Inuksuit

The bubble-wrapped package showed up in my mailbox about the middle of last month. It wasn't the fun-size bubble-wrap that we all think we are too mature to pop, but the small-cell kind; the kind they make into envelopes by backing it with heavy paper so they look like ravioli. This particular pillow-shaped ravioli was over-stuffed so as to remind me of those fringed souvenir pillows from places like Niagara Falls or Las Vegas. If Staples sold souvenir pillows, I imagine they would look just like this package.

It was not until I saw the return address that I recognized what it was: a pair of cassette tapes that I had bought on eBay.

This was very exciting.

Since I discovered the online auction site, I have regularly returned to search for a variety of signs and totems of my past.

It happens all the time: I have something that dredges up some association to the past and I wonder it it's out there. Whenever I would wonder whatever became of the such-and-such toy, or the so-and-so book that I used to have, I would look on eBay to see if was out there.

A family photo taken at Man and his World makes me think about the Ca-na-da song that Bobby Gimby recorded and then I go looking to see if that once-ubiquitous anthem of our national centennial might still be available.

It's kind of like asking permission to have a history. Are your memories worthy of being offered for sale by someone else?

And this is the genius of eBay: making nostalgia into a scavenger hunt. It's the gaming of memory.

Do I have the correct spelling? How would the seller present the item? What key words would they use? Would they spell those correctly?

What is the right combination of breadcrumbs to lure the memory into view.

eBay understands the power of human beings to make bad decisions in an auction situation while drunk on nostalgia. Baby boomers buying back their childhoods are an important part of the business model.

I remember being so impressed with my Secret Sam spy briefcase with its hidden camera, periscope, dart-like scroll for sending secret messages and collapsible sniper rifle; those were simpler times. It was a toy, but it was also something that grown-ups had. James Bond had a secret briefcase; my dad had a briefcase: therefore my dad was Ja--. (That can't be right.)

I got the toy and I played with all of its parts. I remember taking pictures with the spy camera at Man and his World. And, of course, I broke the toy, lost parts and generally—eventually—outgrew the toy.

And then, as I evolved into another ravioli-shaped middle-aged guy, I wondered whatever became of that toy and, naturally, whether they might have one on eBay.

And they did.

So I bid on it.

And as I was bidding and re-bidding on this objectively depraved plaything, I became increasingly irrational. I was convinced that I could once again play with it as I did when I had it the first time.

My adult brain must have known that was impossible, but my memory-addled brain went straight back to the days when I would run through the neighbor's backyards with my sniper rifle, sneaking up on my friends, pretend-shooting them and then arguing whether I had hit them or not. Trying to do that now would get me shot and the bullets would most definitely not be plastic.

The hunting of the totem and, indeed, of the memory itself is the thing. The remembering and the searching and the bidding and the waiting are each more intoxicating than the step before. The debauchery does not end until when, in the cold light of day, the package comes.

When my new-old toy came in the mail, the briefcase with the secret camera and the collapsible sniper rifle, my excitement was immediately cured, my nostalgia lifted. I was struck by how small the briefcase was.

It was like it was made for a child.

It sounds silly to even try and describe, but, in that moment of unwrapping, when memory crashed headlong into reality.... It was like staring down at a long-ago pencil mark on a kitchen wall that recorded how much you had grown. At the moment the memory was recorded it was an achievement, but, now, it just reminds you how much time has passed through my hands.

That is the danger of being reunited with your past. It's what people talk about when they talk about being unable to go home. Past is passed and here is now and never the two should meet.

The power of memory is not in its accuracy, but in its power to evoke. Like the auction of some long-forgotten toy, the hunt is intoxicating because of the many associations that are anchored to the totem.

The secret of the Secret Sam is in its power to make me think about Joe and Peter and Toby and Micheal and our games of Cops and Robbers. I think about them and the others that I could invite to my birthday parties and I compare that to the few friends I have now and how they are so far away....

“Time, time, time, see what's become of me....”

The cassette tapes in my office supply store souvenir pillow contained a version of a radio show which was, itself, an imperfect artifact of a holiday tradition of my childhood.

Like the sniper rifle in the scaled-down briefcase, this recording was a scaled-down version of a holiday broadcast that Montrealers of a certain age looked forward to every Christmas. As broadcast, the program might run up to four hours, as packaged, it is just under ninety minutes. Unlike the live broadcast, it is the result of sober decisions regarding the length of recording tape and the costs of manufacturing and not pure sentiment for the season.

Somewhat sobered by my earlier eBay hunts, I knew what I was getting when I bid on this set. I had looked for a long time for an as-aired recording of one of these shows. For a time, they used to air one annually on a Canada-based short-wave station, but I always seemed to be one software update away from capturing it. Occasionally, I would see vinyl copies of the commercial release come up for auction, but I had neither the asking price, nor a record player.

The memory of listening to the broadcast, coupled with its restricted access made it, over time, the white whale of holiday sentiment. You want it because you want it and you want it more because you can't have it. And, because the value is so personal that it is hard to explain, to justify, then, with no small measure of defensiveness, desire ticks up even higher.

But now, the hunt was over.

After all the bubble wrap was removed, I had in my hands a copy of Paul Reid's Christmas.

Very exciting.

I recognize that, with very limited exceptions, almost nobody is going to appreciate how I felt to be finally in possession of these tapes.

PaulReid had a nighttime show on English-language radio station CJAD in Montreal through most of the Sixties and Seventies. This was still during the time when radio shows had local hosts and the hosts were allowed to have personalities. Their shows were personal to them and not to some sort of algorithm worked out by the programming department.

Each weeknight, when not preempted by sports or world events, Reid interviewed visiting celebrities and played what is now disparagingly called “easy listening” music. He read poetry and he told stories.

It sounds old-fashioned to describe and, in truth, it was a bit of a throw-back even then, but Paul Reid's warm baritone was just the warm milk his listeners needed to help them put the day to bed and even consider the possibility of sleep.

No amount of twisting on the volume control could entirely drown out the times in which we were living, but, after the news and their relentless reports of land wars in Asia and the Middle East, language war in Quebec and any number of constitutional crises—foreign and domestic—a little Andre Kostelanetz helped to take some of the edge off.

The highlight of the year was when he did his Christmas show. It was his annual tribute to his parents and fifteen brothers and sisters. In his fond remembrances of growing up during the Depression and the holiday traditions of those days, his listeners somehow each found their own way back the families, the fireplaces and the traditions of their own memory.

