My parents rained on parades. This was partly because although we had enough money to get by, we did not have more than that. The family would not have the latest model car, a second home, or exotic vacations.  There would be a used Oldsmobile (my father’s invariable choice) and a week on a nearby lake if some friend or boss made a cottage available. There would be adequate clothing, but no one would be a fashion plate. And who needs to go to restaurants? This was not a terrible hardship perhaps because things like smartphones and Air shoes and overly expensive dolls and other toys did not exist. On the other hand, I remain frugal today, perhaps excessively so.

The dampening, however, was not just about material expectations; it was about life in general. Some typical interchanges: It’s a beautiful day today. Yes, but it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. We won the ballgame! Yes, but you play the (powerhouse) next game. The Halloween party is going to be great. Well, it is probably going to be much like the one last year, and I am sure you remember that.

The point, I guess, was to avoid disappointment. If you did not expect much, you would not be dashed, crushed, or frustrated  by what did happen. And if good things did happen, then you could feel good. But, of course, only for a brief time because disappointments were always just around the corner. By spritzing on expectations, my mom and dad no doubt thought they were being good parents by shielding us from disappointment.

The daughter, like many young children, often had great enthusiasm for some coming event. Often I knew that the occasion would not live up to her excitement. My instinct was to act like my parents. I needed to protect that precious little one by referring to my experiences to show her how it was unlikely to meet her high expectations. Then she would not be disappointed. In the beginning I may have done that, but then I realized that such a speech only deprived  her of her pre-event excitement. If the event truly was a bust, then there was no enjoyment whatsoever. My daughter taught me what had been drilled out of me in childhood: enjoy the buildup to something. Get that enjoyment no matter what happens later.

This practice was put to a severe test at Orlando’s Universal Studios when she spotted the Back to the Future ride. She had loved the movie and was eager to go on the attraction. But I knew some things about the daughter, and one of them was that she did not like thrill rides. (Another reason to love her. If she had liked roller coasters, I might have had to endure them with her. But the last time I had been on such a thing, admittedly quite some time ago, I felt sick for hours afterwards.)  I have no idea what she thought this ride was going to be, but I knew it was going to be awful for her.  As we endured the long line, her excitement grew and grew, and I kept debating with myself whether to tell her that we were not going to do it. The more time I internally waffled, the more excited she became.

We did it.  It was not a ride that plunges and twists. It was worse. It was one of those virtual reality things where you do not get sick from real motion, but through the trickery of projections. You know it is a trick, but still it makes you scream. You feel scared and stupid.

We came out, and it was clear she had been terrified and was not a happy person. I am sure that it lasted but a few minutes, and the wait for the ride with her building excitement had been much longer—in other words, the period of enjoyment had been much longer than the period of disappointment (and terror)–but this time in not taking away her expectations I was not sure that I had done right. I feared that the terror, even if brief, outweighed everything that had come before.

What should a good parent have done?

Recently she and I had dinner, and the Back to the Future ride came up.  Although decades ago, she still remembers it vividly.  I asked her if I had been a bad parent not to have warned her.  She shook her head no. But then again she was expecting me to pick up the restaurant bill. (If you meet her, ask her about the Disney ride, It’s a Small World, and you should be convinced that, at least some of the time, I was a good father.)

Whenever I go through the TV dial and find music I know and like, it is PBS fundraising. Or TimeLife doing an infomercial.

I received for Christmas a specially-made T shirt I had requested. It reads: “TRUMP. HIS MOTHER DID NOT HAVE HIM TESTED.”

I recently met a couple.  He was six feet ten.  She was shy of five feet even.  What questions would you have liked to ask?

As I walked to the subway, I heard a street person in a doorway say to no one in particular, “Did you see that old couple who just walked by?  They did it.”

Is it true that there will be an exemption from the travel ban for any adult whose hands are smaller than the President’s?

I was surprised to learn how many countries there are in Africa.

The President pronounces something “great.” He pauses and then repeats “great.” He pauses yet again. His mind seems to be searching, but at best “tremendous” or “huge” or “tremendously great” comes out. Should we be concerned that Donald Trump has chronic lethologica?

When I arrived in New York City years ago, I almost never attended a performance of any kind that received a standing ovation. Now they occur routinely. And, thus, our standards decline.

