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The First Was Not Always the First (continued)

          We take the basic right of freely exercising religion for granted. You can go to your chosen house of worship; read the Bible in any of the multitude of versions of it or the Koran or even Dianetics; pray together with others in your home or elsewhere; watch sermons on TV; give money to religious missions; solicit money for religious purposes; and so on. When people claim that free exercise of religion is under attack, they don’t mention that our right to worship whatever Being we want in the fashion we choose is as secure as it ever has been.

          Instead, claims that the free exercise of religion is under attack often come from those who maintain that their behavior must be exempted on religious grounds from the duties placed on the rest of society. For example, even though the law says businesses may not refuse to serve someone because of race, sex, or sexual orientation, a person claims that because serving a gay person violates his religious belief, he should be exempted from the law. An employer maintains that contraception violates his religious beliefs, and therefore although the law mandates that he provide health insurance that covers the costs of contraception, he feels he does not have to.

          The claim is not that the government has prevented anyone from being allowed to attend the church they want or study the text they hold sacred or pray in the form they desire. It is the assertion that because of their religious beliefs, they must be allowed to behave differently in society and ignore the laws that the rest of us must obey. Even though others must follow certain laws, they don’t have to because of their religion.

          The advocates for these kinds of free exercise claims seldom mention the First Amendment’s other religion clause, the one that actually comes first and is perhaps the most unusual part of that constitutional provision. It bars the establishment of religion.

          The First Amendment, apart from the Establishment Clause, guarantees individual expression and belief and helps ensure a responsive and responsible government. These rights are essential for a free and open society. The prohibition of the establishment of religion, however, arises from different sources.

          The founders knew that free societies and representative democracies could have an established religion. At the time the Bill of Rights was proposed by Congress, several states, including those ratifying the First Amendment, had established churches. These establishments were not regarded as inconsistent with a free, representative government. The Constitution’s Section 4 of Article 4 commands, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government. . . .” If established churches were detrimental to that form of government, Congress would have had the duty to disestablish the state churches. They, instead, did not interfere with the established churches. (Even today countries that seem to have at least as much liberty as ours have established churches, including Denmark, Iceland, Scotland, and England.)

          The Establishment Clause is striking because it has a purpose that is different from the rest of the First Amendment, but also because of its broad language. Picking a church to be established nationally would have been divisive—state-aided churches in the south were Anglican and in New England were Congregational—but the Bill of Rights does not just prevent an established church. It bars any establishment of religion, and it does not just prohibit a formal establishment of religion, it goes much further and says there shall be “no law respecting” such an establishment. The founders did not just want to prevent an established church or the establishment of religion; their language indicates that the United States should not even be on a road that could possibly lead to such an establishment. (This divorce from religion was also evident in Article VI of the Constitution, which states that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Some states did have religious requirements for office-holding that lasted into the nineteenth century. New Hampshire, for example, required state officials to “be of the Protestant religion.”)

          Neither the placement of the Establishment Clause at the beginning of the First Amendment nor the fact that it serves purposes different from the rest of the amendment means that it is more important than the others. On the other hand, it should be viewed at least as equally important as the Free Exercise Clause. All interpretations of free exercise must consider whether a law respecting the establishment of religion is being made.

          The original notion of the free exercise right—I can worship as I choose–produces no tension or conflict with the Establishment clause. I can join the congregation of my faith; read my desired sacred texts; fill the collection plate of my selected church; label my god by my preferred title; worship more than one god; insist that women should be segregated from men during a service; maintain that divorce, homosexuality, contraception, and looking at the behinds of the opposite sex are sins. None of this raises an issue of the government moving towards the establishment of religion.

          The modern claim of free exercise that says a law cannot force a person to behave contrary to religious principles is, however, different. If a person is exempt from following the law others must obey because of religious beliefs, then that person is put in a favored spot over the non-religious or those with a different religion. Does creating this privileged position based on religion violate the injunction that there can be no law respecting the establishment of religion?

          If your answer is no, consider this possibility: Assume a law requires employers to provide insurance to employees when ten people are employed. Assume that Sam, the owner, believes in something akin to Christian Science and that healing comes only through prayers without medical intervention. He maintains that it would violate his free exercise of religion to provide the legally mandated health insurance. Of course, if he is exempted from that general law, not only do his employees not get the coverage, Sam gets a financial advantage over other businesses, and perhaps competitors might think about joining Sam’s church.

