Banned Books Night in Exeter

Last night at  Water Street Books  in Exeter, the ACLU hosted an event featuring readings of books which have been banned from various locales, including libraries, bookstores and school systems. 

This was the fourth annual event, and this one including Peyton Place, Howard Zinn's history of  America, Lillian Hellman's play, "The Children's Hour" and other pieces.

Excerpts were read from each. Renny Cushing read the splendid opening paragraph of Peyton Place and he gave some of the history of the storm it provoked, including the remarks from the Manchester Union Leader's William Loeb who said it was a harbinger of the imminent  end of Western Civilization.  Cushing read the description of Dr. Matthew Swain's confrontation with the reality of incestuous rape and the need to respond with an abortion.  There are many other passages he could have read from Peyton Place, which addressed the damage done by organized religion, the oppressive class structure in the town, and  the tension between prim and proper church going Norman Rockwell small town values and the hot sensual desires percolating unseen beneath.  Much of the book is an effort to show the Chamber of Commerce image of small town New England is a lie, but the abortion passages may have been chosen because of the congressional hearings on Planned Parenthood which were held that same day.

I suppose nothing quite undermines the notion that you can keep the lide on basic human drives more than abortion. If everyone could or would just say "No" then there would be no abortions--but people are not saints. 

A history and social studies teacher from Portsmouth High School read Howard Zinn's description of the murderous fury Christopher Columbus unleashed on the people he found living in Haiti, from whom he demanded gold which they did not have and could not provide. The atrocities were motivated by a capitalist drive to make the capital invested in the expedition pay off in gold, a harbinger of what was to come in the history of the United States. 

The head of the drama department at Phillips Exeter Academy read from the Lillian Hellman play, "The Children's Hour," which concerned two women teachers who have been accused by a student of having a lesbian affair.  The lie carries weight and it doesn't matter it's a lie because, as Shakespeare said, "In speech, there is logic."   It doesn't matter whether the statement is groundless, or the videotape photo shopped--all that matters is the accusation.  Scoundrels from Joseph McCarthy to Jason Chaffetz have known this--true is in the eye of the beholder and often it is simply what you claim it is, no matter how absurd.

It was wonderful to be among friends at the bookstore.  The readings remind us of the power of an idea, and the anger and desperation of those who want to try to kill ideas.

Blood Moon, Lunar Eclipse Come to Hampton, New Hampshire

It is easy to forget how small we are in the universe, but last night held some reminders.  

The sky was nearly cloudless in Hampton but the stars were not prominent because the moon was full and lighted up the sky. It looked much larger than even a full moon ordinarily looks. Then, slowly, beginning around 9 PM, a smudge appeared on its left hand edge and worked its way across the moon. Over a little more than an hour, it slowly progressed, as the earth came between the moon and the sun and as this happened the moon took on a red cast.

It was all visible from my house.  No need for telescopes. 

I'm told the next time this happens will be 18 years.  We always used to say in Maryland, it'll be a long time before that happens again--the Cicadas will be back around the time that happens--the Cicadas are on a 17 year cycle. They are large cricket like insects which bloom every 17 years and fill the night air with their Cicada sounds and they fall dead all over the ground, covering surfaces like snow. 

Up here, we'll be saying--it'll be another blood moon before we see that happen again. 

All this comes just a month or two since the blue moon.

This morning, before sunrise, the full moon had drifted across the sky to the Southwest and hung low over my neighbor's rooftop. The sky was now sparkling with stars, constellations.  The air was clear and brisk.  

Mr. Boat, aka Tugboat went about his business peeing, not looking up at the sky. He's a full blooded lab and he does not look skyward much. He keeps his nose to the ground. There is enough there to keep him occupied. That is one difference between dogs and people. Dogs focus on what is on the ground, what is within their reach or scent. People look to the heavens and wonder.

Best Pope Since Pope John XXIII

I should start by saying I'm not Catholic. Not even a renegade or a recovering Catholic. Not born to the fold. But  I'm Catholic the way I was a New Yorker--an honorary New Yorker, a Catholic by association, Catholic not in spirit so much as affection, a sort of Jesuit-o-phile.

Spent almost 30 years on the faculty of Georgetown University Medical School, a Jesuit institution. The Jesuits are so low key about their Catholicism they have one photo of the Pope in the front hall, near the elevators but crosses in the rooms are so discrete, you never notice them, really have to look for them.