I was walking east. I could see a half-block away a well-dressed, attractive, thirtyish woman standing next to a nice, parked SUV. She was waving a piece of paper. As I got closer, I could see that it was the tell-tale orange of a parking ticket. She was talking to a man. I could tell that he had written the ticket. As I got even closer, I expected to hear her agitated tones saying something like, “I was just a minute late.” Instead, I saw him nod and her smile. She moved to stand beside him. With her right hand, she held the ticket between them. With her left, she took a selfie.

Pleasuring yourself.  Self-abuse.  How can these mean the same thing?

I try to be good because I believe that in hell I will be trapped on a stalled elevator with a banjo player.

“People from downstate have so much money they buy their kids brand-new cars.”  Jim Harrison, The English Major.

My friend Stan told me that he was at a party and introduced himself to Dave.  The conversation followed the usual course, and Stan asked where Dave lived.  Dave replied that he lived on Park Avenue in Manhattan.  Stan started to make appreciative and envious sounds when Dave continued, “But not in one of the best buildings.”

Why do we say something is “affordable?”  Isn’t anything bought, leased, rented, or bartered “affordable” for the one who got it?  And isn’t almost anything, no matter how “affordable,” not affordable for many?

My friend worked for Nokia. She liked the work except for the trips to the headquarters in Finland, even though it amused her that Helsinki was the only place where she saw women with blonde roots.

I had loved him on TV, and now he was coming to the RKO Albee, just a few blocks from my apartment. The RKO Albee was one of those grand vaudeville/movie theaters built in the 1920s. It was said to be the second largest such theater in New York City after Radio City Music Hall. The Albee, by the time I made it there, was in serious decline. It was situated in downtown Brooklyn that once had many similar theaters, but downtown Brooklyn and large movie houses no longer remained fashionable. Shades of the grandeur that had once been in the Albee were evident, but seeing them some faith and imagination, except for the bathrooms which were still magnificent.

Going to a movie there, however, was a bit creepy not only because of the auditorium’s deterioration, but also because of the size of the place. It is only a guess, but the theater held three or four thousand, and the first time I went there, for Diary of a Mad Housewife (who remembers Carrie Snodgrass? Richard Benjamin?), no more than a hundred of us were there. These numbers added up to a lot of empty seats, and an eerie feeling. (Diary remains in my mind not because I remember much about the movie, but because it was my first exposure to people talking back to the movie screen. With the size of the audience, it was easy to hear all the words of those who conversed with the on-screen characters.)

Now, however, it was not a movie coming to the RKO Albee, but James Brown. The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.  The Godfather of Soul. Mr. Dynamite.

The wife and I got tickets.  Good seats. Fourteenth row, just a little right of center. This time we did not feel as if we were alone in the Albee. I could not see an empty seat. We had a great view of the stage for the opening act, a comedian (perhaps,  but I am not sure, Clay Tyson). The audience made it clear that it wanted him off the stage and James Brown on. I could only feel sorry for the comedian, and the clamor was made worse when James Brown with an entourage came down the side aisle. (Huh? The Albee did not have a stage door? Didn’t seem likely. Oh, you think that this was another ploy to whip up the crowd?)

Finally, the warmup was over, and there he was! Our good seats started to be less desirable.  Not because anything happened to them, but because it seemed as if everybody who had been behind us left their seat and rushed towards the stage. Still we could see, but then all those seated in front of us stood up. Now to see we, too, had to stand, which we did. But then those in front of us stood on their seats so we had to stand on our seats. And finally, those in front of us stood on the arms of their seats, and soon, feeling precarious, we, too, were standing on the arms. And we saw a great show.

As we were leaving and I saw the crowd heading towards the exits, it hit me then that besides the wife, I was not seeing another white person. I had not been uncomfortable before, but this realization made me a bit uneasy. Would all those thousands of black faces think there was something wrong with whites going to see James Brown? There was no reason to think so. The crowd was noisy and excited, but everybody was as polite as you could be in crowd that size. But still, we seemed to be the only whites. Wasn’t there a good chance something bad might happen to us? At least this white had not confronted this situation before—one that many blacks no doubt had faced—of being the only one of his race in the place.

