Friends of ours are meeting at a house in the Cinque Terre region of Italy. Before that rendezvous, one couple is going to Venice and plans to attend an opera at La Fenice. Another couple is in Milan and will attend a performance at La Scala. My exposure to opera is limited, but surely it would be exciting to hear music in these famous theaters.

I have never attended any European opera performance although I have enjoyed tours of both the Vienna State Opera House and the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. I have attended a few operas at the Metropolitan in New York City and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Some I have truly enjoyed, and others I truly tried to enjoy. For the last few years, my opera-going has been confined to the simulcasts of the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday afternoon performances, shown in HD in local movie theaters. Where we go, the sound has been superb, at least to this very untrained ear, and seeing the performers up close, something I never get at a live opera, has added a new dimension to the singing and the acting. Intermissions, which can be lengthy at an opera, have been much more enjoyable than at a live opera. For the HD showings, there are interesting, educational interviews with the principal singers or with those who designed the project or behind-the-scenes look into the Met. And you can pack food and eat it during the performances. But there has been a consistency in my opera attendance no matter the venue. Whenever I have gone, I have thought of Neil.

Neil and John owned the house next door to where we rented our first Brooklyn apartment. We became friends.  Neil was a professional, classical singer.  He had many different gigs, and often when he thought the music would be special, he would tell us to go, which we usually did.  He sang regularly at a synagogue and at Trinity Church.  Each year he sang with Alvin Ailey, and it was because of Neil that I first saw this dance troupe, which opened a new artistic high for me. (Perhaps the job that most excited Neil was not for classical singing, but when he backed up Pink Floyd at the Fillmore East.) Neil, not surprisingly, had lots of friends who were professional classical musicians, and one of them was thrilled when he finally got hired fulltime for the chorus of the New York City Opera, partly because he now got benefits including health insurance and partly because it gave him something like a regular paycheck.

Neil, on the other hand, did not especially like opera and generally avoided singing in them.  However, once in awhile, he would be added to the chorus at the Met, including one time for a performance of Turandot.  This featured a long staircase to facilitate the entrance of the eponymous princess. The soprano, wearing an enormous headdress, walks on those steps singing the opera’s signature aria.  Neil was positioned on the steps without a safety rail, twenty or thirty feet off the stage. He was scared to death and thought he might not be able to sing.  The soprano was from Nashville making her Met debut on the national Saturday afternoon broadcast.  She walked down the stairs with what appeared to be about fifty pounds on her head. Neil said his heart was pounding with his own fear and nervousness for the debuting soprano when in the midst of her aria, she turned to Neil and asked him, while chewing gum, in a southern drawl, “How’m I doin’, honey?”  Neil said that he started to laugh. He had to stifle it in order not fall off.

I saw Sweat, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Lynn Nottage, on Broadway last year. It is a good, old-fashioned drama that, perhaps because of its tavern setting, reminded me of The Iceman Cometh. The play is set in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 2000 and 2008. The characters are lower middle class whose social center is the bar, but their lives really revolve around a factory that has given them and the town an identity. Tensions arise, friendships are frayed when the company shifts the factory jobs to Mexico.

Sweat is well-written, and the production I saw was well-acted, but on one level the evening bothered me. This was Broadway, and plays there are breathtakingly expensive. I had a discount ticket and still paid $43. Full price was probably $100 or more. That we in the audience had the wherewithal to be there meant that we were separated from the lives being depicted. If we were moved by the characters’ plight, we may have had empathy for these lives, but perhaps there was also an element of condescension in our reaction.

On the other hand, the play treated these factory employees as hard-working people who took pride in what they and their company accomplished. The drama made clear that laborers can be devastated when their work is taken away.  Perhaps this depiction of the working class comes as a surprise to many (who has not made some complaint or witticism when they see workers on the side of the road seemingly just standing around), but I tend to think it a prejudice when someone thinks those in the working class don’t work hard. Many of us tend to look down on those below us on the economic scale. Having started life on the lower rungs of that ladder, I have seen Nottage’s truths in Sweat time and again.

I was raised in a working-class family. My father was a janitor. He worked hard and took pride in doing a good job. In my college summers, I had menial and factory jobs, and I worked alongside full-time employees. I was young and fit, but the labor they did day after day and during the nine-and-a-half shifts one summer made me doubt my fitness. And always they made sure the work was done correctly. And then there was my grandfather.

My parents, sister, brother, and I lived on the ground floor of a two-story house. My father’s parents lived upstairs. While I talked with my grandmother some, I spent almost no time with my grandfather, who just seemed silent with us most of the time. I have no idea how he ended up in Wisconsin. He was born in Pennsylvania to an immigrant family, most of whom migrated back to Germany. I felt like I knew only two things about him. He played skat, a card game, at a local tavern on some weekends and evenings, and he worked at the Kohler Company, the firm that makes toilets and sinks and bathtubs. Other than that he was some sort of laborer in the factory, I don’t know what he did.

