Our house has two front entrances. A stoop goes from the sidewalk up ten steps to a magnificent double set of ten-foot walnut doors. To the left of the stoop a wrought-iron, four-foot fence with a gate encloses an area three steps down from the sidewalk. This area is where we New York row-house people keep the trash containers.

When we first moved into this house, sanitation workers would enter this area and take and empty the garbage cans, leaving them on the sidewalk to be collected by the owners or custodians. Then one day, although the rest of the block had the trash removed, we did not.  And then it happened again and again.

I finally waited for the telltale sound of the sanitation truck, headed to the street, and approached the driver. I asked, “How come you haven’t been picking up my garbage?” He replied, “Our rules are that we are not supposed to go down three steps to get the cans.” I said, “But you get all the other containers on the street from in front of the houses.” Looking at me as if it were self-evident, he noted, “The other houses have at most two steps!” (My later reconnoitering showed that he was right.) I pleaded, “What am I supposed to do?” With a tone that indicated that that was not really his problem, he announced, “I guess you will have to put the cans at the curb on collection day.”

The pick-ups often come early in the morning, and I started putting the cans out the night before. I was embarrassed by this. The block was hardly pristine, but we were the only house with garbage cans waiting on the sidewalk. I wondered if the neighbors thought we were bringing down the quality of our street, and I wanted to tell everyone why we had no choice in doing this, but, then again, this was Brooklyn, and I only knew a smattering of those neighbors.

The cans awaiting collection were especially unsightly because they were not covered. Once again, this was Brooklyn, and it is a well known fact of life here that garbage can covers in  this borough tend to disappear if they are in reach of those passing by. (Many owners then chained the covers to the fences in the recessed areas in front of the houses.) Indeed, one of the mysteries of urban life is what happens to all those covers. I can’t imagine a use for all that go missing.

I got into the routine of putting the cans on the curb on the appropriate evenings. It irked me, but I lived with it until the day a piece of paper was attached to the front door–a sanitation violation because of uncovered cans on the sidewalk with garbage in them. The violation carried a fine.

I was now in the land of Catch-22. If I didn’t put the cans out, I would not have a garbage pickup. If I did, the tops would disappear, and I would get a fine.

The sanitation violation carried a notice of a hearing if one was desired. The hearing time was during working hours and on a date that I could not make, so the spouse, who then had a more flexible schedule, went. When our violation was called, the hearing officer looked at our distinctive name on the records, and then asked the spouse whether she knew me. She replied that she was married to me, and officer indicated that he knew me from my work at the Legal Aid Society, but if it was ok with her, he would still hear the case. She assented and explained the situation, but the officer said that there was nothing he could do and the fine would have to be paid. Then, when the hearing was over, he subtly waved her forward and leaned over and explained to her how New York works. He said, I kid you not, “Just pay the sanitation workers a ‘gratuity,’ and they will pick up your garbage.” He was careful not to utter “bribe.”

The next collection day I waited for that telltale sound of the coming trucks and approached the driver, who was a different one from my last encounter. I explained our predicament, and I heard the driver tell the other workers in what I regarded as a false tone, “Can you imagine? They get a violation if they leave the cans at the curb!” This was new territory for me. I did not know what was the appropriate amount, but I took out some bills hoping it was enough but not way too much and started to hand it to him. Apprehension flashed across his face while he said that I could not hand him money like that. Then it dawned on this yokel what he meant. I sprinted back to the house, put the money in the folds of a newspaper, rushed back, and handed him The New York Times for his reading pleasure.

This solved the problem. Our cans, like those of our neighbors, got picked up in front of the house until some time later when in labor negotiations the sanitation workers got a raise in exchange for reducing the number of workers in each crew. After that, everyone on our block had to put the receptacles at the curb, and miraculously, no one then got a sanitation violation for uncovered garbage cans on the street.

The spouse likes to lead book groups. She works very hard at it. She reads the book two or three times. I often read the book that will be discussed, too, and she will bounce her ideas that she might raise with the group off me. I have never participated in one of her book discussions. We have decided that my presence would make her too nervous, but I am confident that she does an excellent job.

Some find it surprising that she is so good at it. After all, she was a scientist—a research neuroimmunologist–and those who are not familiar with science, which includes all too many of us, often think scientists are generally isolated in a tiny world of esoterica.

