Family and food; games and rest. Despite tensions around intensifying political differences, Thanksgiving remains my favorite holiday. I am looking forward to next week.

Last year we hosted Thanksgiving with everyone bearing food to our house, save the Palo Alto contingent. This year we will not bring our households together because of COVID-19. Instead, we have shared recipes on Google Docs, held a Zoom call to discuss food prep, will make these dishes in our separate homes, and then Zoom again on Thanksgiving Day over common dishes.

On a recent Zoom call I volunteered the famous mushroom rice casserole that I developed as a bachelor: canned cream of mushroom soup warmed up and poured over rice. This is a variation on the green bean casserole often served at Thanksgiving tables: just substitute rice for canned green beans and leave out the fried onion pieces. I also mentioned the easy version of this dish: omit the rice. Everyone loved the memory of my recipe, but still bid me to suggest something else. We all have our own way of roasting vegetables, so that didn’t pass. We decided I would share my maple pecan pie, which went over very well last year.

…

In truth, good food doesn’t require numerous ingredients or complex processes. When I enjoy well-prepared sushi, there are two main ingredients (fish and rice), one cooking method (for the rice), one preparation method (slicing), and one immediately apparent utensil (knife). A good sushi meal is a delight because of the restaurant environment, food presentation, and most of all the skill of the chef, who selects quality ingredients and knows how to serve them.

Sushi takes scant time to make, and yet it is expensive. When we watch a consummate professional at work — whether plumber or professor, professional athlete or venture capitalist — we might bear witness only to a single masterful performance. Nevertheless, behind the moment, there are months and years of training, fraught with struggles and stumbles.

When teaching the children how to cook in the kitchen, I emphasized being safe, always using your senses, and developing a sense of timing so that everything is ready when it needs to be. Experiment with recipes, be attentive to details, and iterate so that you are satisfied with what you have made.

As I planned to type up my maple pecan recipe, I realized that it was only a slight modification from one I had pulled from the Internet years ago. Except for the fact that I like the way that it tastes, and that it elevates some of my personal favorite foods into an even grander dish, I felt there was very little that represented “me” about the dish. So I changed course and wrote this instead:

…

frutos secos y frutas secas

This dish is a completely customizable platform. — you tailor it according to your personal taste and the availability of ingredients. The fundamental idea is to create and enjoy a colorful and delicious display of nuts and dried fruit (frutos secos y frutas secas).

Here are some guiding principles:

1. Build your dish on a small plate. This is your personal dish and you shouldn’t overload it — it should be just large enough to whet your appetite.. The plate itself should ideally be fairly plain — preferably white and without adornment. The idea here is to have a blank canvas upon which you will create your masterpiece — the canvas shouldn’t distract from what you are building.
2. Buy the best single ingredients available to you. This is ultimately a simple dish, so the quality of ingredients is very important. This doesn’t have to be an expensive endeavor: I buy just about everything for this from Costco. Try to avoid adding any items to the plate that have more than one ingredient (!). Dried fruits should be fruits (no sugar if possible), roasted nuts should be nuts (no salt or other coatings if possible), cheese should be milk (plus a tiny amount of cheese cultures and salt).
3. Use nuts that are roasted (not raw) but unsalted. I like cashews, almonds, pecans, and walnuts here. While I enjoy peanuts, they might be a little strong for this dish, at least for me. I also don’t think macadamias would work well, but maybe I’m wrong about that for you. Try to find nuts that are processed as simply as possible and that are not stale.
4. Use dried fruits from a freshly opened or well-sealed package. I use plums and apricots here. Maybe I’ll try dates next time or maybe raisins, just because they’re in the house, even though I’m not terribly fond of either. Dried cherries would be good, at least for me, and maybe dried cranberries. Because the nuts are all different shades of brown, try to find dried fruits with brighter colors. Try to locate fruits that are not sweetened (this is difficult for cherries and especially cranberries). You want to be able to taste the natural unadorned flavor. 
5. I like to use a mild cheese as a centerpiece. Costco has tiny mozzarella balls that come in packets of three — these are a perfect size. Cheese is optional.
6. I add a very light wisp of extra virgin olive oil to the cheese and a tiny pinch of salt. 

