On April 15, 2013, two pressure cooker bombs exploded near the finish of the Boston Marathon. Three were killed and about 260 injured. Three days later, authorities publicly identified two brothers as suspects. Shortly thereafter the brothers killed a college policeman and wounded several other officers, one of whom died from his wounds a year later. One of the brothers was killed as the police tried to apprehend them, while the other was captured, put on trial two years later, convicted, and sentenced to death.

The bombing, the capture, the trial, and sentencing all were big news stories.  After all, this was terrorism striking at an iconic American event on Patriot’s Day, which memorializes another iconic event, the day often regarded as the opening of the fight for American independence. And it was Islamic terrorism.

Books have been written and movies made about these events. This is as it should be. Lives were lost, limbs amputated, and nightmares endured. These are stories worth telling and remembering.

A few days after that Boston Marathon bombing another, almost unknown, tragedy occurred at the West Fertilizer Company storage facility in West, Texas. Emergency service personnel were responding to a fire there when a horrific explosion occurred.  Fifteen died with up to 300 injured.  A fifty-unit apartment building was destroyed along with as many as 300 homes. A crater 92 feet wide and 12 feet deep was created.

Two American tragedies occurring almost at the same time. We know a lot about one, but few know or remember the other where there was a greater loss of life and the destruction of the equivalent of a small town. There are reasons for the different memories.  A bombing at the Boston Marathon makes us all feel vulnerable. We might not be spectators at that event, but we might attend other sports contests. We might sense that such a tragedy might happen outside a church or a concert or a rally. It might happen at a mall or a commuter terminal. It could easily happen at some place where we have been. On the other hand, few of us relate in the same way to ammonium nitrate storage, or even to deaths at a work site, even though workplace deaths average nearly 5,000 a year in this country—much higher, of course, than deaths by terrorism.

And, of course, Boston’s was Islamic terrorism, and that strikes chords that an industrial explosion does not.

There have been responses to the Boston bombing. Security has increased for events that bear any similarity to the Boston Marathon. I know of no cost estimates for the increased manpower and searches and barricades, but it has to be immense. On the other hand, response to the West tragedy seems minimal. This is especially striking because an investigative report a year later stated that the explosive material was not safely stored, and that federal, state, and local regulations regarding such substances were inadequate. The explosion was labeled “preventable.” In contrast, was the Boston Marathon bombing “preventable”?

If Islamic terrorism had leveled a small American village resulting in fifteen deaths, there would be an outraged and rapid response, but we don’t seem to bother ourselves if it is merely a corporate explosion. But then a twist. Last year law enforcement said that arson was the cause of the fire that led to the explosion. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has posted a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those who set the fire, but so far the offer only dangles.  Perhaps if the ATF had labeled the event as terrorism, there would be action.

A legal prediction: In the next few years, the Supreme Court will expand First Amendment free exercise of religion rights and essentially ignore that Amendment’s establishment of religion clause.  Religious organizations will more easily get state moneys, and less state money will be available for non-religious organizations. And people and organizations claiming religious rights will be able to discriminate more readily.

“Conventionality is not morality.” Charlotte Bronte, Preface to the Second Edition of Jane Eyre.

We who park a car on New York City streets become followers of religion. New York rules prevent us from parking on streets at particular times so that street sweepers can clean to the curb. Thus, in front of my house, on one side the street I cannot park from 11:30 A.M. to 1 P.M. on Mondays and I can’t park during those hours on the other side of the street on Tuesdays. However, there are many planned suspensions of these alternate side parking restrictions—38 this year. (Emergencies such as storms can also bring suspensions.) Many of the suspension are for secular holidays—Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, etc.—but the majority are for religious holidays, and as some religions gain more adherents in New York, and hence more political power, alternate-side suspensions may increase to recognize another religious festival. (Politics gets played out in all sorts of ways in New York City.) I believe that some Hindu and Islam holy days were added not too long ago, increasing the number of my days on which I do not have to worry if I am illegally park. It may sound odd, but I don’t believe that I am the only car parker who says, “Thank God for religion!”

This year, however, religion has not cooperated as well as in years past. There are a lot of suspensions bunched together now because of Easter and Passover. Alternate-side parking is suspended for the first two days and the last two days of Passover and for Holy Thursday and Good Friday. And they are this year, too, of course, but in most years Orthodox Easter comes a week or more after what someone like me thinks is Easter, and the parking restrictions get suspended for Orthodox Holy Thursday and Friday. But not this year. In a rarity, western and eastern Easter come on the same day. And I lose out on some hassle-free parking days. Religion can disappoint in so many different ways.

