When I worked in White Plains, a city in Westchester County north of the Bronx, I would take the subway from my Brooklyn home to the northern reaches of Manhattan and run the eight or ten or twelve miles to White Plains. That meant crossing the Harlem River. There are a number of bridges with walkways that do that, and I ran over quite a few of them, but I don’t remember their names. I did not especially enjoy these bridges. I almost always ran them going to the Bronx. The views of the Bronx were uninspiring, and often I was thinking about how it was going to be running through the South Bronx, a very tough neighborhood in those days. These bridges were utilitarian, only part of my route to get me from point A to point B.

Just as I ran over the George Washington Bridge only once, I ran over the Manhattan Bridge but once. In my running days, the Manhattan Bridge walkways were not open. The plural is correct because that bridge has walkways on both north and south sides. I call them walkways even though one is now supposedly reserved for bicyclists and the other for pedestrians. I have gone over both walkways since they opened, but by walking or biking, not running. Neither is pleasant.  Both are narrow and on the same level as the road and the subway tracks.  With trains rattling twelve yards away and cars constantly on the move even closer, the bridge is hardly a respite from the city. On the plus side, however, I like peering down into Chinatown, a place that still retains some mystery for me.

The only time that I ran over the Manhattan Bridge was in a race, put on by a newspaper that printed legal news. It was billed as a courthouse-to-courthouse run.  It started at the federal courthouse in Manhattan, went over the Manhattan Bridge on the roadway to the federal courthouse in Brooklyn, turned around, back over the bridge again, and ended at the federal courthouse in Manhattan’s Foley Square. We ran on the bridge’s road, not either of its walkways, and the entire race may have been four miles. I remember nothing of what I saw.

I do remember, however, many of the runs over the Williamsburg Bridge. Those runs were not nearly as frequent as my passages on the Brooklyn Bridge, but I ran the Williamsburg Bridge frequently going to and from my office when I worked in lower Manhattan. If I wanted a short run, I ran from my home over the Brooklyn Bridge to my law school or vice versa, a three-plus-mile distance. If I wanted something longer, I went over the Williamsburg, about a 10K run.

The Williamsburg Bridge walkway was not in good shape when I ran it. It was supposed to be covered with something like tiles, but many were missing, giving a sense of decay. The path did not seem unsafe, but it was unsightly. It, however, was elevated above the roadway allowing unimpeded views. The bridge is situated at a dramatic bend in the East River. To the north, one can see to the United Nations and beyond; to the south, to Governor’s Island, the Statute of Liberty, and beyond. No bridge I had crossed before or since offered better views. If you get the chance, walk or bike or run across that bridge. But stop in the middle of the span and admire the view.

But running in New York also brought me to many other bridges because, as I said, New York City is a city of bridges. Many of the bridges are not widely known, but I have run over bridges that span the Newtown Creek and the Gowanus Canal; that are above waters in Mill Basin and Gerritsen Beach; and that separate the Rockaways from the mainland. I have run over bridges to get to Roosevelt Island and City Island. There are bridges in Central Park and Prospect Park.

Running has given me memories of many New York City bridges. They gave me vistas and skies and waters I would not otherwise have seen or noticed. But there was another good thing about those bridge-crossings. They often brought me to a new neighborhood, places to learn about and explore. But that is for another day.

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It may not be apparent when walking the canyons of Manhattan, sitting on the stoop of a Brooklyn brownstone, or gazing longingly at the single-family homes of Forest Hills, but New York City is a city of bridges. When I was younger and a runner, I experienced many of those bridges and in a different way from driving over them. Each time I ran over a bridge for the first time, I was aware it was a new experience. I felt as if I had “collected” another one.

