[Note. There will be two postings a week until December.]

“The date was April 14, 1912, a sinister day in maritime history, but of course the man in Suite 63-65, shelter deck C, did not yet know that.” Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America.

“I have never been what you’d call a crying man.” Stephen King, 11/22/63.

“Words are not only tools; they are also weapons.” Peter Bowler, A Superior Person’s Book of Words.

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap.” J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye.

“From warm, turquoise waves, red, oozing magma, and dripping cloud forests, to awe-inspiring churches and bustling markets that come alive with the colors of tropical fruit and bright, hand-painted oxcarts, Costa Rica, a haven of peace and stability in Latin America, offers endless opportunities to experience and explore.” Costa Rica: A Let’s Go Travel Guide.

“I have no reason to answer the door so I answer the door.” Dave Eggers, What is The What.

“Flying into Australia, I realized with a sigh that I had forgotten again who their prime minister is.” Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country.

“There was a white horse, on a quiet winter morning when snow covered the streets gently and was not deep, and the sky was swept with vibrant stars, except in the east, where dawn was beginning in a light blue flood.” Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale.

“When I was small, I didn’t even know that I was a kid with special needs.” Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump.

“There are some places about which we have strong impressions that when we finally go there they seem familiar, as if we had known them forever.” Cecily McMillan, The Charleston, Savannah & Coastal Islands Book.

“Mother performed in starlight.” Karen Russell, Swamplandia!.

“In the spring of 1841, when John Tyler was President, a Kentucky farmer named Solomon Young and his red-haired wife, Harriet Louisa Young, packed their belongs and with two small children started for the Far West.” David McCullough, Truman.

[Note. There will be two postings a week until December.]

I pivoted. First a pain in my right knee. Then a pain in my right hip as it slammed into the macadam of the Dean Street schoolyard basketball court. The knee had given way in my first time back to basketball after the surgery.

My knee had been operated on months before after it had been torn up in a basketball game at the local Y. A competitor had fallen on me like a football clip. Ligaments and the meniscus were torn, but the methods of repair and rehabilitation were not as good as they would later become. I now had the scar of a large incision on my knee and had spent a month or more with crutches and an immobilized leg. This was my first time after the surgery trying basketball again, but as I lay on the schoolyard “floor,” as the local Brooklyn kids called it, I knew that my basketball days were over.

I went back to the surgeon. I said that I wanted—no, that I needed, to be active. He noted that there were activities other than basketball and suggested running. I instinctively recoiled. I had never really run just to run. Running was to get somewhere in a hurry. Running was a part of other sports–to get back on defense or to round first to get to second for a double. Running was not an end in itself. It was, as many had thought before and after me, boring.

But soon I was doing it. At first, I would run a hundred steps, which I mentally counted. Then I would walk a hundred. Then run a hundred again. After a bit, I could run two hundred steps followed by walking one hundred and soon it was all running.

I did not think of myself enjoying it, but as the distances increased, I did feel a sense of accomplishment. Finally, I was able to run from our apartment to the end of a park and back without stopping, perhaps a two-mile distance, and I felt pride that I was able to run that far.

I began realizing that running fitted parts of my personality. It gave me welcome solitude. I ran alone, something that I almost always did even after I was running much longer distances and regularly running races. When someone suggested that we run together, I almost always found a reason not to.

Running also got me outdoors at times I would not otherwise have been out, and I found I liked that. I would come home after work and, before I took up running, I would have stayed in. Now I put on the running gear and went out. I found that I liked being in the New York twilight, the cold, even a little drizzle.

I also appreciated that I could do this activity on my own schedule. I did not have to have an appointment or a set time. I did not have to wait for others to gather as I did for a basketball game.

And I found my competitive instinct was kicking in. This drive was not to run faster or further than other people, but to see if I could better what I already had done. It was competition with myself. I was in my mid-thirties, and it was satisfying to have a physical activity in which I could get better, and I was getting better.

