Farewell to the Rails

All of a sudden the name I picked for this blog is sort of historical, because Andrew and I just bought a car from my dad and I’ll no longer be commuting on NYC subways and NJ passenger trains with 5 hours of thoughts round trip to fill my head. The good news is I’ll have more time to type them. I just got home from work (mid-Jersey to Brooklyn) in an HOUR. Driving rocks.

A friend suggested I write about what train commuting has taught me over the last ten months. Here are a few thoughts.

#1: Timeliness. Trains don’t wait. I like to make the most of my time before I leave it to go do something else. Which means I often found myself sprinting for the subway on Tuesday and Thursday mornings after dawdling over getting dressed and gobbling down my breakfast. Eventually I decided I was tired of being that stressed out at 6:45 a.m., and I regulated my routine a bit better.

#2: Realism. I would love to say I read classics and the news on my morning train, and worked on a novel coming home plus making nice, quick menus to whip together for dinner. That was not to be. I hardly ever got meals planned. I slept in the mornings to make up for all the lazy nights when we didn’t make dinner till 10:00 or stayed up late watching Downton Abbey. My only literary achievements are scattered notes in my Moleskine plus occasional work drafts. I gave up on the news altogether. I did read a fabulous book on cooking, a Christian romance, a slim theology by Tozer, a history of New York City, a journalistic thing on political strategy, and all of Anna Karenina on the trains. Mostly I realized I needed to be realistic with myself. Although I had a routine, it was unbalanced, and I simply could not build much structure into my week when it came to reading, sleeping, cooking, and household chores. Thankfully, Andrew never hesitated to help out, so I also learned some things about teamwork. :)

#3: Community. This is the part I did the worst at. My irregular schedule not only destroyed my discipline at home, but it threw me off from planning get-togethers and one-on-ones with friends from school who live and work in the city. As a result I fell into the habit of being alone, often not realizing it was depressing me until after we got back from a gathering with friends. This is my biggest regret about the last ten months, and I hope that reducing my commute time will enable me to be a bit more sociable in New York and maintain higher quality relationships. I feel like, on the home front, I’ve pretty well absorbed the truth that “It is not good for man to be alone.”

#4: Need. Since the trains don’t stop at my office door, I had to be picked up and driven the last five miles to work. This made me feel like a drag, but my co-workers faithfully pitched in and went out of their way to get me where I needed to go. Joy, who works in constituent services, picked me up for months in spite of terrible back pain and the fact that my train schedule inconveniently shortened her workday. Ruthie, who also helps with constituent services, has raced the train to another town when my normal stop was flooded, and recently took me on a sightseeing tour of Bound Brook and Manville late at night when I miscalculated the arrival time of my train. Len, my boss and the busiest of them all, who is on call 24/7, was always mysteriously available when I was diverted to the Hoboken terminal and delayed an hour in the morning. And Q, who handles community relations and is our resident political strategist, rescued us from our surreptitious (and miserable) stay at the Howard Johnson in Newark when we had bedbugs. This has been extremely humbling for me. I don’t like to be in people’s way and need things. I like to take care of myself. But because of my co-workers’ generosity I have been convicted nearly every day I’m in the office about certain grains of cynicism that I allowed into my heart in college and was allowing to continue doing their nasty, acidic work. It’s hard to let that go, it’s true. But it’s also hard to let it go unchallenged when you have gentle people taking care of you generously, simply, and without stipulations. I’m grateful that God has used this time to soften my spirit, and that the sullenness and exhaustion of fifteen months ago have given place to a little more optimism.

As lovely as the trains have been, I’m glad to be driving now. Not only will it save me up to an hour and a half each way; it will  allow me to be more available for work-related events outside the office. Not to mention the balance it will bring to the Force—I mean, my schedule. It will mean greater freedom on the Brooklyn end to run heavy errands and visit friends, and it will let us go out of town more cheaply. We feel very blessed to have the car. I am not sorry to bid the trains adieu, nor am I reluctant to enter the fray of East Coast traffic. It's a blessing and a relief. But, all things considered, it’s also been worth the wait.

Obamacare and the Spectacle of Political Naïveté

When you think of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, "hilarious" is probably not what comes to mind. But some proponents of the law have been so naïve about it over the last three months that I really can't help but laugh. Below are four acts in the comedy of errors.

Oops #1: Tunnel vision

A few weeks before the trial I started seeing articles pop up with headlines about the Obama Administration courting an "unlikely ally" in Antonin Scalia. Their reasoning had to do with a marijuana program that Scalia once voted to uphold. I wish I remembered the details, but it wasn't how you'd expect Scalia to vote if you forgot that Scalia mostly reasons from Constitutional procedure, not an issues-based conservative orthodoxy. The Administration found similarities between that case and its own, and hoped it might win Scalia to its side. That could have turned out to be inspired and shrewd, but it didn't work. In oral arguments, Scalia was the ringleader of conservative skepticism, bringing down the house with his jokes about the law, the case, and even the liberal justices' questions. I doubt if the Administration thought wholistically about who it was dealing with—one of the feistiest conservatives in the history of the court.

Oops #2: Projecting

A week after oral arguments, I read this article on Politico about what to expect during the trial. I was tickled by the quote from Thomas Goldstein, who founded SCOTUSblog: “[The justices have] been waiting for this case for years. They have thought a ton about this. There will not be a question asked…There will be six hours of points made by the justices to each other.” The oral arguments were extremely lively, and Goldstein was totally right. The article's last point, “Will the Court punt?,” explained that the court could put off jurisdiction until 2015 under the Anti-Injunction Act. Everybody was asking if they would—well and good. But the article ended with a quote from Walter Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration, to wit that the justices could use the AIA to get out of ruling now “if the court were to think that we’re heading into a very dangerous thicket here of handing down a decision in the middle of a presidential campaign.”