          I am not pretending that I know how those claims should be decided, but in examining them, we should realize that many of the free exercise claims bring a tension with the Establishment Clause.

(concluded February 12)

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The First Was Not Always the First (continued)

          The rights of the First Amendment cannot be considered the most important because they come first; they were proceeded by freedoms in the main body of the Constitution. But perhaps we still should regard the First Amendment rights as the most important in the Bill of Rights because, of course, they come before all the other ones in those ten amendments. That placement, however, was not the intention of those who drafted these provisions. The First Amendment rights come first not because of the drafters’ design but because of a historical happenstance.

          The original Congress passed twelve, not ten amendments, by the required two-thirds majority of each House. These proposals were submitted to the states, but the requisite three-quarters of the states only ratified ten of the twelve, and those ten, the Bill of Rights, went into effect December 15, 1791. The two that were not adopted were the first two provisions passed by Congress, and not surprisingly, were labeled by Congress as the First and Second Amendments. What is now our First Amendment was labeled the Third Amendment. Indeed, well into the nineteenth century courts referred to the amendments by the numbers Congress used, and early judges wrote about our First Amendment as the Third Amendment.

          The congressional framers of our Bill of Rights did not place our First Amendment rights first. And there is nothing to indicate that the states somehow concluded that the Third Amendment, as it came to them, contained the most important rights and consequently refused to ratify the first two proposals to bump that Third Amendment to the head of the queue. It is a mere fortuity that the protections in our First Amendment come first in the additions to the main body of the Constitution, and no importance should be accorded its placement. The notion that our country’s founders regarded First Amendment protections as the most important because they placed them first in the Bill of Rights is revisionist history.

          On the other hand, while the First Amendment’s placement does not indicate the importance of its protections, its rights are foundational to what we would consider a “free” society. That is not true for much of what is in the rest of the Bill of Rights. Many of its provisions are America-specific. We have them but other countries have not considered them necessary for freedom. Most nations do not have the constitutional equivalent of our Third Amendment, which restricts the quartering of soldiers in homes. Many free societies have justice systems that do not rely on juries as we do. Most countries do not have in their constitutions the right to keep and bear arms. Indeed, our overall structure of government mandated by the Constitution with a President selected by an electoral college, a Congress, and separation of powers has not been deemed necessary for many free societies.

          Free nations do not need all of what is in our Constitution, but it is hard to imagine a country we would consider free that did not have free speech and a free press. We may not think about the ability to assemble as much as speech and press, but people need to be able to come together for many reasons: comradeship, grieving, exchanging ideas, protestation, worship, laughter, dinner, and much, much more. Without a right to assemble peaceably, a society would not be free. And a society is not free if governmental communication only goes one way, from the government to the people.  In a free society, the government is the instrument of those it governs. Freedom requires citizens and others to be able to tell the government of perceived problems and improvements. Whether we label this the right to petition the government or something else, it is essential.

          But when Education Secretary DeVos and Attorney General Gonzalez were referring to the primacy of the First Amendment, they were not drawing attention to speech, press, assembly, and petition rights, guarantees that tend to complicate the lives of government officials. (Right now, I am looking at you, Mike Pompeo.) Instead, they were stressing the importance of the free exercise clause, a guarantee that may not be even needed when other First Amendment rights are preserved. When there is freedom of speech, a person can preach, pray, and proselytize. With freedom of the press, Bibles and Korans can be printed as can religious tracts of every sort. With a right of assembly, people can come together to worship, hear sermons and homilies, and join together in singing and praying. The provisions of the First Amendment that generally guarantee a free society also guarantee freedom of religion. Seventeenth century England had criminalized Quaker services. Even without the free exercise clause, that could not happen in America with free speech, a free press, and the right to assemble.

(continued February 10)

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The First Was Not Always First

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

          Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education, recently wrote in an op-ed piece: “There’s a reason why the First Amendment comes first. Our country was founded upon the ‘first freedoms’ it protects. The freedom to express ourselves — through speech, through the press, through assembly, through petition and through faith—defines what it means to be American.” 