I have both walked and run over the Brooklyn Bridge, but I have run over it many more times than I have walked it. Early in my running days, I would run over it and back at lunch time. Later I would run to and from work over the Brooklyn Bridge several times a week. I have tried to calculate the total number of trips, but those calculations are not precise. I’m guessing it was more than a thousand times. I have run the Brooklyn Bridge in the heat and humidity of summer and the cold and crispness of winter, early morning and at night, in rain and in snow, and almost every time its Gothic arches, its supporting wires’ parabolas, its views gave me some sort of thrill.

While I have been over the Brooklyn Bridge many times, I ran over the the George Washington Bridge that connects New York City and New Jersey but once. It was after seeing a doctor in upper Manhattan. I ran from the office to nearby parks on the Manhattan side of the Hudson River and then north to the bridge. I had driven over the bridge many times, and I always admired the view north up the Hudson. The Hudson is a majestic river, and I envy those who have homes overlooking it. However, I was a bit disappointed as I ran across the GWB. The walkway is on the south side of the bridge, so the view up the Hudson is obstructed. On the other hand, this walkway is higher than any of the other bridge walkways and this allowed me to feel as if I were taking my place among the birds. The sun was strong and sparkled off the water far below. The views of Manhattan were spectacular with the sun mirroring off skyscraper windows. Everything looked like a stage set.

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that connects Brooklyn and Staten Island is also high above the water. (New York arcana: While the structure is the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the water it spans is simply The Narrows.) I have run over that bridge only while participating in New York City marathons. That is hardly surprising since that bridge does not have a walkway and the only time it can be traversed on foot is during that event. I understand that it must cost extra to include a pedestrian path, and that it might be seldom used on this particular bridge, but I do think all bridges should allow for foot and bike traffic.

Running that bridge during a marathon was hardly a sightseeing opportunity. The marathon starts on the Staten Island side of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and the runners are tightly clustered. I only could see other runners, and I had to concentrate on running my pace without either being run over or stepping on someone’s heels. If there was a spectacular view of the harbor (there no doubt is), I never saw it.

The marathon goes across the 59^th Street Bridge, also known as the Queensboro Bridge connecting Manhattan and Queens, too. (Now that bridge has an additional name because, for reasons not clear to me, the city or state, or whoever is in charge of such naming, adds dead politicians’ names to them.) I hated it. During the race, we were allowed to run on the roadway or the walkway. The first time I ran on the road because it was more open with fewer runners than the walkway, but the road has little metal projections, presumably to give cars more traction, but they felt like spikes and hurt my feet. In subsequent years I tried to run on the walkway, which was covered with matting.

Even if my feet were not hurt by the bridge, it was hard running. The 59^th Street Bridge comes at the sixteen-mile mark of the marathon. Sixteen miles is a long way to run, but there are still ten more miles to go! It was hard not to be psychologically drained at this point, and, of course, the half the bridge uphill. That incline seemed a mile long, and that was tough to do after sixteen miles. That bridge itself was the loneliest part of the marathon. The runners by now had thinned, many were struggling, and there were no spectators to cheer us on. Thoughts about dropping out surfaced, but I struggled to make it over the bridge each marathon.

Even though I have no pleasant memories of the 59^th Street Bridge from the marathon, I did run over it a few other times. When I was not so exhausted from having run sixteen miles before encountering it, it was not so bad. But still I never enjoyed it. The walkway is next to the highway, and the bridge’s structure impedes views of Manhattan and the East River. I decided to avoid the 59^th Street Bridge on my runs as much as possible.

(continued on August 10.)

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I didn’t know what to make of the man who asked for money saying he wanted to buy food because he was hungry, and he was wearing earbuds.

New Yorkers are not always as tolerant as I would like. Someone made fun of me for eating sushi at a Yankees baseball game.

Why is it that conservatives refer to the Democrat Party but not the Republic Party?

The package for the mini-cucumbers bought at a fancy, and therefore overpriced, food mart was labeled “locally grown in New England.” If those cukes had come from California, Mexico, Peru, or Timbuctoo, wouldn’t they still have been locally grown?