You want to create something that looks appealing to your eyes, in terms of a variety of colors, shapes, and textures. You also want to have a variety of foods with different mouth feels — soft vs. crunchy — and that represent enough fundamental tastes. You should have some items that are primarily sweet (dried fruits), others that are oily/fatty (roasted nuts, EVOO), and some salt.

Use a small amount of each ingredient (three plums is definitely enough, and the rest of the ingredients should be sized equivalently or smaller). Arrange them around the circumference (or perimeter) of the plate so they are not touching each other. Try distributing the most colorful

Ingredients around the plate instead of all clumped together. Do keep the ingredients separate — it’s like you’re a painter creating a palette of paints — you don’t want to mush them together right now: that can be for later, when you’re eating with your mouth.

When you have finished plating this variety of small amounts of food, do not eat it immediately. Set it aside in a safe place, covered if necessary, but it’s better if it’s in your eyesight for a while. You want to savor the way it looks with your eyes, think about how it will taste, maybe allow the scents to reach your nose. Allow everything to reach room temperature (this is most relevant if you have decided to include some cheese).

When it is time to eat what you have created, reflect upon the Vulcan IDIC philosophy (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations). Now it’s up to you. Do you eat each ingredient entirely on its own (Mookie style)? Or do you take an almond and eat it with a dried apricot? How about swiping a dried plum with a bit of olive oil and salt? This is a great time to be reflecting on the various parts of the world where everything came from, appreciating and being thankful for this simple bounty, this bite-sized, personalized mini-cornucopia.

…

Our family is being represented by a plate of nuts and dried fruit? exclaimed my wife yesterday. Well, yes. If you really attend to this dish with care, I don’t know that it’s all that different from other dishes we typically serve at Thanksgiving.

And I really do enjoy it.

I have never lived during a time when I was older than the US President However, throughout history, more than half of Presidents were younger than I am now when they began office.

I look forward to the day when I am older than the President. For a brief while this will be disconcerting in its unfamiliarity. On the one hand, this will also serve as a reminder that I am getting old — or, more to the point, that I will die, along with the entire world of my peers. On the other hand, it will be wonderful for the nation to be led by someone with recent perspectives (Obama is the only one who was born after 1946!) combined with sufficient life experience.

This will also mean that I have survived to be a certain age: an accomplishment of sorts.

A newspaper article from 1987 indicates that the life expectancy for a white male, in 1787 at the establishment of the Constitution, was 38 years. I do not know the primary source for this data. It does have the feel of being roughly correct, especially because the article specified that this was the life expectancy for white males. The life expectancy would have been different for women, who died more frequently in childbirth but not in war, and for non-whites. Probably the data was never taken for those populations. They literally did not count. The number is likely the life expectancy at birth; someone who survived infancy would have had a significantly higher life expectancy.

I don’t know if the Federalist Papers or any other surviving documents explain why the minimum age for the President is set at 35, which seems arbitrary to me. Some people speculate that this has to do with preventing immediate succession by a direct descendant: that is, a monarchy. Three Presidents intervened between John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams; in my own lifetime, the specter of monarchy reasserted itself, with only Bill Clinton between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

I hope we never see a child of our current President in any national office.

In 1968 I was too young to remember.

In February 1972 we moved from the South Bronx to small-town Ohio. I don’t remember discussing politics with any of my Ohio classmates. I do have a dim memory of being with classmates in someone’s station wagon when we still lived in New York, where we chanted: Nixon, Nixon, he’s our man! He’s our man for the garbage can! McGovern, McGovern, he’s our man! He’s our man for the President stand!

By 1976 I had sat before the TV to watch the Watergate hearings as well as Nixon’s “I am not a crook” speech, witnessed both Agnew and Nixon resign, unironically sent for a “Whip Inflation Now” button, and read news stories of Ford’s clumsiness. The Presidency had become a human figure to me and, while I was still much too young to vote, I empathized with Carter’s humility and humanity.

In 1980 the country itself had been humiliated by the Iran hostage crisis. Ronald Reagan visited my hometown for an enormous rally just two days before the election. One of my sisters placed a tape recorder on the stage to record his speech; when she went to check on it, the tape had stopped and she realized that a Secret Service agent had turned it off. I understood the enthusiasm of everyone around me for this change. 