I do know that he started at Kohler in 1917. I am confident of this fact because I now have my grandfather’s Hamilton pocket watch, which was awarded him by his employer on his twenty-fifth anniversary of working for the company. His initials are inscribed on the back. A cover opens revealing his name and further inscriptions: “1917 SERVICE 1942” and “KOHLER OF KOHLER”.  A gold chain is attached to the watch and to a medallion, which is inscribed on the back with my grandfather’s name and on the obverse has a relief of a factory worker, “Kohler” boldly written across the medallion, with a slogan on one side: “He Who Toils Here Hath Set His Mark.” (When I used to wear three-piece suits to court, I would often carry this watch and medallion in my vest pockets. The watch still works beautifully.)

My grandfather continued working at Kohler for another dozen years, but then a strike came. Kohler was by far the largest employer in the area, and the walkout, with my grandfather joining the strikers, had a huge effect on the town. As the strike went on and union benefits lessened, families faced tough times. Some strikers sought other work, but there was not much to be had. A few decided to return to work. Loyalties were tested. In a town with a tavern culture, some regulars found they were no longer welcome at their favorite bar. Sporadic acts of violence occurred. I was only eight or nine when it began, and the kids seldom mentioned it. Child friendships did not follow the fault lines fissuring from the strike, but at home I learned the epithet “Scab” and the words to Solidarity Forever.

And I saw the effect on my grandfather. He was now home at times I had never seen before. And he looked lost, bewildered. Part of his life, his identity, had been stripped. I have no idea what kind of economic strain was weighing on my grandparents, and from the sanctuary of childhood, I never thought about it, or I never thought about it until a few years after the strike started. I was with some friends, and we wandered into a park behind our school’s playground. And there was my grandfather raking leaves. Until then, I was not aware that he worked for the city’s Parks Department. He saw me; I saw him. We made no signs of recognition. He looked embarrassed. Raking leaves was the kind of demeaning make-work projects of the depression. It was akin to a handout. It was not the real work of making something like was done at the Kohler Company. Or perhaps, my grandfather was fine, and only I was embarrassed for what he now had to do. I know that I did not want my friends to know that the lonely-looking figure under the trees was my grandfather. Perhaps my grandfather was truly embarrassed or perhaps he recognized that I was or perhaps both, but we exchanged no greetings.

The strike lasted six years, then, and I still think today, the longest strike in the country’s history. The National Labor Relations Board eventually found that Kohler had not bargained with the union in good faith, and that set off another round of contentiousness about what back pay was owed the strikers. The year the strike ended, my grandfather died.

My sister recently told me something I did not know: that my grandfather waited by his upstairs window watching for me to come home from school. He knew that I was studying German, a language that he considered his native tongue (he also spoke English, of course, and Lithuanian), and he was proud of my German studies. Although I would try to exchange a few words of German with my grandmother, I never said a word of German to him. I am sorry for that, and I am sorry that I did not go up to him in that park. We did not hug much in my family, but I wish that I had given him one. He may no longer have had the job that had been part of his identity for forty years, but work was still important to him, and the many others like him. I try to remember that, especially on Labor Day.

Should I be disappointed in the summer? I haven’t heard even once “Despacito.”

My friend asked, “Am I a bad person?” “Why?” I questioned in return. “I don’t feel as bad or as sorry as I ought to because it was in Texas.”

It was a good day at the U.S. Open. Got to see Federer play. And then Martina Hingis shook hands with the daughter. The daughter reported that Hingis’s hand was remarkably soft.

The tired-looking woman was holding her daughter after being brought to safety from Hurricane Harvey. She said, “We prayed a lot. We praised God, and we were saved.” And what should we say to Him about the devastation?

Jerome K. Jerome said what I often felt in my careers: “I like work; it fascinates me. I can look at it for hours.”

I have a T shirt with “Bazinga!” on it and a likeness of Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons). I am willing to bet that Sheldon Cooper’s face is recognizable to a huge number of Americans, and when I wear the shirt, I almost always get comments on it from strangers. But none of my friends recognize the picture. What does that mean?

A friend who is an architect was showing me the wonderful additions he had recently done to his house. I asked, “Are you through?” He replied, “An architect never says it is done because then it can be judged.”

With the college football season upon us, we will hear announcers use “true freshman.”  Are there “non-true freshmen?”  There are “red-shirt freshmen.”  But couldn’t the commentators just say “red-shirt freshman” or “freshman”?  Don’t those two terms exhaust the universe of freshmen playing college sports?  And don’t get me started on “prior to the snap, false start.”

President Trump is like the Bible or Shakespeare. You can find a quote from to support almost any position you want.

“All of Christian Identity’s assertions were backed up by Scripture, to which they provided chapter and verse, which proved yet again, as I had seen in many lands, that the Bible was often the happy hunting ground of an unbalanced mind.” Paul Theroux, Deep South.

The panel on a news network was discussing whether healthcare is a right. This is not the correct question. It should be: Is universal healthcare good for society?

What percentage of potters are conservatives?

Was the philosopher (or was it a comedian?) right when he said, “If you want to prepare your child for real life, give her a Where=s Waldo book without any Waldos.”

