Sweet Corn Iowa

The sweet corn season – Iowa’s defining season – began today as a pickup truck appeared in the Goodyear parking lot on the corner of Governor and Church streets with a relatively small, early, but eagerly anticipated pile of picked-this-morning corn stacked on the tailgate, $5 a dozen. So dinner tonight became the quintessential Iowa summer meal – country style spare ribs, potato salad, and sweet corn:

My iPhone and I

My sister emailed today to say she’s considering getting an iPhone and wondered what kind of cover I have for mine. Seems her daughter (my niece) has something called an “Otter Box” for her iPhone, which apparently she drops regularly and needs some kind of super protection. I didn’t even know there were covers for iPhones, let alone a wide selection. I thought about lying and saying something like “Yeah, the Otter Box looks good, but I went with the Squirrel Pack because I always drop my iPhone on grass or carpet,” but decided to tell the truth – my pocket.

I got my iPhone about 3½ years ago, as a present from my wife for my 60^th birthday. I really didn’t need or want a cell phone, let alone an iPhone, but my wife thought that I should at least make an attempt at entering the 21^st century. For most of the first year, I used my iPhone primarily as a paperweight. But as I learned more of its functions, especially email, internet, GPS, and weather, I began using it more. At some point I even began using the phone function, though only when on trips. I’m now – three years in – using not only the phone and email and internet and GPS but also a host of apps. But no games, and definitely no texting – I’m practical, not insane.

My current usage at the end of this month is 28 of 450 available minutes (I assume that’s phone). There’s something called N&W of which I’ve used 0 of 5,000. And I’ve only used 1 of my unlimited M2Ms (whatever they are). And 0 of 4,182 ROs (and whatever those are, I lose 390 of them in two weeks, though that leaves me with 3,792, of which I’ll probably use another 0, if only because I don’t know what ROs are or how to use them if I wanted to).

So you can see that I really don’t have a need for an iPhone cover, Otter or Squirrel.

Rand Paul, Obstructionist

There’s probably no more an obstructionist senator in the 112^th Congress than Republican (of course) from Kentucky (of course) Rand Paul. He has a nasty habit of adding off-topic amendments to various legislation. His latest idiocy is wanting to add to an important bill on flood insurance an amendment that life begins at conception. Called the Life at Conception Act, Paul’s amendment to the National Flood Insurance Program “ensure[s] equal protection for the right to life of each born and preborn human person.” (Unclear is who becomes accountable if that “preborn human person” is denied “the right to life” by, say, a miscarriage.) Fortunately, Senate Majority Leader Henry Reid (Democrat) has basically (and rightly) called Paul an asshole and is refusing to vote on the amendment. Unfortunately, this might mean that the flood insurance bill – supported by many Republicans as well as Democrats – may not come to a vote. I wish someone would introduce a Sanity in the Senate Act. But I’m sure Senator Paul would find some unrelated amendment (say, the Why Don’t We Just Require All Women Who Have Sex For Reasons Other Than Procreation To Wear Chastity Belts (and I’ll Keep the Keys) Act?) to propose.

Supreme Court of Fools

If you ever wondered if the current Supreme Court was not politically motivated – and if you have wondered, which planet have you been living on? – consider the dissent today of Justice Antonin Scalia of the court’s striking down three of the four provisions of Arizona’s anti-immigration (and blatantly discriminatory) law:

“The husbanding of scarce enforcement resources can hardly be the justification for this, since those resources will be eaten up by the considerable administrative cost of conducting the nonenforcement program, which will require as many as 1.4 million background checks and biennial rulings on requests for dispensation,” Scalia said. He went on: “But to say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of federal immigration law that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind.” He blasted “a federal government that does not want to enforce the immigration laws as written, and leaves the states’ borders unprotected against immigrants whom those laws exclude.”

Scalia’s dissent boggles my mind more than the majority decision boggles his. What in any of his delusional rambling refers to the Constitution? The executive branch (the president and the Justice Department) has the discretion to execute the laws. If the Congress can’t or won’t allocate resources to execute the laws, then the executive has to balance needs with resources. And beyond that, “profiling,” as implied in the Arizona immigration law, is unconstitutional on its face. This isn’t the first political decision (albeit a dissent) this court has issued, and it won’t be the last. The whole concept of an ideological “impartial” court is a farce. For that matter, so is the concept of our “democracy.”