          Her statement seems to say something learned about our country, and surely First Amendment rights are important, but can her words be profound when they are misleading and misapprehend and misrepresent history? DeVos says the collection of First Amendment rights “defines what it means to be an American.” DeVos should remember the old story in which the teacher asked, “Who was the first man?” Glen shouted out, “George Washington.” Miss Wilson responded, “What about Adam?” Glen, showing disappointment in his teacher, said, “Well, if you are going to count foreigners.”

          America is not alone in what we label First Amendment rights. Citizens of many countries have the right to express themselves. If that right defines what it means to be an American, many foreigners must then be American.

          Perhaps what DeVos really meant to say is that we would not be Americans without these guarantees, but they do not define what it means to be an American. Happily, we are not the only people in this world with such rights. (The Democracy Index has scores for civil liberties and about twenty countries are ranked higher than the U.S.)

          DeVos made another point. These are our most important rights, she says, because the “First Amendment comes first.” Alberto Gonzalez, Attorney General for George W. Bush, said something similar years earlier, stating that religious freedom is the country’s first freedom because our founders saw fit to place it first in the Bill of Rights. We should give primacy to First Amendment rights because they come first, he said, and following that logic, we should give primacy to the religious provisions because they are the first of the First Amendment. It all seems so obvious a third grader using vouchers could follow the reasoning. But this elementary school reasoning is misleading and historically inaccurate.

          The rights of the First Amendment don’t come first in the Constitution. They come after the seven articles of the Constitution that were drafted in 1787; the initial amendments were drafted in 1789 and went into effect in December 1791. Our Constitution granted rights before the Bill of Rights existed, and if rights are to be measured by their placement, then these original freedoms coming years before the First Amendment must be more important than the religious and speech provisions.

          Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution prohibits the suspension of habeas corpus except when a rebellion or invasion may require it. The next paragraph prohibits a bill of attainder or an ex post facto law. The next Section 9 provision gives another right: No direct taxation unless it was based on the census. This was an important right until it wasn’t a right. The Sixteenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, wiped out the no-direct-taxation provision by explicitly authorizing an income tax. Our rights, it turns out, are not immutable.

          Section 9 contains two other provisions that we seldom think about but were truly essential foundational rights for this nation, because without them we would not be one country: “No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. No preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one state, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.” We are welded into one entity because goods and transport can freely travel among the states. Without that, we would only be a collection of fifty fiefdoms.

          The founders also placed important rights in Article III, which provides a narrow definition of treason and requires “the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open court.” It also eliminated punishments for treason that had existed in Europe. Finally, Article III, Section 2 guarantees jury trials for crimes. (If the importance of a right is measured not by its placement in the Constitution, but by the frequency of its protection, then juries are the most important constitutional right since juries are guaranteed not only in Article III but also in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments.) In other words, First Amendment rights should not be given primacy because they come first; they don’t.

(continued February 7)

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Phosphates and Lessons from Phosphates

On the recent trip to Morocco, the guide told us that Morocco did not have oil but that it did have the world’s largest reserves of phosphates. Some of those deposits are in Western Sahara, which Morocco claims and on its maps is the southernmost part of the country. Other nations, including Algeria, dispute Morocco’s assertion of sovereignty over this area, which was controlled by Spain until near the end of the twentieth century. This conflict has fueled tensions between Algeria and Morocco, and the long border between the two countries is closed. Various factions have fought in Western Sahara, but a tenuous cease fire has been in place for over a decade. As far as I can tell, the land is one of the most sparsely inhabited places on earth. But, although the amounts are not clear, it does have phosphates, and that apparently means it could be worth fighting over. The Western Sahara phosphates, however, are not the only Moroccan ones. There are also plentiful phosphates deposits in the rest of Morocco.

Phosphates are important to you and me for several reasons, including that they are an essential component of artificial fertilizers that help produce the food we need. I had not given phosphates much thought even when it was mentioned on the trip, but in a minor small-world moment I read a passage about the substance in a novel I started reading soon after returning from Morocco.