At a different market, the sign above the cucumbers said, “3 for $3.” I was unsure if that was different from a dollar apiece, so I bought three.

Over breakfast at the recent stay at a Virginia bed and breakfast, I met a woman from New York who worked in “wealth management,” a field I only vaguely understand. She said that she had a client worth over $100 million who was very pro-Trump. I asked why he felt that way. I expected the answer to be something along the lines of liking the tax cut and how good it would be for the country, something I have heard from other rich people who will pay tens of thousands dollars less to the government. She said, however, that her client said he was behind Trump because “he felt so disrespected by Obama.”

“Fucked up is the universal condition of man.” Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey.

In a park or outside an old house, I would come across a hand pump as a kid. Of course, I had to try it. The first couple strokes always seemed hard, but with minimal persistence they became easier. As I pumped, I would wonder if the pump still worked. Was there really water down there? Sometimes the effort produced nothing, but with others, a little water would spurt out. That sight produced a quickened, more forceful stroke. Then larger spurts, and finally, a stream without interruption. These efforts always produced a smile and a sense of accomplishment, a satisfaction that most in a younger generation will never have.

“The speed of light: It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.” Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.

I didn’t know what to make of the man who asked for money saying he wanted to buy food because he was hungry, and he was wearing earbuds.

New Yorkers are not always as tolerant as I would like. Someone made fun of me for eating sushi at a Yankees baseball game.

Why is it that conservatives refer to the Democrat Party but not the Republic Party?

The package for the mini-cucumbers bought at a fancy, and therefore overpriced, food mart was labeled “locally grown in New England.” If those cukes had come from California, Mexico, Peru, or Timbuctoo, wouldn’t they still have been locally grown?

At a different market, the sign above the cucumbers said, “3 for $3.” I was unsure if that was different from a dollar apiece, so I bought three.

Over breakfast at the recent stay at a Virginia bed and breakfast, I met a woman from New York who worked in “wealth management,” a field I only vaguely understand. She said that she had a client worth over $100 million who was very pro-Trump. I asked why he felt that way. I expected the answer to be something along the lines of liking the tax cut and how good it would be for the country, something I have heard from other rich people who will pay tens of thousands dollars less to the government. She said, however, that her client said he was behind Trump because “he felt so disrespected by Obama.”

“Fucked up is the universal condition of man.” Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey.

In a park or outside an old house, I would come across a hand pump as a kid. Of course, I had to try it. The first couple strokes always seemed hard, but with minimal persistence they became easier. As I pumped, I would wonder if the pump still worked. Was there really water down there? Sometimes the effort produced nothing, but with others, a little water would spurt out. That sight produced a quickened, more forceful stroke. Then larger spurts, and finally, a stream without interruption. These efforts always produced a smile and a sense of accomplishment, a satisfaction that most in a younger generation will never have.

“The speed of light: It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.” Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.

The novel-reading I did when a judge took a break seemed only a continuation of what I had done from the first grade, for I had been an avid reader from an early age. Even so, the mentor attorney who said read a good novel each week made me wonder if novel-reading could actually aid my professional career. I thought about conversations with the not-yet-spouse when I was in law school. She was in graduate school studying English literature, and her professors stressed the close reading of texts. Some of my law school professors recounted their conversations with those same English professors and how they discussed the similarities between the study of English and the law, both centering on the close reading of texts.

Law requires close reading. Judicial opinions are read carefully to extract the deciding principles to apply those principles to future legal disputes. Statutes and regulations and contracts have to be read carefully with the assumption that every word matters. However, I didn’t think that the mentor urging the reading of novels was referring to the similarity of the close reading of literary and legal texts. Instead, he was saying that because a trial concerned the human lives of witnesses, jurors, judges, and attorneys, the more the trial attorney understood human perceptions, reactions, motives—human psychology in general—the better the attorney could perform. As I became more experienced trying cases, I realized that he was right: The more I could understand others, the better I was in the courtroom.