(Continued from the last post)

After Jean, in her pretty blouse, went to the country and western bar, my own life became more complicated. I had an induction date into the Vietnam-era army, and in the ensuing months, I spent less time with Jean and Ron. After I received a medical deferment, I was more in my apartment again. Jean, Ron, and I chatted some and occasionally had a barbecue. Everything seemed fine, perhaps too fine, because Jean started showing. She was pregnant.

The soon-to-be-spouse found out that Jean, although at least three months pregnant, had not seen a doctor or had any other prenatal care, and she was doing nothing to get such care. She did not have a regular doctor and she had no health insurance. The s-t-b-s started making phone calls and eventually found a Catholic charity offering free prenatal care and birth assistance. The s-t-b-s took Jean to the charity, where they spent a good part of a day waiting, but Jean was eventually examined and told everything was proceeding just fine.

I was in my last year of law school and, realizing that few legal positions appealed to me, was trying to figure out what I was going to do after graduation, an issue that seemed to be even more important because I was going to be married at about the same time. Wrapped again in my own life, I did not spend much time with Ron or Jean as she got bigger. As her due date approached, however, I did become concerned. She was not going to a hospital for the birth. Instead, when her labor began, she was supposed to call the Catholic charity and someone would be sent to her house to assist. “But what if they don’t come, and I am there?” became my frequent thought.

The labor began as she was washing, on her hands and knees, her kitchen floor. I called the charity and waited anxiously. Someone came within a half hour. Again I waited anxiously. Within a few hours a baby girl was born, and the midwife was gone, although she was supposed to check back the next day. Ron was still part of Jean’s life, but he, for reasons I don’t remember, was not there. Jean was on her own. That did not seem to faze her. A few hours later she was up and about. When Ron did show up, he looked thrilled. Perhaps not exactly the idealized family unit, but one could almost see a cozy domestic situation in the making.

The now-spouse and I were about to move on. We were going to New York City to start our new life. She had a Dodge Dart, which we were keeping, and I no longer needed the old Ford I had been driving. (My car, which I had gotten from a friend, had one of the most important features for Chicago:  It always started in the frigid winters, although I often had to manipulate the manual choke for the car to spring into life. However, if the temperatures were in the single digits, as they often were, first gear did not work until the car warmed up. I had to use second gear of the three-gear manual transmission mounted on the steering column. I was inordinately proud of the sensitive left foot I developed for manipulating the clutch to start the car rolling in second gear.) Ron was then carless, and I sold him mine for $50. He paid me half of the agreed price and promised and promised that he would send me the rest. He probably was sincere when he said it, but I was not surprised that the money never came.

Our lives then separated. I never saw Jean again, and we made no pretense that somehow we would keep up. On occasion I wonder what happened to her, but she held so many surprises for me—Sherlock Holmes and slashed furniture, home birth and barbecues—that I know that my imagination can’t really assess the likelihoods for her. And shortly before I left that house and neighborhood, she gave me another big surprise. Somehow I found out from her that she was only twenty-one. My mind whirled, and I tried to hide my surprise. I would have thought at least a decade older, but I realized that if she did not have the bad teeth, she might have looked twenty-one. I tried to calculate how old she was when she had had her first child, but since I was never sure which one(s)were hers and I kept forgetting the age of the children, I could not be sure. Maybe fourteen. Maybe sixteen or seventeen. But she was just twenty-one when we parted, and she had introduced me to a lot of life.

I never labeled Jean a “hillbilly,” but I suppose she was.

I had moved from Hyde Park, site of the University of Chicago, to a working class Chicago neighborhood. The wood frame building contained four apartments, two on the ground floor and two on the floor above. I lived in the apartment fronting the sidewalk—no front yard although there was a back one. Jean lived on the ground floor behind me.

She was attractive. She had striking black hair and a pretty face and a nice figure. Her appearance was only marred by her teeth, which clearly had been neglected with some missing. She did not work, but was raising what seemed to be at least three children, sometimes more. I never quite understood her biological relationship to all the kids. I think two were hers, including a three-year-old girl who was pretty and a delight. I got the impression that others were children of relatives who were dropped off for extended stays. She apparently had kin in Chicago who had these children, but I never saw any of the adults. I never understood her family history. She had been born in Kentucky, but I did not know when or why she had moved to Chicago. She almost never mentioned her parents. I believe she told me that she was raised Catholic, which did not fit it with my assumptions of the hill folk, but she wore a religious medal around her neck. How she paid the rent and bought groceries was not clear, but she did. When I moved in, there was no man in the house, although I got the impression that one had just moved out.

We chatted some as we came and went from the building, but I was surprised when she banged on my door one afternoon. She was hysterical, and it took a while for me to understand her. I learned that she had just come home, and her door was bolted from the inside. She was understandably scared of who was inside, and she indicated that she believed that it was the former boyfriend whom she had kicked out. “He must have kept a key,” is all she could say while crying.

