lwhaley – Unplowed ground

Burning questions, part 1

-Why do the people in my house always open a new bag of tortilla chips even though there is still a perfectly good bag that is half full? We have FOUR opened bags in the pantry right now.

-Regardless of your position on abortion, does it make any sense at all to refer to the procedure as an instance of “reproductive health”? Isn’t the whole point non-reproduction?

-People in California have been putting avocados on toast since, well, someone was smart enough to plant an avocado in California. How did this get so trendy? You can also smear smashed strawberries on toast and it tastes quite good, by the way.

-What psychologist came up with the phrase “high amplitude sucking” to describe an infant’s accelerated pace of drawing on a pacifier when exposed to interesting stimuli? High amplitude sucking? Seriously? It sounds obscene to me.

-Cricket? Wouldn’t you be much more nimble if you dropped the bat when you run?

-Socks with sandals? Come on people. The point of not enclosing the foot in leather or cloth is lost when you cover the foot in cloth or wool.

Clash of Civilizations Revisited

I arrived in Hyderabad at 2am in the morning. My usual MO when going abroad is to withdraw local currency from an ATM in the baggage claim area. I have found that, given the nominal bank fees from my US institutions, this gives me more bang for the buck than using currency exchange booths in airports that have high fees. Alas, the ATM was out of order. Having no Rupees, I resigned myself to using the currency booth exchange option. Oddly, it was closed. Given that nearly all international flights coming into Hyderabad arrive in wee hours of the morning, the office should have been open. Alarms should have gone off, but in my usual polyannish fashion, I chalked it up to karma/bad luck/strange circumstances and figured I could use an ATM in the arrival area.

Alas #2, all seven of the ATM’s in the arrival area were “out of order.” As a seasoned traveler, I admit with some embarrassment, that I still see anything significant about this . But I did begin to wonder how I was going to get from the airport to…well…anywhere without cash. Fortunately, the officially sanctioned taxi companies from the airport take credit cards. Otherwise, I would now be living there. Indefinitely.

India is one of the BRIC countries (or BRICK if you throw Korea into the mix–that is, South Korea, not the lunacy of the Northern iteration; or BRIIC/BRIICK if Indonesia is on your mind; or pluralize it with South Africa, as some do). These are the up-and-comers that everyone who is anyone in higher education and economics has been told to pay attention to as they re-imagine our current world order. These countries, more or less (and over the last 15 years it has mostly been less) will bid to compete for power on the global stage with their growing economies and commitments to modern technology. But, as it turns out, my situation was not just dumb luck. And it shed some light on the BRIC/BRICK/BRIICK/BRIIKS concept going forward.

My India experience was a result of “demonitisation,” which is intended to fight corruption (Venezuela has done something similar lately). The government eliminated the two largest currency denominations overnight in order to crush shady businessmen and crime syndicates who were surely keeping immense caches of these large currency bills under their business mattresses. Maybe this corruption-killing is happening (I have my doubts based on some revealing conversations with commodities “brokers” in the hotel where I stayed), but the more immediate effect on the street has been a rush by the non-shady elite and the middle-class to translate their large bills into smaller ones and to cash any recent pay-checks into smaller denominations asap. The result: a major shortage of the smaller bills. Translation: ATM’s have no cash. Banks have little usable currency–i.e. there are lines at the state bank that shame black Thursday sales at Best Buy… exponentially. If you are a tourist in the country right now, you are not going to get local currency, even at the best hotels.

Of course, there is a black market, but I would not suggest using it. Seriously, don’t do it. I thought about it and even tried it for two and a half minutes. You will not be treated well financially. You may not be treated well physically, depending on who you are dealing with. Just don’t do it if you are a tourist.

You may recall Samuel Huntington’s prediction that our world has been split into “civilizations” along cultural lines rather than moving towards a globally homogenous reality. At the end of 20th century, he received a lot of push back since many thought his pre-9/11 picture of Islam v. the West was overly confrontational (this is, of course, being re-thought in light of the last decade). Many thought he was helplessly naive about the merging of minds in a globalizing world.