In The Gold Bug Variations by Richards Powers, published in 1991, Jan O’Deigh, a main character, is a reference librarian in Brooklyn. Back in the day, these librarians would answer factual questions on all sorts of questions or help patrons find the answer. What was Ty Cobb’s lifetime batting average? What is the highest point in Florida? She is asked a question about what countries are more affluent than America. She posts an answer: “Nauru, a Pacific Island whose eight thousand inhabitants are far wealthier per capita than the U.S. population. They make their money on one product, phosphates, which run the industries of Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. The Nauruans extract the chemicals from huge deposits of seafowl guano laid down over thousands of years. Such affluence has a price. The island is itself largely a guano deposit, and the more than two million tons of phosphates exported each year eat it away rapidly.”

Nauru—never heard of it. To my mild surprise I found out it was not a made-up place. I sought to learn a bit about it. I did what we now do for a little information. I turned not to a reference librarian, but to the internet. I learned Nauru is a Pacific island only eight miles square with its nearest neighbor, another mere speck in that big ocean, only 190 miles away. But the good news for the Naurans with wanderlust is that the Solomon Islands are only 810 miles away. The republic is geographically smaller than all other countries except Vatican City and Monaco, and its present population of 10,000 is the world’s second or third smallest of the world’s nations.

Nauru’s phosphates were easily strip mined, and around 1980, the time The Gold Bug Variations is set, the GDP per capita was about $50,000, which placed it second in this category behind Saudi Arabia. However, the phosphates were playing out. A trust was set up from the phosphate revenues to support the population once the guano deposits were exhausted. The trust was mismanaged. It once had $1.3 billion, but now the fund is less than a tenth of that. The country has struggled to find other sources of revenue, and the GDP per capita (different estimates are given) may be one-twentieth of what it was in its heyday.

The strip mining not only depleted the phosphates, it caused severe ecological damage to the island. Australia concluded that it had a responsibility because of its role in the devastation and offered to move the population of Nauru to an island off Queensland, where the Nauruans would have become Australian citizens. The populace wanted their own sovereignty, however, rejected the offer, and stayed put. (Staying put seems to a favorite [non]activity on the island. Nauru, I learned, has one of the highest obesity rates in the world.)

I know little about the Moroccan phosphates industry other than I was told that the deposits are vast and can meet the present world’s supply for more than the foreseeable future. I do know, however, that extensive natural resources have not always led to a lasting widespread wealth for a country. Nigeria and Venezuela both have sizeable oil deposits, but both are plagued with poverty, corruption, and civil unrest. Oil has not led to nirvana in either place. Riches from natural resources are often too easily spent instead of being invested in ways that improve the economy beyond the extraction of a valuable substance. Think of Spain and all the gold and silver it once got from the Americas and how that wealth was used. It did not lead to a thriving Iberian economy. And, of course, there is the history of tiny Nauru.

I wondered if the Nauru story held any lessons for Morocco, but I don’t know how the profits of the Moroccan phosphates industry are being used. I don’t even know if the Moroccan phosphates are reached through tunnels with the risk of life and limb or through strip mining, as in Nauru, with the potential for ecological doom. But I did notice that the Nauruan phosphate came from guano deposits—bird droppings. I learned that humans and animals excrete almost every bit of phosphorus they consume, a reason manure was returned to the fields. The excrement fertilized the soils. One report says that there is enough phosphorus in a person’s urine to help grow more than fifty percent of the food a person needs. Not surprisingly, there are scientists and companies working to extract phosphorus from wastewater. Just as the wealth from growing broomcorn used in whisk brooms dissipated with the whoosh of vacuum cleaners, new technological possibilities may mean that someday the demand for phosphates could dramatically decrease.  

I hope Morocco is taking this under consideration.

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Snippets

          How upset would you be if there were an outbreak of the coronavirus on the Senate floor?

          Do Rudy Giuliani and Alan Dershowitz share the same brain?

          The spouse asked the NBP what kind of vacations the NBP most enjoyed. Options were laid out: to beautiful natural spots; trips that covered many places; trips that went only to one location; and so on. The spouse finally included in her cataloging a trip designed to visit museums or other cultural sites. The NBP immediately labeled that last option a “nerdcation.” I don’t know if the NBP has already trademarked that designation.