I called the police, and a young officer responded quickly. I explained the situation to him, and he, too, looked scared. (All this gave me a greater respect for the work of the police. He had no idea what was on the other side of the locked door, and he was going to have deal with the situation. Certainly the possibilities included a crazy man with a gun or knife.) The Chicago police, at least then, were in single-officer squad cars. He called for backup but thought that he needed to act promptly. I don’t remember how he got into the apartment. And I don’t know what I was thinking when I followed him, although it was at a bit of a distance. Jean had just bought one of those living room sets from the kind of furniture store that advertises on late-night television. She was proud of the suite, but the couch and chair had been slashed again and again. Something like acid had been poured on her coffee table, and the laminate, meant to look like wood grain, had dissolved. But there was no intruder. A window was open in the bedroom. It was only a slight drop to the ground, and he must have left that way.

Perhaps this gave us some sort of bond, for Jean and I started talking more. I was in law school, and she seemed very interested in that. More and more, she looked at the books I had. In what seemed like an act of courage for her, she asked if she could borrow one. I tried to hide my surprise; if I had thought about it, I would have bet that she had not finished high school. We talked about what she might like to read. I am not sure what she said, but I finally handed her the collected Sherlock Holmes novels and stories. Then, to my further surprise, she returned it within the week, saying that she had loved it. She looked over at my bookshelves, and she did not have to ask. We went over and found something else for her, and I became a lending library. She, in return, having noticed that I cooked regularly, gave me a cookbook, written by a White House chef for President Kennedy. Why she had such a book remained a mystery. I still use it.

I started spending more time with her kids. I thought of them as her kids, and she seemed to treat them equally even if they were not all her biological children. I never got the relationships straight. There were three, or four, or maybe sometimes five. I no longer remember, and I think the number fluctuated. My apartment was one bedroom; hers had two. The wood-frame building did not have central heating, just a space heater in each apartment, and there was no basement, just an uninsulated crawl space. The winters were cold. The floors were freezing. I was used to walking barefoot even in winters wherever I had lived. Not in this place though my heater kept the room that contained it–what I thought of as my combined kitchen, dining room, living room (also my study)–warm, the areas behind the heater, the bathroom and the bedroom with a mattress on the floor, seemed to hover at just above the freezing point in January and February.

Her place, however, may have seemed crowded, with a crib set up in the living room, and many beds in each bedroom, but it always seemed comfortable and clean, much cleaner than my place. I started becoming friendly with the oldest boy who was perhaps eight or nine. I’d ask about his sports and hobby interests and about school. He went to public school not too far away, and he indicated that it was fine, except he said too many blacks were coming into the school, although he did not say ”blacks.” I could see that he often had responsibilities around the home, mostly looking after the younger kids. After we became friendly and I was coming back after classes and wanted a break before studying, he would bring out a game for us to play on his kitchen table. Quickly this became ice hockey with the slots and handles to move the figures up and down the “rink” and that could be twisted so that miniature Bobby Hulls and Stan Mikitas could pass or shoot the puck. He would invariably get it out because he could beat the pants off me. If I scored one goal, I was thrilled. He would have ten or more.

Then Ron entered her life. I never learned any of his back story or how they met. He was friendly and good with the kids. He was comfortable with me. But he seemed as if he was surprised to have become an adult. I have never seen someone so excited about doing a back yard barbecue (where I was the only guest). Before it happened, he would talk about what he was going to cook and how he was going to cook it. Hot dogs and hamburgers have never before generated such conversation! And then there was what chips to buy, and should there be watermelon.

I am not sure that Ron was working when I first met him, but if so, his unemployment ended soon thereafter. He always seemed to be in some new job. Each appeared to be the first step in a possible career, but in a week or two there was something else. The most memorable was in the funeral home around the corner. He was hired as sort of an apprentice, and after his first day he found me to babble on about every facet of the place. But then the next few days when I saw him he looked green. Apparently he had now been introduced to embalming and preparing bodies for viewings. Within a week or two he was looking for different work.

Ron may not have been good at keeping jobs, but he was good at finding them. In short order, he was tending bar at a place on the southwest outskirts of Chicago. He again was enthusiastic. He would go on and on about great the place was. The staff was wonderful. The customers were friendly and distinguished. And there was music. Chicago may be known for its blues, but this was a country and western place. I was not aware that Ron listened to country and western, or any other, music, but he would list names and assure me that these were stars.

This time the job and the enthusiasm continued. Every time I saw him, Ron talked excitedly about the bar and his job. He would list important people who were there. (I never knew who they were, but that may have only indicated my limited knowledge of this world.) Then he kept insisting that my girlfriend (the not-yet-spouse) and I come to the bar. After many entreaties, we went.

It was a nice place. An ample bar with tables ringing a good-sized dance floor and a stage at that far end. It was clean; it was modern. The patrons were largely under forty and nicely dressed, although the fashions were different from the ones I saw around the University of Chicago. Still, it was not my cup of tea. Too loud, too smoky, too crowded. But Ron was thrilled to see us there. He introduced us to the other bartender, to every waitress, to patrons, to performers. “Meet my friends” was said over and over, and each time Ron looked thrilled that the others could see his friends. Neither we or the ones he had us meet were introduced in a way that might have led to a conversation, and in any event, the noise was too much for any kind of a discussion. Although we were in a crowded place, we were, in essence, alone, but Ron seemed relaxed and in his element, something I think did not happen frequently for him. I could understand his excitement about the place, but after what we thought was a decent interval and after telling Ron again and again how great the place was, we left.