But now, in fact and in retrospect, he seems to have been on to something in terms understanding America’s global role going forward, at least in terms of the future of Asia. India needs to be reckoned with as one of his “civilizations”, of course, in terms of absolute numbers of people in its borders, the movement of jobs (albeit low-tech jobs) into its economy and its regional influences. But this influence needs to be put into a larger context. The economic disparity between the “haves” and “haves-not” is of a scale that is unintelligible in the west. The understanding of “rights”is made on a different human calculus. The expectations for “good” government are defined in entirely different terms in D.C. than in Mumbai.

Are humans unique?

During the first meeting of a religion class I took in college, the professor asked, “What is the point of a liberal arts education?” None of us students in the room seemed to trust enough in our 18 years of hard earned wisdom to answer the question. We sat in several minutes of awkward silence. We fidgeted and wished we were not in a religion class. Finally, the professor flashed a smile and, to our deep relief, revealed the secret: “The point of a liberal arts education is to be interesting at a cocktail party.” Ha! He was toying with us.

Fast forward ten years to my early days as an assistant professor at Dartmouth College. One of my colleagues from the Philosophy Department was giving an informal lunch time talk on his work in metaphysics. He asked rhetorically, “What is the difference between humans and chimpanzees?” His answer: “Cocktail parties”. Laughs all around. Ha! He was being clever with us.

Both of them, of course, were making the same profound point about human uniqueness (and, fittingly, in a way that only a human could). We live in an era where the connections between the species have captured scholarly imagination. Yet, while the sequence of the human genome and the chimpanzee genome show a suggestive 96% similarity, there are certain behaviors that call into question whether 96% genomic overlap means as much as the numbers suggest it does.

To press the point, a cocktail party necessarily involves fermented grain/fruit drinks and alternatives for those who do not wish to imbibe because liquor is not part of the latest nutritional fad; lots of chit-chat about local goings-on, national politics, social networks, reflections on history and the future, and the latest trends in technology; manufactured clothing that sends all sorts of signals about status and identity; etc. etc. All this to say, the cocktail party is a unique event in the animal kingdom, and for a whole lot of reasons. It requires technologies, socially complex constructs, temporal displacements, moral judgements and triviality that don’t have obvious homologues among other species. Perhaps there are some analogues, but you have to be seriously creative to believe there is anything close to the cocktail party in the rest of the cosmos. Especially, if the cocktail party is in Hollywood.

Perhaps the time has come to once again, with all due species humility, spend time focusing on what is unique to our humanness. If we are one species among millions, one that is special only by the vagaries of biological complexity or neuronal connections, then, if we are honest, we have no actual obligation to life on the planet, though we may have a self-interested desire to sustain those things that sustain us.

But the “cocktail party” view of things demands more. As many have noted, it definitely would involve an acceptance that humans have a massively disproportionate responsibility to think about the health of the planet, whatever that might mean. This is due to our unique resilience (hence, our ability to disconnect from any particular ecological niche) and our technological prowess (hence, our ability to overcome any particular environmental challenge). But it is more than this. The “cocktail party” crowd cannot help but think in moral terms that go beyond physical survival. The thought goes to “right” and “wrong”, to “who are we?”, to “what are my obligations to the other?”

Trouble in the Soul

My sister recently asked me what affects me most at my emotional core–either positively or negatively. She tossed me a softball, and I totally whiffed. The OBVIOUS answer for anyone of my age who lives in New England was “the year 2004”. Instead, after a moment of self-reflection, I said “death.”

For those who don’t live in New England, “the year 2004” will be an opaque reference, so let me briefly explain. Before 2004, the Boston Red Sox had not won a World Series since 1918. They came close a couple times, only to be denied due to some flukes of baseball (most notably a little league error by He Who Cannot Be Named in 1986). But they won in 2004. And before 2004, the Patriots had never won a Super Bowl. They came close in 1986, but lost to a team that made music videos and whose most memorable player carried the nickname of a kitchen appliance. The Pats won in 2004. Exultation. Serious exultation.