Over all those years, there were only two times the Catholic thing came up at Georgetown.

One time I sent a man to the lab at Georgetown for a semen sample. He was trying to get his wife pregnant and after two years, no luck and part of the evaluation is to examine the semen for a sperm count to be sure the problem is not with the male.  I got  a call from an embarrassed lab director on the phone. 
"Uh, doctor, you sent a patient for a semen sample."
"Yes, infertility work up."
"Well, there's a problem with that."
"Oh?"
"We don't do semen samples at Georgetown."
"Why not?"
"Well, in order to provide a semen sample, the patient has to masturbate."
"Yes, I'm aware of how semen samples are obtained."
"Well, the thing is, masturbation is a carnal sin. Touching in impure fashion."
"But, the thing is, I'm trying to help this guy make more little Catholics."
"Sorry, doctor. There are rules."

So that was that. The other time was a little more dire. A patient of mine delivered twins at Georgetown. One was anencephalic. No brain. No head, really above the eyes. The question was whether to provide life support for the baby or just let it die, as it surely would eventually.  The medical ethics committee visited, mostly priests, but some doctors and some professors. They agreed no respirators, intravenous or feeding tubes. They did want to the mother to see the baby. Not for theological reasons--just so she would never have regrets later. 

I'm still not sure making people who are not medical look at deformed fetuses or, for that matter images which look real but are essentially deceptive on fetal ultrasounds is a good idea.

But all this is a digression. We were talking about this Pope.
This Pope condemns abortion, and he is not for same sex marriage and he is a Catholic, which one would expect from a Pope.

But he seems to be willing to listen, to tolerate opposing points of view.  He's less into bombast and warnings of eternal damnation than sympathy and concern for the underdog. He rides around in a Fiat, for Christ's sake. He understands the value of symbolic acts.   And he's willing to fight what must be very entrenched people in the ultimate bureaucracy.  

He also is not afraid of seeing today's truths:  climate change, man's likely role in it, the moral depravity of mega wealth when there are so many impoverished.   He mentioned the pedophile priest problem, which is the first step toward solving it. 

One wonders whether he'll call a Vatican III, which might, like Vatican II could change things.  Allowing priests to marry, which, as I understand it is custom not doctrine. The one thing which would ultimately solve the pedophile priest problem long term, would be allowing married priests. You don't need three years of psychiatric training to understand the population of men willing to be celibate, to not consort with womankind is a select group, and it's apparent that group is going to contain men who harbor sexual pathology. 

It should be noted that in the early centuries, the Church allowed abortion. I'm not saying Vatican III would go back to that, but if the Church wants to move forward, it has to change. 

This Pope clearly knows that. 

My big problem with the Pope is he is a pope. The hubris involved in any human being claiming to know the mind of God, claiming to speak for God, claiming superiority over other human beings in knowing what God wants is simply beyond my ken. If you are concerned about offending God, one would think a really reliable way to do that would be to presume to speak for Him.

But that's just me. What do I know? 

Or, as Pope Francis might say: Who am I to judge?

Bacha Bazi Pederasty: Captain Dan Quinn and the Silence of the Lambs

We knew the United States has stayed too long in Afghanistan before this.  If I recall correctly, we landed our troops and our tanks and flew our drones to rout the Taliban, which is a group who we did not like because they may have embraced Osma Bin Laden and even if they did not know the guy, they sounded pretty unappetizing because they beheaded teachers in front of their students for the crime of teaching girls to read. 

We were there, I had thought, to get out. To get Bin Laden and get out. 

But like so many other American quagmires, we just could not resist getting involved with local politics and culture and we had all sorts of neo-cons pontificating about the importance of staying with Afghanistan for the long run, not like all the other American interventions where we left too soon.

The New York Times runs an article today which tells us why staying more than ten days in that cesspool of a nation is always a bad idea. 

It turns out the local military and police officers being trained and supported by our troops like to rape boys for fun, to keep them chained to beds for easy accessibility and occasionally one of them will murder his own daughter for kissing a boy and disgracing the family. 