          The reason I can’t speak a foreign language is that I grew up watching American television. A few years ago, I asked a Portuguese waiter how he had learned to speak his excellent English. He said that Portugal, not a rich country, did not dub English television shows into Portuguese but took the cheaper route of having Portuguese subtitles. He said that watching such programming had made his English better than just from school studies. “Yes,” he said, “I can speak English because of Friends.” In the last month I asked a man from the Netherlands about his flawless English and he said that he first learned the language from non-dubbed American cartoons on Dutch television. I only watched Bugs Bunny, Sky King, and Father Knows Best in English, and therefore I only speak a version of English.

          A Mayan guide in Yucatan said that the Spanish brought hammocks to Mexico, and before that Mayans slept on the ground. Mayans quickly adopted hammocks because sleeping on the ground, which had a heavy concentration of lime, caused health problems. The guide, as do other modern Mayans, still sleeps in a hammock. I did not know him well enough to ask about hammock sex.

          I have heard reports that 500,000 animals have been killed in the Australian fires. (Don’t ask how anyone could know the number or even give a reasonable estimate. And are fish, birds, beetles, and centipedes “animals” for this purpose?) Other reports put the dead animals at a half billion. On a first reaction, does one number seem more devastating than the other?

          When the pontificating ass gets to be too much, just say, “I bow to your superior sciolism.”

          “‘One can be cleverer than another, not cleverer than all others.’ (La Bruyère?)” Leonarda Sciascia, Equal Danger.

          Why is it important to learn how to fold fitted sheets, when you can just ball them up and shove them onto a closet shelf? Or do you, as my mommy used to, iron your sheets?

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Let It Snowball (concluded)

My youth is far, far behind me, but I still throw snowballs when given the chance. I still see if I can hit a tree or pole, but shoulder surgeries have made my throwing, like other activities for other reasons, a relatively limp experience, and my targets are much closer than years ago. Even so, each time I pack together a snowball, I feel close to my boyhood and lessons snowballs taught me—how to make a good snowball; how to throw; how to lead a target; how to bob and weave to avoid thrown snowballs; how snowball fights could test my courage; and how my lying skills needed improving.

When I heard the news reports that snowball throwing was banned in a Wisconsin town, I could not believe it. Only a snowflake would want to do that.

On the other hand, I might support a ban on the Dreaded Ice Ball. We learned about the Dreaded Ice Ball through our experimentation in igloo building. We set out in the backyard to build a snow hut. At first, we just mounded snow, but it did not take long to see that walls could not be made in that way. Then someone had the idea of getting a cardboard box, filling it with packed snow, and unmolding it to make a large building block. Better, but no matter how much we tried to compress the snow, the block would crumble when another two or three were placed on top. Third idea: Take the snow block and douse it with a bit of water. Mom’s watering can was rescued from the house; the block was sprinkled; and after it froze, quite a good building material was made. In a normal cold time, when the temperatures were eighteen or twenty degrees, it took a bit of time for the freezing. After a few blocks were constructed and we were waiting around, someone wondered what would happen if snowballs were watered. The experiment began, and the Dreaded Ice Ball was formed. We learned that we had to make the snowballs a little bigger than normal because the sprinkled water shrunk them a bit. They felt heavier. They felt awesome. They felt dangerous. After some had frozen, we threw some against a tree. We heard a Thwak that sounded like a mini-explosion. These could hurt. We instantly realized these could never be used in our snowball fights. We did not want to get hurt, and we did not want to hurt our friends, and these could hurt. In these Cold Wars, this was a forbidden weapon.

And then one day right before the home room period began, whispers went around: “They are waiting for us after school.” No one defined “they.” It had to be the greasers, which in our town did not have the ethnic connotations it did elsewhere. It meant the tough kids. The kinds who had greased-back hair coming to a point in the back. In our provincial place, the hairstyle was a DT, a duck’s tail. Only the greasers could have been out to waylay us. No explanation passed as to why they had planned an ambush. In fact, my friends and I seldom intersected with the greasers. We didn’t have fights with them. But the warning struck fear. We did not want to admit it, but we believed they were tougher than we were.

As the morning went on, it was said they would be waiting at Tenth and Geele. But then the word changed; it would be Twelfth and Bell. The intelligence system was hardly perfect.