Even so, when my sister asked the question, “2004” didn’t register in any of my neuronal paths. Only “death” did. Maybe that is not a very surprising answer for most people, but it was still a bit of a revelation to me since I thought I had a clear and healthy view of death: it is certain and unavoidable, but also not the final word for those of us who are people of faith. Sad, yes, but still.

As some context, I am not a sentimental or expressive person. “Even-keeled” is not uncommonly attributed to me. I find that ironic since I can’t sail to save my life. Now admittedly, I will mist up in a movie when the main character overcomes a tough situation (Brian’s Song gets me every time I watch it), but I don’t even need double digits to count the bona fide crying episodes in my life and they are nearly all linked to death.

One of these episodes was in the days just after 9/11. My church organized a time of prayer, and I, dutifully–and not much more than that–went to intercede for those who were suffering in our country. But here’s the kicker: I ended up weeping. I didn’t personally know anyone who had died in New York, Pennsylvania or Arlington, but I was undone at that meeting. If it were not for my wife’s touch (she held my hand, squeezing it during my sobbing), I think the sorrow might have turned into something more ugly. None of those deaths made any sense.

Other deaths have hit closer to home. My brother-in-law died young from a brain tumor less than a year after marrying my sister. I kept it together outwardly when my father offered a powerful prayer in the hospital chapel, but I fell apart when I called my (at that point, future) wife to let her know that he was gone. [She is starting to play an important role in this blog post]. How could my sister be widowed when she was so young? That is a cruel fate.

My aunt, who was a saint if there ever was one, died of cancer before she got to know her grandchildren. Their lives would have been so very enriched to have interacted with her. She was a special person. On a cold, blustery day in Massachusetts, the time at her graveside was…bad, good, I don’t know, hard to process. With my wife at my side, the tears came on strong. My aunt had lived well. She was still young and vital. How was this untimely departure from the world understandable?

There are others. My grandmother–I can can still barely get through “It is Well with My Soul” in church because of how those verses summoned something deep within me at her funeral. My cousin’s husband–his charisma and vibrancy were maddeningly incompatible with an early death. The suicide of a High School friend–why were his demons so persistent and unshakable?

In thinking about all of this, I have an even deeper appreciation that, at the center of our being, humans sense that death/suffering is not the way it is supposed to be. There is something wrong with it. We were created for life; we were created to thrive. Death is the slap-you-in-the-face reminder that there is a tear in the fabric of our reality that needs mending. Death casts aspersions on everything we believe to be good and meaningful. No wonder it draws us into places our hearts and minds only go on occasion.

And I’m struck by how deep-sorrow is not only permitted, but also wonderfully enabled by the presence of those who love us deeply and intimately. The squeeze of the hand says “I wish you weren’t hurting, but it is alright to hurt. Go ahead and feel this pain right now”. The longer-than-usual embrace in a moment of weeping signals so beautifully that love is stronger than even death, as unlikely as that sounds. The steady presence of a partner by one’s side builds into us an experienced–and therefore, trustworthy–knowledge that we aren’t meant to be alone, and we are not alone, no matter how isolating our grief can feel.

A Wedding Meditation

A month ago, I had the privilege of giving a short meditation during my son’s wedding ceremony. Several people have asked for a copy of what I said. I’ve been resistant to sharing these remarks because, to me, my words seem too one-dimensional. In that hard-to-access three dimensional part of me, I wanted–I really, really wanted–to get to that place beyond the words themselves, to connect with my son and his bride at a more immediate, intimate and unspoken level. I wanted to love them more deeply in their nuptials than they had ever been loved. I wanted to capture the vivid reality that matrimony is much harder, much better and much more significant than our culture will currently admit. I wanted to tell them, both honestly and hopefully, not to settle for the caricature of the divine ideal that most marriages are.

I make a living with words, so I know that I, in fact, fell short in all four of my goals. But through the encouragement of a friend (“get over yourself”–it is a unique friendship) and my father (a more tactful, but also more formative voice in my life), I post them here. In the delivery, I went off script a lot, but here are the remarks that I prepared. (With all due credit to Mike Mason, whose Mystery of Marriage has been very influential in how I think about matrimony).