Jean, who had never been to the bar, kept trying to find out what she could about it from us. Mostly the reply was, “It’s nice.” She would find a way to ask again. And then she began to seem suspicious. “When does the bar close?” “How long do you think it takes to clean up when it closes?” “Do a lot of girls hang out at the bar?” “How do the girls look?” Finally she broke down and told the not-yet-spouse that she was worried that she was losing Ron to someone at the bar. The n-y-s replied that we had not seen anything like that, but continued, “Why don’t you go out and surprise him? He would love that.” Jean replied that she could not compete because she did not have anything nice to wear and, of course, she could not go because she had to take care of the kids. The n-y-s had a solution. She would take Jean shopping, and I could take care of the kids for at least part of the night of the surprise visit.

The not-yet-spouse took her to a discount store that sold everything from percolators to screwdrivers to clothing. Let’s just say that Kresge’s and Walmart would be several steps up from this place. Jean, however, did not have money to buy any new clothes, but seeing that Jean kept eyeing a particular blouse, the n-y-s bought it for her. It was white and satiny and frilly, and it cost under five bucks. (Ok, it’s a long time ago, but you get the point.)

The night came. Jean had no way to get to the bar, but the not-yet-spouse was going to go with her. And then Jean appeared, and I saw her for the first time in her new blouse. The n-y-s and I enthusiastically complimented her, and it did look good on her, but more important, I could tell that Jean liked the way she looked. She was shyly smiling, but also exuded a confidence I had not before seen in her.

They left in the early evening, and I was with the kids. (I don’t remember how many were then in the house.) On my front, everything started out just fine. I got my charges some sort of dinner, and the little girl got tucked in. But the deal was that I was to be on call for only the first part of the night, and that a relative of Jean’s, perhaps it was a sister or maybe it was a cousin, but someone I had never met, was to relieve me at some point. The time passed for when my relief was supposed to arrive. And then more time. The older boy and I continued to play the ice hockey game. More time passed. Normally I might not have cared much, but this was occurring during the final exam period at the end of my second year of law school. I had an exam the next morning at some ungodly early hour, and I was planning to spend an hour or so reviewing notes before going to bed. More time, and still no relief. I did not know what to do, and I finally said to the boy, “I am sure they will be home soon, but I have to go.” A look of panic came over him, and he bolted out the door into the late spring night screaming, “I can’t do it anymore.” I felt sorry for him because of the responsibilities that had been put on him, but I had little kids asleep in the house, and a boy running through the Chicago night, and an exam looming. I quickly ran around the block but did not find him. I went back to the house. He was not there, but the kids dreamed on. I found the telephone number of a non-relief relative. She tried to pretend that she knew who I was as I explained the situation. Within fifteen minutes she came over. I spent an hour, maybe two, looking for the boy, but with my test but a few hours away, I finally gave up. (I don’t remember where he went to hide, but he was eventually found. Physically he was fine.)

I was sleeping fitfully when the not-yet-spouse returned somewhat before dawn. She reported that the excursion to the bar had been a huge success. Ron was surprised by Jean’s appearance, and he was delighted. He proudly showed her off to everyone in sight. He was beaming. Jean was beaming. Jean was so happy that she insisted on staying until the bar closed when she came back with the n-y-s. I was still worried about the footloose boy, but pleased about Jean and Ron. And then I went off to my exam.

(To be continued.)

“The dangerously high level of the stupidity surplus was once again the lead story in The Owl that morning.” Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels.

“Why are there so many robots in fiction, but none in real life?” Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works.

“In a city swollen by refugees but mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war, a young man met a young woman in a classroom and did not speak to her.” Mohsin Hamid, Exit West.

“The police make policy about what law to enforce, how much to enforce it, against whom, and on what occasions.” Kenneth Culp Davis, Police Discretion.

“My ma used to tell me stories about my da.” Tana French, The Trespasser.

“One of the recurrent discoveries of academic writing about constitutional law—an all but certain ticket to tenure—is that from the standpoint of twentieth-century observers, the ‘original understanding’ of the document’s framers and ratifiers can be obscure to the point of inscrutability.” John Hart Ely, War and Responsibility: Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath.

“The day that ended with everything different in the life of Raimund Gregorius began like countless other days.” Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon.

“The phrase ‘American jury system’ implies that there is only one.” Randolph N. Jonakait, The American Jury System.

“My worst dreams have always contained images of brown water and fields of elephant grass and the downdraft of helicopter blades.” James Lee Burke, The Tin Roof Blowdown.