Senate Comes Together For Farm Bill

Yesterday the U.S. Senate did something they’ve rarely done in the past few years – they passed the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act, a five-year, $500 billion farm bill, on a mostly bipartisan 64-35 vote. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, praised it as “one of the finest moments in the Senate in recent times in terms of how you pass a bill.” The subtext of his comment is, “Republicans and Democrats in Congress can come together when we have common interests – especially common special interests.” The reason a farm bill can be passed is because agriculture is an industry that is widely spread throughout the country and so most Senators have a large number of constituents and companies in their states – not to mention lobbyists – who direct the senators’ votes. Senators from both parties in states heavy into agriculture (McConnell’s Kentucky is one such state) find ways to come together on farm bills. Iowa’s two senators, progressive Tom Harkin and conservative Charles Grassley, join in voting regularly for agriculture legislation. Iowa ranks third in the country in agriculture income. I have no idea about the merits of the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act – it’s long and complicated and concerns a subject that’s not my ken (that’s why we have representatives and why they have lobbyists). But I do know that the bill passed not because of its merits but because of its money. Although I guess that’s where we are in politics – the merits are determined by who gets how much of the money.

The Beard's Comeback

I almost didn’t graduate from high school. Actually, I almost wasn’t allowed to go through my high school graduation. As was custom, seniors got out of school a week early, before graduation, at Wichita High School Southeast, and in anticipation, I stopped shaving a week before that. This was in 1967, the year the Beatles began showing up on their album covers with facial hair. Of course, not shaving for several days or even a week when I was 18 wouldn’t have produced any observable results. But not shaving for two weeks did yield a faint shadow of facial hair along my jaw. As I stood in line on the concourse of the field house for graduation, some faculty or administrator spotted my growth, sounded the alarm (facial growth was strictly forbidden at our school, for males or females), and an incident ensured. First there was talk of finding a razor to shave me, but no one had thought to bring shaving equipment to a graduation. (I bet they did the next year.) The next possibility was to deny me entrance to the ceremony, call for my parents (who were up in the audience), and have them take me home. I can’t recall the specifics, but after much deliberation over a situation that had never happened before, cooler heads must have prevailed, and I was finally allowed to resume my place in the procession of happy (for all kinds of reasons) graduates.

I recall this because apparently the beard is having something of a comeback. Chuck Norris has had a beard for some time. Zach Galifianakis sports a beard in some of his movies. Even the hunks George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matthew McConaughey, and Leonardo DiCaprio have been seen with facial hair (tasteful, to be sure) of late. Prince William occasionally has a beard. And just last night I saw that Steve Carell now also has one. 

(This is not me.)

I’ve had a beard most of my adult life. I’ve had a mustache all of the 45 years since those two weeks before my high school graduation. For 40 years, I’ve only been beardless twice, briefly: In 1975, as a graduate student in theater, I played a soldier in a Jules Feifer play who ran out and was shot in the first 10 seconds of the play and remained lying dead on the stage for the first three-minute scene, so for the sake of verisimilitude, shaved my beard (though not my mustache) before the show opened. I was already growing it back during the run of the show. In 1981, I went for a year to teach for the military in Germany, and thought it probably best to shave my beard (though not my mustache) to better fit in with my students on post. But after only a couple of weeks of fitting in with my students, I realized that I’d rather fit in with the Germans around town and so grew out first a goatee and then later a full beard. And I’ve had that beard for all of the past 31 years.

Styles come and go, and beards are no different. Whenever they’ve come back into fashion I feel something of the cutting edge. But then inevitably they fade from fashion again a few years later and I hang on as a hairy relic. My beard (and hair) now are gray and that in itself confers a certain status, either the learned professor, or the wise sage of years – or just an old coot. It doesn’t matter anymore. Comebacks are not something we of a certain age give much attention to. We're happy to be able to grow anything. It's a daily reminder that we're still alive.

Grade Deflation

I had a student drop my class today because she was only making a solid B (85%). We’re one-fourth through the summer semester. She apparently wants to make an A in the class, probably in all of her classes as well. In emails, I’ve told her she’s doing fine and that if she wants to improve her work she should spend more time re-reading the assignments, getting help at the Writing Center, or finding a tutor to help her with her reading and writing. It’s a literature class with quite a bit of reading and writing. And she’s Asian, which means her problems with both reading and writing English (mostly American English, with its allusions, metaphors, etc.) make it that much more difficult for her. I’ve told her, as I’ve told others (full disclosure), that few students in my literature classes receive an A, usually no more than two or three students out of 20-25 a semester. A number of students receive a B, with a few getting C’s, and a very few D’s (the C’s and D’s are mostly from assignments regularly turned in late or off-topic). There’s no quota, but there are standards. And that’s the way it usually works out.