The Duffield theater was only a few blocks from the RKO Albee, but it had never been a palace, only a neighborhood movie house. It was there we saw The Great White Hope, with James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander. (I have had the privilege of seeing Jones on the stage a number of times, but from years ago the most memorable performances were Fences and Othello, the latter in a production with Christopher Plummer, Dianne Wiest, and, in a much smaller part, Kelsey Grammer.) The Great White Hope is the fictionalized account of the black boxer Jack Johnson. Once again, we seemed to be the only whites in the theater, but this time during the performance we were acutely aware of that. In the James Brown concert, our reactions were not much different from the rest of the audience, but that was not true at this movie. In this story about an extraordinary man’s confrontation with race and racism, there was a scene, I think, with a country preacher encouraging Johnson to prayer. The wife and I were moved, but, to our surprise, the scene brought derisive laughter from around us, the kind of laughter reserved for an Uncle Tom. I was acutely aware that I had not experienced what others in the audience had, and as we left the theater, I did wonder if all those other exiting people were wondering what that white couple was doing there.

Part of the reason that we were in the minority at these theaters is that then, and for most of my years in Brooklyn, we have lived in neighborhoods where whites are in the minority. I regarded this as neither undesirable nor desirable. It was just a fact. Not surprisingly when I played basketball in one of the local schoolyards, which I did frequently before blowing out my knee in my 30s, as a white, I was in the minority.

It was an especially eclectic crowd at the courts nearest to home. The neighborhood had a few whites, but also a sizeable group of Native Americans, who had been in construction in New York City, and were frequently, it seemed, on crutches. Their roots were from near Montreal, and when they found we were going in that direction for a vacation, they were quick to give advice about the places for food and drink on the way to Canada. There was also a group of Puerto Ricans that had been established in the neighborhood for quite some time having come to work at the then-functioning, nearby Ex Lax factory. There were blacks with relatives in the Carolinas and some Argentinians who had migrated to South America from Italy before coming to the United States. As I said, an eclectic mix.

One day playing basketball, an argument broke out. I am not sure what triggered it, but soon I heard one kid yell an epithet at the other, “You’re white.” “No, I am not. You’re white.” Both were high schoolers. I knew one of them, whose mother was Puerto Rican and whose father Native American. I did not know the other one, but he looked to be mixed race white and black. As the argument went on, I looked around and realized that I was the only white there. For a moment, with the “W” word being tossed around, I wondered whether I should be concerned but decided not to be. I was older and a fixture in that schoolyard and had done favors for the families of some of the other players. My guess is that I was not so much the white guy, as the old guy. I am not sure how the argument was settled, but it did not escalate into anything major. (This was not a typical incident. Although I played basketball for countless hours in the neighborhood, I don’t remember another time of something intended as a racial epithet.)

These incidents may have made me aware of my race, something that does not happen often to this white person, and probably not to most other whites either, but none made me feel deeply uncomfortable. Sometimes while jogging, however, I did feel threatened. I would often use my running as a commuting mode and sometimes that took me through parts of New York where my skin color made me stand out, including the South Bronx, then considered to be an especially dangerous neighborhood.  I did feel conspicuous, and I sometimes heard what I only hoped were sarcastic remarks coming in my direction, but I soon learned behaviors that seemed to defuse any potential problems. Almost always there was a mother with a baby in a stroller on the sidewalk. I would look intently into the stroller as I jogged closer, and when nearby I would smile and then look the mother in the eye and smile even more broadly. Almost always the mother smiled back, and her smile seemed to make others on the block relax. I would also look for young kids, usually boys, on the block. The ten year olds often did make veiled racial remarks, but my response was to urge them to race me to the corner. Most took up the challenge, and seeing me with a kid running neck and neck up the block also seemed to make others relax. (The kids invariably won.)

These methods almost always worked when I ran in “bad” neighborhoods, but for some reason, I found they did not work to defuse any tensions in parts of Harlem, and mostly I stopped running there.