By noon, the word was around that they had stockpiled ice balls. The Dreaded Ice Balls. You could hear fear as this was whispered when the teacher’s back was turned.  We would be underarmed. Snowballs are made on the spot, but Dreaded Ice Balls must be made in advance. A source of water is needed, and time is needed for the ice to form. This was dangerous. We did not have adequate means to fight back. That flinty taste of fear was in our mouths the rest of the day. Some were about to cry. What would we do when the school day ended? Would we take our normal ways home and pass the listed combat zones? Would some cowardly classmates take long detours to get to their houses? How would we fight? What if a Dreaded Ice Ball poked an eye out? It was the longest day of our young lives.

So I say, let there by snowballs. But ban the dangerous Dreaded Ice Ball.

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Let It Snowball (continued)

Once I had learned the skill of snowball making, I went on to the art of throwing one. This was aided by the family dog, Tippy (this terrier-mix had all dark fur except for the very end of her tail, which was white.  Get it? The tip of her tail was white = Tippy. The siblings and I thought it was quite clever.) This mutt loved the snow. If she saw snow when the back door opened, she bounded into the drifts that were twice her height. Only her head and back were visible as up and down Tippy went. She loved chasing sticks in the summer, and she loved chasing snowballs in the winter. She seemed to like each activity equally even though there was a great difference. I would frisbee a stick when there was no snow on the ground, and she would run after it and pick it up. She might run around with it for a bit, but soon she would come back to me, stick proudly in mouth. Sometimes she would drop it but more often stand just out of easy reach with a look that said, “Come on, dummy. See if you can grab that stick in my mouth.” I’d make a motion, and she would dart back. But either because I made an especially quick movement or, more likely, she let me, soon I would have a part of the stick not in her mouth. Now her look said, “Come on, dummy. See if you get it away from me.” The tugging war began, and the eight-year-old boy was seldom successful with brute force. Instead, I learned, and she did not (or she pretended not to), that if I lessened how forcefully I pulled, she lessened her pressure on the stick, and then a pull as rapidly as I could, got it away. And then she stood, partly looking at me and partly at the yard, indicating “Come on, dummy. Throw it again.”

Tippy invariably returned the thrown sticks; she never returned a snowball, but she chased them just as diligently. I would throw the snowball in the backyard. She would bound after it, find where the ball landed, and put her muzzle into the snow blanket. She would attempt to pick up the thrown object, but the ball no longer existed after it was chomped on. It metamorphosed back from snowball to mere snow.

Even though there was nothing to return, she returned and stood in front with the look, “Come on, dummy. Throw me another one.” And I would. I never outlasted her. She could be literally shaking from the cold, but she did not want to come in if there was a chance that I would toss another snowball.

For an eight-year-old boy, this was a time to practice throwing in preparation for my major league career that I knew awaited. First, of course, came throwing it as far as I could, but without clear demarcations in the yard it was hard to tell how much I was improving, although I never doubted that I was. Then, I would find a spot that I knew I could throw to and see how close I could come to landing the next snowball there. Then, even though it was not appropriate preparation for the National League, I would see how high I could throw it. That was for my own amusement. Tippy would lose sight of the high-thrown ball and look to see where it landed. If she did see it plop, she was off to chomp through it. Sometimes, she did not see where it landed, and she would turn to me with the look, “What the hell.” And, of course, there was the ever-fun fake throw where I did all of the throwing motion except for letting go of the ball. Tippy took a few steps in the direction of the anticipated flight, and then turned and said, “Oh, that’s very funny. Now throw it.” (This was minor preparation for my Milwaukee Braves career. I planned on playing shortstop where the fake throw would seldom be used, but I might on occasion fill in as pitcher, and I was practicing for that fake throw to third with the quick whirl to first base to see if the runner there fell for the charade. I have seen pitchers do this many, many times. Only once have I seen it work, and the runner looked more embarrassed than Tippy did after tussling with a skunk.)

(continued January 27)

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Let It Snowball

I heard on the news that a Wisconsin town has a law against throwing snowballs. I found this alarming. I could not have imagined being a Badger State boy without throwing snowballs.

