This will be an essay without a topic, more along the lines of the kind of extorted report that might be a parent’s best hope from a twelve-year-old at summer camp. Since I never went to summer camp, I never had a chance to write one myself, and so leap at it now. One of my granddaughters has familiarized me with the genre. I am on my own in Princeton and feeling rather unconnected. Joan, accompanied by elder son Richard, flew off to England on Thursday morning. They went to visit granddaughter Lulu, a Barnard College junior who is spending a happy term abroad in Pembroke College, Cambridge. Telephonic and email reports from various the principals suggest that visit is a great success, and everyone is having a great time. Richard has even seen a life-list bird, an increasing rare event and one usually requiring geographical exoticism beyond East Anglia. They will be home by the time I post this. I do wish I could be there, but I I am fortunately not entirely on my own. My wonderful health aide, Christie Kadelu, had been keeping me out of trouble. But I still have the feeling of Life on Hold. And after a couple of days reaching the high seventies, the weather turned rainy and cool again, and in general I feel the week has actually conspired against me.
I had a rather bad twenty-four hours on account of what I call my “electric foot”. This is a a neurological aberration the medical name of which may or may not be a neuroma. It is not uncommon among the aging, but has been considerably exacerbated by some of my other difficulties. There is the sensation, beginning abruptly, of a sharp, short electric sting in the toes, foot, ankle, or lower leg. It is intermittent, with the little shocks spaced with a more or less regular rhythm at intervals of about a minute at its height and three minutes at its mildest. At its rare worst it I painful enough to make the leg jump, and even when relatively mild it makes falling asleep difficult or impossible. The mind cannot relax into somnolence as it anticipates the next jolt. This episode, the first in many months, was also the most painful I can remember, inflicting its intermittent short sharp stings to my lower left ankle with a real malice for several hours. It then decreases both in frequency and in the sharpness of the sting and generally disappears entirely within twenty-four hours. It had been so long since I experienced this annoyance that I was rather offended by its return. I lost all but a couple of hours of a night’s sleep. However, it is now reduced to a sleepable level. Unfortunately, you don’t get a memo from the universe alerting you to the corporal insults awaiting you in old age. But even amidst all this self-indulgence, I must not drift into an organ recital, as an elderly wit of my acquaintance characterizes the typical conversation of seniors.
Two major events in the public sphere have dominated my attention, along no doubt with that of a great many of my fellow Americans. As my last couple of essays must suggest, I have been very concerned about the student demonstrations on many of our campuses. I will say what worries me in a moment, but I think a sigh of relief is perhaps in order. That is, I think that the weekend just past was relatively reassuring on the protest front. Protestors were allowed to make their point, and most institutions were allowed to make at least a gesture toward theirs—the point of an academic commencement being ceremonial and quasi-sacramental. So far as I know, and despite the apparently high hopes of several thousand journalists and the malicious actions of a very few bad actors, dozens of institutional celebrations took place in an atmosphere of reasonably good order. I will breathe a little easier if the next weekend transpires as the last one did. There is serious potential mischief awaiting us at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in late summer, but sufficient unto the day…What worries me about the protests had no direct connection with Israel, with Gaza, or even the horrible slaughter that initiated the war and has characterized its prosecution. I fear that this particular form of campus disorder is likely further to alienate an important segment of the American population who already have a dim view of academic self-righteousness and self-satisfaction and will be further put off by this episode. There are already enough cynical politicians fanning these flames. I want our colleges to be, and to be seen to be, the great national treasures that at their best they are.
There is, however, a big however. Though my opinion is that the protests have often been wrong-headed and transgressive, they evidence the moral seriousness and idealism of at least many of the youthful protesters. The other major news story of the moment is the continuing trial of Donald Trump. It is generally called the “hush money trial” though it is technically a “falsification of documents” trial, there being no precise actual legal category for what it is really about, which is sleaze, personal and political. Don’t get me wrong. I’m as much of a voyeur as any tabloid reader, even if my tabloid is the Times. The latest reports I have read concern the testimony of Mr. Trump’s one-time lawyer, Michael Cohen, who is of course a felon, a perjurer, a former convict, and now a kind of male version of Alecto or Tisiphone, remorseless in his vengeful mission. Mr. Trump has repeatedly boasted that in his choice of lieutenants he takes only the best, and Cohen does seem to have been very good at what he did, at least for a while.
The headline on one Times story reads thus: “Trump Told Cohen Disclosure of His Fling Would Be a Total Disaster.” This headline seems hyperbolic in at least two ways. Few disasters are actually total. Indeed, the testimony is that Mr. Trump and/or his advisers thought that most potential male voters would be okay with the story, but that it might not go over so well with women. Do you think? My real objection is to the word “fling”. Surely a fling has a little more going for it than this? Surely “a drop” would be better, or at best a “toss”. Best of all would be best to drop the whole subject. It’s funny that so many things that aren’t funny are so laughable.