George Bernard Shaw begins his play Getting Married with a memorable observation: “There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked about and thought about than marriage”. In my brief comments now, I hope I don’t contribute too much more evidence that Shaw was right.

I can’t begin to express what an honor it is to be asked to say a few words at your wedding today and, especially, to pray for you as you move into your next stage of life. I have to say, it’s also a bit nerve-wracking for me. There is so much that I want to say, and want to say well. And there is so much that could be said that it is hard for me to know what specifically to say.

So what I have decided to do this afternoon is to let you in on two secrets that every married person knows. Here is the first: Marriage is unconstitutional. It is an obvious violation of the 4th and 14th amendments, and possibly also the 2nd and 9th depending on how you interpret them. It is unconstitutional because marriage is a massive violation of your right to privacy. Once you are married, you are going to be under a constant state of surveillance of the sort the NSA only dreams about. Nothing you do will be in secret. Nothing about who you are will be secret. You will no longer have the luxury of not being watched. All the typical disguises that you put on in public will be found out by each other.

Of course, you have been longing for this moment of marriage to come. Of course, you have come to enjoy the comfort of each other’s company. But I can promise you that you will be surprised at how formidable the challenge of two becoming one flesh is. I’m not just talking about learning how to compromise and sacrifice, how to resist returning insult for injury or how to make each other feel appreciated. These are crucial skills for a happy marriage, but I am talking about something much deeper. You are giving up your right to privacy, to independence, to self-determination. In other words, your marriage is a process of redefining yourself in light of one another. Blake–you are no longer just Blake, but you are also Leigh Ann’s husband. Leigh Ann–you are no longer just Leigh Ann, but also Blake’s wife. Your individual story is being re-written in way that is not understandable without the other. It is false without the other.

No one escapes this redefinition process unscathed. You will learn that the hurt which occurs in the spaces where we love is the most painful hurt of all.

Now I will let you in on the second secret: As you persevere in this process, and only by God’s grace will you persevere, something incredibly profound and wonderful is going to happen. You are going to become a better version of yourself, a person much closer to what God intended you to be. This is what love does, and in particular what marriage love does—it teaches us a deep humility about our shortcomings and frailties (it turns out that this happens daily, or more than once daily, in my case); it makes us dependent; its light forces us out of the dark places where we hide; it compels us to recognize that our earthly life together carries an eternal significance. This is why Paul tells us that the profound mystery of marriage is that it points to Christ and his church—it enacts a meaning far greater than others will see from the outside, an intimacy far beyond what is reflected in our movies and novels. As you enjoy the warmth of each other’s physical embrace, embrace this eternal reality every day. It will serve you well.

Blake and Leigh Ann—today you begin this process of being watched. You are ready for it.

Can we coax these roots back to life?

As far as languages go, English is on the promiscuous side when it comes to borrowing vocabulary. Linguists estimate that well over half of her words are not native, but have been grabbed from the likes of French, Spanish, Latin and Greek, not to mention other Romance languages, Native American languages, Celtic languages, Scandinavian languages, Semitic languages and others. (Maybe “stolen” is a better analogy than “borrow” since the “lenders” didn’t get much out of it). Yes, English is a lexical floozie.

One consequence of all this (particularly of the borrowing from Latin and Greek) is that English has a large number of roots that never occur on their own. They only show up with affixes. There is pro-gress, con-gress, re-gress, trans-gress, di-gress, but no gress. Feel free to syn-chron-ize your watches, but good luck chron-izing much of anything. It is the stuff High School English teachers live for, at least if they teach an SAT prep class.

Because of all these invasive root species, there is a handful of native roots that often are treated as though they are the same curiosity, but they are not. They deserve more careful attention, possibly even cultivation. These are Germanic roots that survived into Old English. They were often used without affixation in the modern English period even though they now have fallen into disuse. One might say that whereas the Latinate roots needed the eye-shadow of a suffix or the lipstick of a prefix to be presentable in public, these Germanic roots were comfortable without adornment. They are whelm, ruth, gruntle, and kempt.

