ash wednesday's child: full of woe... ?

Somewhere between a quarter and a third of the Bostonians wandering the streets today wore schmutz on their foreheads. And from where I could see, all of that stuff could only be derived from fossil fuels. Meanwhile, I was made to wonder whether it depended on the diocese that determined the level of viscocity one sported on his or her frontal lobes -- the difference, say, between being reverently observent and merely sitting still for another one of Father Bernard's messier fondlings.