Americans Ought To Be The Best-traveled, Most

Tourists Moved Over The Piazza Like Drugged Insects On A Painted Plate.

I Reserve My Greatest Admiration For Those Who Continue To Struggle To Embrace The Whole Impossible Tangle Of Snakes That Is Our Society; Those Who Fight To Identify And Strengthen Human Connections, And Defeat Polarizing Forces That Strain To Drive Us Apart.

Ours Is The First Society In History In Which Parents Expect To Learn From Their Children, Rather Than The Other Way Around. Such A Topsy-turvy Situation Has Come About At Least In Part Because, Unlike The Rest Of The World, We Are An Immigrant Society, And For Immigrants The Only Hope Is In The Kids.

This Is What Holidays, Travels, Vacations Are About. It Is Not Really Rest Or Even Leisure We Chase. We Strain To Renew Our Capacity For Wonder To Shock Ourselves Into Astonishment Once Again.

Huge Herds Of Vigorous, Curious, Open-eyed Americans Freely Roaming The World Are, It Seems To Me, Quite Possibly A Vital National Resource Today As At No Other Time In Our History.