The spouse was not always a scientist. While she took some science courses in college, she majored in English. She then went on to get a master’s in English at the University of Chicago. We came to New York, and she kicked around some publishing houses. She found her advancement there hampered by being a “girl,” but she also realized that she had always really wanted to be a biologist. Working part-time, she went to New York’s City College to get science credits, including organic chemistry, that she needed to get into graduate school. She then was accepted into Cornell Medical School, where she got a Ph.D.

The road to being a scientist is a long one—graduate school, and then years of a post-doctoral fellowship, and finally, if one is lucky, a lab of one’s own, which she got and ran until she recently retired. But during all that time, she continued to read detective stories, classic literature, bestsellers, history. She is not alone. Her best scientific friend also reads.

I don’t find this surprising. Of course, many scientists such as C.P. Snow, Richard Feynmann, Lewis Thomas, and E.O. Wilson have been outstanding writers. (Freud wrote some interesting books, but only under the most generous definition can he be labeled a “scientist.”) While those extraordinary scientist-writers just might be regarded as exceptional, there is actually a systemic connection between good writers and good scientists.

Successful scientists are curious about the world. They want to understand nature and the universe and set out to explore the unknown. A relative once said to me that the spouse and I led such safe, ordinary, unadventurous lives. I, not surprisingly bristled, and wanted to lash back with all the James Bondish things in my life (if I could have thought of any), but mostly I was offended on behalf of the spouse. I replied, “She is a scientist, and she goes off to work each day trying to see and understand things that have never been seen or understood before with no guarantee that that will happen. Few things could be more adventuresome or daring than that!”

Research scientists are always seeking what has not been found before, and they do it with a wonder about the world. On some level, every scientist I know thinks nature is marvelous and feels a certain glee when something new is discovered about it.

The good writer also sets out to find what has not been found before, but in the writer’s case, it is a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, a character, or a story. The writer, too, has to have a wonder about the world and observe it and learn from it. He or she must be able to see and remember what the rest of us cannot. They are part of the intelligent people that Blaise Pascal  described: “The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in men. Ordinary people see no difference between men.” The good writer often sees distinctions and distinctiveness where others all see the same, not only in other people, but in many facets of the world. The good writer can describe or explain what many of us fail to see. As a result, our world expands. The scientist, who also seeks a greater understanding of the world, I think, can especially appreciate what a good writer has done.

Of course, the truths articulated by the scientist and the good writer are not the same. Perhaps this is too often a one-way street; while the scientist can understand the fresh insights or observations of the good writer, the scientist’s findings are often not understood outside the scientific community. But in their seeking of the previously unknown, both the good scientist and the good writer add to an understanding of the world.  As Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd say in Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, “If you can trace the neural pathways of criminality, do you know more about criminals than Dostoyevsky knows? No, you know something different.”

We should not be surprised that scientists appreciate good literature and insightful history, or at least I am not surprised that the spouse does. You can ask her about microglia and the like, but if you want to think more deeply about The Gentleman from Moscow, The Sound and The Fury, or The Children Act, she has some questions for you.

The second song the DJ played was “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Is that appropriate for a wedding reception?

I was on a park bench. Off to my left a man was ranting. Police were around the apparently mentally ill person dealing with him patiently. On the next park bench to my right were people who begged in the park and seemed to know the ranter. One of the them looked at the police, saw a blonde woman, and said, “Look at her. She doesn’t look like a cop. Why did she become a cop? She should have been, uh, uh, uh, a chemist, or something.”

I hope it was for a law firm, but it did not say so. The billboard read: “Medical malpractice is all we do.”

I went to a butterfly release. It was a fundraiser for a county Women’s Resources Center that aids abused women. (It is shocking how many women this center aids each year.) For every $15 given to the center, the donor got to release a butterfly. I had never thought about how butterflies might get released. They come from the grower in an insulated container with an icepack. The cold, but not freezing temperature, keeps the butterflies—monarchs in this case—dormant. Each butterfly is individually wrapped in a triangular envelope. The envelopes are taken out of the container to allow the butterflies to warm up and become more active. At the appointed time, a flap on the envelop is opened and the butterfly comes out. In our case, since it was cool evening, they needed some coaxing to start flying.

I think it was a typo. The New York City Department of Transportation sent me an email about upcoming street closures. It said that various thoroughfares around Central Park would be closed “for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Curve.”

I watched some men’s doubles at the U.S. Open. I knew nothing about any of the players, but the men on one team were identically dressed in black shirts and shorts with skulls as decorations. The players sported tattoos, infrequently seen on professional tennis players. I expected them to play heavy metal on the changeovers. They were trying to look as if they were the bad boys of tennis. The image was undercut, however, when they lost in straight sets of the first round.

