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.

Testing Education

“Any thing you can’t measure you can’t manage.” So said Wilbur Ross in his confirmation hearings to become commerce secretary. Data-driven decisions are usually better than those based on hunches, intuitions, and common sense heuristics (hello, Kahneman and Tversky), but measurements even if good and reliable will not always define how to manage. And sometimes there must be management without good measurement. These and related thoughts were prominently in my mind while reading about another confirmation hearing, that for education secretary.

We measure reading and math proficiency, but choices often have to be made about the significance of the data. For example, imagine two third grade classes, each with twenty students. At the beginning of the year, each class has ten students that read at the appropriate second grade level and ten that read only at the first grade level. At the end of the school year, assume thirteen students in one class are reading at the appropriate third grade level, but the remaining seven are still first grade readers. In the other class, ten students are at the third grade mark, and the other ten have made it up to the second grade level. Which class has been more effective?  One class has 65% of its little charges reading at the appropriate level while the other one has only 50% doing so. But in the second class, all the kids improved, while 35% in the first class did not. If the two classes were taught by different methods, which method would you most encourage? However you answer that question, your answer is driven by values that don’t depend on the measurements.

As my own education taught me, not all that is important can be meaningfully measured. I thought that I had received a good education before going to college. My state, and certainly my town, were, as many places are, self-congratulatory about how good the educational system was. I did learn to read and do math. I did those things quite well, and my scores on the national tests placed me in the tiniest top fraction in the country.  For me, the standardized testing of my day was a blessing, and I got into one of the nation’s  top colleges.

Some publication gave the median SAT scores for my college class. Mine were well above that median, and I gloated to myself about how well I was going to do. But then school began.

My classes had Choate and Exeter and New Trier and Stuyvesant boys, and while their standardized scores were not likely to be as good as mine, I realized quickly that in some fundamental ways, they were better educated than I was. It was not that they knew more things than I did, but they knew how to think better than I did. We both could read The Sound and the Fury, but they had a better understanding of that book’s Easter symbolism.  I could learn the facts of the World War I peace process as well as anyone, but they could think better than I about the consequences of the treaties. I could memorize facts with the best of them, but I had never learned to think about the meaning of those facts.

I quickly learned that while I could read and that while I knew grammar and sentence and paragraph construction, I could not really write. One of my early papers, I think, actually had written on it, ”You can’t write.” This was even though in high school I got an A on everything I wrote. In college, I thought back on how little meaningful feedback I ever got on those papers. Few outside of the math teachers in my high school actually pushed me to be better.

I started to learn that often my writing problem was a thinking problem. If my writing was unclear, probably my thinking was unclear. I learned that the writing and thinking processes went together–that often the best way to think about an issue was to write about it. I had to clarify my thoughts, make my thinking more logical, think about whether and how my sources supported my positions. In other words, I learned I could not write well until I could think well.

Perhaps what was hardest for me to learn was that I needed not only to consider what I did know, but to ponder what I did not know. Could those gaps affect my thinking, and if so, was there a way to get that knowledge? I learned I needed to have a skepticism about what I thought I knew so that I would challenge myself to fill the gaps in my understanding.

When years later I taught law students at a school that did not attract top college graduates, many of my students would tell me that they had a writing problem. They knew the material, they would say, but could not explain it on paper. However, when I probed their knowledge, it was almost always deficient. They couldn’t get the material on paper because they didn’t know it well or how to think about what they did know.

On standardized testing, only a few in a hundred or a thousand were better than I was entering college, but those tests did not test everything that was important, and my education up to that point had been crucially deficient. But even if that education had been better, would there have been good measurements for what I lacked? I accept that there were reasonably good and objective measurements of my geometry prowess or reading comprehension skills and my factual knowledge of history and literature. But I am agnostic about how well thinking can be measured. If it can’t be, what then? Thinking, which means something in addition to reading comprehension and solving equations, is crucial to a good education. Wilbur Ross said that if it can’t be measured, it can’t be managed. But often, as in much of education, we need good management even when there might not be good measurements. Can that be done?

Got Work?

The doorbell would ring. It was usually early evening. I would curse. Someone at the door at the hour invariably meant one thing: Someone was going to ask me for money.

We did not have the luxury of a filter between us and the street in our row house—no doorman, no buzzer system. Anyone could walk the few feet from the sidewalk and push our bell. We either had to ignore it or deal with whoever was there. And, for quite a stretch in our neighborhood, it was people asking for money.

We don’t know if we were targeted or if our neighbors had the same thing happen to them. We never talked about it with them because there seemed to be no way to stop what always seemed like an intrusion.