My running led to another incident that was not overtly racial but once again led me to think about my whiteness. I was running through a lily-white, affluent suburb north of New York City. I was not running in fancy running clothes, but, as was my wont, in cast-offs with hair that most would have thought needed a cutting. Why affluent communities can’t afford sidewalks I don’t know, but as a result I was jogging on the side of the road. I was coming up to a nice car at a stop sign with a young woman in it. She saw me and the slightest look of panic came over her face. And then I heard the car locks click shut. I was amused. In the thousands of miles I had run, I was not aware of this happening before, but then I thought, I bet a lot of young black males have heard that clicking sound many, many times.

I once saw the renowned Moses Josiah. Renowned, I say, but in very small circles.  Josiah played the musical saw. His repertoire included some classical pieces, John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and a hymn I associate with my Sunday School days.

The brief program notes said that Josiah said that was recognized as a Master Sawyer by the Sawyer Association Worldwide. I did not know that one who played the saw was a sawyer (some not-in-depth research also found the term “sawist” and “sawplayer”), and I had never heard of SAW. (My research revealed other striking factoids, including that a member of The Pogues as well as Marlene Dietrich played the musical saw, sometimes referred to as the “singing saw.” Don’t you wish you had seen Marlene, bent blade clasped between her knees, bow a saw?)

At the performance, Josiah was briefly interviewed and said that he had learned the instrument in his native Guyana, had been a winner on “The Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour”, and had played for England’s Queen Elizabeth. Josiah then went on to thank the Lord, referring to his musical ability as a gift from God.

I thought of Josiah again as I was reading an Elmore Leonard book published a dozen or so years ago. Tishommingo Blues recounts the oft-told and alluded-to story of Robert Johnson, the seminal guitarist and legendary Delta bluesman. Not much is really known about his life, or death (he was only 27 when he died). Apparently, however, when people first became aware of him, Johnson was merely an acceptable musician and was struggling to play better. He dropped out of sight for a while. When he reappeared, he played the guitar in a style not heard before, a style that has influenced a generation of guitarists, including Keith Richards and Eric Clapton. What caused this transformation? If Johnson ever explained it, that explanation has not come down to us, but the story soon circulated that he sold his soul to the devil. The legend maintains that Johnson met the devil in the shape of a large black man at midnight at a crossroads, and after this meeting, Johnson had a mastery of the guitar like no one before him.

The supernatural notwithstanding, human activity surely played a great role for both Josiah and Johnson. Josiah from birth did not play like he later did. His “gift” was no doubt developed through practice, study, and experimentation, and then more practice, study, and experimentation.  And, no doubt, while he was out of sight, Johnson also practiced and experimented until he found his new style, and then he practiced it some more. But some sort of gift was also involved for them and others. I know that no matter how much I practiced, studied, and experimented, I could never have sung like Pavarotti, hit a ball like Roger Federer, or painted like Matisse. They all had something I did not have and will never have no matter what I do.

But why the different ascriptions? Why is Moses Josiah’s ability or Joan Sutherland’s voice a gift from God while Johnson’s playing came from an unholy bargain with the devil? Why does one come from heaven and one from hell?  I suppose an answer is that for many the blues, played in juke joints and roadhouses, is the devil’s music, but do you really believe in a God who favors a musical saw’s rendition of “Imagine” over Johnson’s guitar playing? And is hell really so bad if it has Robert Johnson down there playing?

After he gives a speech with platitudes and without substance, Donald Trump gets wide praise simply because it was not his usual buffoonish performance. Did the president consciously set the bar this low?

Language matters. Instead of talking about eliminating regulations, we should be talking about eliminating protections.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said it was “absurd” to suggest any connection between President Trump’s rhetoric and a triple shooting. The shooter was reported to have yelled racial epithets before firing at two immigrants from India, thinking they were Iranians, killing one and wounding the other. Last year I heard frequently from conservatives that the rhetoric from the Black Lives Matter movement had helped cause the shooting of police officers. I wonder if Spicer also found that connection “absurd.” Before that I heard that rap music encourages violence. I wonder if Spicer also labels that connection “absurd.”

“To be conscious you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.” Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil or the Two Nations.

It used to be that the Presidency was the pinnacle of a person’s life. Now it seems as if it is a steppingstone to a bigger business career.

I daily pass a small grocery store. It is owned by people who came from Yemen. Next to it is a similar store owned by people from Korea. We call them the Korean and Arab bodegas. That seems so New York.