Whelm means ‘to cover over.’ Church-goers, or at least those among them who use the classic hymns to worship, still use this root every time “My Hope is Built” is sung. At least if verse 3 isn’t excluded in order to keep the service under an hour.

Ruth (‘pity, compassion’), on the other hand, now never seems to make an appearance without the suffix -less. The antonym ruthful made it into the 17 century before falling out of disfavor. Let’s hope the maintenance of ruthless, but not ruthful, doesn’t reflect something deep about the psyche of English speakers. There is a good chance that ruth itself fell victim to pragmatism. English also has rue, which covers much of the same ground and sounds just about the same so one will do.

What about gruntle, as in dis-gruntled? Truth be told, this one is a bit of a cheat since the real root–grunt–is alive and well. Gruntle means to grunt a lot, that is ‘to grumble.’ And again, practically-minded speakers may very well just have rejected the need to keep gruntle when such a similar synonym was in play.

The kempt of un–kempt is a past tense form an Old English verb that means ‘to comb’ (and is etymologically related to the word comb, so like gruntle, this example is a bit of a cheat). Kempt started falling out of use in the 15th century, while unkempt soldiered on (well, at least in crossword puzzles). Curious that we also have messy, but not un-messy. I suspect that teenagers may be behind that mystery.

At any rate, it seems wasteful to let these roots lie in the ground dormant. I suggest a group effort to coax them back to life. “Have ruth on me officer. I was running late to a meeting.”

Requiem for Pluto

10 years ago today the International Astronomical Union dealt a death blow to Pluto’s eighty-six year claim to planethood. The decision was, shall we say, not received well by many Americans, and several state legislatures passed resolutions rejecting it. The California State Assembly went so far as to call IAU action a “scientific heresy.” (Me thinks, Assembly members may have a wee bit too much time on their hands).

The ignominious treatment of Pluto was hard to swallow for the the thousands of adults who had been taught, in no uncertain terms, since the 1st grade, that there were 9 planets. Punto. We were taught that educated folks should know the 9 in order from their distance to the sun. Clever mnemonics sprung up like weeds: “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas” was a personal favorite. And “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine” doesn’t work.

To be fair, the IAU didn’t actually remove Pluto’s planetary status. It just gave him a downgrade to “Dwarf Planet,” a newly-created category to deal with celestial bodies that orbit the sun and are rounded by their own gravity, but don’t have enough mass to share the stage with the Big Eight “real” planets. I doubt the God of the Underworld appreciates that subtle distinction, but then, he is probably also used to such demeaning treatment.

Behind the Pluto brouhaha rests a fascinating reality of the human psyche. We regularly create categories to make better sense of our world. The categories become real to us, so real that we take them to be woven into the created fabric of the universe. Challenge those categories and people become unsettled. They pass resolutions to curb the heresy. But whether Pluto is a planet or a dwarf planet doesn’t have much (any?) affect on our lives. Whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable doesn’t change its taste or whether it shows up during the main course or dessert (or on the breakfast plate if in England). Does it makes sense to call a platypus a mammal even though it is the egg-laying outlier to the entire class of Mammalia? They will keep on laying eggs either way. Yet people become quite animated in their defense of the “real” category to which these things belong even when there are no real stakes involved in the outcome. Curious.

Still, it bothers me that Pluto isn’t a planet anymore.

Second in Rome

Julius Caesar once said, “I’d rather be first in a village than second in Rome.” One of my experiences in the city gives new meaning to his words.

I was traveling to the Eternal City for a quick business trip. Not wanting to be “one of those types” that stoops to staying at the Hilton out of convenience, I booked a room in a brand new boutique hotel not far from the Coliseum. Oh yes, I was the quite the sophisticated traveler finding this gem, reasonably priced, surely unknown to any other foreigner, in the best part of the old city. Bang.

Apparently, the gem was also still unknown to taxi drivers since mine couldn’t find it after 45 minutes of driving up and down nearly every Via within a kilometer of the Coliseum. He had the address and was using a GPS. He was stumped. He finally got out of the cab, had an animated conversation with a bar owner, opened up the trunk, removed my bag and informed me that I would need to walk since every road to the hotel was one-way in the wrong direction. An uneasy feeling began to set in.