In 1984 I voted for the first time. The polling place was off-campus and it was exactly as a I imagined, a machine with red levers. During college I hardly engaged in mass media except for college radio and my morning dose of the Cornell Daily Sun delivered to my dorm room, yet somehow I was aware of Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign theme. But I looked beyond the tax cuts and the improved economy and saw a tragic lack of sympathy for the AIDS crisis; the over-simplification and underlying racism of the War on Drugs; the growing financial inequality that spawned Yuppies and glorified attitudes that later exploded in expressions like “greed is good”; the increased military spending. Outside the Straight, I signed letters for Amnesty International; I affixed a “Bread Not Bombs” button to my knapsack. And I watched Reagan win against Mondale in a landslide.

In 1988 when I was a grad student at Berkeley, I watched Lloyd Bentsen eviscerate Dan Quayle in the Vice Presidential debate. I was standing in line at a BBQ joint in Oakland, it might have been Everett and Jones. Everyone in the shop, watching the single TV behind the cashier, we looked at each other and laughed. Nevertheless, George H.W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis, despite Iran-Contra, running on the legacy as the former Vice President of the Teflon President.

In 1992 I was teaching at Andover, where Bush had attended school many years ago. In the previous election, Bush had promised, “Read my lips, no new taxes” — then he raised taxes. Meanwhile, the young and charismatic Bill Clinton won by focusing our attention on the economy.

In 1996 I was teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as summers in writing workshops with Bard College. Clinton had become the Democratic version of a Teflon President. “It’s the economy, stupid” was the unofficial election mantra — and indeed the stock market was booming and the national debt was actually going down. Dole/Kemp didn’t stand a chance; Clinton cruised to reelection.

In 2000 we were living in Santa Fe while I taught at St. John’s College. I closely watched the early returns between Al Gore and George W. Bush, focused on which way Florida would go. When the networks called it for Gore, I felt liberated to vote in New Mexico for Nader, on the principle that Gore as my favored major party candidate wouldn’t be endangered, so I could support alternatives like the Green Party. Florida ended up being contested, and the younger Bush was installed.

In 2004 we were living in New York City. Living in a state that would inevitably support the Democratic Kerry/Edwards ticket, I wrote in the Green Party candidates. Regardless, W. won a second term.

In 2008 we had moved to Pittsburgh. I voted for Barack Obama over John McCain.

In 2012 I saw Obama speak in person on the Carnegie Mellon campus. I favored him again over Mitt Romney in that year’s election.

In 2016, I was caught up in the populist movement. While much more energized about Bernie Sanders, I voted for Hillary Clinton. Instead, the populist Donald Trump was elected.

In 2020, I voted in Pittsburgh once more, for the first time this year by mail. I pumped my fists in the air after I dropped the envelope into a mailbox on Penn Avenue. Last night, on the eve of the election, Joe Biden spoke in my neighborhood — exactly forty years to the day after I saw Ronald Reagan in the final days of his campaign — which I took as a good omen. As of this moment, the results of the election are uncertain: Arizona and Nevada are leaning towards Biden, North Carolina and Georgia are leaning towards Trump, and too many votes are uncounted in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, and here in Pennsylvania. And yet, less than an hour ago, from inside the White House the President threatened to go to the Supreme Court so that my vote will not be counted. Every vote must be counted. If Trump wants to rule a country where he decides whose votes count and whose don’t, he should leave the United States. What an utter embarrassment.

We have a propane heater that served us well last year when the thermocouple on the water boiler of our radiator system needed to be replaced. This would also have been handy in 2010, when we returned to an ice-cold house after a holiday in Santa Fe, where we wed in 2000 and first lived. In addition to the heater, we have a camping stove that can burn either propane or butane. However, both of these devices thread onto 1-pound propane canisters. These small bottles are exceedingly wasteful, from an environmental standpoint because the steel containers should be disposed after just a single use, as well as from a financial standpoint because one is actually paying more for the container than for the fuel itself.

Fortunately, there is a solution: 1-lb propane cylinders that have been designed and manufactured specifically to be refilled, along with a kit to connect these bottles to 20-lb tanks, which are more widely available, being a typical size for RVs and BBQ grills.