Lou, a work colleague who said he ran, heard I was now running and urged me time and again to try a Central Park race. I finally signed up for one and went up to the race with Lou and a friend of his, who drove. I quickly sensed that the friend was a jerk, which was confirmed when we were caught in traffic near the park. He honked his horn when there was no point to it, and the cabbie in front of us got out of his car, came back to us, and angrily berated Lou’s friend. The friend, looking scared, stammered, “It wasn’t me on the horn, but the car behind us.”

We got to the race, which was a 10K. I don’t remember my time, but I know that I was pleased with my performance. On the way to the race, the jerk had talked almost continuously about how many races he had run and how good he was, but it turned out that I had run my first race in a significantly faster time than he had. I could see that he was a bit pissed by that.

That gave me pleasure. And a step on the road to a marathon was taken.

All sports fans learn that players and teams fail, and perhaps other boys my age were also too optimistic about race because sports were integrated, but the Milwaukee Braves also brought home to me another lesson not confronted by all sports fans. I encountered it when I was in college, that time when adulthood was supposed to be upon me but aspects of boyhood still clung.

At my college in those days, baseball was not cool. Few of my classmates indicated an attachment to a team. I did not broadcast that I was a Braves fan, but every day I sought out the box scores from the previous evening to see how the Braves, and more particularly, Henry Aaron had done. This often took some effort because the school got early editions of New York City newspapers, and they often did not have the box scores from games not played on the East Coast. This would keep me scrambling to find later and later editions. Until I could find out what happened the night before, I felt something like I do now when I have not had my regular quotient of morning coffee.

Then it changed. A Chicago-based group bought the Braves, and they determined that they could make more money if they moved the team to Atlanta. In what increasingly became the norm for sports and many other things in this country, television and radio were the controlling factors. While attendance in Milwaukee had dropped off since the Braves early days there, when it was spectacular, the crowds were still respectable. The Braves’ broadcast market, however, was limited largely to Wisconsin with no way to grow, and this was a fraction of the market available to an Atlanta team that could hope to capture fans, and ears and eyeballs, throughout the South.

I had assumed without really thinking about it that I would be a Milwaukee Braves fan all my life and this would always bring back the joys and agonies of my boyish summers. Of course, I knew that money was involved in the game. Players got paid; admission got charged. The essence of baseball, however, was competition, the matchup of pitcher and batter, sunshine, cool evenings, radio voices, a community of fans.  Now I saw it differently. A community may have seen the Braves as their team, but they were wrong. It was not the community’s team. Ownership and money triumphed over community.

A court order required the Braves to stay in Milwaukee one more year, and I kept hoping that the move would not happen. I went to some games in that forlorn year and got some more baseball memories. I saw Don Drysdale hit Mike de la Hoz in the chest, producing a crack like a pistol shot. I watched Maury Wills get picked off first base twice in an afternoon. But it was all sadness, and at the end of the season the Braves decamped.

The Braves had taught me about ups and downs, human failings and successes. They taught me about the optimism of waiting until next year. They taught me that to succeed one had to risk failure and that everyone fails some of the time. But now the Braves set me on another path of understanding. I began the lifelong search for understanding the power of money and ownership.

When I viewed the Braves not as a baseball team, but as a profit-driven corporation, it made me more sensitive to other corporate decisions, especially the decision to move a factory out of a town. On the one hand, such corporate moves have usually been done for a seemingly different reason from the reason given for the Braves move out of Wisconsin. The factory has been moved not to increase broadcast revenues, but because wages would be lower in the new place. And the moving of a plant does not dash the naïve fantasies of a boy, because few boys fantasize about the ups and downs of a factory. Nevertheless, the move of a factory, I came to realize, was quite similar to the move of a sports franchise. In both cases, those already with money, the owners of the team or business, want to improve their bottom line; they simply want to have more money. And just as a sports team produces a community, a factory also produces a community that includes those who work there, their relatives and dependents, and others who more indirectly depend on the factory workers, such as owners of diners, taverns, and grocery stores. The move of a factory so a few can make more money crushes a community.

But a lot has been written about the moves or retention of sports franchises; not enough has been written about the moves of other corporations, and their effects on communities.