Before you can throw a snowball, you must make it, but that is not as simple as it might seem to those who lack a depth of experience in snowball-throwing. Of course, you want a tight round missile that fits easily in your hand, but snow varies in the snowball-making department. The snow needs some moisture for the stuff to make a ball that will cling together as it goes through the air. Generally, the colder the temperature, the less moisture. It may seem counter-intuitive if you have not had years of experience in making snowballs, but it can be too cold to make good snowballs. When it was really frigid, desperate measures were needed if the snow was going to be balled. Gloves or mittens had to be taken off (mittens keep the hands warmer, but gloves are better for throwing, and I almost always wore gloves) and the snow molded with bare hands so that body temperature could melt a little of the snow to get the needed moisture. Of course, in this kind of cold, you did not want to have those gloves off for very long, so snowball fights were short. (We did go out to play in single-digit temperatures. Many years later, when I took my small child out in twenty-degree weather, other New York City parents acted is if I were committing an act of child abuse. I guess they thought that in colder climes kids were kept indoors for three or four months. Now that would have been child abuse.)

Now let’s get to the technical terms. When the conditions were right to pack the snow into a good ball, we would say the snow was “packy.” (Or maybe it was “packie.” Until I wrote this, I have never seen the word written out.) We may not have been like those fabled Inuits, but we did have more words for snow and other winter weather than I hear now. For example, we had a word for one sort of specially dreaded puddle. Snow was quickly and completely removed from the sidewalks after a snow ended. Unless more snow was forecast, we could walk to school and elsewhere without boots, galoshes, or rubbers, a word which got snickers in our early teen-age years although we did not really comprehend the alternative meaning. There could be puddles from snow melt, but the depths were less than the soles of our shoes and not a problem. Conditions, however, often differed at the crosswalks. There runoff from salted streets was often deeper. We learned to gauge which puddles to jump over and which could be stepped in. But we all sometimes made mistakes and stepped into a deeper puddle than our otherwise discerning eyes had gauged it to be. Most often the mistake was not too bad, but every so often the puddle was deep enough that the cold, icy, salty, dirty gutter water came over the tops of our shoes and flooded our feet, with the prospect of an uncomfortable time at school. When this happened, you got a “soaker.”

When the snow was packy, even as a kindergartener I was into the backyard to make snowballs. I had seen older kids in snowball fights, and I had learned early on that just as success in colonial times was oft determined by how quickly a musket could be reloaded, a snowball contest could depend on how quickly you could make the ammunition. There was a fine line here. You wanted the snowball packed tightly both so it would fly true through the air and to make a good impact on its target, but if you spent too much time cupping the snow together, you would be bombarded by an opponent who made them quicker. On the other hand, if you rushed too much and the snow was not balled tightly enough, it fell apart as it was thrown—the equivalent of a musket’s all flash and no ball.

(continued January 24)

Posted on by rjonakait

Days of Wines and Tagines

Our guide in Morocco did not drink alcohol.  He said that he had tried but had not liked wine and vodka. The guide, however, was a practicing Moslem, and I assumed that religion was behind his abstinence. I have been told that Moslems are not supposed to drink alcohol. (I have since learned that that is true for the majority of Moslems, but some believe that the Koran only bars intoxication, not drinking in moderation.)

I did not see any liquor stores, and the only bars I saw were in our hotels in the overwhelmingly Moslem Morocco, but at our meals we had plenty of drinkable, inexpensive local wine. Morocco has an active wine industry with most of the product staying in the country. The country has a lot of tourists, but more than tourists must be drinking all that wine. (The guide said that Morocco’s national liquor was very strong and made from dried figs. I did not try it because I could not find it.)

A westerner might see hypocrisy at work in this wine industry, but I remember that I was raised in an American Baptist Church that proclaimed that alcohol abstinence was necessary to get into heaven. This stance is true for most varieties of Baptists. In 2006 the Southern Baptist Convention reaffirmed this position. I have never understood this prohibition since wine is consumed by the godly (including, of course, Jesus) in both the Old and New Testament. My hunch is not that the Bible commands teetotaling, but the reason is more along the lines of what H.L. Mencken said about Puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.”

What I do know is that many Baptists do drink. Polls report that a third of Baptists admit to imbibing. And if a third are willing to concede this “sin” to a pollster, I am sure more than that drink alcohol. There are reasons that swaths of this country are laden with bourbon and Baptists. Probably the jokes I heard when I was fourteen are still told: “Jewish people do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of Christianity. Baptists do not recognize each other in the liquor store.” “Why should you always take two Baptists on your fishing trip? If you take only one, he will drink all your beer.”