It has taken me years to appreciate that it was through his honesty and the fondness of his recollection that his listeners found connections to and association with his story.

Reid was unapologetically a Catholic, but, for him, Christmas was as much about sharing an openness with people as it was about faith. To him, saying “Merry Christmas” was another way of saying “I love you.”

I can't claim to have heard the show each year without fail, but I do remember thinking it was important that it was on. I can remember more than once tuning in and catching the tail-end of the program and feeling disappointed that I had missed it—usually for reasons I would regret in comparison.

In Canada, we do not have the one-two punch of Thanksgiving and Christmas to focus our thinking on the holidays. At least in Montreal, coming as it did, in early December, Paul Reid's show served to re-set your seasonal compass. It did more to put listeners in a place of gratitude and thanks-giving than any amount of holiday specials on TV or store-wide sales.

It's been a generation since since Paul Reid was last on the air and yet the recollection of this program has stayed with me, locked away in that small closet of moments and experience that remind me that I am still alive, still human.

In the same way that there are particular holiday ornaments, or a recording of “The Little Drummer Boy, or a particular film version of “A Christmas Carol” that may be a part of your personal journey through the holidays, this is part of mine.

We are fortunate, I suppose, to live in an age where gateways to sentiment are readily available, just a download away, but, like holiday tinsel wrapped around the beater bar of your vacuum cleaner, stripped of context, they can look pretty cheesy.

Like giving a toy sniper rifle to a six-year-old, there is much about this time of year that does not stand careful scrutiny. When compared to ever-shortening periods of daylight, falling temperatures and the snow and ice that make even simple journeys treacherous, decorating for the holidays may seem like that string quartet that played while the Titanic sank, but it is precisely for these reasons that it is important for each of us to find our way back to whatever “home” might mean for us.

I, regrettably, have one of those minds that can more easily remember every mistake I have ever made, every sleight I have felt, every criticism I have ever received, than I can any of their opposites. Sure, I was disappointed to see that the briefcase was smaller than I remembered it would be, but what was harder for me to appreciate was the fact that I got the toy in the first place. And the thoughts behind all that generosity are equally hard for me to connect with.

But it was there.

I was fortunate to grow up two parents, a brother and a sister. My parents did the best they could to take care of us, keep us safe, and honor those things that we felt were important to us and for us. It can take a long time to recognize the truth of any experience and far too often it is not until your time is all but gone that realization is even possible and appreciation within reach.

I was brought up with few religious traditions. We were affiliated with the Anglican Church and so I have strong associations between the “hap-hap-happiest time of the year” and the legato tempos of dirge and laments. (I suppose that is why I can connect Christmas and sniper rifles.) This is part of what makes it all the more important to hang on to whatever totems and inuksuit I can find to help point me to a sentiment and a perspective that I can work with.

“Inuksuit”?

You heard me.

Inuksuit are man-made stone landmarks found across northern North America. Among other things, they are used for navigation, to mark places of veneration. In a place free of natural landmarks, they help a traveler find their way and sustain them in their journey.

Landmarks are few and far between both on the barren tundra and in our very-cluttered real life. You gather what you can find—rocks, toys, books, music—pile it high and then strike off in what you hope is the right direction. You going as far as you can, out of sight of land, of the familiar, but never so far as to lose sight of that last marker. When you think you can't see it is when you stop and look for a new stone, or go online and look for an old memory....

These tapes still evoke the same feelings, but it is less because of what they are and more because of what they represent: a simpler time in my life, a time when I had fewer responsibilities and more opportunities, more answers and fewer questions.

That is, I suppose, the greatest gift we, as humans, can give ourselves, these tokens, these personal markers that lead us back to our past.

Our path through life is not linear, but, like the very structure of ourselves, helical and multi-stranded. We journey forward, we circle back, we make new connections and we reinforce those connections already made and it is all made possible by a set of markers, the guideposts of memory that we pull together and pile up so that they may be seen more clearly.

With each lap, we are moving forward and yet we are also climbing up the helix. The more distant the memory, the larger we have to make its marker so that it might remain in view. This is perhaps what makes the toys of childhood seem larger than they really were, the times simpler, the emotions purer and the food taste richer.

It is only fitting that we have special days in our year set aside for reminiscence and sentiment that are close to the end of the year. Daylight is scarce, nights are long and the weather forces us to turn inward. It is at times like this that our pasts are, like the images in the passengers side mirror, closer than they appear.

The winter holidays are the time to unpack your inuksuk and examine each stone. Learn from them, rebuild them and then, with the days getting longer once again, set of on the next lap of our journey.

Correcting "Politicallly Correct"

I wanted to write about how different it feels now that I have a vote in the present Presidential election.

I wanted to talk about how angry I am at all of the wasted energy, the smoke, the mirrors and the real human cost of chasing power at the expense of managing the country.

What follows is a revised version of the Politically Correct post.  I am very grateful for the feedback received from the readers of that effort.  Those comments helped me to clarify my thinking and correct my many typos.

I am an immigrant.

I came to the U.S. more than 30 years ago because I thought there would be more opportunity for me to pursue my teaching and other creative aspirations.  Canada, my country of origin, was, at the time, mired in seemingly endless debates over language, immigration, cultural sovereignty, national identity, special relationships and regional disparities. It was like living in a household that was being held together for the good of the children. America, by comparison, was like spending the weekend with the non-custodial parent: anything could happen. It seemed like a place to just go and do the thing that you most wanted to do.

Perhaps I was looking at the grass with red-white-and-blue-colored glasses, but, based on scale alone, the odds seemed more in my favor.  And, to be perfectly honest, part of my interest in coming here was that so many of my high school classmates had crossed the border right after graduation that an American graduate school would be my chance to catch up.

But, soon after I  got here, it was as if the country, as a whole, after spending the previous decade coming to terms with a lost foreign war, an emerging vulnerability to foreign-controlled fuel and a normalizing of multi-culturalism, decided that immigrants were a problem that needed to be more aggressively managed.

It's part of national folklore that, as a nation of immigrants, it's always the ones that come after us that fuck everything up.  We are good, "they" are bad.  "This would be such a wonderful place if it weren't for all the sick and tired and huddled masses.  What's the matter with them?  We're breathing free over here....  That's the problem with this country:  too much yearning."

I recognize that my perceptions about the country may have no relationship to fact, but I really believed that all I had to do was show up and I could go wherever and do whatever.  At some level, I likened it to playing with my brother's Hot Wheels collection:  sure, there were going to be some awkward questions and hell to pay if I ever scratched, or broke, one of them, but, at the end of the day, not much a problem. 