The Braves left, but even so, memories of the Milwaukee Braves are still part of my boyhood reminiscences. Those thoughts, however, seem isolating because they are shared or even known by few. If I tell a baseball fan that the best lefthanded pitcher, perhaps simply the best pitcher, of my lifetime was Warren Spahn, I am likely to be met with a blank look. I can talk about Bob “Hurricane” Hazle, and the listener has no idea whom I am talking about. But the memories, even if not widely shared are still important to me. They are part of my life and development. When I look at that picture of Eddie Matthews and Henry Aaron on their last walk off the Milwaukee baseball field, I see the end of my childhood, but I also see that childhood. That white man and that black man walking off with their hips seemingly joined remind me of a hope and the many thrills those two men gave me. In case you did not know, the two still hold the career record for home runs hit by a pair of teammates.  They were a part of my life that I still cherish.

[Note: There will be two postings a week until December.]

A color photograph of a young me hangs above my desk.  I am sitting in profile at the L-shaped work area I once used.  Pens, matches, photocopies, a thesaurus are lying on the surfaces–some of the tools for my writing in those days. Seated on my lap is the two-year-old daughter.  While I look forward, she has turned towards the camera.  She has a proud, joyful smile as her finger is poised over the keyboard of a Selectric. The picture defines an era of her childhood for me.

Another photograph, this one in black and white, is to the left and above. It defines an era of my childhood.  Two men in old baseball uniforms–stirrups, baggy, no names, are walking with their backs to the camera in a narrow, concrete passageway with harsh lights in the ceiling.  “41” is on the left and “44” on the right. The caption to this picture, which I reproduced from a book, said it was Eddie Matthews and Henry Aaron’s last trip off the field as Milwaukee Braves from County Stadium.  The team would no longer exist.

The Milwaukee Braves were my childhood team.  Our radio, as were our neighbors’, was tuned to their games. I could walk down the street on a warm evening with everyone’s windows open and not miss a pitch. I knew not just the lineup but idiosyncrasies of all the players.  (I did not know as much as some did. At one of our family’s yearly outings to a game, two young women sat in front of us. One said to the other, ”Root for Frank Torre.”  Torre was the backup first baseman who sometimes came in as a defensive replacement, hardly the one with a large fan following. The woman went on, “He’s the only one who is single.”)

I learned early that the mythic figures on the ball field were actually human beings. I went to my first major league game with a youth group—Cardinals versus Braves.  We were in the right field bleachers where there was a low fence that we could stand next to.  There he was—Stan Musial.  I had heard his name on the radio a gazillion times. I knew that he was a baseball god, and I guess I expected a god-like figure or at least someone as heroic-looking as the good guy in a cowboy movie.  But as I stood a few yards away from him, my boyish eyes saw an old man in need of a shave. (It was low-scoring game, and I remember Musial hit a home run in the tenth inning to win the game.  I have never tried to look for the box score in case my memory is wrong.)

Baseball players were mortals, and I learned that they made mistakes and often failed. I heard a story that at a dinner honoring Stan Musial after he retired, Joe Garagiola said, “Stan was an all-time great. He batted .333 and got two thousand hits. (Pause.) Wait a minute. What are we doing honoring a man who made out four thousand times?” I learned that the best often failed, and that all players made errors, struck out at inopportune times, gave up home run pitches.

Individuals failed, and so did teams. Of course, the fan of any sports franchise learns that the season generally ends without winning the championship, but still some disappointments are larger than others. That was true for Milwaukee Braves fans. In a four year stretch of my childhood, the Braves finished one game out of first, won a world series, blew a world series, and ended up tied for the pennant but lost in a playoff.  Had a few outcomes been different in this stretch, the Braves would be seen as the dominant team of an era, one of the all-time great teams. Instead, those clubs, the teams of my youth, are mostly forgotten by anybody who was not a fan.

These are lessons any sports fan learns. Players often fail; teams seldom win championships. These lessons remain with me and seem to speak to more of life than just sports. But the Braves also gave me a false lesson, one that was situated in the particular era of my boyhood. The Braves presented me an overly optimistic picture of race in the country.

Major league baseball had been integrated a few years before the Braves moved to Milwaukee. The team arrived just as the United States Supreme Court held that segregation of public schools violated the Constitution. I am not sure when I heard about Brown v. Board of Education, but to this third grader, integration was an abstract issue since my town–fifty miles north of Milwaukee–was all white. Even so, I and seemingly everyone I knew, were adamant anti-segregationists.