It’s always troubling when I have students who want and expect to receive A’s. And all too often their expectations are based on the assumption that if they just do the work, and work hard, that the A will follow. Their conception of grading is one criterion: effort = A. This is particularly true of Asian students. I’m not sure why this is, but it is. Perhaps they have an inflated sense of grade-point average, that they need a 4.0 to be the best, or maybe there’s a cultural expectation. And maybe they do get A’s in other courses, math and science, disciplines that don’t require an understanding of reading and writing in English. I would be thrilled if I would receive a C in a German literature class (I had four semesters of undergraduate German and one semester of graduate German) and pleasantly shocked if I were to get a B. But I don’t know that I would have been all that grade conscious in the first place. I took courses because they were required or because I wanted to. I did my best, when I wanted to, received the grades I got, and accepted them. And I certainly didn’t end up with a 4.0.

But students are different today (a statement that could probably be made in any generation about something or other (“Those kids today!”)). And I find it sad that the question now is too often not “How can I improve my learning?,” but rather “Why didn’t I get an A?” My student who dropped today didn’t like my answer to the question – basically, “You’re doing well, and if you want to do better you should get some help with your reading and writing at the Writing Center or with a tutor.” – and she bailed. She wanted an A because she wanted an A. She didn’t want to earn it. She’s just like too many other students who I see paying not for an education but for a diploma, a degree, a GPA. The student is the consumer, and the customer is always right. The commodification of education. And I retired just in time.

The Iowa Caucuses Redux

I wrote back in early January about Iowa’s inane first-in-the-nation caucuses:

They’re little more than a non-binding straw poll of preferences among a minority of registered Republicans. The ‘votes’ mean nothing politically. The caucus attendees, meeting in groups of several to dozens to maybe scores in homes and schools and churches, after hearing last-minute speeches on behalf of the candidates, write down their preferences on blank sheets of paper or raise their hands, the results counted on site, and then the results are phoned in to the Iowa Republican Committee who collate and release them to the media. There are delegates elected at the caucuses to attend county conventions, but they are uncommitted, not bound by any of the preference ‘votes.’ At the county conventions, delegates, also uncommitted, are elected to the state convention where delegates are elected, uncommitted, to the national convention.

Of course, the course of the caucuses this year played out even more silly than usual. Late on the night of the caucuses, Mitt Romney was declared the “winner” (of no committed delegates) by the wide margin of 8 votes. But about a month later, another count discovered that the “winner” (also of no committed delegates) was Rick Santorum with a 30-some margin. So the county conventions came and went, and yesterday was the state convention, and the almost 2,000 delegates there voted to send 23 of the 28 delegates Iowa gets at the national convention . . . for Ron Paul, who came in a strong third place back in January. I don’t understand all the political machinations, but apparently the Paul people were much more successful than the Romney people in manipulating the system to push through their delegates and agenda from the county to the state to the national conventions. They aren’t expected to cast their votes for Paul – but then they weren’t expected to get almost all of the Iowa delegates either – but they are vowing to push the Paul agenda in platform committee meetings and wherever else they can. More power to them, I say. The more splintered the Republican Party comes out of their national convention – especially with the nutty fringe splinters of the Paul campaign, the Tea Party, and the Birthers – the harder it will be for Mitt Romney to claim distance from those who helped boost him to the nomination. And if nothing else, perhaps this farce will put an end to Iowa’s first-in-the-nation silliness.

The Semi-Colon

I propose we get rid of the semi-colon, the most confusing, misused, and unnecessary punctuation mark. There is nothing a semi-colon can do that a period, conjunction, or comma can’t do just as well. Let’s look at the “rules” – conventions, actually – of the semi-colon:

1. Link two independent clauses that are closely related. 

                “Some people like roasted pork testicles; others prefer beef.”

This sentence would be much more elegant with a simple conjunction.

                “Some people like roasted pork testicles, while others prefer beef.”

If you wanted to emphasize conflict, you could use a period.

                “Some people like roasted pork testicles. Others prefer beef.”

And while I realize I’m going out on a punctuation limb here, I’d be fine with a simple comma.