When an American officer responded to such behavior by beating the stuffing out of one of these Afghan pederasts, he was drummed out of the military.  We are there to help fight whoever the American generals deem to be our enemy and not to get in fights with people who offend us by raping local village boys in a practice so entrenched it has a name:  bacha bazi, "boy games." 

When a German concentration camp guard does not resist the atrocities he sees, we try him at Nuremberg. When an American soldier resists an atrocity, we drum him out of the military.  

Cultural relativism says we ought to respect the culture of others, not impose our values upon a culture.  When we are sending our young to fight in Afghanistan, I don't see the value of cultural relativism. We are there with guns and we can tell people to do what we think they ought to do or we'll kill them. Once we leave, they can go back to raping their children, murdering their daughters and growing poppies to feed the craving for heroin in Manchester, New Hampshire. 

Captain Dan Quinn

Until then. we should be pinning medals on men like Daniel Quinn, the soldier who beat up the pederast, not getting rid of men like him.  The men we should be drumming out of the military are the generals who drummed Quinn out of the military. 

It's entirely possible there is more to this story: Maybe Captain Quinn was a bad actor in some ways which did not come out in the NY Times story. Maybe he did not talk enough before he started throwing fists.  This is a story which ought to be explored and presented more fully. But it is entirely possible to imagine a narrative of upper rear echelon general officers falling all over themselves to enforce "discipline" on a junior officer who saw an appalling offense and took action to stop it.  The Times documents other reports from American soldiers in Afghanistan saying they heard boys screaming all night long on these bases, as they were, presumably, raped.  The soldiers reported this up the chain of command and were told this is something Americans had no right to interfere with.

You can just imagine the folks at the Obama White House who are now scrambling to manage this story.  I am looking forward to hearing President Obama address this at a news conference, which I hope will be soon.

As Nashville Goes, So Goes the Nation

Nashville, Tennessee is something of an anomaly in the South.  The home of a thriving music industry, it is far more liberal than the state in which it lives.  New hotels are rising up the way Starbucks and McDonalds sprout in most cities--which is to say, almost on every block. 

When New York chefs look to open a new restaurant in a different locale, they have been choosing Nashville lately. The demographics, the sophistication of taste and the money are there.

And now, Nashville has just elected a woman mayor, for the first time. Megan Barry beat her opponent, whose name happened to be Fox, and that turned out to be providential, because he conducted his campaign as Fox News would have.  He launched a whispering campaign that Ms. Barry is an atheist, so she had to resort to appearing at prayer breakfasts in church. Ms. Barry, apparently, was fighting against charges she is not Christian enough, which in a Bible belt state, even in a liberal enclave, is a slur. 

She will build on what her predecessor, Karl Dean, did to make Nashville an emerging national hub. And, Mayor Dean is not from Nashville, or even Tennessee. The man grew up in Massachusetts.  Imagine that. The good citizens of Nashville chose first a Yankee and then a woman to lead them. 

Politics is a strange estuary.  

Sometimes the voters get it right.

If this is possible in Nashville, maybe voters could get it right when they think about who should be living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. 

So You Think You're a Republican?

I hadn't been in New Hampshire more than a few months when I found myself standing on a "visibility line" on the corner of Rte 27 and Lafayette Road, across from the Old Salt with an Obama poster along with about a dozen Democrats. Cars would drive by and beep sympathetically or someone would smile and wave, but mostly drivers ignored us, absorbed in their own thoughts. 

Talking with a lady who was dressed in a Talbot's jacket and pressed slacks, I asked about New Hampshire politics and whether she thought this was still a Republican state.  "Oh," she said, "What you have to understand is New Hampshire Republicans are not like down South. They are reasonable people. They just worry about taxes and they want small government, but you can have them over for coffee and there's a whole range of topics you can agree with them about."

Just at that moment a car drove by and a young man leered out of an open window and shouted, "Nigger lover!"  

I looked at her and she looked off after the car, disappearing down Lafayette toward Hampton Falls.  

You have to wonder what it feels like to be a Republican today and to see those whackos on stage, the leaders of your party. 

Not that the Democrats haven't had their times of agony.  From the end of the Civil War until Lyndon Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act in 1964, the Democratic Party was the party of the South. So everyone from Roosevelt to Adlai Stevenson had to accommodate the most vicious and ardent racists to keep their coalition together. 