It took a while to realize that the whole country did not feel that way. I think I came to that realization during the Little Rock school crisis. The hate on the faces screaming at that brave little girl in her simple dress filled me with fear and disgust. But I naïvely thought that such hatred could not last for long, and I thought that because of the Milwaukee Braves. How could you not want Henry Aaron–in my ten-year old (yet carefully-considered) opinion probably the greatest ever to play the game–to be in your neighborhood, in your school, in your home? Maybe there were some problems with integration now, but baseball seemed to be indicate that the hatred would disappear and all people would soon be treated according to their merits. That’s what happened on the ball field. That Lew Burdette was white and Billy Bruton was black was not an issue. What mattered was whether the Braves won. And, of course, I saw that the Braves all worked together for that goal. Surely these teammates were all friends. If that could happen on the ball field, surely it would soon happen everywhere. Right?

[To be continued.]

Monty Hall, host and co-creator of “Let’s Make a Deal,” died recently and this has led again to discussion of the “Monty Hall Problem.” At the end of his show, a contestant was offered a wonderful prize and two clinkers. They were hidden behind three doors. The contestant would pick a door. Hall, who knew what was behind each door, did not immediately open the selected door but would instead first open one of the two remaining doors to expose a booby prize. The contestant would then be allowed to keep his or her selected door or switch to the remaining door. Should the contestant switch? I remember reading Marilyn vos Savant’s column in Parade magazine where she demonstrated that the contestant’s odds of winning the big prize were two-thirds if the contestant changed the pick to the unselected door. The column caused a storm with many people, some highly educated, saying the odds were 50-50 no matter what the contestant did. But, of course, vos Savant was right.

The newspaper article indicated that the owner of the Dallas Cowboys professional football team had proclaimed that no Cowboy would play if he showed disrespect for the flag. Accompanying the article was a picture of the Cowboys lined up standing, many with hands over hearts, during the national anthem. In the foreground of the picture were several Cowboy cheerleaders in their famous outfits of short shorts and a skimpy top with a bare midriff. Question: Do those barely covered asses, as cute and delectable as they may be, show respect for the flag?

The client with the Italian surname, hardly more than a child but charged with serious robberies, asked me if I were Jewish. I asked why he wanted to know. He replied, “Because Jews make the best lawyers.” I replied, “No, I am not Jewish; I already have enough problems.” But I remained his lawyer.

“In nineteenth century-politics, as much as now, the side with the best metaphors often wins.” Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals, and the Making of Modern America.

I have a book in my hand. It seems permanent, not so much the physical object, but the content. And, of course, to some extent that is true. I have read books that were published a century, two centuries ago, but most books, even well-received ones, are quickly forgotten. Whenever I get a book out of the library, I look at the return dates stamped in the book. Most of the older ones have not been checked out in years. A physical book may still be on somebody’s shelves, but does it really exist if it is not read?

As I was waiting for a prescription to be filled, a twenty-something woman made some purchases and asked Rose behind the counter, “Do you sell toilet brushes?” Rose said that the store did not. The young woman continued, “Do you know where I might buy one around here?” Rose shook her head. I then suggested a hardware store a few blocks away. The woman thanked me and said, “My parents are coming tomorrow. . . . They have high standards.”

The author’s autograph is inscribed right below his name on the title page. That struck me as a little sad because I had bought the novel at a used book store.

I find that paperbacks printed years ago often contain promotions on the inside covers or at the back for other books. I read this material to see how many of those books published back then or their authors I even recognize. They are sometimes the most entertaining part of the book. Take, for example, the ads in my oldest softcover book printed by the American News Company in 1895.

Bought for a buck or two at an art and antique show. I was attracted to it not because I was familiar with the title or author but because of the remarkable picture on the cover of the author, or as I am guessing she, Miss Laura Jean Libbey, might have called herself, the authoress. She is staring straight ahead. Her eyes are hypnotic, but it is almost impossible to concentrate on them because the gaze is drawn to the noteworthy hat that spreads wide over the head and has three visible plumes plus something else I cannot identify. The back cover shows a fuller, three-quarters view of the same picture, which shows that Libbey had an enviable bust and a waist, surely cinched in, that does not look humanly possible.