My left-handed sister got upset when our jokester father told her that he had bought her a right-handed tennis racket. Then she thought about it.

A legal prediction: In the next few years, the Supreme Court will expand First Amendment free speech rights. The overwhelming beneficiaries of these decisions will be corporations and conservative entities.

All those TV sports shows ought to interview college athletes about their favorite professors and then produce clips of those teachers in the classrooms and interacting with the athletes outside of classes.

When you see security personnel, do you always feel more secure?

The guy who painted our dining room is also a standup comedian. Are you surprised that his act has no jokes about his painting job?

How did a woman in a hoop skirt get into, much less use, an outhouse?

I know someone who doesn’t like sweetbreads.

I wondered what Donald J. Trump is like when he is alone in a room. My friend, stealing a line from John Maynard Keynes, responded, “When he is alone, there is no one there.”

The resurrection of Jesus is at the core of Christianity.  For most Christians their religion would not exist without the concept of life after death. It is important that this particular death, the death of Jesus, did not come from “natural” causes, from cancer or a heart attack or a liver disease or from what sometimes is labeled an Act of God, an earthquake or a flood or a tornado. It seems essential that the resurrection, the new life, came after a death caused by man. It was brought about not by an individual; it was not merely a murder or an accident. it was a death exacted by society. It was, in fact, an execution. If the resurrection is at the core of Christianity, at the core of the drama is also a state-enforced death penalty.  Is there meaning in the fact that Christianity flows from capital punishment?  As far as I am aware, the role of the death penalty in the Easter story is under-played.  On the other hand, the method of carrying out the execution, the crucifixion, which by definition requires a cross, has a central role in the symbols of the religion.

Although not all denominations fetishize the stations of the cross, nearly all Christians have an image of a beaten, yet still heroic Jesus struggling to carry the cross to Calvary. And every follower of Christ has looked in wonder at representations of Him on the cross, which, whoever the artist, are strikingly similar. He no longer can keep his head erect; it slumps to the side. He bears a crown of thrones and a wound in His rib cage. Stripped of all but a loin cloth (where did that come from?), He is dead or nearly so, but still powerful with a muscular torso and manly shoulders.  Even with death imminent, majesty is present.

Sermons and hymns almost rhapsodize over the agonies of the cross.  Nails pounded through flesh, muscle, and bone into the wood.  Hanging by the outstretched arms until death (mercifully) came.  And this suffering, we are told, was for us, for our redemption, because of our sinfulness, so that we can have everlasting life.

As a boy, I felt that if this suffering were for me and my salvation, Jesus’ agonies had to be unique. How else could His crucifixion work this wondrous change in the future of mankind if that pain and torture were commonplace?  Of course, I knew that two others had been crucified with Him and must have suffered similarly, but these deaths were merely an accompaniment to Jesus’ crucifixion. It was confusing, then, when I learned that this mode of execution was not unusual and saw depictions of fields of men nailed to crosses. Many others, I realized, encountered a physical pain that had to be almost identical to what Jesus encountered. If the agony of Jesus was supposed to mean something to me, did the agony of these countless others have special meaning, too?

Although I do not (fully) understand why, Jesus had to be executed for His resurrection to lead to the belief in Jesus’ redemptive power. The crucifixion, however, was not unique to Jesus and many suffered it; therefore His death did not have occur on a cross. But would it matter to Christian belief if a different form of capital punishment had been used? Perhaps it is important that the form was slow and agonizing, but Jesus apparently died a relatively quick death for a crucifixion, as indicated by the centurions’ surprise that He was no longer still alive. But if prolonged agony was important, even a quick form of execution like beheading or a less gruesome form like poisoning could have been preceded by lengthy flagellation and mutilations. And, of course, other horrific execution methods were also used then, such as stoning, impalement, starving, crushing under rocks, burying alive. My question then: What if crucifixion had not been used, but a different form of execution was? Certainly powerful symbols of Christianity would be different. Would that make any difference to Christianity itself? Is belief actually influenced by iconography, and if so, how?