As the country song puts it, there are two things money can’t buy: true love and homegrown tomatoes.

The sign in front of the Catholic Church on 42^nd Street said, “Confessions.  Saturday.  4 to 4:30.” A half hour a week for confession! Was it a small congregation or one with very few sinners?

I got to the escalator at a local Target. A man carrying more stuff than I offered to let me go first, but I insisted that he proceed.  When I got to the escalator with him in front I realized that the escalator was not working.  I said to him, “But I expected you to get it to work.”  He immediately replied, “That’s just what my wife says.”

As I passed a group of toddlers after some rain, I heard the teacher calmly state, “It is your choice whether you walk in any puddles.  But first think about whether that is a good choice.”

What’s your line after spotting a sign off a Utah highway: RESTAURANT and HORSEBACK RIDING.  Mine: Do you worry about the kind of meat they serve?

A tidbit for your novel, short story, or screenplay.  Coming around a bend on a trail at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, I hear a 50ish man in clothes without wrinkles say to four young men in well-used hiking gear, “And in any town, you can call the President of the Rotarians, and he will talk to you.” He then hands cards to each of them, commanding, “You should check it out.”  The four take the cards and trudge on.  Write a page or a paragraph.

I went to church recently. This may not be noteworthy for you, but it is for me. It came about because of a visit to Al and Lynn, both of whom are smart, funny, gracious, and charming. This long-time friendship began before Al made a career switch and became a minister, but it has continued on. He is now Pastor of a Congregational Church in Florida.

The sermon on the Sunday of my attendance was on Jesus’ words, as recorded by Matthew, about lust in the heart and plucking out your eye. These are troublesome verses (go ask Jimmy Carter), but Al’s sermon was informative and thought-provoking. This got me thinking about religion and some books on religion that have stuck with me through the years.

In God: A Biography Jack Miles reads the Hebrew Bible as a literary text and examines the character of God. In spite of the religious piety that God is immutable, Miles shows how God developed over the course of the narrative, especially as a result of His interactions with humanity.  God the Creator at the beginning of Genesis changed as He interacted with Adam and Eve. The God who eventually talked to Job is different still. And so on.

At least for me, however, the Jesus of the New Testament does not really develop or evolve over the course of the scriptures.  Instead, different writers have related, but different, conceptions of Jesus.  Matthew’s Jesus is not precisely the same as John’s.  Paul’s versions of Jesus are not all consistent (I know: scholars say that the same person did not write all of the Pauline stuff), and Paul’s depictions differ from those of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  Each writer has either tended to find different characteristics in Jesus, or the writers have created a Jesus to fit their own agendas.

The possible variations of Jesus’ character were not immutably fixed in biblical times.  They have certainly continued in America as Stephen Prothero’s American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon discusses.  The American Jesus has supported slavery and desegregation; capitalism and socialism; bombing Iraq and pacifism.  He has been a go-getter who would be comfortable at a Rotarian meeting.  The muscular Christianity of Theodore Roosevelt had its Jesus, who perhaps had six-pack abs.   But Jesus has also sweetly taken His place at love-ins.  He espouses Reverend Ike’s or the Osteenian gospel of prosperity but also a Rauschenbuschian social gospel.

But in all these incarnations, He was somehow always an American Jesus.  He had to be. We Americans and our beloved land are blessed; we live in an America that is exceptional, and surely that must mean that Jesus has a special affinity for America. Jesus could be right there with us on the Fourth of July enjoying a hot dog (not necessarily kosher) and apple pie.  If He had wanted to, he would have played a great shortstop. Many American Christians have absorbed without reflection that Jesus looks out especially for America. Americans, it seems, are lucky in another way. We don’t really have to seek to be like Jesus because our Jesus is like us.

He is like us also in his physical manifestation, as indicated by our pictures of Him.  He seems to be of above average height, but not so tall as to be disconcerting. His skin, while not a sickly pale, is a version of white. He is not blond, but his hair is not too dark—a pleasant brown, often with highlights. His face looks like one who has immigrated to the U.S. of A. from some Northern European locale. His eyes might even be blue.  Except for his clothing and that his hair might be a bit long, he would not be out of place in many American living rooms or corporate offices. (It is not surprising that different cultures have created different portraits of Jesus. The Ethiopian or Russian Christian has a Jesus who looks different from the American one, but one that seems more than a little Ethiopian or Russian.  A Renaissance Jesus tends to look, how shall we say, “renaissancey,” and even a Korean or Chinese Jesus tends to reflect a Chinese or Korean culture.)