I was also drawn to the book because of its title—When His Love Grew Cold. Her other books that were advertised inside the covers showed that Libbey had a way with titles that at least attracted me: Miss Middleton’s Lover; or Parted on their Bridal Tour; A Forbidden Marriage; or in Love with a Handsome Spendthrift; He Loved, but was Lured Away; and Lovers Once, but Strangers Now. A couple of her titles at first glance were letdowns, but only until I read their descriptions. I learned about Olive’s Courtship that “the quiet title does not prepare you for the powerful story that follows. No living author has ever equaled it.” And the reader “will never lay down That Pretty Young Girl until you discover who killed the handsome, profligate Earl of Dunraven on his wedding night, and unravel the mystery which surrounds the beautiful, hapless Helen, whom to love—was fatal.”

Nearly as surprising as this body of work was to me was the conclusion of the preface. Libbey after teasing her readers, as she had apparently done before, with the suggestion that this would be her last book, not only gives her name, but her address: No. 916 President Street, Brooklyn—a house that in all probability still exists.

Other ads in my older paperbacks pique my interest. While I finished Libbey’s novel a whiIe ago, I am now reading in small doses The Sardonic Humor of Ambrose Bierce, which was printed in 1963 and published by Dover Books. It has an eight-page catalog of other Dover Books at the back of the volume. Three of those pages are for art books, including the intriguinng Foot-High Letters: A Guide to Lettering (A Practical Syllabus for Teachers).

I only recognize a few of the authors in the “Entertainments, Humor” section. A book I am not familiar with, however, facinates me: The Bear that Wasn’t by Frank Tashlin. Its description: “What does it mean? Is it simply delightful wry humor, or a charming story of a bear who wakes up in the midst of a factory, or a satire on Big Business, or an existential cartoon-story of the human condition, or a symbolization of the struggle between conformity and the individual?” Sounds like quite a book.

I recognize more of the authors in “Fiction,” but not always the listed books. I have read Tarzan, and take certain pride that Tarzan has a Wisconsin connection. But should I now read Three Martian Novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs? Or the other Mars novels by Burroughs that are listed? Further down in “Fiction” I found the listing for Five Great Dog Novels and tried to think of five dog novels, period. Maybe you will recognize more than the only one I did: Call of the Wild by Jack London; Rab and his Friends by John Brown; Bob, Son of Battle, by Alfred Ollivant; Beautiful Joe by Marshall Saunders; and A Dog of Flanders by Ouida. Who knew?

My favorite, however, was the last listing: Gesta Romanorum, translated by Charles Swan and edited by Wynnard Hooper. “181 tales of Greeks, Roman, Britons, Biblical characters, comprise one of (sic) greatest medieval story collections, source of plots for writers including Shakespeare, Chaucer, Gower, etc. Imaginative tales of wars, incest, thwarted love, magic, fantasy, allegory, humor, tell about kings, prostitutes, philosophers, fair damsels, knights, Noah, pirates, all walks, stations of life.” I feel as if my education is sorely lacking for never having heard of this book. Surely, it has everything, and if I had read it, I would not have to read anything else ever again. Five hundred pages, and the list price: $1.85. Where can I find this?

The daughter and I have more than once seen a film that especially moved us because each of us separately thought it related to the two of us. At the core of these movies has been a strong bond between a girl or a young woman and her father or a father figure. Others may have been entertained by the movie, but for us these films are something more. They apply directly to us. For example, we saw a holiday showing of “Les Miz” in a crowded theater where we could not sit together. I know that it might seem strange to you, but I kept thinking throughout the movie that it was in essence describing the relationship between the daughter and me. At the movie’s conclusion, we met at the back of the theater. I said that was about us. She had been thinking the same. In the midst of people streaming for the exits, we hugged tightly.

