¶ Matins: At lunch yesterday, Édouard told me that, while he used to read the Book Review religiously, he never looks at it now, because it’s so clearly the inside job of a self-interested coterie. If it were really that precious, it would be far more interesting. In this whirlwind week, I have to ask myself why I read the Book Review, and the answer is clear. I wouldn’t read it at all, if it weren’t for this weekly feature of mine.

¶ Tierce: Good news on the goofball front: the late Virgilio Cintron’s buddies won’t be going to jail for wheeling his corpse to a Pay-O-Matic in order to cash his Social Security check.

¶ Sext: In today’s Morning Read, I came across the very pithy expression of a truth that I learned to the limit in the last presidential election: “There is no reasoning someone out of a position he has not reasoned himself into.”

¶ Vespers: A treat for anyone who bothers to click through.

¶ Compline: We had theatre tickets for this evening, but I was able to make a last-minute change, freeing the evening for — in a word — stargazing.

A bough of cherry blossoms at Carl Schurz Park.

Oremus…

§ Matins. Which is not much of a recommendation to you, the Gentle Reader, is it? I’ve long since come to regard the Book Review review as a sedimentary deposit, to be cored by literary archeologists in a century or two. I may have been the only person to have left a regular record of responses to the Review.

As usual, Édouard and I had a fine old time at lunch yesterday disagreeing about books. Jonathan Franzen, for example. Don’t be giving my friend any books by Jonathan Franzen. You can give them to me, though — even if I do already have them all. (Have I plugged Strong Motion lately? Ha! They’ve sexed up the cover art!)

§ Tierce. The People could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr Cintron was dead “before leaving his apartment,” the rather mean-spirited list of charges against James F O’Hare and David Daloia were dismissed in Manhattan Criminal Court.

Don’t think I’m soft. What Messrs O’Hare and Daloia did was wrong. But society would not benefit from their imprisonment, or, for that matter, from any kind of punishment beyond, maybe, a stern lecture from the judge. As the horrifying story about American “world-leading” incarceration levels demonstrates, we need to begin asking ourselves if sending malefactors to prison isn’t just one of those “principle of the thing” follies that, as Adam Liptak’s article notes, Anglophones are inordinately prone to commit.

If you look at the story, note that the vast majority of Federal prison inmates are drug offenders. It is not surprising that drug offenders outnumber violent criminals in Federal prisons, because most violent crimes are state, not Federal, crimes. But that they should so overwhelmingly all other types of prisoners is, again, a disturbing reminder that we need to re-think our stance on drugs, which does indeed betray a ghastly genre of Calvinism. For my part, I agree with Vivien Stern, a researcher in London: ““The U.S. pursues the war on drugs with an ignorant fanaticism.”

In other news, Maureen Dowd’s column about the Pennsylvania primary gave my thinking a gentle shove, and I suddently saw that Hillary Clinton, for all her virtues, sounds a lot like George W Bush. There isn’t anything that the woman can’t spin or re-interpret to her own liking. She has succumbed to the Republican disease of never admitting to any weakness. That this is a stereotypically masculine trait should hardly recommend it to her legions of feminist supporters.

§ Sext. I’d look for a link to spruce up my verse, but I’ve got to dash to the florist to arrange for boutonnieres and flowers for the ladies. Kathleen, meanwhile, has assembled the four great Somethings: Old, New, Borrowed, and Blue. She even has the sixpence!

§ Vespers. I was surprised by the wave of happiness that seemed to course through my veins as I padded around Carl Schurz Park an hour or so ago, taking pictures of the cherry trees in bloom. My Nano was transmitting almost erotically appealing music, all the more powerful for not having been listened to much in recent years, while a breeze ruffled the branches of ornamental fruit trees heavy with blossom. It seemed as though every carefree day that I have ever known was happening then and there, and not just to me but to everyone in the park.

This happiness is a kind of blessed dementia. As long as I don’t lose the housekeys,* I’ll be fine.

* Or my wallet, or my cellphone, or my Coolpix, or my Nano….

§ Compline. Of course, stargazing is impossible in Manhattan; what I had in mind was something more like “daydreaming,” but I was misled by the fact that we did our daydreaming on a tidy balcony in the hour before eleven at night.

When I arranged to postpone our theatre date (as a kind of long-term MTC subscribers, we get to do that), I did so with a view to spending the evening hours writing up all sorts of things that I’ve neglected lately. In the event, however, I potted up impatiens and perlargoniums on the balcony and made a stab at arranging our non-classical CD collection, which is both vast and dispersed. Kathleen came home between nine and ten, and we went to the New Panorama Café for our usual dinner (we have a “usual” dinner at each one of the different neighborhoods that we go to; we take care of variety by changing restaurants, not menu choices), and then we sat on the balcony for a while, talking about Megan’s wedding.

Megan called while I was potting the plants, and it’s only by a stroke of luck that I came inside to fill a watering can that I heard the phone ring. It turned out that she had found Something to Wear at last. Two Somethings, actually; but both were black-and-white ensembles. So: although where we’d left things this morning, I was just buying boutonnieres for the men, she wanted to make a tiny suggestion in case I’d been thinking of taking care of the ladies as well, which of course I had already done. In Manhattan, however, there is no order that cannot, at the last minute, be enlarged, and it will be well before the last minute when I call the florist first thing tomorrow to ask for an additional lady’s corsage,* and a somewhat splashier arrangement for the bride herself. When I was asking Kathleen’s advice this morning, she counseled, “anything but tulips.” What does Megan want? “Tulips, and I think white would be best.” So we’ll find out what the florist can do. That Megan had taken my offer to buy flowers for the men and come to count on it enough to seek amendments to the plan was manna.

It is a truth that ought to be universally acknowledged: the marriage of your daughter to a handsome man who both inspires her affection and excites your approbation is a joy without equal. It is the other shoe dropping, so many years after her healthy birth. I am sure that I ought to feel the same about a son, if I had one, but my enlightenment, though great, is not entirely ultramontane. I have never thought of Megan as “my little girl,” but I am as happy for her as if she had been, all these years. And  nobody, ever, has been prouder of his very grown-up daughter.

* Optional note that I place in small print just to drive Fossil Darling crazy — because this is the sort of last minute change that his family in Managua imposes all the time, as a matter of course, really. It turns out that one or both of Megan’s bridesmaids — bridesmaids for the November celebration, which is still very much on — will be on hand on Friday. If only one shows up, then she’ll take the corsage that was intended for Megan before Megan decided on black and white clothes and tulip flowers. Just in case both show up, though, I’ve got to have an extra floral. Let this be a lesson to those of you who think that getting married “at City Hall” is a simple, straightforward business.

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