I arrived in the midst of another American revolution.

Like its predecessors, this was a rejection of oppressive old ideas. Out with the love beads and the anti-establishment alphabet soup of openness and experimentation; no more therapy and self-actualization. It was the “Reagan Revolution“ and an entire generation was evolving from “Me” to “Just Me.”

After growing up listening to American news and an establishment coming to terms with a post-war generation, it was as though talking about that g-g-g-generation had suddenly become too tiring; figuring out how to recover from a protracted and unpopular war, recognizing the essential fragility of the American economy and that, in many respects, the horizon—the one natural resources it seemed to have in limitless supply—was actually a lot closer than anyone thought gave everyone a headache.

The 'big idea” in 1983 was to have no more big ideas and to instead focus on a more transactional analysis: what's in this for me?

In graduate school, I met my first 19-year-old with a "Reagan for President" button and I couldn't believe it.  How could someone so young be taken in by the Nick-at-Nite nostalgia for a time when the nation's challenges were as simple as black and white and cowboys versus Indians?  He put it to me quite simply:  "Because I want a job when I graduate."

And the way he said it was so certain that you couldn't even tease him about it. It wasn't a Coke versus Pepsi conversation, but much closer to being an article of faith.

Perhaps it was the time in which I was born, or indeed my alien-ness, but a 19-year-old Republican? Today, it seems quaint to even comment on, but that was transformational. It remains, to this day, a bellwether of a changing America.

I too was hoping to get a job after graduation.

I didn't really know going in how it would happen, but I thought if I worked hard that it would somehow just work itself out.

To get a job in my field, I had to not only convince someone to hire me--not an easy thing for a shy Canadian--but I also had to be worth the trouble, in their eyes, of dealing with an increasingly difficult Immigration and Naturalization Service.  (At least, in those days, it was a "service" and not the now more aggressively named Immigration and Customs Enforcement.) Any prospective employer had to demonstrate that there was no qualified American candidate for the position.

No pressure.

And, to make matters worse, I was in the same category of foreigners as the scientists and programmers that were being relied upon to drive the innovation economy.

Every prospective college or university employer had to decide whether to invest their time and energy in applying to the government on my behalf—a theatre production technician—or on behalf of a candidate of higher economic value.

And the closer I got to graduation, the more heated the public debate over these visas and the total number that would be allowed each year. It seemed to be common currency that if the number of opportunities for foreign workers were reduced then a counter-balancing number of domestic candidates would suddenly appear. This too seemed to be expressed in the absolutist terms of that 19-year-old that made the position invulnerable to logic, or debate of any kind.

My journey from "alien" to citizen--my "landing," if you will--is not very interesting, if indeed any of the above was, but it is important to know why I persisted.

I persisted because of what I thought of as the promise of America, the contract, if you will, the implied bargain trading effort for return, investment for interest.

It could fairly be asked, I suppose, whether I was indulging in my own heavily-filtered, overly-simplified vision of my future, but the terms of that contract were, and are, easily understood; they are so straightforward that they can be expressed within the 140-character limit of a Tweet and the same very definitely could not be said about the Canadian dream; we have too much inclusive language and too many subordinate clauses.

Simple, direct, easy-to-understand:  these are the features upon which America and Americans have made their fortunes.  Or, at least, selling those features as being part of the national OS, has been central to the idea of America.  "Nuance" and "interpretation" have always been things of which America claims to be suspicious; they are tools of the "old world" that are used to skirt and subvert and are not all that far removed from "malfeasance" and "misdirection".

Simplicity and direct-ness are also part of the feature-set of youth; they are the default positions of children who don't know, or have reason to know, differently.  Youth is binary, it is one and zero, on or off, and it knows of no valid reason why wanting something and getting something are not the same. 

Recently, I started a new job working for a company that provides valet parking services.  Every day, drivers of all makes and models bring their similarly variegated vehicles to our door and give us their keys fully expecting us to ransom their cars back to them. 

Take my car, please.  And, by all means, don't tell me where it is and prevent me from accessing its contents without your permission.  Under no circumstances are you to return it to me, until I ask for it.  I can have the car back at an agreed-to price and may even throw in a little more depending on how I feel when the car is returned to me. 

This is a trust relationship, an agreement between parties that is literally worth less than the paper it's printed on.  Each party, the parker and the parkee, agree that they will respect the other and rely upon them to behave in a predictable way.

Whole societies have been built on similar understandings. 

I work with a bunch of people who rely on this parker-parkee relationship to feed their families and fuel their futures. 

Since I started there, I have met people from Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean and all parts of the U.S.  Like the people whose cars they park, they are always moving, always trying to save time, to save money, to earn their way.  And when they are not parking a car, or retrieving a car, they are scanning the horizon looking for a potential new customer who might be in need of our service.  They watch as each new vehicle pulls up in front of the building to see if it will be a "park" or a "drop." 

Parks are full of promise and the potential of a tip; drops are disappointments. 

The days can be pretty "streaky" with many cars arriving or leaving at once, but there are other parts of the day when nothing happens, when you can hear the grass growing and feel time slowing down.  During those times, my colleagues are on their phones: they are talking, they are texting, they are looking on the Internet.  One guy was trying to collect money owed to him by a friend, another studying colloquial English so as to better understand his new country. 

I won't pretend to be able to tell their stories, or even do them the justice of a good sketch, but I think it's important to know that there is an essential Horatio Alger ethic in play.  No one, myself included, believes that they have reached their professional apotheosis working in valet parking; rather it is a means to an end, a flagstone in a much bigger, much longer walkway. 

I've met more than one person who leaves their shift as a valet to go to another job where they stock shelves, or to school to take classes, or both. 

The slack time in this job works to my disadvantage.  It gives me time to reflect and that is always dangerous.  I'm fifty-five-years old and, as in most other aspects of my life, I seemed to have missed the critical life lessons that were supposed to result in a fair trade of hard work for prosperity and realized ambitions.  I believe I have kept up my part of the bargain, but have seen only decline; a steady backsliding that increases stress and decreases prospects. 

And the more I reflect, the harder it is to escape a sense of missed opportunities and a growing resentment of what looks like wave after wave of people who have skipped to the front of whatever line I happen to be in. 

Anyone who has picked a check-out lane at the store only to find a new lane open, or all others suddenly clear out will have some sense of what I'm talking about.

It shames me to admit it, but I am afraid. 