This came back to me when I read Trevor Noah’s memoir, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood. Noah’s father was a Swiss German who could not legally marry Noah’s mother under the South African laws where they lived, but the father tried as much as he could when Noah was small to stay in the boy’s life. Things changed, however, when Noah was thirteen. A stepfather entered his life, and the relationship with his biological father was severed. A decade later, when Noah had success and with his mother’s encouragement, he again sought out his father.

Noah had difficulty in finding this secretive man. Finally, Noah wrote a letter for his father in care of the Swiss embassy in South Africa. It was forwarded. The father responded, and Noah went to meet him again. After some hours together, the father opened a scrapbook recording everything Noah had ever done—newspaper clippings, magazine covers, club listings—from the beginning of Noah’s career through the week of their meeting. Noah says that he could hardly restrain tears. “Seeing him had reaffirmed his choosing of me. He chose to have me in his life. He chose to answer my letter. I was wanted. Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give to another human being.”

This made me choke up. These were words for the daughter and me. The daughter is adopted. In some sense we chose her, but that is misleading. An adoption agency paired us with her, and how can you know the person a six-month baby will become?

But what Noah’s words brought back to me was a night in Atlanta. I had gone there for a law school conference, and the daughter had gone along because she had never seen Atlanta. We were at a Buckhead restaurant with a Florida public defender in whose office I had spent time on a sabbatical. Back then I did not know the full extent of the daughter’s struggles with identity issues, but some were obvious. She’s adopted; she’s Asian and her mother and I are not; and it was clear from an early age that she was not a traditional girl.  I don’t remember how the topic came up that night, but at some point she said, “I know that I have always been a disappointment to you. I am not the girl you wanted.”

The daughter no doubt knew that we had asked for a girl when we were adopting. I had hoped that I would be good in helping to raise a strong, independent girl who would not simply follow a gender-defined path but would chart her own course. I knew that I wanted a girl who, at least metaphorically, would not run and throw like a girl and would not blindly follow the crowd. I got all of that (and in reality she never threw like a girl). I never had to find out my reactions to being served pretend tea out of little cups by a girl wearing a frilly dress and makeup, because she never did that.

I replied when the daughter said that she was not the person we wanted, “I never cared that you were not a girly girl. I never wanted a girly girl. From our first moment together, I always wanted you.” There is a picture of the first time I held her as she was delivered to us at JFK airport. I like the picture for the look of love and amazement I was giving her. (The picture, however, also less happily reminds me of how young and thin I once was.) I continued, “I never felt that I was a traditional boy. I always felt that I was an outsider. I loved you because you were you. I loved that you were not the same as others. I have always wanted you the way you are. I have always wanted you and that won’t change.” (It hasn’t.) I gave her a hug, and she returned it with what I believe is the strongest hug she has ever given me. And although we did not discuss it then, I also believed that she always wanted me as her dad. So, Trevor Noah’s words resonate not so much the being chose part, but for being wanted. Being wanted, is the greatest gift you can give to another human being, and the daughter and I give that to each other.

Noah went on to say something else that also applied to the daughter and me. After the lost decade, he wanted to know his father again, so he set out to interview him. He soon realized this was a mistake. He wanted a relationship, but he realized that relationships don’t come out of facts and information. “Relationships,” he wrote, “are built in the silences.” Time has to be spent together often in what seem like inconsequential ways for a true relationship.

That also resonated, but in a slightly different manner from way Noah meant. To understate it, the daughter as a tyke was never chatty. She was not the kind of girl who babbled about her day—what Suzy said or how Tommy got in trouble with the teacher. And she certainly did not like to be asked questions. That somehow always made her feel on the spot and uncomfortable. Instead, we spent hours together when I drove her to school, or we watched TV, or we were on a plane to Florida, or driving to the country, or on our way to a movie, or on our way to a tennis practice or tournament, and little was ever said. However, out of those many long silences she did occasionally say something. Without the silences, I knew, she would have said nothing. Our relationships really were built out of those silences.

So, Trevor Noah, I thank you for your book. Your story is touching and moving and eye-opening, but I especially thank you for reminding me of my bond with my daughter and some of the many reasons for it.

“Reinhardt shuddered awake, again, clawing himself up from that dream, that night of a winter field, the indolent drift of smoke amidst along the hummocked ground, the staccato line of the condemned and the children’s screams.” Luke McCallin, The Man from Berlin.