I had not been to my family practitioner doctor in a while. For specific complaints, I had gone to specialists, and before various surgeries, I had had the equivalent of physicals so I had seen no need to go to the generalist. But I finally decided I should get on a more consistent health regimen and went to make an appointment with the doctor I had not seen for a couple years. I dialed his number and instead of the usual message I get from doctors—“please pay attention because the menu has changed”—I got the message, “Your phone call will be recorded. If you do not want to be recorded, hang up.” I don’t remember ever before hearing that my phone call to a doctor’s office would be recorded, and it was not the more usual, “For quality control purposes, your call may be recorded.” It was more ominous, and the message then gave a different phone number to call if I still wanted to proceed. I realized that the recorded announcement had never said that it was  the doctor’s office, and I thought maybe I had dialed wrong or the number had changed.

I hung up and googled the doctor. The first listing stated that his office was permanently closed. For a moment, I thought that he had retired. I didn’t know how old he was, but he was not young. More than once, he mentioned how he had treated Abby Hoffman ,and then I saw the next entry. An FBI press release from a year ago. My doctor had just been sentenced to 20 months in prison.! A New Jersey medical lab had been giving kickbacks for unnecessarily-ordered medical tests.  In fewer than three years, the doctor had received more than $100,000 in fraudulent dealings with medical.

My doctor was not alone. Thirty-eight people, including 26 doctors and 12 executives of the medical lab, had pleaded guilty as a result of the fraud. Looking for meaning in all of this, I thought of all the times that politicians have talked about fraud, and how often they concentrated on the actions of the classes with little power—welfare fraud, of course, and now unemployment insurance fraud—and how little about the actions of the powerful classes, such as doctors and corporate executives. But this narrative seemed a little forced under the circumstances. Doctors and corporate executives went to prison.

So then, even though I am convinced that I am not self-centered and could tell you all the reasons that I am not, I looked for something personal. My doctor, whom I had not seen for years, was in prison. Surely that was an omen. Did it mean that I should see doctors more often?  Less often? That I should think about what might be fraudulent in my life? Others around me? So far, however, I have not found that personal meaning. Any suggestions?

Remind me again: Why is April the cruelest month?

I am so old that I never got a participation trophy.

On radio or TV, the news host interviews someone, and at the conclusion of the segment, the host says, “Thank you” to the interviewee. That guest invariably replies, “Thank you.” Whatever happened to “You’re welcome”?

Why was it that a certain kind of male was described as a pansy? Why not a daisy? Or even better, sweet william?

People seem so proud of themselves when they know the meaning of “defenestration.” But how many of them know the word for the act of throwing someone off a roof?

The TV listing said volleyball was on. I was disappointed when I found out it was men’s volleyball.

Do you see the irony in the fact that gun sales have slumped since the last election with industry analysts asserting that it is because a Republican is president. If you want fewer guns in society, you apparently should vote against the candidate who favors fewer guns in society.

Sometimes when I watch The History Channel I wonder what I would have to study to become an ancient alien theorist. I am guessing the studies would not include methods for testing my theories.

The only time I have been in one was in Baltimore while on a tour of baseball stadiums as a guest of a minister friend. He insisted he wanted to go to his first “Hooters.”

“After all, she was a Catholic and her whole life was invested in death.” Robert Wilson, Instrument of Darkness.

Does it bother you that Barclays of the bank and center and sporting events fame does not have an apostrophe?

Why is it that some jokes are painful if told by the comedian but make me laugh when told by the ventriloquist’s dummy?

When I complained about how long mine was lasting, the friend said that there was a New England saying: A cold lasts fourteen days unless you are lucky and it lasts only two weeks.

Does it bother you, as it bothers me, when you hear, “She graduated NYU.” I want to scream, “She graduated from NYU.” But isn’t my priggishness misplaced if the correct formulation once was, “NYU graduated her”?

We once had the Secretary and Department of War. Now we have a Secretary and Department of Defense. Which is the more accurate formulation?

The doctor’s assistant taking my health history got to that now routine question about sexuality.  She said, “If you had to have sex, would it be with the opposite sex, the same, or both?” If I had to have sex.  My mind went through my sexual history. The last time someone held a gun to my head and said, “Have sex or else,” my performance must have been so inadequate that I can’t remember it.