Each of us, of course, learns human psychology from our own experiences, but the attorney was suggesting we needed to find ways to expand our knowledge about others beyond that gained from our firsthand observations and interactions. I found that I agreed with that.

The experienced attorney was telling us that one of the quickest and best ways to expand beyond our personal experiences was to read novels, for good novels often contain insights into human nature and behavior. Good novels imaginatively explore human behavior and psychology with sharp observations of manners and societies. Trials are always about human behavior, psychology, and societies, so reading the insights of great writers might help a trial attorney. On the other hand, I have known people who read much but remain clueless. I don’t know if novel-reading truly enlightens me or others, but I learned that trials tell stories and can make, change, rehabilitate, and destroy lives. Novel-reading certainly could not hurt a trial attorney, so, as a trial attorney, I continued to read novels. But I still did not read them while court was in session. And whether novels have aided me or not, I know that reading novels is more enjoyable than reading advance sheets.

I don’t recall how the conversation started. I do remember that the attorney, a generation older than we newbie bar members, said, “If you want to be a trial lawyer, read a novel a week.” I was not the only listener who looked quizzical. He continued, “To be good at trials you have to understand human nature, and the best way to learn human nature is to read good novels.” He repeated, “Read a novel a week.” Since he had a reputation as a stellar trial attorney, I registered his remark. My first reaction was to think that there might be something in his pronouncement, but I also quickly concluded, “It has to be better than reading advance sheets.”

Court decisions are eventually published in bound volumes, but back in the day, a considerable lag intervened between the time the court issued an opinion and the decision’s appearance in the official report. Today, the opinions are filed online as soon as they are rendered, and there is immediate access to them. When I started as an attorney, though, there was no internet. Instead, in New York, a weekly magazine-like publication was available containing a week’s worth of opinions by the New York courts. These were called advance sheets.

I spent a good part of my working day as a Legal Aid attorney waiting in the inefficient Manhattan courtrooms for a case to be called. I initially filled the time by reading books, but this brought on the ire of the court officers. I could understand that a newspaper with its rustling pages might be an irritant, but, for reasons I never understood, those officers also forbade the reading of books. I learned, however, that I could read my case files. Preparing for the upcoming hearing was acceptable to the court personnel.

Then I tried reading an advance sheet. The court officer came over for chastisement, but when I held it up, he saw what it was and walked away. I assumed that he thought the reading was preparation for a case about to be called. From then on, I carried advance sheets to court. This not only passed the time better than sitting dumbly waiting for something to do, it also advanced my legal education. The front of the advance sheets broke down the enclosed decisions into legal subject matters, and I read every decision on criminal law and criminal procedure because that was what I was practicing. Most of the opinions were mundane, but from reading them I got a thorough grounding in New York criminal law and procedure.

However, even before the advice from the seasoned attorney, I had read novels, and I continued to do so afterwards. I did read them in the courthouse, but not in a courtroom when court was in session. My memory of Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray is bound up with memories of the Brooklyn Criminal Courthouse. I was working a week of night court where the court was in session from 6 PM until 1 AM, grueling for many reasons. The judge, however, took numerous breaks, and I made significant dents in Vanity Fair. I was entranced with the character and name “Amelia,” and my difficult work was made a bit more bearable whenever I could dip into Thackeray’s created world drawing me away from the real world I was dealing with of poverty, violence, ignorance, and crime.

(Concluded on August 3)

“Dreams of God and of gold (not necessarily in that order) made America possible.” Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels.”

“It takes three men to pull the body from the water.” Christine Mangan, Tangerine

“Cola Pesce was always playing in the sea and one day his mother said in exasperation she hoped he’d turn into a fish.” Peter Robb, Midnight in Sicily.

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

“My father, Oswald Jacoby, was an unquestioned mathematical genius.” Oswald Jacoby and James Jacoby, Jacoby on Card Games.