At a recent dinner party, a guest mispronounced a word. Other people at the table, either out of ignorance or out of politeness, pronounced the word in the same wrong way. I avoided using the word. What should one do in such a circumstance?

“Shish kebab. Sugarloaf. Sheboygan. Whenever life called for foul language, Aughenbaugh broke into a reserve of quaint Midwestern euphemisms.” Michael Chabon, Moonglow.

A once magnificent hotel had become decrepit and was torn down. I and others were touring the grounds to see if they could be turned into a park. A flagpole had been left standing. Two of my colleagues were looking up and commented that the donated flag was too small for the height of the pole. They were right. It reminded me of the President when he holds his hands up.

“Wasn’t history supposed to end in 1991?” David Greene, Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia.

“Some notable sight was drawing the passengers, both men and women, to the windows, and therefore I rose and crossed the car to see what it was.”  Owen Wister, The Virginian.

“My wife and I were both born without whatever brain part it is that enables people to decorate their homes.”  Dave Barry, Dave Barry’s Bad Habits: A 100% Fact-free Book.

“In planning your wedding, remember that this is above all a sacred and personal occasion.” Jordan Marsh, Wedding Embassy Yearbook.

“Down to the last day, even the last hour now, I’m an old man, lonely and unloved, sick and hurting and tired of living.” John Grisham, The Testament.

“To write is to talk to strangers.” Tracy Kidder & Richard Todd, Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction.

“The day my wife left me she gave me a list of what I was.” Chang-Rae Lee, Native Speaker.

“We were never born to read.” Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.

“He knew that it was wrong, and that he was going to get caught.”  Scott Turow, Personal Injuries.

“Two hours before my mother killed herself, I noticed she had put on makeup.” Betty Rollins, Last Wish.

“Standing before the kitchen sink and regarding the bright brass faucets that gleamed so far away, each with a bead of water at its nose, slowly swelling, falling, David again became aware that this world had been created without thought of him.” Henry Roth, Call It Sleep.

“I was in the washtub naked.” Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography.

“America, said Horace, the office temp, was a run-down and demented pimp.” Sam Lipsyte, The Ask.

“About 17,000 years ago a great sheet of ice one thousand feet thick covering eastern North America from the Canadian Arctic all the way to Staten Island began to melt and retreat.”  City of New York Parks & Recreation, New York City Trees: A Field Guide for the Metropolitan Area.

“Fame requires every kind of excess.”  Don DeLillo, Great Jones Street.

Immediately after 9/11, the political and policy discussions centered on security. We needed a larger military, more intelligence, more monitoring of potentially dangerous people, stricter border controls. We needed to kill bin Laden. We needed to wipeout al Qaeda. These thoughts were understandable even if many of the actual responses were not justified or wasteful or downright wrong.

We had little discussion, however, of what should have been evident from 9/11—the importance of a strong, efficient, creative government in the non-militaristic areas, but I witnessed that firsthand. My office on September 11, 2001, was eight blocks from the Twin Towers. I had driven to work at around eight to prepare for a class later in the morning. I took a break to go to the bank and heard the first plane go over my head. I heard the crash and saw the hole on the upper floors of the Tower. Mesmerized, I realized that I was watching people dying.  After completing my bank errand, I decided that I wanted to see what the Tower looked like from the other side. As I got two blocks from the World Trade Center, the second plane hit the far side of the other Tower and flames shot out in my direction. I walked back to my office. I called the spouse to tell her I was ok, but the call got cut off when the first Tower fell. I decided it was time to get out of lower Manhattan.

I had driven to work. My usual routes home to Brooklyn were over the Brooklyn or Manhattan Bridges, but I knew they were closed. Picking up and dropping off people along the way, I drove to the next bridge over the East River. I was in line to cross the Williamsburg Bridge, with but two cars in front of me to get on the span, when traffic officials signaled that the structure was now closed. I went to the next crossing; got in line; and had it close just in front of me. And the next. There was no way to drive to Brooklyn. I turned around and headed south. I parked my car on a Chinatown street and walked with hordes of others over the Manhattan Bridge roadway to Brooklyn. (The mind can operate on curious levels. Although I had driven over that span many times, I found myself thinking in the midst of the horror and shock of that day about the only other time I had crossed it on foot. In those days, no pedestrian walkway on the Manhattan Bridge was open, but I once ran a “Courthouse to Courthouse” race. It started by the Manhattan federal courts, went over the Manhattan Bridge, which had been closed to vehicles for the event, wound around on local streets to a Brooklyn courthouse, and then reversed course to Manhattan. It was not a long race, but a tough one, all uphill or downhill. Now, I reflected, it was not an organized run of a few hundred, but a solemn trudge by the tens of thousands, as if we were extras in a Biblical epic, except this was all too real.)