“The United States of America during the nineteenth century could quite properly be described as a ‘dope fiend’s paradise.’” Edward M. Brecher and the Editors of Consumer Reports, Licit and Illicit Drugs

“To judge from the entrance the dawn was making, it promised to be a very iffy day—that is blasts of angry sunlight one minute, fits of freezing rain the next, all of it seasoned with sudden gusts of wind—one of those days when someone who is sensitive to abrupt shifts in weather and suffers them in his blood and brain is likely to change opinion and direction continuously, like those sheets of tin, cut in the shape of banners and roosters, that spin every which way on rooftops with each new puff of wind.” Andrea Camilleri (Stephen Sarterelli translator), The Terra-Cotta Dog.

“I was riding in a Manhattan cab downtown, from 48^th Street to Hudson Street, and I was talking on my cell phone to my racehorse trainer at Santa Anita.” Jane Smiley, A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck.

“Dennis Lenehan, the high diver, would tell people that if you placed a fifty-cent piece on the floor and looked down at it, that’s what the tank looked like from the top of that eighty-foot steel ladder.” Elmore Leonard, Tishomingo Blues.

“I will here give a brief sketch of the progress of opinion on the Origin of Species.”  Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.

I recently saw Lindsay Lou and the Flatbellys. It was a great concert. The group might be lumped into the bluegrass category, but the music had many influences, including blues and rock. A tagline of theirs is accurate: “Eclectic Americana from the Heart of America’s Third Coast!” By the “third coast,” I assume they mean the Great Lakes, for while the group may now call Nashville home, its roots are in Michigan. (Quick. How many Great Lakes border Michigan? And how do you count Lake St. Clair?) Lindsay Lou, the lead singer with the great voice, was raised in the Upper Peninsula, and this got me thinking about the UP, a place few among us, I suspect, tend to think about.

That has been largely true for me even though I was raised in Wisconsin, a state that borders the UP. Even so, growing up I think I only knew two things about it. The first was that if I drove through Green Bay and kept driving and driving, and then drove a little bit more, I would get to the Upper Peninsula. If much of northern Wisconsin is bleak and cold, I assumed that the UP was even more so. And I knew that Iron Mountain was in the Upper Peninsula and that Iron Mountain had one of the few major ski jumps in the United States.

My brother, after he graduated from college, moved to Michigan, and on one of my visits I noticed a book with jokes about those in the Upper Peninsula, Yoopers I believe it was spelled. My brother told me that those in southern Michigan often made fun of Yoopers, who were seen as isolated hicks. Certainly for much of its history, the Upper Peninsula was segregated from the rest of Michigan. It is geographically separated by the Straits of Mackinac, a five mile stretch of water. A magnificent bridge was completed in 1957, but before that only railroad and car ferries, which often could not operate in winter, connected the two parts of Michigan.

That bridge had to have made a great difference to the Upper Peninsula, but the UP is still isolated from much of the rest of Michigan. From Marquette, the largest city in the UP, to Detroit, it is a seven hour drive of 460 miles, and the drive to the state capital, Lansing, is about an hour shorter. Marquette is much closer to Milwaukee, “only” 292 miles to be traversed in under five hours. And it is a mere trifle of 179 miles to Green Bay from Marquette. In many ways the UP shares more with Wisconsin than the rest of Michigan, and surely there are more Packers fans there than Detroit Lions fans in the Upper Peninsula. (Of course, the Packers win a lot more than the Lions do. But then again, what football team doesn’t?)

I have only been to the Upper Peninsula once. After another visit to my brother, the spouse and I drove through Michigan with our packed camping gear, and after a brief sojourn on Mackinac Island, we were in the UP. Our stay was short, but it produced many memories.

We went to Sault Ste. Marie, and visited its famous tourist site, the Soo Locks, which connect Lake Superior with its twenty foot drop to Lake Huron. According to some sources, these locks are the busiest in the world by cargo tonnage, and 90% of the world’s iron ore is transported through them—80 million tons each year with a value of $500 billion! From seven to ten thousand ships traverse the locks in its ten month season each year, which means on an average day 30 ships make the nine hour trip with the largest ships over a thousand feet long. The first of these locks was opened in 1856, and the locks are now owned, operated, and maintained by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. (Perhaps this should lead to a discussion of the importance of the federal government and infrastructure construction and maintenance to the American economy.)

I have two other memories besides the locks from Sault Ste. Marie. There is a crossing over the locks to Sault Ste. Marie, Canada. On the American side, a car had been pulled over, and it looked as if it had been stripped. Its seats had been removed and placed alongside the road as well as many other objects that I assume came from the vehicle. I knew nothing about the car or its occupants, but I was reminded about how few rights any of us have when we cross the border into the United States, and that includes American citizens.

We went to lunch in a tavern. I must stress that this was August. We entered one door and were in a small space facing another door which contained a large sign, “Galoshes must be removed here.” Many Yooper jokes immediately came to mind.

We went to a campground in a state park on the shores of Lake Superior, which, of course, is the largest body of freshwater in the world. The spouse and I have different memories of how Superior looked that day. I remember its being beautiful—one of the deepest blues I have ever seen. The spouse remembers nothing but slate gray water stretching further than any eye could see. We both agree—let me stress again this was August—that it was, trying to be as fair as possible to the UP, not overly warm. Many of the campsites were already taken, but to our surprise a beautiful spot on a rise            that jutted into the water was available. It afforded wide views of the lake and easy access to the (incredibly cold) water. Many of the sites around it that did not seem as desirable were occupied, and while we may have wondered a little why this spot was available, mostly we just blessed our luck.