Yesterday I bought the last remaining propane refill kit from a store down in Washington, PA. This morning I went on a quest for a new, filled 20-pound tank. Here is the result of my mission:

• Home Depot has empty tanks inside the store but was out of propane. The customer service rep did not know when they would have more, and said the Sunoco across the street would have some.
• The Sunoco attendant said they were out of propane too and had no recommendations.
• The cashier at the Marathon gas station on the way home said that they did have propane but couldn’t help me because she was alone at the store. She gestured towards the beer distributor (I misheard her say “bear distributor”). Even though this is my neighborhood, I have to admit that I never knew there was a package store in the area. It just never registered because we are a teetotaling family.
• The beer distributor said they no longer carry propane. He pointed me towards the two gas stations nearby — the Marathon where I had just been, and the Sunoco (different from the one I had already visited).
• The Sunoco cashier said they didn’t carry propane and suggested the Home Depot. When I explained I had already been there, she moved her thumbs as though using a smart phone and suggested Googling propane.

I had already tried Duck Duck Go, Google, and GasBuddy — none of them could help me find current prices for propane, whether a store has current stock, or even a clear map for where it is available. I guess search engine and app developers don’t use propane, or already know where to find it? Maybe they just go to gas stations near campgrounds, or to national chains like Wal-Mart, U-Haul, or Home Depot. It seems like a ripe opportunity for a developer to gather this information, especially because propane can obviously undergo temporary local shortages. Here in the US we do produce more than enough propane to meet our needs; this is a storage and distribution problem — and maybe a little predictive modeling could solve this issue.

Anyhow, because I don’t have a smartphone, when I returned home I called U-Haul, which is also close to our house. (I don’t want to travel far with a full tank of propane in our passenger car, out of an abundance of caution.) I called U-Haul with great reluctance, because years ago I had the most horrendous experience with U-Haul in Chicago and swore that I would never never never give them my business again. I learned that they do have it in stock, and the person on the phone sounded very knowledgeable and matter-of-fact about the pricing. So I’ll return to Home Depot to buy an empty tank, and go to Marathon or U-Haul to fill it up.

Here are more widely relevant things I have learned recently about propane:

• 20-pound tanks are DOT-approved and initially certified for 12 years. Because they meet stringent government standards, the brand is irrelevant. Government FTW.
• New tanks are not purged and the air inside may contain moisture. There is some disagreement on the Internet about whether this must be done by a professional, how many cycles of purging are required, and whether this is necessary if the tank has been manufactured in the past six months.
• There are three ways to get a full tank of propane: buy a pre-filled tank, exchange an empty one, or refill an existing one. The problem with exchanging an empty one is that you are receiving an indeterminate amount of fuel — there are discussions about whether overfilling the tanks might be a safety issue because gas could be vented in hot conditions, or whether underfilling the tanks is another way for propane companies to increase their profit margins.
• In the United States, propane now comes primarily as a by-product of processing natural gas, not from refining petroleum.
• Propane is measured in pounds instead of gallons. You can determine how much propane is in a tank by using a luggage scale and subtracting the tare weight, which is stamped on the handle. A typical volume capacity for a 20-pound tank is 4.7 gallons; that is, liquid propane has a density of 4.2 pounds per gallon.
• Propane prices vary across the country. I imagine it must be relatively cheap here in western Pennsylvania, with our proximity to Marcellus Shale and nearby natural-gas processing plants. The person who answered the phone at U-Haul quoted me $3.25 per gallon, mentioning that it would cost about $15 if the tank is completely empty. That’s about 75 cents per pound.
• Meanwhile, four 1-pound containers cost $12 plus tax at Wal-Mart last year (or $16 plus tax at Home Depot yesterday), corresponding to $3 per pound. Because the Flame King refill kit cost $50 plus tax (it was only $38 at Home Depot last year) and an empty 20-pound tank at Home Depot cost $35 plus tax, the break-even point for buying these items instead of individual 1-pounders is nearly 40 pounds. While I don’t know if we will use enough propane to make this outlay economically wise, I feel better knowing that we don’t have to deal with the safe disposal of single-use tanks, that we will produce less waste metal, and that we have greater flexibility in obtaining fuel for cooking and heating.