I walked by the Ample Hills creamery and remembered back to when I wondered about the name. Not coming up with anything else, I decided that it sounded like a reference to breasts. Later I was reading a poem and saw the phrase and understood why the ice cream was “Ample Hills.” I was somewhat embarrassed for myself.

One of my trips to Venice came because the spouse was attending a conference on the Lido where we stayed.  As always, it was memorable. I would ride the boat to Venice and take long walks through the city while she was at her meetings.  I went to the lesser squares and heard from a church a soloist rehearsing for an evening concert.  I stopped at markets and, being without Italian, pointed to foods to try.  I saw apparent immigrants selling apparent knock-off goods outside fancy stores.  It was late September, and the weather was generally beautiful, but on a few days, I saw some of the rising water which is common in autumn, and it was interesting to see how the Venetians coped.  A movie scene with Heath Ledger was being shot next to San Marco, and it was fun to watch it–a rescue from a hanging for the movie Casanova.

Other times I walked throughout the Lido that was simultaneously part of Venice and separate from it.  Here there were cars and buses, a bit of shock.  I went to the aristocratic, but aging hotel of Death in Venice and tried to picture the beach, empty at that time of year, as it was a century ago when Thomas Mann must have studied it.

Our hotel made good recommendations for restaurants in what were said to be the non-tourist parts of Venice.  I doubted such places existed but since we often appeared to be the only non-Italians in the restaurants, or at least we heard no English or German, we weren’t in the usual places.

But most memorable was a dinner at the end of our stay with other scientists from the conference.  My job had been to scout up a restaurant, and I picked a place on a canal on the Lido.  It definitely was not a tourist place.  The staff did not speak English.  We were outside on a beautiful night and through nods and pointing and much laughter and wine, we selected local fish, which was wonderfully prepared.  This was a night for Venetian memories, but the night became more memorable because of the stories of D and M.

D was a colleague of the spouse and M her husband. M and D were born, raised, and wed in Romania.  Romania was still a communist dictatorship when they tried to leave some twenty years ago, but permission was denied.  They protested; they cited the Helsinki Accords; they spoke on a pirate radio station.  The Romanian response was to imprison M. D, now alone with a new baby, did not know what to do.  She did not know how M was being treated or when or whether she would ever see him again.  Out of desperation, D contacted the American embassy and some official there got word back that D should go to the embassy, but D was afraid to do that.  The embassy was ringed with Romanian security, and she expected to be arrested if seen approaching it.  She called the embassy and told an official, whom she had never met, of her fears.  The disembodied voice on the phone told her, “Meet me under the street lamp at this intersection at this time.  I will be wearing such and such, and I will take you into the embassy.  The Romanian military will not arrest you if you are with an American.”  Not knowing what else to do, D took the leap of faith and did as the voice instructed.  With an American at her side, she walked into the embassy and told her story of how she and her young family just wanted to leave Romania.  Apparently American diplomats worked behind the scenes, and after a few months, M was released.  Permission to leave, however, was not granted; instead, the Romanians “punished’ the couple by expelling them from the country.  No punishment was more gladly received.

It all sounded like cloak and dagger out of a modern Alan Furst novel, but not the way they told it.  They wove it into an amusing story, concentrating on how naive they were and how lucky.  They elicited much laughter under the stars by the Lido canal.  But surely anyone in a Ceausescu jail had to wonder about the possible fate that awaited him.

I thought, once again, whatever my country’s flaws, how lucky I am to be an American.  And I wondered how harrowing times should best be preserved.  In their memories, was it as humorous as they presented it?

Their story, of course, had a happy ending.  Not only did they get to leave the country as they desired, M made a lifelong friend.  After the conference, he was driving up to Austria to see again the person he first met as his cell mate.

It is always moving when the audience stands before the opera begins and sings the national anthem. My patriotism overflows when the movie is paused at the two-thirds mark to allow us to sing “God Bless America.” And it is thrilling that every outdoor bluegrass concert I have attended starts with an adrenalin-boosting flyover by Air Force jets.

Of course these things don’t happen, but why not when such performances and displays are routine occurrences at sporting events?  Why is it that nationalism is a part of baseball, football, and NASCAR, but not “cultural” performances? Is it thought that operagoers differ in patriotic fervor from a Minnesota Vikings crowd? If the cultural audience cares less about our country, isn’t that all the more reason to have “The Star Spangled Banner” before Lohengrin in hopes of increasing national identity? And if the opera audience is already patriotic, surely they would want to sing the national anthem.