Usually it was a man in his twenties or thirties. Most often the person simply said, “I don’t have any money. I am hungry. Could you help me?” On one occasion a man was standing there with what I assumed was his son. He asked if we had cans of food that we could give him. The spouse hearing that got something out of the kitchen cabinet. When giving this to the man, she told him to come back in a week. She spent hours finding a food pantry that would help the father and son. The two did come back, and the spouse told them about the fruits of her labor. That food pantry said they never went.

A few tried even more of a con. The pitch was along these lines: “I am in a big jam. My mother was just taken to the hospital, (or some variation of an emergency). I was going to drive there, but my car would not start (or some variation of car trouble.) I don’t have any cash, and I have to pay for a jump (or a car service). Could you help me?”

If you have sometimes found being approached by a panhandler unpleasant or perhaps even vaguely threatening, answering that evening doorbell was more so. The home should be a place of respite, and this made it feel not entirely secure. Nothing bad ever happened. No one threatened, but answering the face-to-face request for money was never easy. Mostly we said no because we quickly found that giving something on the doorstep meant an increasing number of intrusions since invariably the money-seeker would soon be back.

Marvin, however, broke the pattern. He, too, rang the doorbell and said that he needed money, but instead of asking for it, he asked if there was any work he could do for us.  Of the myriad people who’d come to the door, he was the first, and only one, that asked for work. By then I seldom if ever gave money to the others at the door, but I found myself wanting to help Marvin.  All I could think of that moment was to ask him to sweep the sidewalk. He did, and I paid him, and a long relationship began.

There have been many ups and downs.  At the beginning, Marvin would come too often. I had to tell him time and again not to come more than once a week and would send him away when only a few days had elapsed since his last sweeping.  Sometimes he rang the bell too late at night, after the daughter was asleep, and I would get angry with him.  There was a stretch when he had been drinking and difficult to deal with. He would disappear for stretches, and when we thought he was permanently gone from our lives, he would reappear. The wife once invited him in to ask about his life history. Mostly it was boring and repetitive as he cataloged rehab attempts and incarcerations, but the pattern changed when one judge released him from jail early. He is still grateful to that judge, and that incident appears to be the one that started the change in his life. He was given and found a church that has given him activities, contentment, and fellowship.

Our relationship began more than thirty years ago. He still sweeps for us and has done other custodial tasks. But it has gone beyond that. On winter nights, when ice and snow were piled at the curb and on the sidewalks, he would wait for the wife to come to make sure that she safely made it into the house. She went to the hospital with him when something was wrong with his eyes, and he was clearly frightened about his condition. We have tried to help him in other ways, including having a fund for him dispensed by his church. And it all started when he didn’t just ask for money but asked if I had any work for him.

FIRST SENTENCES

“The small white steamer, Peter Stuyvesant, that delivered the immigrants from the stench and throb of the steerage to the stench and the throb of New York tenements, rolled slightly on the water beside the stone quay in the lee of the weather barracks and the new brick buildings of Ellis Island.”  Henry Roth, Call it Sleep.

“Toxic water streamed with gold like the belly of a turning fish: sunset over Newtown Creek.”  Kate Christensen, The Astral.

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

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

“As I entered the lobby of The New York Times at 10:30 P.M., normally deserted at that late hour, I found myself in step behind a lissome woman with wavy ash-blond hair, wearing a snug-fitting black dress.”  Arthur Gelb, City Room.

“Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have that charming and instructive sight—an upper middle-class family in full plumage.”  John Galsworthy, The Man of Property.

“I was looking for a quiet place to die.  Someone recommended Brooklyn.” Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies.

“It was in those days when I wandered about hungry in Kristiania, that strange city which no one leaves before it has set its mark upon him.” Knut Hamsun, Hunger.

“Every age creates its own Shakespeare.”  Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All.

“Nearly everything she said was truthful, but because she laughed so much her friends often believed she was joking and remained her friends.”  John O’Hara, Andrea.

“This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak—the sea entering into the life of most men, and men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of breadwinning.”  Joseph Conrad, Youth.

“It is a remarkable fact about the United States that it fought a civil war without undergoing a change in government.”  Louis Menand, Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America.

“Close to three million years ago on a campsite near the east shore of Kenya’s spectacular Lake Turkana, formerly Lake Rudolf, a primitive human picked up a water-smoothed stone, and with a few skillful strikes transformed it into an implement.”  Richard E. Leakey and Roger Lewin, Origins: What New Discoveries Reveal About the Emergence of Our Species and its Possible Future.

“The dream of reason did not take power into account.”  Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry.