We lived in Manhattan between Santa Fe and Pittsburgh, from 2003 to 2005, soon after 9/11. During that time, I carried various talismans in my pockets and backpack: a whistle to be heard in the midst of rubble, potassium iodide tablets to flood the thyroid if there were a dirty bomb or nuclear power plant accident, an N95 mask to protect against fine particulates, a pocket knife because sharp metal is one of the most important tools devised by humanity. I did not have a cell phone at all, even as they were becoming ubiquitous. I did carry my MetroCard and a swatch of the orange fabric used in Christo’s The Gates.

How differently I prepared for dangers during the 80s and 90s whenever I visited the city of my birth! Back then I carried mugger money along with subway tokens.

Mugger money, potassium iodide, propane.

Just in case.

Why are you dressed up today? I asked my daughter as she stood near the front door, wondering whether she was planning to go out somewhere during this time of COVID-19. It’s Culture Day, she replied, speaking of the school she attends online.

Later in the day, I expressed surprise to my wife that our daughter was wearing a Filipino dress. She thinks it looks cottagecore, she replied. I had no idea what that was. It’s an aesthetic, you need to see pictures. Look it up. So I did.

Foxfire ≠ Firefox

Cottagecore is like the Foxfire movement back in the Seventies, I offered, referring to the series of books devoted to self-sufficiency, a rejection of over-reliance on technology. Foxfire is tangled in my childhood comprehension with hippie and folk culture, as well as with popular culture through TV shows like Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons. Wikipedia characterizes cottagecore as a back-to-the-land movement.

The Little House books depict Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life from 1870 to 1894; the first book was published in 1932; the television adaptation premiered in 1974. The Waltons television series depicts life in rural Virginia starting in 1933; the series first aired in 1971. Cottagecore, with its emphasis on traditional skills, became popular here in 2020 during quarantine, according to Google Trends:

 

Before these works of literary, broadcast, or social media, there were the Transcendentalists, with their emphasis on the goodness of nature. The Transcendentalist Club held its first meeting in 1836.

It seems the American back-to-land movement revives in popularity about every generation and a half, with a period of forty to fifty years. Everything old is new again.

This morning I received this email message from Senator Pat Toomey:

I Will Vote to Confirm Judge Barrett

This week, I had the pleasure to meet with Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Our meeting, along with her record and recent confirmation hearing, affirmed for me that Judge Barrett clearly has the intellect, experience, character, and judicial philosophy needed to be an outstanding Supreme Court justice.

Importantly, Judge Barrett reiterated to me her strong belief that the proper role of a judge is to apply the law, including the U.S. Constitution, as written, and not to serve as an unelected super legislator who imposes one’s preferred policy outcomes.

Given Judge Barrett’s stellar record and credentials, her nomination is deserving of overwhelming bipartisan support. It is unfortunate that most Democratic senators rejected her nomination from the start and even refused to meet with her. Nonetheless, I look forward to supporting Judge Barrett’s successful confirmation.

Read more about my decision in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

I replied:

Confirmation Bias

I received your message this morning that you intend to vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court.

Shame on you.

[In an earlier message] You claim to care for the will of the voters, who indirectly determine the Supreme Court by electing the President, who nominates justices, and the Senate, who confirms them. For this exact reason, you resisted reviewing Garland’s nomiation for eight *months*.

You are now ram-rodding this nominee through a hasty confirmation process, knowing full well that the Republican party could lose both the Presidential and the Senate elections in eight *days*. Indeed, it is only by accident of the six-year election cycle of Senators across 50 states that the Republican party retained control over the Senate in 2018; you surely witnessed how the party lost the House two years ago.

As for your praise of Barrett’s orignalist views, judicial activism has an important role in our history: Brown v. Board of Education. Roe v. Wade. Do you hope that the Supreme Court will review and overturn these monumental precendents, or that the court should not interpret the Constitution in light of any societal changes since the 18th century?

If you truly believed in listening to the citizens of our nation as well as in the strength of your position, you would wait until after the election. What is your hurry, sir? Surely you recognize this process is hasty. Why the big rush? I welcome a sincere answer.

Our country is going to pay the price for your planned malfeasance. I hope you see the error of this path.

May God have mercy on your soul.