I have never researched the history of the national anthem at sporting events, but a law professor of mine, Harry Kalven, a devoted Chicago Cubs fan even during the decades when you had to be a bit meshugganah to be a Cubs follower, said that it started during World War II. That seems likely, and I guess that once a patriotic ritual starts, it seems unpatriotic for it to end. Thus, we continue to hear the Anthem before the first pitch and now at every sporting event.  (In the trivia question department: How many times did Pat Pieper hear “The Star Spangled Banner”? How many of those days did the Cubbies lose? I don’t know the answer to either question, other than to say, many, many, many times.)

The national anthem may have been played at sporting events since WWII, but its performance style has changed. Once we had only straightforward renditions that zipped right along. For example, for years “The Star Spangled Banner” was performed by Robert Merrill at Yankee Stadium—sometimes live and sometimes on a recording (occasionally nowadays a Merrill recording is still used). It clocked in at under two minutes. Now we regularly have versions that seem to be in a contest to see how slowly and with what added emotion the anthem can be sung. Soulful interpretations of the song have been traced back to a particular moment—Marvin Gaye’s rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game. Since then we have had many take-your-time idiosyncratic versions of it. (Gaye’s version was over two-and-a-half minutes long.) For me, however, it really started with Jose Feliciano at the fifth game of the 1968 World Series. I thought his version was moving and made me hear the song afresh, but to many it was offensive because this dark-skinned, blind guy had the nerve to sing it with a fresh insight and in a non-standard style.

Feliciano’s version did not inspire copycats, however, because his career was damaged by it. For incomprehensible reasons, his rendition got him labeled unpatriotic and disrespectful, and many radio stations refused to play any of his songs after that. (Question for your history discussion: Is there more division and hate in the country now, or was there more in 1968?) Feliciano’s version, while slower than Merrill’s, was faster than Gaye’s at a little over two minutes. (A joke my father told me which was fresh back then.  A Latino boy new to the United States made his way to the stadium for a game. The only seat he could get was in the distant centerfield bleachers under the American flag. He knew no one and was feeling lonely, but he felt welcomed when everyone before the game began, stood, looked at him, and sang, “Jose, can you see?”) What was shocking, outrageous in 1968 is accepted or at least tolerated today, and now we have all these “modern” arrangements of our patriotic hymn. (What does it mean about the connection between patriotism and sporting events that you can place bets on how long the national anthem will take at the Super Bowl? Perhaps to the surprise of many, the under has won the majority of times in the last ten years.)

And now at baseball games we get “God Bless America.” This started in the aftermath of 9/11. I went with the daughter to a Yankee game not too much after the attacks, and that was the first time I heard it, in the recorded performance by Kate Smith, during the seventh inning. (I wonder how many there recognized her voice. You have to be my age to remembeer her fifteen-minute TV show.) That made perfect sense then, as did the delay of a different ball game that autumn to hear a speech by President Bush. And, as I said, once started, it is hard to stop a patriotic ritual.

I probably object more than most to “God Bless America.” Baseball games drag on long enough without the song, which does hamper the between-inning routines of the game. Of course, they could  get rid of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” which comes right after the patriotic song, but since I go to the park for baseball rituals, I want to hear “Root, root, root for the home team.” (Never, never, never get rid of “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” which plays at a different time in the game. Love it.) Perhaps I would object less if I did not find “God Bless America” so insipid. The best I can say is that it is a step up from the Kars for Kids song, but not much. (Have you ever wondered why the Kars for Kids folks don’t tell us what the money is for?) As a kid, well before I understood its left-wing political implications, I thought “This Land Is Your Land” was a much better song (still do), and I would be happier if at least some of the time, it were to be performed in the seventh inning. (Kudos to the Baltimore Orioles.)

This, of course, is nothing compared to what happens at the Super Bowl. I was only paying partial attention to the run-up to that game as I was preparing dinner for the wife and the daughter (I am a modern guy), but I heard portions of what seemed like a five minute narration by Johnny Cash about the flag, and there was a trio singing, I think, “America the Beautiful,” and then a sprightly version of the national anthem, followed by the flyover when military jets fly in close formation low over the stadium just as the national anthem ends.