But those Southern Democrats were simply monomaniacs, or maybe limited maniacs--apart from their belief that Negroes were subhuman and that the Bible was the literal truth and the source of all knowledge, they could be charming and in some areas even erudite.  

That most charming slaver of all, Thomas Jefferson, once remarked, "Embracing slavery is like holding a wolf by the ears. Better not let go."  For him and for many Southerners, they realized the jeopardy in which their beliefs had place them, but they were stuck with it.  

These current day Republicans seem to relish their own folly.

They enjoy believing Mexican, Honduran and El Salvadorian migrants are rapists and depraved. They love the thought of bombing Iran back to the stone age. They relish the idea of sending other people's kids off to fight ISIS in Syria. They love the idea they know the truth about vaccines causing autism when the doctors are unable to see it. They feel all potent when they think about scaring Vladamir Putin by sending American boys and girls in uniform to mass on his borders. 

The New York Times today, in a remarkable editorial, finally said what every Democrat should be saying--this current crop of Republicans is simply not worthy of any sort of respect.  They are so damaged they cannot stand the touch of reality and so they create a fantasy world in which they are strong and smart which is simply not in touch with any sort of reality.

When Carly had her great moment of high dudgeon, when she really connected with the deep feelings of her base, she was telling a story about Planned Parenthood officials selling the brain of a living fetus for profit. Her high cresting moment was based on a lie; she simply made it up, or if she thought it was true, she thought it was true because she didn't want to ask the questions which might have ruined her great strum und drang story. 

Wow. Is this the best the Republican Party can do?  Makes you get all misty eyed thinking about Mitt Romney.  

What is College For? The Metrics Miasma

The College Scorecard represents President Obama's effort to answer the question for families of high school graduates about which colleges are worth the expense.

When you ask what college is worth, you are asking a variety of questions from a variety of viewpoints:  What is college worth to the individual student? What is college worth to the nation? What is college worth to the nation's economy?  What is college worth to business?  What is college worth to the professions?  What is college worth to the faculty and to the other employees of the college and to the community in which it operates?  What, in fact, in the 21st century constitutes a real college?

When you've got college professors from Stanford saying they can offer free on line courses about everything from astrophysics to biology to economics, what they are saying is that college is simply content. If that were true, nobody would have to bother with campuses, dorms, grades, diplomas. If the only concern were imparting knowledge, you'd not need to bother with exams, for that matter. But since the individual student and businesses who hire him/her often need some proof of mastery of content, you need exams. 


When you look at the scorecard, you are given the income for a graduate of Harvard or Yale or Brown or the University of Maryland, a single number and you ask, what does this number mean?  The quick answer might be it's the annual income 10 years after the first day of freshman year. But, it turns out, like most metrics, it's a number which  requires  more questions. It's supposed to be the income but it's the income for only students who got government grants in aide during college, which means there's a huge selection bias. And is this the median income or the average income? Not stated.  Is this for only people who graduated Harvard or just attended Harvard?  If it includes Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and is the average, rather than the median, then the Harvard number could be skewed by those two guys alone.  Likely it just looks at one cohort--e.g. the class of 2005.

Here's a sampling:
HARVARD  $87,200
GEORGETOWN $ 83,300
STANFORD $80,900
UNIVERSITY MARYLAND BALTIMORE CAMPUS $80,400
DUKE $76,000
PRINCETON $75,000
YALE $66,000
VANDERBILT $60,900
BROWN $59,700
UNIVERSITY MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK $59,100
NYU $58,800
PACE $58,400
HAVERFORD COLLEGE $55,600
SWARTHMORE COLLEGE $49,400


NB: The median income for 28 year olds (college freshman + 10 years) in 2014 was roughly $40,000. 


Of course, at 10 years after freshman year, if you are an intern at a prestigious university hospital (which you would be at 10 years), you would be earning between $40-55K and so if Haverford and Swartmore and Brown send a lot of kids to medical school, that would tend to keep that score down.  

But as far as the score goes, the college which sends kids to medical school has a low score at 10 years because those kids are just beginning their lowest paid jobs (internship) while the kids from UMBC have been earning for 6 years and have climbed the pay scale at their jobs. 


Universities which educate high numbers of engineers all have particularly high ratings--MIT, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon all sport higher scores than Duke. Presumably, this is because engineers start earning money as soon as they graduate and they work their way up the company ladders so by 10 years they are ahead of the doctors, professors and many of the entrepreneurs who graduate from schools below them on list.