I am afraid to get sick, I am afraid to get old, I am afraid to take risks.  I am afraid to hope. 

I suppose that is why I look upon the work I am doing now as the perfect metaphor for the cul-de-sac life that I have been living.  Instead of being the person who is rushing to a very important something-or-other, I get to be the guy who stops to hold their car door.

In the same way that misreading a menu can leave a bad taste in your mouth, I have a sense of having signed up for a class that is no longer being offered. 

During one of our recent slack periods, I spent the time helping one of my colleagues to resolve a payroll issue he was having with the company. Though he had started shortly after me, almost two months ago, he had only received one paycheck and was trying to figure out how to get the rest of the money that was his due.

Since English was not his native language, I was pressed into service to tell his story to a series of customer service representatives at the company and their payroll service contractor.

Feeling the pressure of a rent payment, my brother from another country was getting frustrated because he did not understand why he couldn't just have a check instead of the pre-paid debit card that he was being offered.

As I was doing my best to explain his issue to the operator and their issues to him, I thought of the famous chicken salad scene in “Five Easy Pieces” and, not with no small pride, the long tradition of peacekeeping in Canada.

At stake was about five hundred dollars and, what I took to be, a significant amount of anxiety about his as-yet unmet obligations.

After several rounds of call-the-company-no-call-the-bank-no-call-the-company, my friend in frustration said he wanted to close the account and have them send him a check for the money that was owed, even though it would take up to ten business days.

This decision quickly brought the negotiation to a close.

By this time, as a full-blooded Canadian, I had internalized his frustration and was confused by this choice given the imminent deadline he was facing.

My friend smiled at me and said that it really wasn't such a big deal. He had come from a country where he had had to be on the alert all the time; where his last name and his location relative to a river could mean the difference between life and death. In his country, he was always being watched, being forced to pay bribes to keep his business afloat and to sleep with one eye open for fear of violence directed at him, or his family.

He smiled because he had made his way to America where the problems were trifling by comparison; frustrating, no doubt, but, compared to his experience, trifling.

The world is a confusing enough place and is full of what Douglas Adams described as "infinite improbability."  Just when you think you understand your place in the world, there comes a group of monkeys who want a minute of your time to discuss an idea for a play they've been working on. 

So powerful a motivating force is this improbability that Adams makes it the energy source that powers the spaceship in his story.  It is, so the reasoning goes, just as improbable that we are at any given point in our lives as it would be if we were anyplace else, therefore, if improbability is a constant and we would rather be anyplace else other than where we are, why not be there instead? 

Given the unassailable nature of the principle of improbable motivation, it is a wonder that the world had to wait for a writer to describe it.  Customarily, it is the province of writers to record, to document, to assign inevitability.  In essence, writers deal in recipes:  they define the ingredients, describe how they are combined and overstate the outcomes.  (Feeds six?  Maybe if you're having dinner with five Barbies.) 

To be alive in this world is itself a product of improbability.  Making it from one day to the next, one breath to the next, is to overcome significant barriers. 

America, as an idea, is built upon the idea of harnessing improbability.

Providing a roof, four walls and three squares for yourself and those you care for is a tremendous achievement; one that would not be possible without agreements and understandings, stated and implicit. 

We agree to trade our independence for some constants like food, electricity, and some measure of security. 

We trust that by showing up to work every day, we will get a check.  We follow the rules of the road in the expectation that we will neither be killed nor arrested.  We surrender our keys to the valet fully expecting that we will get them, and our vehicles, back when we are ready to leave. 

We trust. 

We know this is a risk, because we have an innate appreciation for improbability, but we trust.

And I want to be clear that trust is very different from faith.  I don't give my car keys to an idea, I give them to a person who I can look in the eye and who can look into mine.  They don't get my keys until they get "the look" from me that says "I'm getting these back, right?" 

It's a contract. 

Even in a time when everyone knows that contracts aren't binding, that there always seems to be a way out for people who are, or who can hire, masters of the fine print, we still give up the keys. 

It's a remarkable reflection on us that, even despite evidence to the contrary, we continue to trust one another and that, sometimes, we are prepared to take great risks based on that trust. 

I come back to my colleagues in the car park and those who have made affirmative choices to leave their countries of origin and come to America because they trust that the country will provide a safe place with more opportunity for them and their families.  Even if a compelling case might be made for America playing a pivotal role in creating the instability and the lack of trust, in their country of origin, they still come.

They are betting against the odds and on improbability.

That's trust:  trust in the power of an idea despite evidence to the contrary.

You have to respect that level of trust. 

And you have to respect the people who are willing to trust. 

Respecting the trust of other people is, regrettably, an old-fashioned idea.  Today we celebrate the fixers, the fine-printers, the super-humans who seem to be immune from the rules and regulations that allegedly confine and restrain all of us.  "Ha-ha, no mere Law of Gravity is going to keep me from jumping off this tower!" 

This is a popular though unrealistic aspiration because our capacity to trust has been hobbled.  Believing we have properly observed the democracy of the line, we have seen too many able to skirt that by paying for premium, primary, access.  Even at Disney World, if nothing else a celebration of American values and ideals, they now have two lines for each attraction:  the "FastPass" which allows priority seating for customer who pay for the privilege and the "Stand-By" line for everyone else who could not, or would not, plan ahead. 

FastPass is not a new idea for Disney, what is new is the characterization of the regular line as "stand-by."  In the very phrase "stand-by" is the notion of chance, of gambling and the very real possibility of disappointment.  FastPass is the new normal and Stand-by is for the "others." 

We obsess over fairness even as we struggle for premium status and our key rings are choked with tags denoting preferential status by virtue of our loyalty to the places we shop. I don't think, we ever stop to appreciate that the cost of premium status is paid out of our shared "trust" account. 

Each time we have visited Disney World, we have been to the Hall of Presidents.  It is a sobering presentation of America's political ideals as manifested in the process of selecting its President. 

After a predictably stirring introduction by America's conscience, Morgan Freeman, the curtain parts to reveal a stage full of animatronic representations of the country's 43 presidents.  Everyone of the figures moves and several speak to the idea that one of the country's big ideas is that it picks its leaders from among its citizens, that president serves and then returns to civilian life. 

Given everything we know about the toxic effects of power, it really is a remarkable idea that someone can become the leader of the nation, if not indeed, the "Free World" and then will, in four to eight years, simply step back in favor of a successor chosen by the citizenry, 

That's trust. 