The historical Jesus, of course, was a Jew from the Middle East—a Semite.  Recently forensic anthropologists have tried to figure out what Jesus really looked like.  If you look at these depictions, you see something much different from the American Jesus. The odds are overwhelming that Jesus was not very tall with dark eyes, almost black hair, and a swarthy skin. He was much more likely to have short hair rather than flowing, shoulder-length locks. And, of course, he likely had what might be described as a Jewish nose. The looks of the real Jesus were unlikely to be of the kind that would fit easily into a Kiwanis meeting, or more to the point, most Sunday services in America. He didn’t look so much like our imagined portraits. He looked like a Mideast terrorist.

So my thought experiment: Imagine that every existing picture of Jesus in America was replaced with a more historically correct one. We hang up pictures that look like, shall we say, Yasser Arafat’s nephew.  How would this change American Christianity?  Might this even change American’s views of the world or America’s foreign policy? Would our faith in Christianity be changed? How?

I had this preexisting condition. (Funny word, “preexisting.” It seems to mean existence before existence. That doesn’t seem possible. When it comes to insurance, it really means an already-existing condition, but for some reason we use what should be the nonsensical “preexisting.”) It was a bad shoulder. I would have said that I had a dislocation problem, but that was not accurate. The bone did not come completely out of joint. I could pull it back into place with my free arm. I would have called it a partial dislocation, but the doctor who replaced my shoulder joint in the last year defined it as a subluxation.

The original subluxation had happened five years earlier, with the next one about six months later. When the bone slipped out of joint, it hurt like hell with residual pain for days afterward.  Over time, those disconcerting events happened with increasing frequency. It was time to get the joint repaired.

I did not have health insurance of my own. I was finishing what I hoped was my last year of schooling, and back then the only health insurance I was aware of was tied to employment. I had already accepted a job to start the following September. I would have health insurance through this employer, but I undertook the fun job of reading the policy and found the preexisting-conditions clause. The plan would not cover any health condition that existed when I first became insured.  Instead, the preexisting condition would only qualify for coverage two years down the road, assuming I was still in the same job. Waiting that long to have the shoulder surgery would not have been the end of the world. It was not as if I had cancer or imminent liver failure or was going blind. But it meant a couple more years of painful, partial dislocations and the awkward lifestyle changes that I had adopted to minimize them—not lifting my arm above my head, sleeping in ways so that rolling over would not cause the sublaxation, and so on. It also meant living with a constant level of pain that could be tolerated but still was not exactly fun.

The wife, however, had a job, and she had a health insurance benefit. I read that policy, too. It said that spouses of the insured were covered, and since she had been working for a while, the preexisting limitation did not preclude my shoulder surgery. I went to a famous shoulder surgeon who was ready to do my repair, but both he and the hospital wanted a notice from the insurance company that my treatment would be covered. We went to the benefits administrator at the wife’s work, who, to our surprise, said that the company’s insurance would not cover me for anything. “How can that be!?!” I exclaimed. I showed her the clause in the many-paged policy mandating coverage for “spouses” of the insured. The wife was the insured, we all agreed, and she and I were married, so I am the “spouse.” Ergo, I am covered. “No,” the administrator patiently explained, “‘spouse’ meant ‘wife.’” That is what it had always meant, the bureaucrat stated. We learned that only female spouses were considered beneficiaries under the plan because, apparently in those distant days, no man had ever sought to be covered before. The women utilizing the plan were either single, or if married, had husbands who had their own insurance or were too proud to seek spousal coverage.

I was flabbergasted, but not so much so that I could not pronounce the word “sue.” There are advantages to being a lawyer, even though back then I had little idea how to bring a suit. But the threat produced a further consideration by the wife’s employer and insurance carrier. With much grumbling, they decided that they would cover my shoulder surgery.

The wife left that job a little while later. After I had the surgery.

