim sum restaurant in Flushing, Queens, and breathed deeply. "Hi, everyone," she said brightly, introducing herself in Mandarin to the eight judges for the preliminary round of this year's Miss New York Chinese beauty pageant. "I'm Stacy Wang, and I am 18 years old. I like to dance, play the piano, swim, play Go and read."

Sean Daly with P-to-the-Pastor: After the beat-boxer and the DJ and the bass-heavy gospel quartet, after the throbbing light display and the swaying sing-along, the hip-hop pastor takes the stage:

"How's my ladies in the house? Make some noise!"