And the thing is, we all know how inherently fragile an idea that is because of the raft of conspiracies and works of speculative fiction that exist speaking directly to this point.  It's as though, after a quarter of a millennium, we cannot ourselves believe that it still works.

If you have read this far, thank you, and, in exchange for your trust, your belief that I would, sooner or later, come to the point, I will begin to wrap this up. 

It has stuck in my craw for some time that, as has been observed, the country can no longer afford to be "politically correct."  The idea is that, somehow, by respecting that there are differences between us that cannot be settled over a beer and a cheeseburger is somehow a threat to the national soul.  Acknowledging that everyone may not be in the country for the same reasons, or believe the same things, is a sign of weakness?

Political correctness has become a rallying cry, the "dog whistle" that speaks to a country full, or apparently full, of people who resent feeling obligated to say "African-American" or would rather just raise their voice when talking to someone whose first language is not English than accept that acquiring some cultural sensitivity might actually simplify their lives in a changing society.  As one local public official was heard to say, "Cultural Competency is just something the government makes us do." 

Somehow the idea has been seeded that openness and understanding, or at least a readiness to understand, is a representation of government over-reach instead of what we--as travelers to this country--have always understood to be a major thread woven into the American welcome mat. 

Paragraphs like the last one must surely paint me as some sort of doe-eyed optimist, a refugee from some Capraesque country where people always say what they mean and mean what they say.  In my own defense, I would point out that even BedfordFalls had room for both George Bailey and Mr. Potter. 

Capra, the immigrant, made what have come to be seen as the most American, or perhaps idealized version of American stories.  His characters were always presented with a choice between doing what was "right" and what was "easy" and they always chose to do the right thing.  And, for as much as the independent, the lone figure striking off to meet his destiny is a part of the national ethos, so too is this idea of always doing the right thing. 

Is this still true? 

Perhaps because the stakes in Capra's America were so clear, quite literally black and white, it was easy to see the country's character reflected in them and to understand what the right thing is.  Almost a century later, the world is much less binary and the national pallet is a lot bigger. 

But just as having access to a broad spectrum of colors provides the artist the opportunity to paint a richer portrait of their subject, having a diversity of talents and perspectives only improves our ability to confront challenges and overcome obstacles.  Even characters like Batman and Superman need a diversity of talents to respond to their biggest challenges.  When the chips are down, you need a League to fight for justice, or to assemble a team of Avengers. 

This is stuff we all know. 

More is better; the "right" answer is most often a combination of ideas and inputs from different sources.  

We know that one person cannot have all the answers even though we might like to imagine it possible. 

This is the first year since I have been living in America that I will be able to vote in a presidential election.  I've been watching from the sidelines for a long time, but this will be the first time I will be allowed off the bench.  I have to tell you that it has made watching the endless campaigning deeply unsettling. 

One does not so much have the sense of joining a team as coming into the middle of a family feud--and not the Steve Harvey version, either. 

Over and over again, we hear that the major-party candidates have historically low approval ratings.  It has become almost common currency that this year's election will be less a contest of ideas, of visions for the country's future than of nose-holding and lesser-of-two-evils-picking. 

This is still the United States of America, right? 

The country of big ideas? 

Is the best idea really to build a wall? 

Really? 

Voter interviews routinely return quotes like, " Oh, he really doesn't mean that...," or "He's a straight shooter...." 

They also say that she is the most qualified candidate with tons of leadership experience and is untrustworthy. 

The most prized value this election season is "change."  Not the gradual, evolutionary change that comes from building on success and learning from failure, but the change that comes when your little sister loses a board game and tosses everything in the air before storming out of the room. 

The voters want change and they have had it, lots of it. 

They just don't like it. 

Whether you like it or not, the country and the world have changed and will continue to change. 

Countries are not businesses, despite what you may have heard, they cannot just decide to close if they don't like the customers they are getting.  Countries cannot ignore the changing realities on the ground.  (Well some can, but they are not normally the countries that are predicated on a regular and orderly transition of leadership.) 

Don't get me wrong, I am old enough to be nostalgic for simpler times, for a time when air travel was glamorous and anything was possible, but I am also old enough to know that those days will never come back and we will be forever surrendering our belts, and our dignity, to move around the country. 

I am a stranger here, well, I'd probably be a stranger anywhere, but it seems to me that the country was FOUNDED on the idea that people could think for themselves,  believe for themselves, and then, despite coming from different perspectives, could join together for the common good. 

This model has worked very well for a long time--perhaps too well.  In the beginning, the differences may have been less obvious, or you may have had to travel greater distances to see them, but now, differences are everywhere.  We see different ways of dressing, hear different languages, smell different foods and listen to music that has been fashioned from, quite literally, a whole world of influences.  This is not "new" it is just more apparent. 

Accepting that the United States of America has been quilted together from the people and cultures of the rest of the world is not bending to a trend, but an authentic acknowledgment of the country's history and addressing the people in the manner of their preference is a sign of respect, the drive for which is what built the country. 

And, if that idea, that respect is too complicated an idea to be recognized in speech and in accommodation, we should simply honor the trust that we all share in our collective ability to work things out, to get along. 

There is a national trust and it is not a treasure hunt and it is not in forces beyond our control, but it is trust in an idea that with enough hands on the typewriter, regardless of where they came from,we can eventually come up with something pretty great. 

That is the contract we each made with America, the one that brought most of us here, and we are trusting in one another to deliver. 

I can almost hear the objections, the concerns about "unfunded mandates" and the tyranny of unmet expectations.  If I am talking about the inevitability of change, then I have to expect that the contract will change too. 

I do. 

It has. 

And I have not always been happy about it. 

But I keep going, trusting that I can adapt and overcome. 

What else can I do?  

I signed a contract. I expect it to be honored just as I expect to keep up my part of the bargain. 

And besides, they've got my keys.     

Politically Correct

Recently, I started a new job working for a company that provides valet parking services.  Every day, drivers of all makes and models bring their similarly variegated vehicles to our door, give us their keys fully expecting us to ransom their cars back to them. 

Take my car, please.  And, by all means, don't tell me where it is, prevent me from accessing its contents without your permission.  Under no circumstances are you to return it to me, until I ask for it.  On certain occasions, I can have the car back at an agreed-to price and may even throw in a little more depending on how I feel when the car is returned to me. 

It makes me think of the movie "Ferris Beuller's Day Off" and the scene where they park Cameron's dad's Ferrari at a downtown Chicago garage.  We see the car disappear in one door and come right out of an adjacent door with two parking attendants who have promised to take very good care of it.