When I was growing up, I looked forward to the mail. Sometimes we would have outgoing letters, so I could tell that the mail had arrived from the living room window because the flag was down. But more often I would walk to and from the mailbox. I didn’t get mail often, even collecting First Day Covers and writing famous people for their autographs. I subscribed during my childhood to Highlights, Cricket, Boys’ Life, Chess Life, Linn’s Stamp News, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, National Geographic World. Every month the Ontario Science Centre would send their newsletter.

I still do look forward to the mail whenever I have ordered something. But more often than not, the mail and the email and the phone calls I receive are an annoyance, distracting me from the other work I should be doing, which also arrives by these same methods (especially email).

People who don’t know me well are surprised that I don’t have a smart phone, that I don’t text, that I have disabled voicemail on my flip phone. Those are not for me — the world already has enough ways to reach me. 

The children are still delighted when they receive magazines or personal mail. It’s a rare treat to have something delivered to them. It’s a sign that the rest of the world recognizes their existence, separate from everyone who happens to live at the same address.

When did this change?

I have been asking my daughter what she wants for her birthday. Today we received her wish list: non-profit organizations we could support; an appeal to buy from small companies instead of big businesses; and finally some items that would advance her comfort, learning, and making.

I’ve been reflecting on her list this morning, before and after talking with her about it. I wonder why she stated a preference for smaller companies. After all, the two larger businesses that she named (Amazon and Walmart) were once small, even within my own lifetime. While Walmart’s early origins go back to my birth, I was not aware of this store until they opened a store in my Ohio hometown sometime in the 1980s after I left for college; I placed my first order on Amazon in 1996 when I was developing a course on the chemistry of food and cooking. I remember my parents expressing enthusiasm for the low prices and variety of goods at Walmart, and I myself was dazzled by the pricing and selection of books on Amazon.

Shouldn’t we be happy when small businesses such as these are successful and grow?

For me, the answer is: it depends. Both Amazon and Walmart have grown spectacularly not because they offer low prices and offer a broad selection, but also because it is easy to buy from them (up to 24 hours), delivery is fast, and it is easy to find products. This depends upon a vast distribution and transportation network. On top of that, Amazon has built a community of reviewers who share their opinions with other customers; offers digital services including hosting, entertainment media, and seller platforms; and can easily leverage all of this data to nudge users towards additional purchases. Collectively, all of these traits provide Amazon a strong competitive advantage over other retailers — and the leviathan only becomes more knowledgeable and stronger with every purchase, every view, every click. I purchase much more from Amazon now than I did 24 years ago. As I do, Amazon learns more about my preferences, as well as others’, and serves us better over time, which in turn makes me even more likely to turn there for my purchases.

What’s not to like about this cycle?

First, there is the danger of too much power being divested to one entity, even to one person (Jeff Bezos). With control over vast wealth, Bezos and his descendants can control what people see and do not see, hear and do not hear, eat and do not eat.

Second, the company influences not only its customers, but also its employees — and therefore the working conditions of many citizens. This also has an impact on the culture and the benefits that other workers experience across the country. Depending on the laws of the land, this can in turn lead to vast inequities in wealth distribution, which are unhealthy for a nation, because citizens do not share enough common experiences.

Third, there is the very real question of how much is enough. After all, growth is not always identical to success: cancer is abnormal cell growth. Although it’s been awhile since I’ve read John Bogle’s book, I recall he observes that some appetites (such as for food) have physical limits. Not so, with appetites for money, power, and adulation.

Fourth, it is more difficult to maintain a culture of quality customer service. As a gigantic company takes a life of its own, it can afford to lose a few customers due to bad service.

Fifth, a large company develops many mechanisms to dwarf upstarts who would challenge it. This drowns out alternate voices, depriving the public of opportunities to shop the world (and shape the world) in innovative ways.

On Sunday I watched A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which I borrowed from the Homewood Library, a place that Mr. Rogers visited during one episode.

The places he visited in his neighborhood were often located around Pittsburgh; the WQED studio is just a couple of blocks away from my office on campus.

The film itself is puzzling and marvelous, continuing to resonate with me. One YouTube commenter wrote an incisive one-line review:

This movie isn’t a bio pic. It’s a feature-length episode of the tv show—for adults.