As it turned out, the walk to the hotel was not far at all, though I also quickly debunked the theory that there was not a legal way to drive to establishment. Another taxi driver was happily depositing his fare at the front door. At check in, I was informed that my room had experienced an unfortunate plumbing incident and was not habitable. No other rooms were available, but not to worry. A room had been booked at another hotel. The blow of the news was softened by the clerk giving me a bottle of Italian wine. If only I had realized then that this was not an apologetic gesture, but anesthesia for what was to come.

A taxi was hailed (and again, the driver had no problem pulling up to the front door). 15 minutes later we arrived at Hotel Galeno, located in a perfectly fine neighborhood, albeit one that is about 2 kilometers further from the Coliseum or anywhere else I wanted to be. At 10pm, I assumed this was the only equivalently priced/quality hotel that available on such short notice. (Well, you know what they say about assuming).

After shelling out my second wad of Euros to a taxi driver that night, it took me a while to find the entrance because the hotel is set back from the street and has almost no outdoor lighting and no signage. The uneasy feeling started to grow. Finally, an inebriated and amorous couple walked by. I followed them to a small entrance on the side of the building and voila, there was the secret door to the Hotel Galeno.

The lobby was about 6X6 feet, which meant my drunk guides and I had no choice but to exchange basic life information while we waited for someone to show up at the front desk. (They were newly weds from Nebraska, by the way, and very proud of their state, especially Cornhusker football). After 10 minutes, Mr. Nebraska couldn’t stand the waiting (it was hard to tell if it was his bladder or libido), and simply walked behind the desk and grabbed his key. Alas, having not checked in, no such option was available to yours truly. The receptionist–a very pleasant South Asian man in his early 20’s–did appear shortly thereafter, checked me in and walked me down to room 16b, neatly tucked in between rooms 16 and 17. (Uneasy feeling increases slightly more at odd numbering). He left me with well-wishes for a good night of sleep.

My key, which was the lightest piece of metal I have ever held, wouldn’t work. I could slip it into the key hole, but the tumblers simply didn’t care and wouldn’t respond. So it’s back down to the lobby, where India man is again nowhere to be found. I wait. It is now 11pm and my hope for a light dinner (I had drooled over the thought of a prosciutto appetizer on the trip over) gives way to the more urgent need for a comfy bed. At last, India man appears. He walks me to my room, fiddles with the key, and by some sort of Italian wizardry, gets the door to my room open.

I walk in. Let’s just say that the Galeno lobby is extravagantly spacious compared to good ol’ 16b. Against all laws of geometry, the Galeno management has managed to get a twin-sized bed, a built in desk, a tiny bathroom and tv into something the size of a glorified phone booth. I am unclear about where I will open my suitcase other than on the sink while sitting on the toilet. Granted, that is efficient, but I’m in no mood to unpack while doing a job on the crapper. The bed is right out of the inquisition, a medieval mound of cinder blocks with a sheet thrown over it. I scratch my head about why there is a TV since it does not face the torture bed and cannot be rotated. And there is nowhere else in the room to sit and watch–how could there be? This would have meant eliminating the bathroom.

There are many things worse in life than cramped quarters, so I nobly conclude that I should suck it up, call it a night and worry about moving to a different spot the next day. But as I shut the door the door to 16b, I realize that I am hearing snoring in 17 and love-making in 16. And these are not subtle noises. This is low budget porn meets a sleep apnea clinic. There is no way I’m going to sleep. I decide the time has come to explore other hotel options.

It’s back down to the lobby. India man (who, this time, was there against all expectations) has no suggestions for me. Not even one. This seasoned hotelier has not one freaking idea about a place to stay in Rome other than his own hotel. I get on my computer (there is free wi-fi in the hotel, but it only works in the lobby–go figure since there are no chairs there–how could there be? Then people couldn’t check in). Blessed be hotels.com, I find a decent place, ironically just two blocks from my original hotel. I mention the name to India man and he snorts in indignation. He finds it to be a major step in the wrong direction. Personally, I take that as a good sign.