“The summer my father bought the bear, none of us was born—we weren’t even conceived: not Frank, the oldest; not Franny, the loudest; not me, the next; and not the youngest of us, Lily and Egg.” John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire.

“This book was born on a cold, drizzly, late spring day when I clambered over the split-rail cedar fence that surrounds my pasture and made my way through wet woods to the modest frame house where Joe Rantz lay dying.” Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

“’Now what I want is, Fact.’” Charles Dickens, Hard Times.

“The first news story appeared on the morning of April 6, 1987, when the Charlotte Observer reported that a barge filled with New York garbage had been turned away from a privately owned port near Morehead City, North Carolina.” Benjamin Miller, Fat of the Land: Garbage of New York the Last Two Hundred Years.

“In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood.” Toni Morrison, Sula.

“My first indication that food was something other than a substance one stuffed in one’s face when hungry—like filling up at a gas station—came after fourth grade.” Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.

I was taken aback by the headline: “Burton Richter, a Nobel Winner for Plumbing Matters, Dies at 87.” I was amazed that the Prize was awarded for, perhaps, developing a laser guided snake for the commode. Then I thought again.

The TV ad for the drug Repatha told me not to take that medicine if I am allergic to it. How do I know if I am allergic to Repatha if I never take it?

          Was he right? A distinguished academic who had spent most of his career in New Haven had moved to New York. He stated that in New Haven he saw lots of movies because there was little else to do. Now he seldom had time for them, partly because his wife had mapped out an extensive social life for him. He indicated that sometimes it seemed a bit too much, but still he said, she is filled with all this energy, and she knows lots of interesting people. His luncheon companion agreed that his wife knew lots of interesting people, but there was a failing in the people she knew.  The companion continued, “You would think better of the social life if she knew more twenty-eight year olds with cleavage.” The academic laughed and laughed and said, “Twenty-eight with cleavage.  What a great movie title.”

The acknowledgements by the best-selling novelist started: “I would like to express my most sincere thanks to the following:” He gave no explanation for why he could not thank them.

“The Sicilian language is the only one in Europe that has no future tense.” Albert Mobilio, “Introduction” to Leonardo Sciascia, The Wine-Dark Sea.

The server was new. She said that she served at the restaurant a few days a week. She also worked for a service that cleaned rental cottages. The cleaning work had taken a turn for the worse. The cleaners had been allowed to take the food and toiletries left behind by the renters, but no longer. She said that some renters had come early and stocked the place before the cleaners had arrived, and the cleaners did what they had always done and took home what they had found in the pantry and refrigerator. The renters were upset, and the police were called. That got worked out, but now the cleaning service forbade the workers from taking anything out of the rental cottages. This was a blow. The half loaf of rye bread and the leftover deli ham had been important perks for the cleaners.

“I like to think that I’m an honest man, but in the modern world you can’t carry honesty very far without taking a break from time to time.” Walter Mosley, Charcoal Joe.

In addition to recommending the Foxfield Inn, we also highly recommend the nearby Ivy Inn Restaurant for dinner. It was as good a meal as the spouse and I have had in long time—innovative dishes carefully prepared. For me, it is not spring until I get some ramps, so I was especially happy to see them during the menu on our springtime visit. The spouse had shrimp and grits, and the grits were special not just because they were a local product, but also by the addition of two cheeses—I think a mild blue cheese and mascarpone—and the shrimp were perfectly cooked.

The spouse loves her Manhattans, but she is a traditionalist, and I was surprised when she ordered a specialty one at the Ivy Inn. She was wowed. It had the now-trendy one large ice cube, which chilled the drink without over-diluting it. The Manhattan had rye (craft, of course), black walnut bitters, sweet vermouth, and the surprise ingredient, Art in the Ages: Root, something we had never heard of before. Our server told us it was a liquor using ingredients that often find their way into root beer. Because we liked the Manhattan so much, we went looking for Art in the Ages: Root and found that the small Philadelphia distillery that made it no longer does so. An internet search, however, found a few stores in New York City that still had some bottles.