You go on about your business convinced that your vehicle is safely parked in a garage somewhere when, in reality, it could just as easily be anywhere else. 

This is a trust relationship, an agreement between parties that is literally worth less than the paper it's printed on.  Each party, the parker and the parkee, agree that they will respect the other and rely upon them to behave in a predictable way.

Whole societies have been built on similar understandings. 

I work with a bunch of people who rely on this parker-parkee relationship to feed their families and fuel their futures. 

Since I started there, I have met people from Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean and all parts of the U.S.  Like the people whose cars they park, they are always moving, always trying to save time, to save money, to earn their way.  And when they are not parking a car, or retrieving a car, they are scanning the horizon looking for a potential new customer who might be in need of our service.  They watch as each new vehicle pulls up in front of the building to see if it will be a "park" or a "drop." 

Parks are full of promise and the potential of a tip; drops are disappointments. 

The days can be pretty "streaky" with many cars arriving or leaving at once, but there are other parts of the day when nothing happens, when you can hear the grass growing and feel time slowing down.  During those times, my colleagues are on their phones: they are talking, they are texting, they are looking on the Internet.  One guy was trying to collect money owed to him by a friend, another studying colloquial English so as to better understand his new country. 

I won't pretend to be able to tell their stories, or even do them the justice of a good sketch, but I think it's important to know that there is an essential Horatio Alger ethic in play.  No one, myself included, believes that they have reached their professional apotheosis working in valet parking; rather it is a means to an end, a flagstone in a much bigger, much longer walkway. 

I've met more than one person who leaves their shift as a valet to go to another job where they stock shelves, or take classes, or both. 

As I said, there is lots of slack time in this job and that works to my disadvantage.  It gives me time to reflect and that is always dangerous.  I'm fifty-five-years old and, as in most other aspects of my life, I seemed to have missed the critical life lessons that were supposed to result in a fair trade of hard work for prosperity and realized ambitions.  I believe I have kept up my part of the bargain, but have seen only decline; a steady backsliding that increases stress and decreases prospects. 

And the more I reflect, the harder it is to escape a sense of missed opportunities and a growing resentment of what looks like wave after wave of people who have skipped to the front of whatever line I happen to be in. 

It shames me to admit it, but I am afraid. 

I am afraid to get sick, I am afraid to get old, I am afraid to take risks.  I am afraid to hope. 

I suppose that is why I look upon the work I am doing now as the perfect metaphor for the cul-de-sac life that I have been living.  Instead of being the person who is rushing to a very important something-or-other, I get to be the guy who stops to hold the car door while others rush by. 

In the same way that misreading a menu can leave a bad taste in your mouth, I have a sense of having signed up for a class that is no longer being offered. 

I too am an immigrant who came to the U.S. more than 30 years ago in part because I thought there was more opportunity available for me to pursue my teaching and other creative aspirations.  In comparison to Canada, my country of origin, which was, at the time, mired in endless debate over cultural sovereignty, national identity,special relationships and regional disparities, America seemed like a place to just go and do the thing that you most wanted to do. 

Perhaps I was looking at the grass with red, white and blue colored glasses, but based on scale alone, the odds seemed more to my liking.  And, to be perfectly honest, part of my interest in coming here after I finished undergraduate school was that so many of my high school classmates had gone to the US right after graduation that an American graduate school was my chance to catch up. 

But, soon after I  got here, it was as if the country, as a whole, after spending the previous decade coming to terms with a lost foreign war, an emerging vulnerability to foreign-controlled fuel and a normalizing of multi-culturalism, decided that immigrants were a problem that needed to be more aggressively managed.

It's part of national folklore that, as a nation of immigrants, it's always the ones that come after us that fuck everything up.  We are good, "they" are bad.  "This would be such a wonderful place if it weren't for all the sick and tired and huddled masses.  What's the matter with them?  We're breathing free over here....  That's the problem with this country:  too much yearning." 

I recognize that my perceptions about the country may have no relationship to fact, but I really believed that all I had to do was show up and I could go wherever and do whatever.  At some level, I likened it to playing with my brother's Hot Wheels collection:  sure, there were going to be some awkward questions and hell to pay if I ever scratched, or broke, one of them, but, at the end of the day, not much a problem. 

We used to be so proud of having the longest undefended border in the world.... 

Nobody talks about that much anymore. 

There is "inside" and there is "outside" and ever-higher walls to separate them. 

We spoke in terms of a "Reagan Revolution" and the transformation of the "Me" generation into the "Just Me" generation.  Like most things, apparently, it took me a long time to appreciate what was happening.  In graduate school, I met my first 19-year-old with a "Reagan for President" button and I couldn't believe it.  How could someone so young be taken in by the Nick-at-Nite nostalgia for a time when the nation's challenges were as simple as black and white and cowboys versus Indians?  He put it to me quite simply:  "Because I want a job when I graduate."

In truth, I too wanted a job upon graduation, I just wasn't prepared to pay such a high price for it. 

As a result, I had to not only convince someone to hire me--not an easy thing for a shy Canadian--but I also had to be worth the trouble, in their eyes, of dealing with an increasingly difficult Immigration and Naturalization Service.  (At least, in those days, it was a "service" and not the now more aggressively named Immigration and Customs Enforcement.) 

Any prospective employer had to demonstrate that there was no qualified American candidate for the position. 

No pressure. 

I was in the same candidate pool as scientists and programmers who were being brought in from other countries and yet I was applying for an entirely different kind of job. 

And as American politicians further embraced the "Us-versus-Them" as a campaign issue, there were discussions of limiting the overall number of visas in my category and so I soon found myself competing with the scientist for one of those visas.  It was another brick in the wall between who was "inside" and who wasn't. 

The rest my twenty-year progress from "alien" to citizen--my "landing," if you will--is not very interesting, if indeed any of the above was, but it is important to know why I persisted. 

I persisted because of that contract, that implied bargain trading effort for return, investment for interest. 

It could fairly be asked, I suppose, whether I was indulging in my own heavily-filtered, overly-simplified vision of my future, but the terms of that contract were and are easily understood; they are so straightforward that they can be expressed within the 140-character limit of a Tweet and the same very definitely could not be said about the Canadian dream; we have too much inclusive language and too many subordinate clauses. 

Simple, direct, easy-to-understand:  these are the features upon which America and Americans have made their fortunes.  Or, at least, selling those features as being part of the national OS, has been central to the idea of America.  "Nuance" and "interpretation" have always been things of which America claims to be suspicious; they are tools of the "old world" that are used to skirt and subvert and are not all that far removed from "malfeasance" and "misdirection". 