I have no idea when the flyover ritual started. I am always amazed by it. How can the timing be so precise? My most memorable flyover was combined with another patriotic display, the flight of Challenger. This Challenger is a bald eagle, and I have seen him in action a number of times at Yankee Stadium. My memory is that the bird was originally released outside the stadium during the national anthem and would fly to the pitcher’s mound or home plate where he would land on his handler’s wrist. As time went on, Challenger would be released from right in front of the center field fence for his flight to the infield. It is magnificent seeing an eagle fly in the wild, and I always found Challenger’s flight nearly as thrilling. The last time I saw him (I say “him,” but I don’t if the eagle is male or female), however, was different. It was a playoff or World Series game because the rosters of both teams had been announced and were lined up on the first and third baselines. Challenger was flying in from the outfield as the National Anthem was concluding, and then the flyover came. This time the planes flew really low. I was in the fourth row of the upper deck, and my knees buckled a bit from the vibrations. (How do the residents of the Bronx respond to this patriotic display? Many must not know it’s coming, and perhaps think New York City is under attack again.) Challenger was not prepared for this. He had been about to land on his handler’s wrist, but the jets seemed to almost knock him out of the air. It was as if he hit an air pocket, and he dropped like a stone for ten feet. He then seemed disoriented. He flew around the lower deck and returned to the playing field where he had Derek Jeter and other players ducking out of his way. He did not land on his handler. He finally just settled on the infield grass and appeared very sad and discombobulated. His handler had to walk over and collect him.

Is there truly a connection between such patriotic rituals and the sports events that follow? This question brings back a memory of Rocky Graziano, who won and lost the middleweight championship within a year during the heyday of boxing. After retiring he wrote an autobiography, Somebody Up There Likes Me, which appealed to my schoolboy fantasies and was made into a successful movie starring Paul Newman. Later, he did the talk show circuit regularly telling amusing stories in heavy Brooklynese. On one of them he said that he hated “The Star Spangled Banner.” Merv Griffiin or Mike Douglas or whoever looked at him incredulously and said, “Why?” Graziano replied quite logically, “I knew that whenever the national anthem was over, someone was going to try to knock me unconscious.”

Should I worry about my mental health? After the colonoscopy, I was told that everything was normal, and my first reaction was, “I went through all of that for nothing!”

Whenever I see a man walking with a flower bouquet, I wonder what he is apologizing for.

She said, “I never said I was a good mother.” The eleven-year-old boy sitting next to her replied, “And I never said you were a good mother.” “I am only being a mother until I can get you out of the house.” “Fine with me. [Pause, then, somewhat anxiously.] But you are always going to keep my room as it is. You aren’t going to make it into a study!”

What question would you have asked?  The restaurant prominently displayed a sign that said, “Voted the Second Best Chinese Restaurant.”

Questions I did not expect to be asked on the subway.  The young, purple-haired woman wearing a frayed, but clearly “vintage” jacket said, “Excuse me. Do you know geometry?” I looked over and she pointed to a sketch book on her lap.  An octagon was carefully drawn.  (During the ride I learned that it was going to be a frame for a mirror, and she was on her way to buy some reclaimed wood.)  She said, “If the diameter is sixteen inches, can you calculate the circumference?”

He was pontificating as some are wont to do in a bar. He may have had more than the beer that was in front of him when I sat down. It was shortly after the last presidential election, and he was talking politics and history.  He rambled, but what he said about why Trump had won had some sense in it. I joked that he was one of the few people I knew that had voted for him. He quickly said that he had not, and then went on to say that he had taken his seven-year-old daughter to vote with him. He pulled out his phone and started scrolling. He found the picture of her entering his ballot into the scanner, a cute black girl in braids, and showed me a picture of his ballot, which had only Democratic votes.  I asked him how he felt the morning after the election when he found out who won. He said that he had been awake at 3 AM and that is when he found out.  His daughter was awake at 4.  He told me that she had become a devoted Hillary fan. When he told her that Trump had won, she said, “But he’s so mean,” and started to sob. He said that he did the only thing he could do. He picked her up and held her tightly and kept repeating until she fell back asleep, “It’s going to be all right. Daddy won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

“Nature takes good care of her appearance. What makes nature ugly is the behavior of human beings.” Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography.

Do you hold the emery board still and move your fingers or move the emery board across a still hand? Or do you use a nail file? Or do you only get professional manicures?