You Think I’d Crumble . . . That’s Me in the Corner

A decade or so ago I went to Israel on an unusual junket—all expenses paid to study terrorism from an Israeli perspective. My reactions were all over the map.

As a kid, shekels was a slang term for money, but now I was buying chewing gum with that decidedly non-biblical currency. Back then I had often looked at the pictures and maps in my Thomas Nelson Revised Standard Version Bible during the boring parts of church, but only when I went to Israel, did I realize how small the country is.  (Bethlehem is but six miles from Jerusalem.)  More than once on the trip, I was told that Israel is about the same size as New Jersey.  (Is there be any other way that New Jersey is like the Holy Land?)

Of course, especially on this trip, there were constant reminders of terrorism—the disco across from our Tel Aviv hotel where partygoers were bombed waiting to enter; the Gaza checkpoint where soldiers had been killed; the meeting with the man disfigured by an incendiary device tossed into his car. These reminders of terrorism made it hard to remember that someone in Israel is more likely to be killed in a car accident than by a terrorist and that per capita more people are killed by guns in America than by terrorists in Israel even though guns are everywhere in Israel.  Soldiers carrying guns are a common sight.  (My favorite—a soldier in sandals carrying a gun slung over one shoulder and the biggest, reddest purse I’d ever seen balancing on her other side.)

One image of Israel: security, security, security.  Searches to get into the hotel; lengthy interrogations and more to get into the Knesset.  Sometimes I did wonder about the efficacy of these measures.  The first time I went to a Czech restaurant the guard controlling admission did a cursory search. The second time, he simply said, “Have you got a gun?”  I said no and was nodded in.  Would a terrorist tell him he had a gun?  By the third day at the hotel, our group was generally waved around the security check point.  Does that mean a terrorist committed to staying at the hotel for at least three days could then avoid security?  Or is it that I and the rest of the group did not look Palestinian?

My northern European looks did not stop El Al from subjecting me to rigorous scrutiny.  Going I was pulled aside from the other passengers, interrogated, and my suitcase thoroughly, I say thoroughly, inspected.  Returning it happened again, but then I had a touch of turista, and the experience seemed to take even longer.  I did get on the plane even though Ihad fudged the truth.  On the day of departure, it was market day near the hotel.  I went to poke around and ended up buying some gifts of Dead Sea mud and some bee products.  I did not give much mind to these casual purchases until I was asked at the airport whether my items came from the stall in the market, or whether the seller had gone into the back to get the facial mask and pollen rejuvenator.  Sick I may have been, but the mind quickly decided the right answer for getting on board—I picked them off the shelf, handed them to the proprietor, and then paid for them.  Everything was in my sight.  But as soon as I said that I was not absolutely sure that I really knew how the transaction went.  Wanting to get home, I did not voice this little doubt.  I was a bit a nervous on most of the flight home.

We were exposed to many intriguing people—terrorism experts in academic institutions; drone pilots; agents who were incredible marksmen and, as indicated by a film of an actual incident, could snatch a suspected terrorist off the street, throw him in a van, and drive off in a matter of seconds.  Perhaps most striking was the professional interrogator for one of the intelligence agencies.  He entered the room, and his bearing, his aura was such that I would have told him anything he asked me.  He maintained that a professional interrogator almost never needed to use physical force, implying that Americans did not have professional interrogators, but he also went on to discuss whether shaking a subject should be considered torture.

I also saw more usual tourist sights—the cars haphazardly parked; the Tel Aviv waterfront;  Caesarea being set for a beautiful evening, seaside wedding reception; the I-would-not-believe-it-if-I-had-not-seen-it rest stop in homage to the King, not David or Solomon, but Elvis Presley.

We spent a few hours touring Jerusalem.  Our guide for the day impressed me when, for reasons no longer remembered, he talked about the obverse of a coin.  Note, not the obverse side of a coin, which would have been incorrect. I was unsure if I had ever heard a native English speaker use obverse, and my admiration increased when I found out he was certified to give tours in many languages in addition to English.  He took us in and out of many religious places, and of course, it was important to remember whether the place was Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, or Muslim in order to put a hat on or take it off.   I think the Upper Room was pointed out, but then another place was said to be perhaps the site of the Last Supper.  Mary’s burial place was there, but, then again, a location in Turkey is venerated as the place where her Assumption took place, and of course, it is not clear to Assumption believers whether she actually died. (And I think that some believe she died in India.)