Simplicity and direct-ness are also part of the feature-set of youth; they are the default positions of children who don't know, or reason to know, differently.  Youth is binary, it is one and zero, on or off and it knows of no valid reason why wanting something and getting something are not the same. 

* * * 

My mother is in mourning.

After experiencing a stroke, about five years ago, my step-father now lives with dementia and all of the foreshortening that comes with that labyrinth of related symptoms.  His world consists of what fragments of memory he can dredge up and only those things that he can put his arms around.  Sometimes, that includes my mother, but often it does not. 

Their marriage was the second chance that both of them wanted and needed; it was an opportunity for them both to know that their lives could have a different focus, perhaps it was not the one they might have chosen for themselves earlier in their stories, it was however, an immensely rewarding partnership that helped to balance the hard-earned furrows of worry on their faces with an equal, or greater, number of laugh lines. 

Their relationship was richer for what it cost them both to have:  it's a nuanced interpretation, but, what do you want from me, I'm old. 

My mother mourns because she looks at her husband and sees him both for who he was and who he is becoming.  She carries the weight of holding two realities in her head simultaneously.  She is living in Orwell's doublethink dystopia and feels the pressure to accept the world as it is described to her without the permission to free herself from memory and from her own expectations. 

Reared with a Depression-era mindset, my mother and her husband were planners and savers; they lived less in the present so that they could enjoy a comfortable future.  Unexpectedly, their futures arrived with that stroke and it was not the one they had planned for. 

So, what do you do when you find yourself forced to play in the High Stakes room surrounded by unfamiliar games of chance? 

There really are only two choices:  you learn the new games and try to make the best of the opportunities that come your way, or you keep looking for the exit and a way back to  familiar surroundings with more manageable risks. 

Eric has been forced, literally by factors beyond his control, to adapt.  He no longer can express any connection to another reality; one that doesn't involve secure wards and wave after wave of familiar strangers.  Once in a while, he might connect to a sound, or a taste or. some other primal trigger, but, for now, he's like a plastic bag caught in an air current:  buffeted by forces he cannot recognize. 

And, because the course of dementia is degenerative, change is relentless and mourning is never broken.  My mother visits him almost every day, sits with him, holds his hand and watches for any recognition, even if it is that she is the same stranger that came to see him before. She wants the deal she signed up for, the contract she made with her husband wherein they would grow old together and enjoy hearth and home, friends and family and, above all, certainty. 

* * * 

The world is a confusing enough place and is full of what Douglas Adams described as "infinite improbability."  Just when you think you understand your place in the world, there comes a group of monkeys who want a minute of your time to discuss an idea for a play they've been working on. 

So powerful a motivating force is this improbability that Adams makes it the energy source that powers the spaceship in his story.  It is, so the reasoning goes, just as improbable that we are at any given point in our lives as it would be if we were anyplace else, therefore, if improbability is a constant and we would rather be anyplace else other than where we are, why not be there instead? 

Given the unassailable nature of the principle of improbable motivation, it is a wonder that the world had to wait for a writer to describe it.  Customarily, it is the province of writers to record, to document, to assign inevitability.  In essence, writers deal in recipes:  they define the ingredients, describe how they are combined and overstate the outcomes.  (Feeds six?  Maybe if you're having dinner with five Barbies.) 

I watch my mother as she sees the outcome of following her three-decade recipe and works to understand and accept the differences between what she has now and what she had expected and I marvel at the persistence of trust. 

To be alive in this world is itself a product of improbability.  Making it from one day to the next, one breath to the next, is to overcome significant barriers.  Providing a roof, four walls and three squares for yourself and those you care for is a tremendous achievement; one that would not be possible without agreements and understandings, stated and implicit. 

We agree to trade our independence for some constants like food, electricity, and some measure of security. 

We trust that by showing up to work every day, we will get a check.  We follow the rules of the road in the expectation that we will neither killed nor arrested.  We surrender our keys to the valet fully expecting that we will get them, and our vehicles, back when we are ready to leave. 

We trust. 

We know this is a risk, because we have an innate appreciation for improbability, but we trust.

And I want to be clear that trust is very different from faith.  I don't give my car keys to an idea, I give them to a person who I can look in the eye and who can look into mine.  They don't get my keys until they get "the look" from me that says "I'm getting these back, right?" 

It's a contract. 

Even in a time when everyone knows that contracts aren't binding, that there always seems to be a way out for people who are, or who can hire, masters of the fine print, we still give up the keys. 

It's a remarkable reflection on us that, even despite evidence to the contrary, we continue to trust one another and that, sometimes, we are prepared to take great risks based on that trust. 

I come back to my colleagues in the car park and those who have made affirmative choices to leave their countries of origin and come to America because they trust that the country will provide a safe place with more opportunity for them and their families.  Even if a compelling case might be made for America playing a pivotal role in creating the instability and the lack of trust, in their country of origin, they still come. 

That's trust:  trust in the power of an idea despite evidence to the contrary.  It's why they're here and it's what keeps my mother returning to the care facility to see her husband. 

You have to respect that level of trust. 

And you have to respect the people who are willing to trust. 

Respecting the trust of other people is, regrettably, an old-fashioned idea.  Today we celebrate the fixers, the fine-printers, the super-humans who seem to be immune from the rules and regulations that allegedly confine and restrain all of us.  "Ha-ha, no mere Law of Gravity is going to keep me from jumping off this tower!" 

This is a popular though unrealistic aspiration because our capacity to trust has been hobbled.  Believing we have properly observed the democracy of the line, we have seen too many able to skirt that by paying for premium, primary, access.  Even at Disney World, if nothing else a celebration of American values and ideals, they now have two lines for each attraction:  the "FastPass" which allows priority seating for customer who pay for the privilege, and the "Stand-By" line for everyone else who could not, or would not, plan ahead. 

FastPass is not a new idea for Disney, what is new is the characterization of the regular line as "stand-by."  In the very phrase "stand-by" is the notion of chance, of gambling and the very real possibility of disappointment.  FastPass is the new normal and Stand-by is for the "others." 

We obsess over fairness even as we struggle for premium status and, I don't think, we ever stop to appreciate that the cost of premium status is paid out of our "trust" account. 

Each time we have visited Disney World, we have been to the Hall of Presidents.  It is a sobering presentation of America's political ideals as manifested in the process of selecting its President. 