I go back down to 16b to retrieve my luggage. Apparently, the metal of my ultra light key has now fatigued to a breaking point because when I try it in the lock, it snaps off. There is now no way to get into the room. My uneasy feeling has grown to something much more, call it North Korea meets Comedy Central.

I walk down to the lobby, wait a couple minutes for India man (I never did figure out where he went off to all these times) and explain the situation. He stares at me in unbelief. He shakes his head. He chastises me for key-incompetence. He commands me to wait in the “breakfast atrium” (i.e four tables placed in a small alcove between rooms 12, 13, 13b and 14), while he looks for a spare key and a pair of pliers to remove what is left of the miraculously light, but now broken, key from the lock of 16b.

I sit. I wait. I wait a long time. I stare at room 13b contemplating the meaning of these b-rooms. My meditation is interrupted. Alas, the sounds of passion can be heard (quite clearly I might add) from rooms 12 and 13. I begin to feel quite inadequate for coming to Galeno alone. There is sex aplenty. All I personally care about is extracting my suitcase and catching five hours of sleep somewhere. Anywhere. Anywhere but here.

India man arrives after a few minutes (and not a moment too soon given the, ahem, bizarrely loud sounds coming from 13). He reports that he has found keys for all the rooms in the hotel except mine. What? 16b cannot be that special. I was in that room. There is nothing special about it.

He has, however, in another act of wizardry, maneuvered the broken key from the lock, which means that, at the very least, he can call the locksmith. The locksmith is not available until morning since it is so late. The locksmith may not be available for a few days since he is a religious man and there are several Saints days coming up. What? There is no non-religious locksmith in Rome? Uneasy feeling now becomes straight out anger. Indian man, in an unexpected act of responsibility, now heads off to look in some “other drawers” for unmarked keys that may spring my luggage from an extended stay in a strange, low-budget Italian hotel.

In the meantime, I’m destined to sit outside room 13 until, well, they reach the climax of their situation. And that they did. I am not familiar with Nebraska, but something special must be going on with the breeding there because Mr. and Mrs. Nebraska really did make an impression on me.

Finally, India man returns. Room 13 has gone quiet other than a lot of giggling. I’m beginning to dislike them a lot. Suddenly, the door opens and, I didn’t see this coming at all, out comes a topless Mrs. Nebraska. Our eyes meet (well, sort of, since she is topless). I feel really awkward, maybe she did as well, maybe India man did as well, so all I can manage is a misplaced and boldly stated comment: “Well done”. She is, quite obviously, unimpressed with my wit. She glares at me for a moment, flips me the bird and then asks India man about where the vending machines are. With that new found knowledge in hand, she retreats back into 13, whether for a boob-covering t-shirt or something else is anyone’s guess. Regardless, I knew I would never feel comfortable in Nebraska again.

As it turns out, one of the twenty-some loose, unmarked keys that were in “other drawers” fit 16b to the great satisfaction of India man, who looks as if he has just found a cure for cancer. He haltingly hands the key to me and implores me to “be f*&ing gentle with this one.” By weight, this one is a gold brick compared to the last key. I bite my tongue and don’t propose an alternative explanation for the previous key breakage.

It is at this point I pass on the news to my South Asian friend that I am moving on to a different spot. He takes it well. I grab my suitcase, and I walk back down towards the lobby. Mrs. Nebraska re-emerges, now in a robe. I wave. She ignores me. She asks India man about getting change for the vending machine. As I leave them behind, he is explaining that the vending machines at Galeno don’t actually work.

The Mystery of the 9th Amendment

An acquaintance recently asked me to prove my American mettle by reciting the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights (not verbatim, thank God, just the gist). It didn’t go very well. Thanks to dramas on TV, I nailed #’s 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6. I just passed muster with 7, 8 and 10 by reaching deep into the recesses memory, but I had nothing to offer for 3 and 9. Nothing. In my defense, I don’t think the third amendment has made a public appearance in my lifetime. No one should be deported or sent to Guantanamo for not knowing the name of a recluse, so I should get a pass on that one.