If there is hypocrisy about Moslems drinking, it is a hypocrisy shared by other religions and cultures. I am not about to cast the first cork.

The Moroccan wine, which I drank as much of as I could, was served most often to accompany a tagine. A tagine is the vessel in which food is cooked. The traditional Moroccan tagine is earthenware, with a circular, flat base with low sides and a removable cone-shaped cover that sits on the base during the cooking. That cover condenses escaping liquids allowing them to drip back onto the food. A tagine is wonderfully designed for slow cooking and is used in homes and restaurants throughout Morocco. Clearly using one can be a source of pride. Our guide, normally modest, bragged that his wife said that he made the best tagines. Apparently, it is a custom that men cook a tagine on Fridays.

Tagine means the pottery, but it also refers to the cooked food. We had tagines of many foods that can benefit from slow, moist cooking, including vegetables, beef, chicken, and lamb. We also had food that did not benefit from this cooking method—i.e., most of the fish dishes. The Moroccan cuisine is distinguished not only by the tagine pot, but also by the combination of the foods cooked inside it. Vegetables and protein together were obvious choices, but also fresh fruit such as plums were part of a dish. A careful blend of sweet and savory or sweet and sour was common. Nuts and dried fruit, perhaps apricots or dates, or even dried tomatoes were frequently used. And the careful spicing raises the cuisine to what is nearly mythic levels in some places. I have cooked lamb with rosemary, salt, and pepper. The Moroccan cuisine, however, had careful blends of spices. Cumin might be combined with cinnamon and ginger. Or saffron and paprika. Or with spices I don’t know. I am guessing that the best Moroccan chefs are known for their precise and innovative blending of spices. As a diligent tourist, I, of course, bought spice blends to bring home. (Oops, forgot to tell customs I brought back food.) And as a typical tourist, I have mostly forgotten how to use them.

The tagine was almost always accompanied by fresh baked bread. The bread was of many different styles and very good. I don’t know if the French influenced this baking, but the variety, the textures, the shapes, the tastes were about as good as I have had anywhere.

The tagine was usually proceeded by many small plates for the table of vinegary, cooked vegetables— several styles of carrots, beets, eggplant, and the like. Forkfuls from a variety of the dishes made a tasty salad. After the tagine sometimes we had a cake or some other confection, but mostly we had fresh fruit. Altogether, the meals we had were tasty and healthy.

And, yes, I looked for Moroccan cookbooks, but then I thought that it did not make sense to lug around a tome when I could find a good cookbook in New York to teach me Moroccan recipes. I have held on to that thought but so far with no action.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

          Are there palindromes in Chinese?

          Do geese see God?

          Was he able before Elba?

          What was the last restaurant to give women (or in this case “ladies”) a menu without prices?

          The Wisconsin Congressman was on Fox News. I was surprised that he was not wearing a U.S. flag pin. Instead, on his lapel was a Green Bay Packers symbol. You might not think that he has his priorities right, but he does for a Wisconsin politician.

          My idea for a book group: Everyone read three-quarters of the same mystery and then get together for a discussion.

          My idea for a blockbuster script: Little Women Walking Dead. Beth comes back as a musical, apologetic vampire.

          New York City pedestrians violate the traffic laws less than they did a generation ago. I was used to walkers coming to an intersection with the light against them and looking for a break in traffic to see if they can scamper across before they get the green. Now if people can’t cross when they get to the corner, they look not at the traffic but down and read, scroll, or text on their smartphone. They don’t look for an opening in the cars and trucks and often don’t even notice that the light has changed.

          What does it say about me that I am disappointed that even though “futtock” sounds dirty, it is not?

          When the men’s room has a solitary toilet, what is the correct etiquette after using it: Put the seat down or leave it up?

“as you both know,

if you worship

one god, you need

one enemy—”

          Louise Glűck, “Witchgrass”

          During a promo for a TV show “Viewer Discretion Advised” came on the screen. I was viewing, but I did not know how or on what I should exercise my discretion. Surely it did not mean that I should not watch the show, but what does it mean to watch a show with discretion? Does that mean with one eye? Or that I avert my gaze every five minutes. Could they be more specific about how viewers should use their discretion?

          I am confused. How can pants I have not worn for a while simultaneously get longer in the legs but smaller in the waist?