“Upholstery is often a self-taught craft.” Steve Cone, Singer Upholstery: Basics Plus.

“It is after midnight on one of those Friday nights when the guests have all gone home and the host and hostess are left in their drunkenness to try and put things right.” A.M. Homes, Music for Torching.

“These are the central questions that the great philosopher David Hume said are of unspeakable importance: How does the mind work, and beyond that why does it work in such a way and not another, and from those two considerations together, what is man’s ultimate nature?” Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature.

“In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.” Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.” Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit.

“Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.” William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury.

“Over the years I have found that there is one room that generates question after question and that room is the bathroom.” Linda Cobb, Talking Dirty with the Queen of Clean.

“She came by way of Archer, Bridgeport, Nanuet, worked off 95 in jeans and a denim jacket, carrying a plastic bag and shower shoes, a phone number, waiting beneath an underpass, the potato chips long gone, lightheaded.” Atticus Lish, Preparation for the Next Life.

“The Film Snob’s stance is one of proprietary knowingness—the pleasure he takes in movies derives not only from the sensory experience of watching them, but also from knowing more about them than you do, and from zealously guarding that knowledge from the cheesy, Julie Roberts-loving masses, who no right whatsoever to be fluent in the work of Samuel (White Dog) Fuller and Andrei (the original Solaris) Tarkovsky.” David Kamp with Lawrence Levi, The Film Snob’s Dictionary.

“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.” Donna Tartt, The Secret History.

I learned more about gun violence in our country about ten years later when I found out that somebody with whom I had played tennis and golf, with whom I had had conversations and drinks had died. He had killed himself. With a gun. This somehow impelled me to look up information that I was only partly familiar with before.

I had thought that many people died each year from gun violence, and that was right—nearly thirty-four thousand every year—with about 60,000 non-fatal firearm injuries every year. But I learned that most, not quite two-thirds of the deaths, were by suicide, and I reflected on all the impassioned debates about assault weapons, the size of magazines, armor-piercing bullets, and open carry laws and thought how little those issues were likely to affect the majority of those who die from gunshots—suicides. Mass shootings, as has happened yet again, deservedly get widespread attention with almost always futile pleas that the government should do something to help prevent them, but I learned that these are only a blip in the homicides by firearms each year, and the more common killings seldom get much national attention.  My intuition was correct that handguns, not rifles, were the real issue for most murders. About seventy percent of all homicides are committed by people wielding handguns. And,yes, we are violent with our guns. America’s firearms homicide rate is more than twenty-five times the average of other developed countries.

All these thoughts about rifles and pistols came back because of a recent weekend I spent with guns, many, many guns. I have a friend—let’s call him Al–who has a firearms collection. Al does not fit my preconceptions of a gun nut. He is a corporate executive who was raised in New York City and has lived for a long time on the west side of Manhattan. He is a liberal. He is anti-Trump, and his wife is even more so. But he owns a lot of guns.

He is quick to say that his gun collection stems from his relationship with his father, who fought in World War II. I don’t know his full story, but I have the feeling that he returned without his full health. He did teach Al something about guns, but he died while Al was a teenager. Al says, with a smile, that perhaps he should see a shrink, but instead he collects guns, primarily, but not exclusively, weapons from the Second World War. And it is an extensive collection. Al keeps the firearms stored in a big safe, but every so often he displays them on racks in his basement, which takes him several hours to set up. He did it recently for me, the spouse, the daughter, a nephew, and the nephew’s husband.

There were single-action revolvers and double-action revolvers. There were semi-automatic pistols, including a Glock. There were American and German rifles from WWII. He had semi-automatic rifles, some of which could become fully automatic. He had other machine guns; I think there were eighteen in total, for which he needed special permits that required him to be fingerprinted eighteen times.

He collected only weapons in mint condition, and the wood of the stocks shone and the metal was all oiled and burnished. Frankly, putting aside their lethal purpose, many were beautiful.