We were experienced in getting our campsite prepared. We followed our routine for putting up the tent, which was about six feet square and six feet at its highest point. We noticed that our camper neighbors were staring at us in silence. None had given us the usual greeting we usually received at a campground—“Hello”, “Where are you from?”, or “First time here?” Every so often, they did seem to exchange a look with the other campers and then returned to staring at us. Our tent up, we unpacked our other gear and sat down to admire the scenery. As dusk approached, a little breeze came up. With darkness closer, what might be called a little wind blew. With darkness even closer, what might be called a gale force arrived on our spot, which now seemed to be situated to catch the wind perfectly leaving the other sites untouched. Our tent had left perpendicular and achieved a forty-five degree angle. It looked as if it was soon going to depart for Canada.

We packed up our gear and took down the tent, which, because of the hurricane-force gusts, was much harder than putting it up. Once again our camper neighbors merely sat in their chairs and silently observed us. When we had finally thrown the canvas in the car, those neighbors, without saying a word to us, nodded at each other and shared the tiniest of smiles. Although I am sure that some applied, even I was not in the mood for a Yooper joke.

We survived the night at another site and next day drove through the UP. What we saw looked largely desolate and unprosperous. The land looked inhospitable for farming, and it was hard to figure out how people made a living. On the other hand, everything indicated that not many people needed to be supported since few people lived there.

We took a break and went into a state park that contained unusual structures. The plaques indicated that these were the remnants of a once-thriving iron industry, and the signs told us about coke making and the extraction of iron from its ore, and so on. The spouse and I exchanged comments about our ignorance, how little we know about this iron process, and how we would not survive in a new iron age. Soon we were near a twelve-year old girl and her younger brother. He was clearly as mystified as we were by the structures. The girl quietly and patiently explained to the boy, pointing to a vase-shaped construction twenty feet high, “That is where the troll lived.” The spouse and I shared a smile, and one of us whispered, “That is as good an explanation as we could give.” We left the UP after that, driving through Wisconsin to visit my parents.

I find that a trip to a new place is almost always worthwhile; something different is learned or experienced. Even so, I am not sure that you should put the Upper Peninsula on your bucket list as a necessary visit. On the other hand, the UP does produce good things. If you have the chance, go see Lindsay Lou and the Flatbellys. That is definitely worthwhile.

The spouse told the dinner party how a car salesman kept calling her “Dear” or “Sweetie” and how after the transaction was completed she let him know that even though she was not overly bothered by this familiarity, other women might be. Another dinner guest said he was not offended when the diner waitress called him “Dear” or “Sweetie.” “Why not just ignore the car salesman?” he said. A good discussion about sexism, sexist speech, and political correctness ensued. My questions: Is it all right for a diner waitress to call a male or female customer “Sweetie”? Is it all right for a male car salesman to call a female customer (surely he would never so call a male customer) “Sweetie”? What about a plumber, a bank clerk, or a medical doctor?

Would you be offended to have a statute of Benedict Arnold in your town square? You might think that is a crazy question because we don’t put up monuments to those who fought against the United States; we don’t put up memorials to traitors, and “Benedict Arnold” became synonymous with “traitor” shortly after the American General Arnold defected to the British during our Revolution. But Arnold, before his switch, was an American hero and had a major role in the battles around Saratoga and Lake Champlain, and he does have a sort-of memorial at Saratoga—a sculptured pair of boots (Arnold was wounded in the leg there) with an inscription that talks about a “brilliant soldier” without mentioning Arnold’s name. This, however, commemorates his bravery fighting for the new United States. We don’t have memorials when he was fighting for the British against the United States for the simple reason that we don’t honor Americans who fought against the United States. Unless, that is, they fought against the United States from 1861-1865. Somehow we don’t see these people as traitors and treasonous, but we should. They made war on the United States. A major issue after the Civil War was whether to charge the leaders of the Confederacy with treason. Jefferson Davis was so charged, but he was never tried for it, as the United States officials concluded that the desired reconciliation of the country would be harmed by treason trials. Then on Christmas of 1868, President Andrew Johnson issued a “pardon and amnesty” for treason to “every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion.” A result of Johnson’s proclamation is that we don’t see the Stonewall Jacksons and the Robert E. Lees as traitors, but, of course, they were. And if we saw them as traitors, we might wonder more about why there are so many memorials to them.

I don’t think it was intentional, but it was a dump truck. The back of it read, “In God We Rust.”

I thought it was genius when I first saw the graffito “Moses Invests” penned below the sign “Jesus Saves.”

Do you have a friend like mine? She might ask, “How did you like the movie ‘Dunkirk’?” She does not interrupt while you speak. She is only waiting for you to end so she can give you her opinion of “Dunkirk”. No real conversation ensues.

Why is it when you sleep fitfully all night that you are sound asleep when it is time to get up?