[After today’s post, there will not be another one until February 27.}

We had come from Short Hills, Austin, D.C., Irvine, California, London, New York City, and many other places to staff a voter hotline for the last election. There were retired and practicing Wall Street lawyers and English solicitors.  There was an armed forces special ops guy who had done a tour in Afghanistan and who now was writing at a national security think tank that he described as left of center.  There was a former prosecutor who was now an entrepreneur seeking funding for an energy business, but whose real claim to fame was that he had guided Antonin Scalia on a Montana fishing expedition. (Surprise. The then Supreme Court Justice was not a good fisherman.  Too impatient.)  There was a Fulbright Scholar from Atlanta who had just returned from Brazil where he had started a drone company to help farmers with their crops.  There was a young lawyer working for a union who surely did not make much money but loved fine dining.

We picked up phones with voices asking, “Am I registered?” “Where do I vote?” “Can I get an absentee ballot?” “Can I vote without a voter registration card?” “Do I need an ID?” “What kind of ID?” “Can I get a ride to the polls?” Some wanted canvassers to stop coming to their door, over which we had no control. Some were more adamant. “Don’t bother me,” one said.  “I am 61 and if I live to 161, I will never vote. My vote doesn’t matter.” On Election Day, people reported long lines and malfunctioning voting machines and election judges wrongly interpreting the law.

Some were upbeat and wanted to chat. “I was ten years old on Pearl Harbor Day,” another said.  She had loved to dance, not just a polka but the jitterbug, too, but now did not have a partner except for her niece’s husband.

Some were frazzled, but still wanted to vote.  A woman was trying to find out if her father, who had recently moved in with here, was registered, but she could not remember in what year he was born.  After a bit, I found the year and told her.  She said, “He has been saying he will be 90 next birthday, but he will only be 89.” Then as an afterthought, she asked if her son were registered. I joked and said, “Well I bet you remember his birth date.” She told me the month and day, but then could not remember the year.  I could hear her panic.  She asked if she could walk away from the phone for a moment, and I said, “Yes.”  Before going she mumbled that her son was 34. By the time she got back, I had figured out the year and found his registration, but she had still not remembered the year of her son’s birth.  I tried to reassure her, but she said, “What kind of mother am I that I can’t remember when he was born?” Then she said how overwhelmed she was taking care of her father and started to cry.

The days were intense, punctuated by brief walks and too much food of dubious nutritional value. Finally we counted down to the closing times for the polls.  A quarter hour later I left, as did many others.  I have neither seen nor heard from any of those people since.

THE TRANSYLVANIA/MORMON QUESTION

The university/museum boat trip down the Danube from Vienna to the Black Sea was not as satisfying as I had hoped. The lectures were not very informative and the stops in various cities were too brief to feel that I had even begun to see a place. Even so, I did get the sense that, although these countries may be neighbors and share much, they differ in essential ways. In one, for example, there was a strong security presence—armed men with automatic weapons outside the museums and in formation in the squares—while another one or two cops were spotted. In one country, mule-drawn carts were prevalent, while in others I saw only motorized vehicles.

I did learn yet again of deficiencies in my knowledge. Some were rather trivial. I failed the Budapest guide’s question, “What is the second largest Hungarian city in the world?” His answer: Cleveland, Ohio. I doubt that Cleveland continues to hold that distinction.(Perhaps there was a time that Cleveland held that distinction, but I doubt it now.)

Some other knowledge gaps were about the less trivial. I knew that World War I is vital to understanding today’s world, but I did not fully grasp how much that war’s aftermath continues to affect Eastern Europe, and elsewhere (by which I mean the Middle East). This was driven home when I learned that the same days were simultaneously a period of mourning in Hungary while a period of celebration in Romania. This stems from the Treaty of Trianon. Okay, maybe you know more than I do, but I had never heard of the Treaty of Trianon, which helped to end World War I. I thought that the Treaty of Versailles had done that, but the Versailles Treaty did not stand alone. The Treaty of Trianon (it is some consolation to my bruised ego that this treaty was signed in Versailles at the Grand Trianon Palace) was negotiated in 1920 between the Allies and the Kingdom of Hungary. Austria-Hungary had fought with Germany and was dissolved into separate states after World War I. The Treaty of Trianon defined an independent Hungary’s borders, which are nearly the same today.