                “Some people like roasted pork testicles, others prefer beef.”

There’s no confusion (the purpose of punctuation) with this last example, two brief clauses with a parallel structure.

2. Link clauses joined by transitional phrases or conjunctive adverbs.

                “However you may think that the decline of Western civilization is being hurried by the Kardashians, you should not throw a brick through your 40” high-definition TV; sadly, it just won’t change a thing.”

A period would make the point just as clearly and with a bit more emphasis.

                “However you may think that the decline of Western civilization is being hurried by the Kardashians, you should not throw a brick through your 50” high-definition TV. Sadly, it just won’t change a thing.”

3. Link lengthy clauses or clauses with commas to avoid confusion between the clauses.

                “A few people still write with a typewriter, pen or pencil, or cuneiform tablet; but most of us living in this century use a computer.”

A comma rather than the semi-colon should be okay for at least a competent reader (and if you aren’t writing for competent readers, you shouldn’t be writing).

                “A few people still write with a typewriter, pen or pencil, or cuneiform tablet, but most of us living in this century use a computer.” 

4. Link lists where one or more of the elements include commas to avoid confusion among the list elements.

                “There are basically two ways to avoid marital strife: marry someone who is too stupid to recognize all of your deficiencies, which is problematic, especially if you like to engage in conversations about politics, movies, or religion; or don’t get married at all, though that will diminish your chances of having children.”

Again, a comma would work just fine here for the competent reader.

                “There are basically two ways to avoid marital strife: marry someone who is too stupid to recognize all of your deficiencies, which is problematic, especially if you like to engage in conversations about politics, movies, or religion, or don’t get married at all, though that will diminish your chances of having children.”

Or better yet, just stop writing such convoluted sentences. And stop using semi-colons. The fewer punctuation marks, the better off we’d all be.

An Age of Miracles

You may not have noticed (it’s yet to make the front page of the New York Times or the cover of Newsweek) but we seem to be in the midst of a New Age of Miracles. Consider the evidence of events, all having been reported in recent years:

In 1977, Maria Rubio discovered the face of Jesus burned into a tortilla she had made for her husband’s breakfast. The family built a shrine to the Jesus tortilla in their backyard where it stayed for years before time and hear warped the image until it finally it was dropped in 2006 in an elementary school’s show-and-tell.

In 1986, masses of the faithful assembled before a silhouette of the Virgin Mary that appeared on a wall of an empty house in suburban Hanover Township, Pennsylvania, following the installation of new street lights.

In 1994, Diane Duyser almost bit into a grilled cheese sandwich she’d just made before seeing the image of the Virgin Mary staring back at her. After being in a plastic bag in her freezer for nine years, Duyser finally put the Mary sandwich up on eBay, stipulating that it was “not intended for consumption.” It was sold to the Golden Palace Casino for $28,000.

In 2004, Steve Cragg was munching on Cheetos when we came across a cheesy, chemically infused morsel that he was certain was in the shape of Jesus. “I do not think that God makes Cheetos that looks like Jesus,” Cragg said understatedly, “but I do know that God reveals himself in amazing ways.” He named his find “Cheesus.”

While cooking pierogis for her family on Palm Sunday, 2005, Donna Lee flipped one of the dumplings and her husband exclaimed, “What? There’s Jesus!”

On Easter 2009, Eric Peterson purchased a See’s Candy chocolate and peanut butter egg, and removing a decorative flower he unveiled an image of Jesus in a piece of chocolate on the bottom of the flower. “I have to admit,” Peterson said,” finding an image of Jesus on Easter was a great experience, and I’m sure it will become a tradition to talk about it on Easters to come.”

And just last week the image of Jesus appeared to Chyanna Richards in mold growing in a shower in her Splendora, Texas, home.  “Maybe it means something,” Richards said. “Maybe look into yourself and see if you need to change something in your life.” The mold is reported to have started growing a couple of months ago. Maybe the change should be to start cleaning the bathroom.

These are only a few of the examples of the resurgence in the past few years of holy visions and apparitions. According to a New York diocesan newspaper, the Catholic Church (most miracles tend to emanate from the Catholic faith) is investigating some 200 reported miracles at any one time.

To be sure, if ever there were a time in need of miracles it’s now. What with the threats of terrorist attack, climate change, computer viruses, and a zombie apocolypse (how would the prophets deal with such worries?), we can use all the reassurance we can get from some Divine Plan that promises things will all turn out peachy in the end, even if we do have to suffer the inconvenience of death in the process.

