Monthly Archives: September 2020

The Mourning After

Out of respect for the presumed solemnity of the event I actually donned a dress shirt and tie for the first presidential debate of the 2020 election season. It was the first time in seven months I got that decked out – a measure of how little my life over that time has called for anything but dress casual. Of course it was a bit of ritual on my part. But then isn’t this what a debate is supposed to be – the ritual of a country going through the deliberative process of deciding its future? Voting is a sacred act. It represents the highest capacities of human character – respect for the ability of people 18-years old and above to decide the kind of country that they/we live in. Obviously people bring very different capacities to the process. All it takes is a few outtakes from “undecided” voters in a panel assembled to watch the debates to realize, once again, how wide-flung peoples’ judgments are. That’s the price of living in a democracy: respect for difference, faith in aggregate opinion, and a commitment to the rules and regulations for moving forward. The first debate, staged in Cleveland and involving...Read more
Home Court

Home Court

I keep pretty good records. Somewhere in my various files and boxes of papers are copies of my publications, correspondence going back decades (back when they were actual, physical letters), papers from college and graduate school, taxes records, family documents. For all the maintenance of written records I never did keep the papers I wrote back in high school – on a manual typewriter, hunt n’ peck method, lots of white out, without regard to margins. Too bad, because when news hit Friday night of Rosh Hashanah that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, I teared up in sadness and fear and flashed back to a sophomore or junior year project I wrote for American history class on the rise of the Supreme Court. I remember the title, more or less: “How the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall Expanded Federal Powers through a Loose Interpretation of the Constitution.” It focused on three landmark decisions that came to shape and define strong federal authority: Marbury vs. Madison (1803), McCullough vs. Maryland (1819), and Gibbons vs. Ogden (1824).   Back then I was pretty geeky about American history and social studies. In between reading baseball biographies and sports history I pored through American...Read more
National Championship

National Championship

When I started this blog over five months ago (already!) I figured I could keep up a pretty good pace of columns. For better or worse, however, last week, after 33 consecutive postings I had to take a break because real work intervened. Such is the fate of a freelancer, to answer the editor’s call. Within the space of a few hours I had landed five assignments, all of them due within a week. That’s when you drop everything and focus on meeting deadlines; 7,500 words later I am relieved to say I met the test. Luckily they were all related, having to do with this week’s U.S. Open national golf championships at Winged Foot Golf Club in Westchester County, New York. The morning after those assignments arrived I made the trip down to the golf course, just over 100 miles from our house here in Northern Connecticut. As I made my rounds and interviewed the people I needed to reach – all of whom were amazingly accommodating on short notice – I kept reminding myself of the different assignments and the need to make sure I took legible notes. Too often while walking and taking I write down a...Read more