The fact is, if you are so unsophisticated you do not understand the difference between what having "Yale" on your resume can mean vs having "UMBC," then the scorecard will not help you.  You might say, well, the ivies have been selling snake oil--the scorecard shows you may wind up driving a cab with your Yale degree but you'll become a high paid employee if you go to UMBC.   

This is because the private sector is lazy and stupid. Goldman Sacks only interviews at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT and Stanford (or some cadre like that) because they can.  They use the admission committees at those schools to do their selection for them. They get "the best and the brightest" or they convince themselves this is what they get and they take them in, chew them up, spit them out and some remain and prosper. Golman Sacks doesn't care enough about the talent it gets  to really assess if there is a better way, because they think they're doing fine with what they are getting. 

The other issue about earnings of graduates is whether the above average earnings at 10 years--most elite schools show $60-80 K--has anything to do with the fact those kids had the diploma on the wall or whether it simply is a marker for class distinction. Rich kids from rich families go to expensive, elite schools and graduate not much smarter than when they arrived but their families are connected enough to get them good jobs--that's another equally plausible scenario. Higher earnings reflect class, not college advantage.

The other issue is whether an on line college experience really tells an employer what he wants to know, which in many cases is: Will this kid show up on time, get his work done on time and be pleasant enough to tolerate?  Bringing to the workplace command of a specific body of knowledge is not very important in the workplace in many cases. They will teach you what you need to know at the workplace. The question is: how likely are you to show up and play the game. College, almost any rigorous college will certify you can show up and play the game.

As an employer or former employer, a kid who left town to go to college at least had the experience of having "fledged."  That is, he left the nest, spread his wings, lived independently from his parents, did his own laundry, got to class, got to the library, handed his work in on time and did not violate enough rules to get thrown out.   

From the point of view of the student, 4 years in college may be transformative. It sure was for me.  But plenty of my classmates seemed to grow little, if at all. What I got out of college could not have happened at home, on line.  Sitting in the office, across the desk from a professor who actually knew his subject in depth, going back in forth, as they do at Oxford, one tutor, one student, getting grilled, no place to go--that was real learning which would be hard to do on line--although with Sykpe, maybe you could. 

Simple metrics for complex subjects. Got to love it.

The Dreaded ICD10 Monster

The Phantom does not claim to be a computer wonk, but he was an early adapter and although he has eschewed the smart phone, he did develop his own version of an electronic medical record (EMR) before this became widely available and once he became a corporate employee, he learned the EMR and actually became almost fond of it, as you might become almost fond of the pit bull who your neighbor has chained to his porch, who growls at you every day and hungers for your vital organs as you walk past.

It is true the version he uses at work, called "Athena"-- improbably named after she who sprung fully formed from Zeus's brow and who kept the head god eternally  intimidated-- is something of a frustrating program. You can never accomplish a task with a single click on Athena.  Want to print? Yes. click. Want to print right now? Yes, click. Want to print on a printer? Yes, click. Want to print on paper? Yes, click. Want to print on white paper? Yes, click. Want to print on the paper sideways or vertically? Horizontally, thank you, click. So finally after about six clicks, it prints your note.

But now even Athena has been outdone by a new creature of uncertain provenance, a system for identifying diagnoses as you see your patients. Typically, for a medical doctor, the patient in front of him may have three or four, sometimes a dozen problems and now the powers that be, whoever they are, government, commercial insurers--it's not clear who has fathered the system called ICD 10--now they have taken diagnostic coding to heights of complexity beyond the merely absurd to the truly monumentally absurd.  

You have a diabetic, but that's not enough to say. Does he have neuropathy?  Does he have neuropathy in his feet? Which foot? Both feet? For how long? Is this recent neuropathy or chronic neuropathy? Does it cause pain or loss of sensation? Does it bother the patient or just his doctor? Does it keep him from sleeping? Does it require drug therapy? Which drug? How much? For how long? For how long do you anticipate this therapy will be necessary? Does his mother or wife object to the therapy or to the cost of therapy? Which one? Does the wife object in principle to all drug therapy?  Where does the patient store the bottle of pills? In his bathroom? In the cupboard over the sink? Which shelf? Is the cupboard painted or mirrored?