The trip to Virginia had the added bonus of getting me to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, when we got back. A liquor store’s website said that a Greenpoint liquor store had some Art in the Ages: Root. Greenpoint borders the ultimate hipsterish part of Brooklyn, Williamsburg, and I was told that hipsters were spreading into Greenpoint, but the liquor store’s environs were untouched by the new Brooklyn. It was still a Polish neighborhood as it had been for decades or longer. I saw butcher shops with extensive displays of sausages and hams. Bakeries were on every block. Still having delayed the start of my diet, I went into one and heard only Polish until I ordered a delicate pastry stuffed with cream and a bread with a poppy seed filling. The liquor store itself was not the usual Brooklyn liquor store that has an extensive wine selection. Wines here were minimal. Instead a thirty-foot long wall eight-feet high of more liquors than I never knew existed.  Facing these shelves was refrigerated case after refrigerated case of more kinds of vodka than I had ever seen before. The woman running the place looked hard at me as if no one but regulars came in. I asked for Art in the Ages: Root. She said that she had never heard of it and was sure that they did not have it. I told her that it was on the store’s website. She went to the computer and said in a surprised tone that they did stock what I wanted. She dragged a ladder over and ascended to the highest shelf and hand me a bottle and said they had two more. I told her I would take all three giving me what I assume will be a lifetime supply for the spouse since little of the drink is used in the Manhattans.

The Ivy Inn, besides teaching us a new way to make a Manhattan, also had a good wine list that offered a fair number of local wines. I am not sure that I had ever before had a Virginia wine, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted one–I had doubts that they made even barely palatable wines in Virginia (a lesson extrapolated from once drinking a Pennsylvania wine), but some Virginia stuff could be had by the glass, so I reasoned, what the hell. The server said that while Virginia made some good reds, the region was more known for whites. The spouse and I each ordered a glass. Mine was a passable chardonnay, but the spouse loved hers listed as “Chardonnay and Viognier.” We looked for it unsuccessfully afterwards at our various stops, but as we drove around outside Charlottesville, we now noticed how many wineries the area had. We even saw a sign for a winery that said “Trump.” We did not even slow down.

We recently stayed at a gracious Bed and Breakfast, the Foxfield Inn, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Our room and bath were beautifully furnished with a comfortable bed and luxurious linens with even a rubber duckie available for the spa tub.  No TV in the room. It was good to get away from my usual diet of too much CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and ESPN.

Although there were five guestrooms, we were the only guests the first night with two other couples the next night. (We were there midweek in less-than-high season.) There was a pantry for the guests, with coffee, tea, water, sodas, and very good cookies—I postponed the start of what I said to myself would soon be a diet.

The Foxfield Inn had two public rooms and, of course, a breakfast room. And that breakfast was something. Three courses of innovative dishes featuring local ingredients. I loved that bacon.

On that first day and morning, without other guests, there were opportunities to chat with our hosts, Dan and Kathryn, and I learned why the breakfast was so good. Kathryn had a degree in food science and spent the bulk of her career in the food service industry developing products for the likes of Cadbury. The spouse asked for a recipe for one of the dishes we were served, but Kathryn said that it was a variation, with seasonal ingredients, on something she had made many times without a recipe. Dan proudly stated that she was working on a cookbook. Bring on that book, Kathryn!

Dan was a chemical engineer and entered what he no doubt expected would be his lifelong career at Kodak. He worked on specialty films used for DNA fingerprinting. I don’t know how long this valuable work lasted, but soon this important product was in the bin with buggy whips as digital camera technology emerged.  Kathryn soon said to him, “Let’s do something different.” I have heard many people over the years propose something similar, but few ever acted on it. Forty years ago, I even heard a number of couples say—in those years before the second Bob Newhart Show—that they planned to open a New England bed and breakfast. Dan and Kathryn fell into the small numbers that actually followed through. They started looking for a bed and breakfast, and after an extensive search, they bought the Foxfield Inn nine years ago. The spouse and I are glad they did. We highly recommend it.