Al was incredibly knowledgeable about each of the firearms and was patient in answering our questions, which no doubt were often naïve. But we were there not just to learn about the firearms, but to shoot some of them. We loaded a few into Al’s SUV and drove to a field with a picnic table. We moved the table to a bottom of a slight incline. We set up bottles and cans up the hill. Although to a marksman they may not have been far away, it seemed quite a distance to me. Al showed us how to load the magazine for a .22 target pistol. Al gave us stern, but friendly, instruction in safety and how to fire the gun. And one by one we did. The spouse missed everything, as did the nephew and husband. The daughter, however, who had always wanted to shoot a handgun and was now getting her first chance, hit one of the targets. That made me happy. I, too, hit a target. That made me happy, but pissed off the daughter a bit. No competition here!

We moved on to a larger handgun, with similar results. Then there was a rifle. Only the daughter and I wanted to shoot it. She hit something, and so did I.            We then scoured the site for spent cartridges, packed up, and headed to Al’s home so that he could lock up the guns in his safe.

I felt I had learned something important that day besides that I still liked firing a gun and occasionally could hit a target. I already knew Al believed he had right to his gun collection, but in talking to Al that day I realized that this right to him was not like other Constitutional rights, such as the right to speak freely or have a jury trial. Those other rights, as important as they are, are for the public functioning of the country. His right to own a gun was something more personal, even something intimate. It went to his identity. Without those guns he was not the same person. That feeling for him no doubt has complex roots, but it is real and sincere. And I suspect that many other gun owners feel something similar to what Al feels.

Al, however, may also have beliefs that aren’t shared by the others. He supports universal background checks and other rules that will improve gun safety. He does not see why people should be allowed to carry guns openly. He thinks it is ok that he has been fingerprinted eighteen times. He has a right to his guns, but society has a right to try to make sure that guns are not misused.

And for me, it was a satisfying day. I only wished that I had hit more targets.

And I continue to despair that we will find a way to lessen our gun violence.

My law school teaching brought me into few intersections with guns except for the occasional case or statute I taught that involved firearms. Then, about fifteen years ago, while still an academic, I went to Israel with others on a fellowship to study terrorism. As part of this junket, we were taken to various police and military installations, and, of course, there were guns. At one of them, after a tremendous display of marksmanship by those trained for hostage situations, our group was taken to a range and, after brief instruction, given automatic pistols to fire at targets. I felt quite comfortable firing off some rounds and was told that I had done quite well. I never saw the target, and the praise may have been given to all us, but I prefer to believe that the remarks to me were right on.) I enjoyed the experience, and a picture of me aiming the pistol hangs in the passageway to my bedroom.

The sight of guns, however, was not limited to military installations. Armed forces personnel were carrying rifles almost everywhere we went. Buying gum at a highway rest stop, I found I was standing behind one rifle in the queue and in front of another. Military people were carrying guns walking down the streets of Tel Aviv, which is where I saw one of my favorite Israeli sights. A woman in an army uniform was on a corner talking with a colleague. She had a rifle slung over one shoulder, and over her other shoulder was slung the biggest, reddest purse I have ever seen. The need for all this seemed obvious, and after a little adjustment, I hardly noticed this open display of weaponry. A normal society and many visible firearms were not incompatible. But even so, there were fetters on these military weapons. Security checkpoints were almost everywhere, and the military personnel often had to show something, I am not sure what, to carry their rifle into an establishment.        Those of us not visibly carrying a gun also had to go through numerous security procedures.  Before walking into a grocery store, for example, I was, as was everyone else, “wanded.”  I did wonder about the efficacy of much of this.  Entering our hotel, we had to go through metal detectors but after a few days, but after a few days, we were simply waved in. I went to a restaurant and had to go through a checkpoint, where I was searched. A couple days later, I returned to that eating place (they had pork, and I was hungering for it), and the security guy asked, “Got a gun?” I replied, “No,” and without further ado, was allowed to enter.

I did not know what to make of all of this. This was a society with many visible firearms, but the guns I saw were carried by trained personnel, and there were many security checkpoints to see if unauthorized people were carrying weapons. I was led to believe that the society had little gun violence, but the connection, if any, between visible weapons, the ubiquitous security, and a low gun homicide rate was not clear to me.