After a predictably stirring introduction by America's conscience, Morgan Freeman, the curtain parts to reveal a stage full of animatronic representations of the country's 43 presidents.  Everyone of the figures moves and several speak to the idea that one of the country's big ideas is that it picks its leaders from among its citizens, that president serves and then returns to civilian life. 

Given everything we know about the toxic effects of power, it really is a remarkable idea that someone can become the leader of the nation, if not indeed, the "Free World" and then will, in four to eight years, simply step back in favor of a successor chosen by the citizenry, 

That's trust. 

And the thing is, we all know how inherently fragile an idea that is because of the raft of conspiracies and works of speculative fiction that exist speaking directly to this point.  It's as though, after a quarter of a millennia, we cannot ourselves believe that it still works.

If you have read this far, thank you, and, in exchange for your trust, your belief that I would, sooner or later, come to the point, I will begin to wrap this up. 

It has stuck in my craw for some time that, as has been observed, the country can no longer afford to be "politically correct."  The idea is that, somehow, by respecting that there are differences between us that cannot be settled over a beer and a cheeseburger is somehow a threat to the national soul.  Acknowledging that everyone may not be in the country for the same reasons, or believe the same things, is a sign of weakness?

Political correctness has become  rallying cry, the "dog whistle" that speaks to a country full, or apparently full, of people who resent feeling obligated to say "African-American" or would rather just raise their voice when talking to someone whose first language is not English than accept that acquiring some cultural sensitivity might actually simplify their lives in a changing society.  As one local public official was heard to say, "Cultural Competency is just something the government makes us do." 

Somehow the idea has been seeded that openness and understanding, or at least a readiness to understand, is a representation of government over-reach instead of what we--as travelers to this country--have always understood to be a major thread woven into the American welcome mat. 

Paragraphs like the last one must surely paint me as some sort of doe-eyed optimist, a refugee from some Capraesque country where people always say what they mean and mean what they say.  In my own defense, I would point out that even BedfordFalls had room for both George Bailey and Mr. Potter. 

Capra, the immigrant, what have come to be seen as the most American, or perhaps idealized version of American stories.  His characters were always presented with a choice between doing what was "right" and what was "easy" and they always chose to do the right thing.  And, for as much as the independent, the lone figure striking off to meet his destiny is a part of the national ethos, so too is this idea of always doing the right thing. 

Is this still true? 

Perhaps because the stakes in Capra's America were so clear, quite literally black and white, it was easy to see the country's character reflected in them and to understand what the right thing is.  Almost a century later, the world is much less binary and the national pallet is a lot bigger. 

But just as having access to a broad spectrum of colors provides the artist the opportunity to paint a richer portrait of their subject, having a diversity of talents and perspectives only improves our ability to confront challenges and overcome obstacles.  Even characters like Batman and Superman need a diversity of talents to respond to their biggest challenges.  When the chips are down, you need a League to fight for justice, or to assemble a team of Avengers. 

This is stuff we all know. 

More is better; the "right" answer is most often a combination of ideas and inputs from different sources.  

We know that one person cannot have all the answers even though we might like to imagine it possible. 

This is the first year since I have been living in America that I will be able to vote in a presidential election.  I've been watching from the sidelines for a long time, but this will be the first time I will be allowed off the bench.  I have to tell you that it has made watching the endless campaigning deeply unsettling. 

One does not so much have the sense of joining a team as coming into the middle of a family feud--and not the Steve Harvey version, either. 

Over and over again, we hear that the major-party candidates have historically low approval ratings.  It has become almost common currency that this year's election will be less a contest of ideas, of visions for the country's future than of nose-holding and lesser-of-two-evils-picking. 

This is still the United State of America, right? 

The country of big ideas? 

Is the best idea really to build a wall? 

Really? 

Voter interviews routinely return quotes like, " Oh, he really doesn't mean that...," or "He's a straight shooter...." 

They also say that she is the most qualified candidate with tons of leadership experience and is untrustworthy. 

The most prized value this election season is "change."  Not the gradual, evolutionary change that comes from building on success and learning from failure,, but the change that comes when your little sister loses a board game and tosses everything in the air and storms out of the room. 

The voters want change and they have had it, lots of it. 

They just don't like it. 

Whether you like it or not, the country and the world have changed and will continue to change.  And, like my mother's relationship with her husband, that change is not always positive.  The country, like my mother, has the same choices of adapting or denying. 

And, just as my mother has had to adapt to a life where her husband is no longer available to reach the items on the top shelf, the country will have no choice but to adapt. 

Countries are not businesses, despite what you may have heard, they cannot just decide to close if they don't like the customers they are getting.  Countries cannot ignore the changing realities on the ground.  (Well some can, but they are not normally the countries that are predicated on a regular and orderly transition of leadership.) 

Don't get me wrong, I am old enough to be nostalgic for simpler times, for a time when air travel was glamorous and anything was possible, but I am also old enough to know that those days will never come back and we will be forever surrendering our belts, and our dignity, to move around the country. 

I am a stranger here, well, I'd probably be a stranger anywhere, but it seems to me that the country was FOUNDED on the idea that people could think for themselves,  believe for themselves, and, despite coming from different perspectives, could join together for the common good. 

This model has worked very well for a long time--perhaps too well.  In the beginning, the differences may have been less obvious, or you may have had to travel greater distances to see them, but now, differences are everywhere.  We see different ways of dressing, hear different languages, smell different foods and listen to music that has been fashioned from, quite literally, a whole world of influences.  This is not "new" it is just more apparent. 

Accepting that the United States of America has been quilted together from the people and cultures of the rest of the world is not bending to a trend, but an authentic acknowledgment of the country's history and addressing the people in the manner of their preference is a sign of respect, the drive for which is what built the country. 

And, if that idea, that respect is too complicated an idea to be recognized in speech and in accommodation, we should simply honor the trust that we all share in our collective ability to work things out, to get along. 

There is a national trust and it is not a treasure hunt and it is not in forces beyond our control, but it is trust in an idea that with enough hands on the typewriter, regardless of where they came from,we can eventually come up with something pretty great. 

That is the contract we each made with America, the one that brought most of us here, and we are trusting in one another deliver. 

I can almost hear the objections, the concerns about "unfunded mandates" and the tyranny of unmet expectations.  If I am am talking about the inevitability of change, then I have to expect that the contract will change too. 

I do. 

It has. 

And I have not always been happy about it. 

But I keep going, trusting that I can adapt and overcome. 

What else can I do?  

I signed a contract. 

And besides, they've got my keys.