We shared a breakfast table on our second morning at the Foxfield Inn bed and breakfast with a couple driving from their Florida home in The Villages to their home in Rochester, New York. The woman did not work for The Villages, but no one who did could have been more enthusiastic about that development near Ocala. I had heard about the place before, but I learned a lot more from her. I had assumed that it was not a place for me, but her infectious excitement about The Villages made me wonder about it.

In the small world department, he, too, had worked at Kodak, but what I found most intriguing about him is that he played in a band. I asked him what kind of music, and he said, “Eighties rock.” When I asked what kind of bands he was in when a kid and did they play anywhere, he said he had only learned to play the guitar when he was in his thirties. He, like the hosts, had said to himself, “Let me do something different.” He had. There was a lesson somewhere in there.

The other couple was younger, both divorced, and living in New York City. She reminded me of a young Bette Midler, and that made me like her immediately. He had gone to the University of Virginia business school and was back to attend some sort of college event that was held down the road from the bed and breakfast. We had passed the site–a large field that stretched out of sight over a hill—coming and going to the Foxfield Inn and learned that horse races of the steeplechase variety would be held there just after we left. She had trepidations. She did not like to see animals get hurt and cited some statistics about how many horses had been put down during a race meeting at Saratoga, New York. He, on the other hand, was excited about the event and said that the section where the undergraduates congregated was always good for laughs. I asked “Why?” He replied that the undergrads got very drunk and it was “so funny” watching them throw up and fall down. I did not know how to respond, and I remained quiet.

(Concluded on July 25.)

The People of 1787 chose a system that effectively binds us on how our president is to be chosen, but that method most often resulted in a president who has received the greater support from the voters. The People of 1787 also chose a national legislature that is not representative of the majority of the country’s people. And the People of 1787 expressly forbade later generations from changing an essential component of the legislature so that our national laws might truly reflect the consent of the governed.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate must pass a bill for it to become law. The Constitution chosen by the People of 1787 provides that the House must be apportioned according to population. While this apportionment and the resulting House elections may be imperfect, we can say that the House represents the People. The governed have given a consent when the representatives act. But what about the Senate? Each state, no matter the number of people in that state, gets two Senators. In essence, the citizens of Wyoming, the least populated state, has sixty times the representation in the Senate as do the citizens of California. There were understandable reasons why the People of 1787 chose this constitutional construction, but would the People of today do so?

If we were setting out to form the government today, we might opt for the direct election of the president, and while amending the Constitution to reach that result is almost impossible to accomplish, it is theoretically possible. It is harder to conjecture what the People of today would choose if they wanted to change the basic composition of the Senate. But there is no point in even contemplating it. Under our Constitution, we are forbidden from changing equal representation in the Senate for each state.  Article V of the Constitution, which defines the amendment process, prohibits altering the Senate by stating “that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the senate.” Wyoming can always have representation in the Senate equal to California. Delaware can always have the same number of Senators as Texas.

The People of 1787 made it impossible for the People of any later time to reconsider this basic aspect of the Senate that gives more powers to some citizens than others.. The People of the eighteenth century prevented the People of today from deciding for themselves how the consent of the governed should be determined.

When we take pride in announcing that the United States is a government of “We, the People,” we should realize that the extolled People are often not us, but those from long ago. In crucial ways, the sovereign of this country may no longer by King George III, but it is the Americans of George’s time who are sovereign over us. We may not be controlled by a live King, but we are controlled by a dead generation of centuries ago.

And now conservatives seek to interpret the Constitution in ways that magnify the sovereignty of the People of 1787 over us. But that is for another day’s discussion.