The treaty proclaimed that all of Transylvania, including the part that had been in Austria-Hungary, was now Romanian, even though about a third of Transylvania’s population was ethnic Hungarian. Thus, the anniversary of that treaty is met with mourning in Hungary and celebration in Romania. It may be nearly a century later, but the memories are still firmly in place.

While I did not know enough to get all the history, sociology, or demography l I might have out of the trip, I did pick up a useful social tip: Make an effort, if the opportunity exists, to befriend any Mormons on your trip. Talk with them; hang out with them; eat with them. This is partly because all the Mormons I have met have been bright, charming, engaging, entertaining folk, but also for another reason: They don’t drink. On trips like mine, many meals are included in the tour price, and sometimes wine comes with the dinner. If so, a bottle or carafe or two may be placed on the tables. (I am not the kind of traveler whose tours have been so exclusive that the group is small enough that all can be placed at one dinner table; instead, there have been a number of tables with the travelers free to go to any place setting.) Stay with your new Mormon friends. We did, and there was more wine and vodka for us.

Now you might think you don’t have to find a Mormon; you can find any teetotalers. I warn you, however, avoid the teetotaling non-Mormon Christian groups. (If you want to see an interesting reaction, ask Mormons whether they are Christian.) In my experience, the teetotaling Baptists, for example, are quite different from the teetotaling Mormons. (I was raised in such a Baptist church. Take the Bible literally, I heard preached. I also heard that when the Bible said “wine,” it really meant “Concord grape juice.” I had some trouble with the inconsistency.) Those Baptists don’t just abstain, they think all should shun alcohol, the devil’s brew. (Thus, prohibition.) This view does not make for a good dinner companion when you are reaching for your third glass of pinot. The Mormons, however, seem to hold the attitude that while they will not drink alcohol (or coffee), they will not pass judgment on those who do. Thus, good dining partners, especially when you get their share of the wine.

Snippets . . . . Snippet It Real Good

Write me a story. A young woman was walking in my direction on a commercial street.  She was in camouflage clothes, and although she did not have the most piercings I had ever seen, it was right up there.  She had spiky hair that was bright yellow and deep black.  She seemed to be talking to herself.  Just as we were about to pass, she turned around.  And then I heard from her a beautiful, mournful rendition of “I Don’t Get Around Much Any More.”

The young woman said to the much older man, “Have an excellent day.” He replied, “I will settle for a pretty good day.” She smiled.

A Topsy Turvey World. I worked with some old leftists at the beginning of my career. They actually spent time debating about Trotsky. Back then, the right had a fear that these lefties were going to sell us out to Russia. Later I worked with some postmodern liberals, for whom all truth was relative, and the right castigated them. Now we have a concern that the right wants us to be Russia’s lapdog.  Now the right has become postmodern where facts have become subjective. Go figure.

If the Gospels are divinely inspired, why did He inspire four different people who wrote four different accounts inconsistent with each other? Wouldn’t it have been better for one comprehensive narration so that those without faith would have less to pick at?

On the subway I heard one 30ish man say to another, “He wrote 60 novels. And 100 short stories.” But I did not hear who that author was. The numbers are not quite right, but in the ballpark for Philip K. Dick. Who else could it have been?

I had a heart incident a decade ago. In the days right before I landed in the emergency room, the strain of ordinary exertion must have shown, for, for the first time ever and to my dismay, a young woman offered me her seat on the subway. Luckily she was not that good looking.

“La-La-Land” was not my favorite film of the year, but it must have been good. It almost made Los Angeles attractive and romantic. And some people even walked.

“No wonder people into health foods were so flaming skinny, she thought. Everything they ingested immediately obliterated any desire to ingest more.” Elizabeth George, Deception on his Mind.

What do you think of people (not always little old ladies) who push pets in strollers?

A while back, the daughter went to the opera with Molly. It was their first time. Earlier that year they had gone to the ballet.  When asked about the opera, the daughter said, “Molly liked the ballet better.  I like TV better.”

While crossing the street at a busy intersection, I heard a young man say to a young woman, “Would you rather have your best friend murdered, or . . . .” And it faded away.

The sign said: “Psychic—10 AM to 2 PM. Walk-ins Welcome.” Of course. She knows they are coming.