In mid-afternoon, a news report stated that some East River bridges were again open. I walked from home to the Manhattan Bridge where one bus stood to ferry passengers over the river. I got to my car and quickly doubted the accuracy of the news report since I kept finding bridges closed. About to give up again, I found I could cross the Tri-Borough Bridge into Queens, which, of course, abuts Brooklyn, but then I found my usual way home from that Bridge was closed. Normally I would merge off the Bridge on to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, but traffic officials were blocking the entrance to the expressway. An officer told me that I would have to take local streets.  In those days I prided myself on knowing my way around much of New York City, but Queens was my weak link. I literally drove in circles, seeing one particular building at least three times. Finally, I came upon an intersection that I was familiar with because it was one I sometimes passed when I took the daughter to tennis on Roosevelt Island and now knew a route home.

In my wanderings, which were less than twelve hours after the first attack, I passed many entrances to elevated roadways. Every one of them was blocked, I presume out of security concerns, by government officials.  I can’t imagine how many such entrances there are in New York City. I thought what an amazing logistical feat it was to have guarded every one of them in such short order. It took a good government, a strong government, a large government (which in New York City was largely a unionized government) to accomplish this. We pay a lot of taxes in New York, but it seemed more than worth it on the night of 9/11.

Of course, this was one of the many feats, and one of the more minor ones, that New York City quickly accomplished in response to the attack. When I had gone to my car, I could see that Manhattan south of Canal Street had been effectively cordoned off—once again, a tremendous logistical feat. And in the coming days, I would learn about the efforts and coordination of emergency medical personnel and school guards and sanitation workers and firefighters and housing officials and welfare workers and much more. Volunteers stepped forward as New Yorkers pulled together, but New York would not have recovered as well as it did without the effective performance at all levels of government. And this was not the work of bureaucratic drudges. The situation required new coordination among different government branches. It required creativity. It required dedicated service.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani got lots of praise because New York performed so well after 9/11. He deserved praise, but a salient fact was overlooked.  The City government as a whole performed marvelously. Plans had been drawn for emergencies, and they went into effect. And what put them into effect was Big Government. Liberals and conservatives both praised Rudy, but the importance of all level of governments should also have been stressed. Would other cities where the mantra is against government have performed as well? We, luckily, do not know, but a story that should have come out of that tragedy was not just the performance of Giuliani, but how important a strong, dedicated, and creative government can be. If that strong, dedicated, and creative government had not been there, Giuliani would not have been effective and not have been a hero. In those unusual times when New York City was generally admired (Do you remember that accurate Onion headline: “Rest of Country Temporarily Feels Deep Affection for New York”?), besides the discussions about security, lessons should have been preached about the worth of the kind of government conservatives rail against. Reagan’s anti-government rhetoric was not heard in those days. It had been proven false.

Conservatives contend that the “mainstream media” is liberal. That may be so, but even if true, liberals, even if they have a message, don’t know how to sell it. Quick, give me a liberal aphorism or quote that helps set the political agenda today. Compare whatever you remember with these: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” “Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.” “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” “The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.” “The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.” “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

These are all the words of Ronald Reagan, and his rhetoric not only still resonates, it is often the starting point for any political policy discussion. The discussion does not start with the thought that government does good things or that taxation can lead to a better society. Instead, it starts with the premise that government is dangerous. Government is too big. Government is inept. Government is incompetent. Taxes are bad. Taxation is too high. Regulations destroy jobs. Reagan was so influential because he re-shaped the political dialog.  Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson in their book  American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper point out that Eisenhower, in his 1953 State of the Union address, referred to government about forty times, almost all of them favorably. Bill Clinton’s State of the Union address in 1993, after Reagan, was almost the same length as Ike’s, but mentioned the government only about twenty times, almost always negatively.