Mario’s Pizza is on DeKalb. Luigi’s Pizza is a half mile down that avenue. Do you, too, want to ask them whether they are brothers?

What is your reaction when you are bored and turn on a sports channel just looking for anything competitive to pass the time and you find that a dog show is on?

Parking increasingly requires us to go to one of those machines and buy a slip with a time printed on it to put on the car’s dashboard. With a parking meter, there was always a chance that time still remained on the meter, and we might need fewer coins than we thought. It was not a huge joy when that happened, but it always made me feel at least a little bit good. But that happy moment is now gone. Or does anyone, when leaving a parking place, give the slip with time remaining on it to someone pulling into a spot?

Will a new generation know what “Rita the Meter Maid” is about?

In my post last week, I suggested that we be skeptical of those who proclaim a method of interpreting the Constitution that insures judicial neutrality and guarantees that personal values of a judge will not enter into judicial decisions. This cannot be done. The Constitution itself makes it impossible. That document often uses broad or vague words, terms, or phrases, and not all reasonable people will agree on their meaning when applied to a particular circumstance. For example, Congress has the constitutional power “to regulate commerce . . . among the several states . . . (what is often called the Interstate Commerce Clause). Under this provision, can Congress regulate commerce between just two states, or does “among” require the involvement of multiple states? Does the term “commerce” require a commercial transaction? For example, if I take a pleasure trip from Brooklyn through New Jersey to Pennsylvania, has there been “commerce” that Congress can regulate? (Did I really just use “pleasure” and “New Jersey” is the same sentence?) Relying on the Interstate Commerce Clause, Congress prohibits the growing of marijuana, but does the power to “regulate” mean the power to “prohibit”? If I grow wheat and consume it myself, I will no doubt buy less grain from the national market for wheat. Can Congress regulate my personal garden because my wheat cultivation affects interstate commerce? The Supreme Court has addressed questions like these many times, and the answers could not have come from a judicial automaton. They could come only from justices exercising judgments, and those judgments may be influenced by personal values.

The Constitution is filled with terms that are even more open-ended than the Commerce Clause. Article I enumerates congressional powers and then goes on to state that Congress has the power to enact laws that are “necessary and proper” for carrying out the enumerated powers. Article II states that the “executive power” is vested in the President. Not all will agree in a particular circumstances as to what is “necessary and proper” or what is an “executive power.” Today we might ask whether “emolument” is a term so clear that we can’t expect different interpretations of it. And so on; and so on; and so on. The Constitution cannot just be read and applied. Constitutional decisions require contemporary interpretations of the words and phrases, and in spite of what some conservatives say, that will always permit personal values to affect the outcome.

We can hope that a judge will select a reasonable method for interpreting the Constitution, but no method will eliminate the opportunity for personal values to affect the outcome. Moreover, no method is mandated by the Constitution itself. That document is silent on how it should be interpreted. Those who framed it in the constitutional convention and those who adopted it in the states were also silent about the “proper” method, if any, for later generations’ constitutional interpretations.

It is noteworthy, however, that one of the earliest Supreme Court pronouncements about how the charter should be interpreted did not proclaim it as a document with a meaning fixed in the eighteenth century. Having been present at its creation, Chief Justice John Marshall knew as well as anyone how the framers and adopters wanted the Constitution interpreted.  When the Constitution was proposed, he advocated its adoption, and as a delegate to the Virginia convention, he voted in favor of it. When he was on the Supreme Court, Marshall gave his view on how the Constitution should be interpreted. He said it was a document “intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the crises of human affairs.” (Emphasis added.) Constitutional provisions do limit constitutional interpretations, but Marshall recognized that the document has many generalities and interstices that must be refined and filled in by judges. Constitutional meaning was not rigidly fixed in 1787. Rather, that meaning needs to adapt and evolve in light of “the crises of human affairs” if that document is to endure.

The originators did not tell us how to interpret the Constitution. Each generation must decide for itself what method or methods are to be used. This generation of conservatives has concocted a method that supposedly gives our fundamental law a meaning fixed from generations ago and removes a judge’s values from constitutional interpretation. This method is not constitutionally required, and its goals cannot be met. When a judge tells us that he acts merely as an umpire having removed his values from his decisions, he is either delusionally naïve or disingenuous.