Tom Hanks plays Mr. Rogers. Matthew Rhys, whose work I admired on The Americans, plays the skeptical Lloyd Vogel. I am using the word play here in the most powerful sense, in the sense of how a child at play is performing the most important task to the child at that moment: deeply immersed in being creative while exploring thoughts and emotions. Making and believing.

One lesson of the film is to remind ourselves that it is important to listen when you are with someone else, to attend with your whole heart. Learn from the other person. When with a child, remember what it was like to be a child.

The director Marielle Heller employs magical realism, sometimes in jarring moments, as when we first see a photograph of Lloyd Vogel. The film invites us to reflect on the unity of Fred Rogers’ public persona and his private life, the studio set and the living room, actual buildings and tiny models, the televised neighborhood and the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, the film on screen and viewers like us, ourselves and our better selves. It does not merely bridge these as though they are divided — it shows how they belong together.

We also come to realize Mr. Rogers is special in part because he is supported by the love of those around him. He is possible because of them; they are possible because of him.

…

On Tuesday I watched the Presidential Debate. It is easy to observe how the words and emotions entering our homes that night displayed a horrifying absence of kindness. It was like staring into the void. My stomach unknotted when it was over.

…

On Wednesday, yesterday, I received the most lovely email message. It concerned a pain and confusion that someone felt — a confusion and pain that I share. (I am being vague here to preserve privacy.)

I asked friends for advice on how I should respond. They said that I would respond graciously and thoughtfully, as always. I am still not sure how to do that, in this particular situation. I know I am not always gracious and thoughtful — why would my friends believe otherwise?

The film provides a lesson here too. Mr. Rogers was in many ways a living saint. But his empathy required an incredible amount of practice and care on his part. The film does not dwell on this, appropriately so. Yet the message is clear: being a better person requires mindfulness towards one’s conduct, to recognize that differences can be celebrated because we are all neighbors in this together.

When we talk about the need to attract and support a more diverse population within the university, I often hear others use the metaphor of the pipeline. I catch myself sometimes using this language too. The idea is that we want to increase diversity among the faculty, who come from graduate programs that need to become more diverse, who in turn come from undergraduate colleges, high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools that need to prepare a greater number of diverse students for the next stage in education.

One problem with this way of thinking is that it locates most of the blame and responsibility outside the university. Woe are we, goes the story that our own undergraduate admission office presented at the BOND (Building Our Network of Diversity) luncheon a few years ago, the number of underrepresented minorities graduating each year with high SAT scores is small, and some peer institutions offer them larger scholarships and greater name recognition. There is little we can do about this, except raise more money.

So much is broken with this attitude. Not the need for more scholarship funding: I certainly do not deny that. But an obsession with US News & World Report college rankings leads to tunnel vision. High standardized test scores are an important metric to the university’s admission office because they have been a significant factor (7.75%) in determining rankings.

Until last year, the admission office here firmly resisted any notion of making standardized tests optional. I know: I asked. Only after they saw the writing on the wall — that an increasing number of other institutions were abandoning the test requirement — did they begin to reconsider their position. Of course they framed themselves as prophets, enlightening the rest of the university.

This hyperfocus on high test scores even contaminated the summer pre-college programs here, until the academic leaders revolted and extricated the undergraduate admission office from the process. The pre-college programs can now finally admit a more diverse population, allowing them to more fully demonstrate students’ abilities to succeed in our college curriculum, despite low test scores.

The resistance towards increasing the diversity of undergraduate and high-school students at our university is not merely a risk-averse attitude. The conservatism that festers the admission office stems from an attitude of white man’s burden. Indeed, there have been only two people leading the admission office here in the past five decades, and the person being groomed for the position is cut from the same cloth. Provosts and presidents, deans and professors, all of them come and go, so the admission office takes credit for transforming the campus from a regional institution to an international university. Meanwhile, other staff members leave the admission office, dissatisfied with the lack of commitment and vision towards diversity.

The problem with the pipeline metaphor is that it treats individuals as masses, as though they are fluids to be confined and diverted. The pipeline metaphor objectifies our fellow human beings, as though they were part of a manufacturing process.

I suppose it is slightly better than to bottle students up, to contain them, to restrict them to living in dormitories that are separate but equal.

Some days I hope for a mighty river to wash the plain, to carry away the gatekeepers. But I know which voices whisper in which ears and where the power lies. I am not holding my breath.