But then there is the 9th amendment. It reads: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Huh? Or in texting parlance, wtf? The holes created in that sentence are so large that a proverbial truck of any size could be driven through them. Surely, James Madison wrote more clearly than this.

“Certain rights”?–So not all of them, but only some? Or does this mean, only the rights that no one is still quibbling about, so they are “certain”?

“Shall not be construed”–Beware of the passive voice. Is the unexpressed agent meant to be the courts (they think so), the executive (he thinks so), the population of greater Los Angeles?

“To deny or disparage others retained by the people”–I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure some of my rights are disparaged on a regular basis even while they aren’t being denied. Is that unconstitutional?

My limited research on the rationale behind this odd amendment (“odd” in content, I mean, and not just because it is, in fact, and odd numbered amendment) suggest that it was stuffed in there as a compromise. The compromise was a convenient way to appease that unruly lot of patriots who feared the power of the federal government. Having just thrown off the yoke of monarchy, they were suspicious that rule of Congress/the President might seep out of the container of limited government and make a mess on the front stoop of the states. Hmmm. I think the anti-federalists might have been drinking a bit too much before the Philadelphia Convention to agree to the wording of the 9th. The schnockered got snookered on this one. The Supreme Court hardly ever referenced the amendment until the second half of the 20th century. And irony of ironies, the Court has usually cited it in overturning a state law.

Why are these shows so popular?

In this new age of stream-able and binge-able TV consumption, I’ve been warned that, to be relevant, I need to tune in (to use an anachronism) to any number of “amazing” shows. Doing my best to move into the 21st century, I’ve actually checked out some of them: House of Cards, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, True Detective, Fargo, Breaking Bad, Black Sails, and others. Some of them took. Breaking Bad was all pleasure. Some of them, not so much. True Detective took too much effort for me to to get invested, even when Matthew McConaughey and Woodie Harrelson were doing the heavy lifting. I only made it through two episodes.

But, of course, this “take it or leave it” attitude is the power of the new culture of TV watching. The networks don’t define what you can watch or when you get to watch it. And, let’s face it, for people raised on NBC (or ABC, or CBS, or FOX), where ne’er a boob is seen nor an f-bomb dropped, Americans are unrepressing their repression with characters who swear like sailors and sleep around…a lot. A whole lot.

The success of two shows has caught my attention in particular. No, Game of Thrones is not one of them. How could a well-written, well-acted, well-produced, larger-than-life fantasy show not work? The shows I have in mind are Shameless and Californication, which have had surprising staying power. I’ve watched several episodes of both, and I find them (disturbingly) alluring as far as binge-watching goes.

At a superficial level, the shows are very different. Shameless is set against the challenge of the economic uncertainty of a working class family in Chicago. Californication is set against the against the challenge of meaningful living in the world of Southern California writers, actors, producers and rock-stars.

It is this difference that makes their similarity so striking–they have the same premise. Flawed people consistently make bad decisions that get in the way of grasping what they desire most. The opportunity for realizing a dream is there, but it always wafts away due to a lapse in judgment. And the flaws that bedevil the characters in both shows are the same–an obsession with getting into the pants of nearly everyone they encounter, drug and alcohol abuse, lack of social filters for the words that exit their mouths, personal pride. The inhabitants of Shameless and Californication have next to no impulse control. They don’t want to harm those that they love, but, seriously, these folks just can’t help themselves.

The spectacle of disaster-episode after episode-is what makes these shows so seductive. It is cathartic to see someone on the screen live out the consequences of character flaws that I share, at least in part, without experiencing them myself. And the vicarious thrill of watching them say things and do things every couple of minutes that are, well, really, really inappropriate, offers a vicarious thrill for those of us operating in polite society.

But the success of Shameless and Californication is also deeply saddening. Nearly all of the characters are seeking happiness. All of them believe that happiness exists in faithful, intimate, relationships. Yet all of them subvert that possibility through their own betrayals, stupidity and self-centeredness.