We passed stations of the cross and the crucifixion and burial places.  I wondered how people could be so sure that these were the right locations and why there was no marker for the doorway where the Wandering Jew refused aid.  Perhaps these doubts about authenticity led me to blasphemous thoughts.  I was told to plunge my arm through a hole so that I could feel the rock on which the True Cross stood.  As I did, my mind returned to the sixth grade Halloween parties where, blindfolded, we put our hands into bowls of grapes and spaghetti and told we were feeling eyeballs and guts.  Of course, many of these now revered sites were “authenticated” centuries after the events by, I believe, Constantine’s mother, who also collected many relics, perhaps the relics that Mark Twain later saw in his travels to the Continent and the Holy Land.  Even if they are in the places where the events happened, I wondered why are they regarded as holy sites?  If a religion is universal, then no place could be more sacred than another.

But the most striking part of the Jerusalem trip was its beginning and end. Before we entered, the obverse-coin guide brought us to a place that overlooked Jerusalem. He pointed out things in the old city; where Bethlehem was and is; the Palestinian-controlled territory; the wall marking the boundary (although Israelis called it a fence, not a wall); and the mural-painted wall (this was called a wall) behind us, which prevented Palestinians down below from shooting into Israeli apartments up above.

Our location was a parking lot, and a nearby food van was, like many other Israeli places, playing old American rock and roll.  The third song I noticed was Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive.  I almost laughed at the remarkable fortuity.  I know that the song is about a woman’s strength in rejecting a lover who walked out, but what better chorus could there be as I looked out over Israel and Jerusalem than I WILL SURVIVE.

During this trip because of the sensitive places we often visited—military and intelligence facilities—we were accompanied by heavily armed, young men, and in Jerusalem I fell into step with such an escort. A few moments later, some men rounded a corner shouting and elbowing others aside.  I asked the escort, born and raised in Israel, what that was about, and he replied, “Just some Arabs showing off.”  He and I exited the old city together, and I was visually assaulted by a row of tacky tourist shops.  American rock and roll came from them, too, and the first song I heard outside the old city was R.E.M.’s Losing My Religion.  I smiled and said to the escort, “That doesn’t seem right for Jerusalem.”  He stopped, paused a beat, and thoughtfully said, “I think that is the only way.”

Is that right?  Can there only be peace if we lose our religion?

The daughter’s crack art 

            She did not talk much as a child. She seldom played with other children. Mostly when she came home from first or second grade, she drew. She did not do the classic stick figures of mommy and daddy or a rudimentary house or cat. Nothing representational. She did abstract drawings, but these were not quick slashes of crayons across paper. She could often spend an hour or more on one. She seemed to have some sort of plan and carefully placed straight-edged lines of one color alongside half-circles of another. She would end up with strokes shooting off at angles seemingly held in place by the occasional curve. She did not look for approval; she drew only to satisfy herself. I don’t remember her ever saying, “Look, Daddy, at what I made!”

          One day, however, the daughter had made some different art. She had been with Cleta to the park at the end of the block. Calling it a park was then somewhat generous. When we moved in, there was a triangular plot that was mostly empty but had a cemented-up old movie house and a few other vacant buildings. Those structures were eventually torn down, some minimal landscaping had been done, and a park proclaimed. Vacant land stood across the street from the site’s hypotenuse; a boarded- up hospital bordered one side; and a nursing home the other. (Later on the park was redesigned into an attractive space; a Catholic charity converted the hospital into housing; and nice row housing was constructed on the vacant land.) A few people used the park during the day back then but not many, and I could only guess what happened there during the night. I certainly did not go into it after dark.

            When I came home that evening, Cleta said, “Look at what she found in the park and what she did with them.” She showed me a piece of construction paper to which were glued tiny, plastic vials with colorful tops. They were arranged in some careful pattern that clearly pleased the daughter’s eye. This time I could see pride in her. She knew she had made something special, and I agreed inwardly and outwardly. It was striking.

            While I evinced sincere admiration, I also tried to keep the horror off my face. While Cleta and the daughter did not recognize the plastic containers, I knew what they were; they were crack vials. The different colored tops denoted, in effect, different brands of crack. I might have guessed it before, but now I really knew what happened in the park at night. As I looked at the art and the pride on the artist’s face, thoughts flashed and crashed in my mind, I resolved to say nothing about the origin of what were now part of an innovative collage. The park was safe during the day, and I did not want Cleta and the daughter to be afraid of going there.

The mother got home later, and I showed her the daughter’s art, but I played dumb when the topic moved to the source of the vials. Much to the daughter’s consternation, however, I made her wash her hands time and again that evening.

Much later, not from me, the daughter did learn that this art incorporated crack vials. This is a story we now share. Amazing what fathers and daughters can bond over.

Snippets . . . . Snippet It Real Good

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