The newspaper reported that “new fossil discoveries show that prehistoric ‘squirrels’ glided through forests.” Shouldn’t it be “glid?”

President Trump said that he was “sad” at the removal of “our beautiful statues” and that “you can’t change history, but you can learn from it.” The President’s home in Trump Tower is a short distance from a great, amazing, huge collection of public statues and monuments—Central Park. I wonder how often he has gazed at them and was inspired to learn more history.

The southeast corner of Central Park, the closest entrance to the Park from Trump’s penthouse, is only a few minutes walk (or more likely, a few minutes golf cart ride) from the Tower. There he would have encountered a statue of William Tecumseh Sherman on horseback. If looking at the monument inspired him to read about that General, he might have learned that Sherman’s capture of Atlanta is credited with guaranteeing Abraham Lincoln’s re-election and thereby the defeat of the Confederacy. Lincoln pledged to preserving the Union, his opponent was expected to make peace with the Confederacy. Does Trump think about what would have happened had Sherman failed at Atlanta? Perhaps he does not think about what it would have meant for slavery and blacks or the cotton trade and the New York financiers who backed it or how it would have affected expansion into the territories, but surely he would wonder how Mar-a-Lago and his Charlottesville winery would have been affected if they were now in the Confederate States of America.

If he sought to learn more about Sherman, he would learn how important the defeat of the Confederacy was to this American patriot. He could learn that Sherman, like many others of his era, had changing views about blacks; that thousands of freed slaves joined his March to the Sea; that he settled thousands of the recently-freed on land expropriated from Southern whites. He could think about how Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction wiped away many of these gains for the former slaves.

Trump might learn that Sherman declined the Republican Presidential nomination of 1884 by saying, “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.” Would he find this amazing? If you don’t want to serve as President, you should figure that out and say so before being elected.

A block away from Sherman’s likeness are statutes of Simòn Bolivar, the Venezuelan who is known for liberating much of South America from Spain, and Josè de San Martin, the Argentine who helped liberate both Argentina and Peru from Spain. He might learn from these figures that South Americans do not look kindly on foreign powers trying to dictate to them. But, of course, if Trump had learned this, he probably would not have made his recent statements about Venezuela.

A short hike, or even shorter ride, from these men on horseback is Balto’s statue. Balto was the Siberian husky that led a final team of sled dogs delivering diphtheria serum to Nome, Alaska, in 1925, a story that was covered by newspapers worldwide. Surely there are lessons to be learned here about humanitarianism and the mainstream press. And perhaps the President might also realize that he ought to have a puppy.

Perhaps Trump has seen these statues near to his penthouse, and though I find it doubtful, even learned something from them. I am more confident, however, that Trump has not learned from a statute at the other end of the park from the one of Sherman. It is near 110^th Street, which borders Harlem. There he could see a statue of Frederick Douglass. Enough said.

Central Park has, not surprisingly, more statues and memorials, including ones of Beethoven, Christopher Columbus, Robert Burns, and many others. But perhaps the most important one to visit if you are in the park these days is on the east side of the park near 74^th Street—Alice in Wonderland! Surely there is much to contemplate at her feet.

I don’t remember the first time a reporter interviewed me. The law school where I worked wanted to see or hear its name in the news more often and had PR firms and in-house employees to help that happen. I presume that through such efforts I was called by a reporter.

Over the years many news organizations contacted me.  Primarily they were local newspapers or television stations, but I also got calls from networks, magazines, and newspapers from around the country as well as from some foreign news organizations. This did not lead to fame. Few people I knew, except for some students, ever mentioned any of the appearances. (Perhaps the most excited were some male students who spotted a quotation from me in Maxim magazine.)

After a while I felt comfortable with most reporters, but early on, when I was on TV and I still had vanity, I did have concerns about how I looked and sounded, and if the interview was not shown live, I would either try to be home when it aired or I would record in on a VCR. These early appearance almost always concerned some New York City criminal case. My office was near the courts, and when a noteworthy case was being tried, a local TV reporter sometimes would swing by the office after the day in court concluded and tape me. The reporter would come with a technician who set up the sound and the camera. I would be at my desk with the reporter sitting a few feet away and the camera shooting me over the reporter’s shoulder. (I would try to have included in the frame the daughter’s drawing of sneakers I had hanging on the office wall.) The reporter would ask a question or two—only a brief sound bite was usually sought. After that, the reporter almost always wanted a reverse shot to get the reporter’s face. The camera would be placed behind me and aimed at the reporter. The interview was over by this point and the sound turned off, but the reporter would ask that I continue to act as if I was still responding to questions, which I tried to do, although acting has always made me self-conscious.

I watched one of the first of these appearances with the daughter, who was then ten or twelve years old. I don’t actually remember anything about the substance of the interview or who the reporter was. I only remember the daughter’s reaction. The camera captured me from mid-chest up over the reporter’s shoulder, and the daughter quietly said, “That’s good. They didn’t get your stomach.”  Then they shot over my shoulder at the reporter, and the daughter  even more quietly said, “But they did get your bald spot.” (Should a parent reward, punish, or ignore such honesty?)

And I still love the daughter.