But the miracles we’ve been given of late – images on tortillas, grilled cheese sandwiches, pierogis, and shower mold – strike me as being a tad feeble, certainly nowhere near the magnitude of those found in the Bible – Moses’ parting of the Red Sea, Elisae’s curing Naaman of leprosy, Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead or his walking on water. (You can find 120 such Biblical miracles here.)

Perhaps it’s that ours is such a paradoxical age, that we are such a schizophrenic folk. On one hand we are unboundingly hopeful, yearning for whatever sign we might receive that there is some Greater Being watching over us – be that being divine, extraterrestrial, or whatever – that might one day make clear for us all this apparent chaos and confusion that we know only as “Life.” On the other hand we are prudent, wary sorts. A sign in the post office warns us bluntly that “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!” In the New York subways, signs command us, “If you see something, say something.” Were Jesus to return and resurrect a latter-day Lazarus, we’d probably have to rely on Entertainment Tonight to cover the story: HUBBY BACK FROM DEAD – WIFE SUSPECTS ALIENS. Intrigued, we’d watch. But we wouldn’t believe it.

I guess the point is we have to take what we can get, meager as it might be. If we can’t get seas to part or the dead to rise from their graves – or even corporations to stop polluting the environment or fanatic religious zealots to stop blowing themselves and others up – then we’ll just have to settle for skillet burns on tortillas and mold on the walls of showers.

WTF?

I always thought the Constitution was pretty clear when it comes to public speech: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” But of course with all things regarding the Constitution much involves interpretation, if not divination, a reading of the verbal tea leaves. What to make of a new law in Middleborough, Massachusetts, that imposes a $20 fine on anyone swearing in public? Despite there already being a law, going back to 1968, against public profanity in Middleborough, there have been no arrests because of the hassles and costs with court, so the citizens voted 183-50 to allow the police to just hand out $20 tickets for anyone cursing in public. Of course, the law isn’t aimed at the public in general but rather at a particular segment of the population, a segment often targeted by such laws – teens. Officials assure everyone that the purpose of the statute is only “to crack down on loud, profanity-laden language used by teens and other young people in the downtown area and public parks.” Apparently, teens and other young people don’t possess the same right to free speech as the rest of us. I can’t imagine the police doling out tickets to New England Patriots fans going blue in the local bar on a Sunday afternoon.

What I can’t find in any of the reporting on this law is what, exactly, constitutes “profanity.” I’m sure fuck and shit – the two biggies – would incur a $20 fine on the offender without question. As would variations such as fuck-face and shit-face and fuck-head and shit-head and fuck-ass and shit-ass, all appellations I’ve heard many times and occasionally used myself (often to effect).

But there’s a sliding scale on the barometer of profanity. Bodily expulsions are typically gross, shit being right up there in repulsion, if only because it’s the grossest (and the one we typically only do in private). The other excrement, piss, is a little less offensive, and even less so when it’s just pee. (You can say pee, and sometimes piss, on TV.) Snot and vomit are pretty tame bodily discharges, not profane, probably because they don’t involve reproductive organs. (And I don’t think there’s ever been a TV prohibition on either of them.)

Fuck is definitely a no-no. But not the more sanitized intercourse, coitus, copulation, sexual relations, make love, sleep with, get laid, copulate, pair, or couple. I’m not sure about the more slangy screw, hump, jazz, shag, shtup, or bang. Best if you’re in Middleborough to keep your intercourse middle-of-the-road.

But reproductive organs are themselves definitely problematic. Penis and vagina are OK; they’re technical, if not medical. But don’t go calling someone a dick or a cunt, at least in Middleborough, or you could be slapped with a $20 fine. At least maybe. I’m not sure about cock or wiener or pecker or boner. Or pussy or muff or clam or beaver. And I don’t even want to think about hooters, boobs, jugs, or tits.

And then there is butt and ass. I think butt is legal, as I hear it often on TV and radio. There was even a TV character named Butthead from 20 years ago who had a caffeinated persona, Bumholio.  I’m not sure though that butthead or butthole are acceptable (is bum more acceptable than butt because it’s British?). I think ass is OK. But I’m pretty sure asshole isn’t.