Reagan’s rhetorical views of government still drive the political discussion, but his actual policies often undercut conservative ideology. Thus, conservatives continue to maintain that tax cuts will cause a spurt in the economy, and that economic growth will cut the federal deficit and reduce unemployment. Reagan engineered a major tax cut, but the federal deficit and debt ballooned. Reagan then went on to support specific tax increases, on gasoline, for instance, in a failed attempt to lower the debt. Part of the deficit problem, in spite of his aphorisms, was that Reagan did not cut government spending; instead, the size of the federal government increased significantly under his watch.  (And, of course, there was Iran-Contra. Under Reagan, the United States illegally sold arms to Iran and then illegally gave some of the proceeds to rebels in Nicaragua. How did that befriending of Iran work out? And do you remember when Nicaragua was an existential threat to America? And am I the only one who thinks there might be parallels between Reagan administration contacts with Iran and Trump supporters’ contacts with Russia?)

The liberals have lost out on the starting point for what should be an essential discussion: What is the role of government? Hacker and Pierson note that modern discourse often sees government as only a vehicle for wealth redistribution. “But what is missing is an understanding that most of what government does is not about redistribution at all; it is about addressing a wide range of problems that markets alone are ill equipped to tackle.” And while Hacker and Pierson, among others, have attempted to expand the discussion beyond the conservative viewpoint, little has been accomplished. Instead, liberals or anti-conservatives only seem to respond to conservative claims. They don’t seem capable of seizing or molding the debate.

Al Franken, in his latest book, Giant of the Senate, gives an explanation: “Democrats always have a disadvantage in messaging—not because we’re idiots, but because we have complex ideas and, sometimes, a hard time explaining them succinctly. Our bumper stickers always end with ‘continued on next bumper sticker.’” That may be so. It is easier to proclaim that immigrants take jobs, for example, than to discuss that our economy is not a zero-sum game where a job for one is not simply the loss of a job for another; how immigrants help grow the economy by buying goods and services; how immigrants pay payroll and incomes taxes; how, as our birthrate declines, immigration is a force for necessary workforce expansion. Yes, no bumper sticker can do that. (Although not in bumper-sticker form, Senator Franken did a better job in his latest book of explaining the Affordable Care Act than I ever heard President Obama give. For this and other reasons, put Al Franken on your radar for possible Presidential candidates. A good start to see if you want to do that would be to read Giant of the Senate. Parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny, but other portions taught me, at least, things I did not know about how the Senate functions and about the views and abilities of Senator Franken.) But even sloganeering has not been a Democratic strength, the liberals and anti-conservatives don’t seem to be able to seize opportunities to point out that the conservative slogans often don’t hold water.

An opportunity to start a useful discussion comes right now from the hurricanes. As is usual in such a crisis, I heard someone complain to a news reporter about price gouging, but price gouging is simply the fallout from the law of supply and demand. The extraordinary, sudden demand for goods with a limited supply of them gives the seller the opportunity to make extraordinary profits. If you are a conservative who believes in leaving markets unrestrained, you should accept price gouging in an emergency. Interestingly, however, I have never heard any leading conservative who has mouthed platitudes about the importance of not interfering in markets defend price gouging. Instead, what price-gouging could teach is that almost all of us have concerns about our free market system and believe that it should be—oh, that fearful word—regulated some of the time. The debate should be when is that regulation best for the good of our society.

The fight for FEMA funds could also be an opportunity for an examination of conservative shibboleths. In accordance with their call for a smaller government, conservatives should be opposed to FEMA, and some conservative congressmen and think tanks have proposed a more limited FEMA. But when a natural disaster occurs, those in the affected areas tend to think that getting federal money is a right. Although it is never called this, it is seen as an entitlement. Furthermore, it does what conservatives say should not happen: it is a government program that redistributes wealth. This redistribution is not so much from wealthy individuals to those below them on the economic scale, but a redistribution of money to some parts of the country from the country as a whole. Natural disasters and other emergencies do not occur at the same rate throughout the country; some states–Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, for example–are more prone to them than others. A place like Texas takes more funds out of FEMA than it puts in while many other states put more in than they get out. FEMA redistributes wealth by geography.

Another way to look at FEMA, however, is that it is part of a social safety net. People are in need because of an disaster, and we as Americans–and that includes our government–help people in need. As with any aspect of our social net, we should seek to lessen the need for it in the future and seek to make those asking or demanding assistance more responsible for lessening their present and future need, but as long as we are one country, even though fortune and misfortune do not fall equally upon us, we should aid the unfortunate. Let’s start talking about FEMA as welfare, as wealth redistributor, as part of our social net, and tie them into a broader discussion of Americans who might need help from, yes, the government.

But liberals have not been good at changing the focus of policy debates. I have been thinking that since 9/11. (To be continued.)

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.