Hello? Did Mr. Dellinger forget that the Supreme Court has never lost sleep over presidential politics? In one case, the Chief Justice not only discomfited an outgoing President, but was wily enough about it that he got the Supreme Court out from under Executive thumbs forever. Something about a Marbury. To imagine that the Supreme Court walks on tiptoes around elections is to miss the point of having a Supreme Court in the first place. Our judges are appointed for a reason, and cases like this are precisely it. Mr. Dellinger saw implications for the President's reelection in this case (and he's not alone), but that doesn't mean the justices found this as troubling as he did. The law, not elections, is their job, and they love a challenge. (They have to.) They wouldn't turn down the “blockbuster of blockbusters” unless they had to, and legally there was no need.

Oops #3: The Solicitor General

Why Donald Verrilli was unprepared for the justices' questions may wind up as one of those mysterious historical oddities that make professors shrug, but his performance was dismal. When the big day came, the Administration's lawyer was tongue-tied. His answers to Justices Scalia, Roberts, and Kennedy were so inept that at some points the liberal justices stepped in to make his arguments for him. Normally the justices only ask questions during oral arguments, so the press took notice of this. Papers and blogs were full of commentary for over a year that could have helped Mr. Verrilli anticipate counterarguments, but evidently he didn't see them coming. Either he expected to sail through on a zephyr of enlightened consensus, or he had one very bad day. Either way, odd.

Oops #4: Blustering

This one doesn't technically count unless the law is struck down. But again, a misunderstanding of judicial independence spurred some unwise comments, this time from the President himself. He expressed confidence that the Supreme Court would uphold the Act, and opined that not doing so would be judicial activism. He had nothing to gain from making that statement in advance. It wasn't memorable enough that if his side wins, everyone is going to pull it out and say, "Look, he told us so." If his side loses, he'll just look silly. The Court has already voted in secret: it's either going to uphold the law or strike it down (or strike the important parts of it down). As the opinions are written and circulated, some justices may change their minds. But most of them will vote without regard to public opinion or the President's unofficial lobbying. Justice Thomas gave the public buzz surrounding the trial the importance rating of a fly in the room. The President is no different.

None of this is to predict an outcome as much as it is to make a point about how the outcome happens. The Administration may win, and in fifty years our kids may think it was all inevitable and normal. But on the twin traditions of judicial independence and respect for the law, the Administration has made a clown of itself. If it wins this case, it will win in spite of itself. That is not to say its position was never worth considering, but it never explained why when the time for reason superseded the time for rhetoric. If such shamming gets by without heavy logical supplements from the justices, it will be a bad day for thinking.

But I don't think that will happen. Meanwhile, good show.

Thoughts for Almost-Brides

It’s May. Wedding season draws on apace. Andrew and I are figuring out travel plans, bridal-party uniforms, gifts, and responses for a total of seven weddings between now and September.

As I watch my friends plan their festivities and occasionally give advice (I have great tricks for flowers—ask me), it reminds me of my own planning process and what I learned during that time. Wedding planning means hope and inspiration, but also incredible stress and fastidious detail. I want to offer a few encouragements if I can.

Preparing for marriage is a transition of your whole life. Andrew and I were engaged for five months, beginning the February of my senior year in college. Graduating, moving, looking for work, starting work, and planning among several states made for a stressful confluence of life events that I would never want to live through again. But others I know are dealing with similar pains. One couple is trying to remodel a house in time for their wedding while running all over the place with musical and theatrical engagements. Another is bending over backwards with the end of separate leases and timing their move with their wedding.

Obviously this isn’t difficult if you’re already living together, but for couples who respect Christian teachings on chastity, it escalates the logistics of marriage. One couple in our church had a funny experience with this. They were considering moving into the same apartment and sleeping separately to save money before the wedding. Everyone in their families and friend circles thought it was a great idea, or at least didn’t raise any fuss. Then they asked their pastor: “Absolutely not. Being a Christian is always more expensive.” So live apart they did.

I rehearse all this in order to emphasize to almost-brides that you’re not alone. When I tried to vent to my single friends about how hard it was to juggle my life at that time, the most common response was, “Oh, but you’re getting married! It’s so exciting!” And married friends, especially if they were older, frequently cooed, “Enjoy every minute!” Which was clearly impossible. It made me wonder if I was the only person in the world who wasn’t totally happy from the popping of the question to “You may kiss the bride.” I wasn’t. Wedding planning is hard, and everyone admits it afterwards.

Therefore, the measure of whether your engagement is successful is not whether you feel blissful 100% of the time. You should feel happy at your bridal shower, your engagement photo shoot, and other celebratory events. The rest is normal life. Your engagement, like your life, is a success if you and your intended are carving out quality time, pulling together as a team, looking ahead to potential conflicts and working out your differences, learning about marriage and opening up to each other, keeping peace with your families “as far as it depends on you”, and growing and encouraging each other in your faith (even when that means repentance and rebuke). If you haven’t learned how to fight yet, learn now. In all the fuss and hubbub there are moments of clarity, when you see—what? Something beyond usual. In certain conversations with Andrew, my mom, and others, I saw the past in new lights and the future becoming real. Misunderstandings averted, new relationships with parents, new certainty of your own identity, a clear moral road, a blessing from God, even a new angle of light on your beloved’s face or a trick of bearing—those are the moments you treasure, even into marriage.

Marriage is a new phase of life—for us it was a refreshing, overwhelming relief. The headaches are a necessary prelude to this life of belonging, self-giving, and devotion to the one you love. But it’s worth it.

Congratulations.