Doctors faced with this "coding" requirement have begun to ask: Who cares?  Does this come from the government or from commercial insurance companies?  To what use will all this specificity of information be put? Does an infection in the right ear get paid for differently than an infection in the left ear? 

It's actually entertaining, listening to the hired shills on the videos explaining these things with a straight face. Remember when Johnny Carson used to send the audience into howls of laughter by simply reading the income tax instructions slowly, carefully on air, from his desk, slowly going through each step?  ICD 10 has the IRS code outclassed by a light year.

I would love to see Stephen Colbert read the ICD 10 diagnostic coding instructions on air. 

When people complain about "regulation"  the Phantom immediately thinks they are just Tea Party Republicans. But maybe these complainers have a point.  

ICD 10 could make a Free Stater Let's-Live-Off-the-Grid out of any one.

Next time you visit your doctor and his eyes remained fastened on his computer screen rather than on your eyes or on your swollen, gouty, tophaceous toe, you'll know why: He's trying to get the wife of Zeus to tell the ICD10 monster which toe, whether it started hurting 1, 3, 6 or 12 hours ago, whether it has turned the toe red, blue, magenta or hot pink, and whether the nail over that toe has fungal disease, whether anyone in your family has ever had a similar toe experience, and whether you drank coffee before the toe started to hurt and whether the coffee was from Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts.   Once he has entered all that, he might be able to order some medication, if he's played the game right. But, under no circumstances will he have time to look you in the eye, or Heaven forbid, to look at your toe. 

Hobbits in New York: The Adventurers

“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. 
...Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. ” 
― E.B. White, Here Is New York


When I lived in New York in the 1970's I noticed that there were certain groups of people who really  loved living in New York, who lived every day as if they had won a prize just living there--people from Kansas and people from the South. Of course, this was a self selected population, for the most part--these people had come from someplace to this place, looking for something.

But there were always those upon whom New York City was forced--they had to move there for a job and they either loved it or hated it.

A nephew is one of those--he was born and raised in North Carolina but recently his job moved him to New York City.  The family held its collective breath. We have all read the Hobbit stories--the creature who is living happily in his shire, who is forced to venture forth and meets danger he never asked for.

Now, there is much more to his story. His brothers were, in financial and professional terms intimidatingly successful. One became a plastic surgeon, but was not content with that--went out and got a MBA and is currently in the process of taking over a healthcare delivery system. The other, an architect by training and a developer by choice is now by far the richest member of our family going back to the Neanderthals.

The nephew in question was clearly very bright. For one thing, he loved and understood calculus, which, if you've ever tried it, you know nobody should love or understand unless his name is isaac Newton.  He is also left handed, which means he sees life differently. After college, he began his career teaching special education students and he loved the work, loved the kids.  

But then he asked an extraordinarily beautiful woman to marry him. She said yes, but her father sat the boy down and explained that, objectively, this woman was going to have all sorts of choices in life, if only because of her obvious physical attributes and as a special ed teacher, he may not be in a position to compete.  He considered that, but married her any way. Somewhere along the line he decided maybe he'd better expand his options, took some on line courses, then some other courses and then he took the CPA exam and passed all four parts on the first try, something I am told is unusual.

Now he works for one of the biggest accountant firms in the world and he flies to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and he's been transferred to New York City.

His brothers were aghast. How would he cope with the culture shock?

He coped by selling his cars, moving to mid town and he now walks to work. He walks everywhere, across the Brooklyn bridge, into Central Park. He has discovered a diner where they cut the salmon for your bagel right off the fish in front of you and serve it with a halapeno cream cheese so hot it brings tears to your eyes.  

His kids have discovered the Lego store, the Museum of Natural History and his wife is holding off judgment.

There are certain people in life who have the spirit of adventure. He is one. 
A neighbor has a son who graduated from the local town high school and launched himself off to China, where he is finishing a degree at a Chinese university, speaking fluent Chinese and he has a Chinese girlfriend.

These are the adventurers who will carry America forward. There is a certain courage, mixed with curiosity and daring, the same qualities which set Marco Polo and Columbus and Neil Armstrong on their paths. 

Some Hobbits go forth because they have to and others because they are restless and reject the shire which spawned them. But they all find themselves on the Big Voyage, and that will make all the difference.