And finally there are the ethnic slurs, considered profane by many (in alphabetical order): boer, camel jockey, canuck, chink, coolie, coon, cracker, dago, frog, gook, greaseball, gringo, gypsy, heeb, honky, hymie, jap, kraut, limey, mick, nigger, nip, pollack, raghead, redneck, redskin, slant eyes, slope, spic, towelhead, wetback, wop. (And there are many more.)

I’m not sure how the Middleborough police are going to enforce this new statute against swearing in public. But I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s just going to be against “teens and other young people in the downtown area and public parks” who happen to utter within hearing distance something that a police officer deems profane. That can’t be unconstitutional. Can it?

Her majesty's a pretty nice girl . . .

I thought we Americans fought a revolution a few years ago against the British monarchy. But from the media gushing, first last year around the marriage of Prince William and Katherine (or Kate, as we prefer), and now around the 60^th year diamond jubilee of William’s grandmother, Elizabeth II, one would think that we had been defeated by the British and happily settled into cheery subjection. I’ve watched what I could stand of the royal fete (admittedly, not much; it really is pretty boring), and try as I might I can’t see what all the fuss is about. It’s not like this old lady has ever done anything. Indeed, it seems her only accomplishment is having lived to the age of 86. My mother is 85, and I don’t see any flotillas or fly-overs or Paul McCartney concerts honoring that feat. In the past – like back in the early Henrys and Johns and Georges  – British royalty would actually accomplish something – ride in armor on horses leading armies into battles, vanquishing the foes, and securing an empire. The original Elizabeth, 400 years ago, at least was a patron to Shakespeare. But for at least the past couple of hundred or so years, the “duty” of the British monarchy, having no military or political function, has been purely ceremonial. And that’s just dandy – for the British. But we’ve not been a British colony for some 250 years. So why don’t we just stand back and let England be England? I guess it does make good TV (for some). And for us, good TV is a pretty good monarchy itself.

Fortunate Travel

I don’t know how we’ve been so fortunate to do so much traveling over the past 20 years or so. It can’t be karma. I doubt it’s genes. Part of it’s money, yes (we somehow make more than we should, but so far we haven’t been caught). But much of our travel has been wrapped around our jobs, one or the other of us attending conferences or trade shows or whatever on the company dole and the other tagging along for just the cost of airfare and food. And a few times we’ve travelled just on our own because we wanted to and could get a good deal. About 12 or 15 years ago we decided that we should travel while we could, while we had the money and health and still-living brain cells. But as I look back over our travel of the past two decades, I’m both surprised and thankful:

Domestic

We have of course travelled often in states adjoining Iowa: Minnesota (Minneapolis, Duluth, Grand Marais, several times), Illinois (Chicago, once or twice a year), Missouri (St. Louis, Kansas City), and Kansas (Wichita).

Beyond the upper Midwest: Indiana (Indianapolis), Ohio (Columbus, Dayton, Oxford), Tennessee (Memphis, Nashville), New York (Rochester, New York City), Massachusetts (Boston/Cambridge), Washington D.C. (numerous times to visit our granddaughters), North Carolina (Raleigh/Durham), Georgia (Atlanta), Florida (Clearwater Beach), Louisiana (New Orleans), Texas (Austin), New Mexico (Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos), Arizona (Phoenix), Colorado  (Boulder), Utah (Salt Lake City, Park City), California (San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland), Oregon (Portland), Washington (Olympia Peninsula), Alaska (Anchorage, Seward, Homer).

Foreign

And then there’s the fortunate foreign travel: Canada (Victoria, Vancouver (not far foreign)), Belize (San Ignacio, Caye Caulker), England (London), Ireland (Dublin), France (Paris, Burgundy, Alsace-Lorraine), Germany (Berlin), Czech Republic (Prague), Italy (Rome, Florence, Amalfi Coast), Spain (Barcelona), India (Mumbai, Goa).

It’s not the longest list – we have friends whose would be about twice as long – but we like it, we’ve taken advantage of what we can. And we’re hopeful of more. It’s something of an old saw, but whenever we come back from a trip – here in the US or overseas – we never fail to comment on how much more of the country (the Northeast, the South, Hawaii) or the world (Mexico, South America, Africa, the Far East, Australia) we have yet to see. If one spent one’s whole life doing nothing but traveling I don’t know if you could cover the earth, or even all of the earth that you would want to visit. I don’t think I could. A lifetime isn’t long enough to take in the whole of the world. But we hope that we’ve still got another decade or so where we can at least add to our list and take in what we can of it while we can.