“I found the channel changer and watched the end of an episode of Doctor Who.                   The David Tennant configuration, the only Doctor Who for me.”

Patti Smith, M Train.

I often see more young, student-looking people when I go to Shakespeare than at other plays, but there seemed to be even more this night.  I was seeing Richard II, the first play in a cycle by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  I went with trepidation, as I do regularly when I go to Shakespeare.  By now, I have seen many productions.  Do I really enjoy Shakespeare? The honest answer is “not always,” or perhaps, “not usually.”  Through the years some productions of Shakespeare have blown me away, including the first one I saw, Peter Brooks’ Midsummers Night’s Dream.  And there have been many outstanding ones since, but the truth is, I have truly enjoyed only the minority of Shakespeare plays that I have seen.  Oh, yes, even in the ones that have not fully appealed to me, there are usually some lines whose brilliance or beauty is noteworthy, but three hours for a few appealing lines can make for a long night.

Then why go, you might ask.  Because every so often, as I have indicated, some Shakespeare production is breathtaking, and I never know which one it is going to be.  I attend four Shakespeare plays because one of them will be magical.  I won’t fault you for wondering if that is really worth it, but that is what I do.

And this Richard II was a heartstopper.  The actor portraying Richard was a wraith with flowing hair over flowing robes, and by intermission he had already moved me.  I had not examined the cast notes before the play began, but as the house lights came up, I quickly went to them, and saw that David Tennant was Richard II.  David Tennant.  That sounded vaguely familiar.  Then I saw that he had been in Broadchurch.  I had just watched the first year of that British series, and I said to myself, “Of course, Tennant—Alec Hardy.”  Having identified Tennant to my satisfaction, I turned my attention back to the stage.

(I found the first year of Broadchurch satisfying.  It was my kind of show.  Over the eight or so episodes, a story was told from beginning to end.  No cliffhanger.  No feeling that as long as the show gets renewed, the producer will find a way to string it out.  Instead a complete narrative arc with good writing and mesmerizing actors.  Thus, I felt cheated at Broadchurch II, when instead of a new story, the story that had seemingly concluded was given a twist so that it could continue, or begin, anew.  I may have thought that that was a cheap trick, but still I found the second year engrossing.  My jury is out on whether I watch the third year.)

I had enjoyed Richard II so much that I broke my only-nod-at-a-celebrity rule.  If my eyes catch a celebrity’s eyes, I merely nod and move on.  Nothing more. No smile. No conversation. After seeing Richard II, but before seeing the next play in the cycle, I walked passed a sidewalk café near the theater.  Three men were at a table, and I said to myself that I knew at least one of them, but I could not place him.  As I continued on, it came to me that he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.  I went back, and when they looked up at me, I asked if that was so.  Yes, came the reply, and I told them how much I had enjoyed Richard II and how much I was looking forward to the other productions.  They said something gracious, but I felt awkwardly intrusive and quickly left.

David Tennant was not one of the three.  After seeing Richard II, I read an article that said he was not in the other plays in the cycle and often commuted between the UK and Brooklyn during the run.  I learned that he was a long-time member of the RSC and had done much Shakespeare.  And I finally learned why so many young people had been at the production—Tennant was Doctor Who, or at least one of them.  The article quoted Tennant to the effect that he knew that one of the first lines of his obituary would refer to Doctor Who.

Once again, it was clear to me that fame was not an ingot with universal value but depended upon the experiences of those who gaze on the famous.  For some, Tennant is famous for Shakespearean roles.  For me, he was Alec Hardy.  But for many more he was an incarnation of Doctor Who.  In essence, who Tennant is depends upon who we are and what we have done.  (I have heard many references to Doctor Who.  I know that it has been incredibly successful, but I have never watched it.  Is it worth watching?)

And although I said that for the actors at the sidewalk table I broke my celebrity-nodding rule, in some sense I didn’t because their fame was limited.  Few passersby, I am sure, recognized them or would have recognized their name.  Only because I had seen and remembered one of them from a few nights before did I recognize them.  I wonder if in London can they sit so little molested.

With my awkwardness, however, I blew a chance to ask these actors something I have wondered.  Just as I ponder how often playgoers really enjoy Shakespeare instead of attending as some sort of cultural duty, how often do actors truly enjoy doing Shakespeare versus tackling the plays because serious actors are supposed to hunger after Shakespearean roles?