April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Monday morning, I drove down Fountain Street to a hearing in New Haven. At Ramsdell, the traffic got bad. A city bus had stopped to pick up passengers and a long line of cars trying to make the light blocked the box. When my turn came, I joined the procession and as we made our way down Fountain Street, I noticed cars in front of me and behind putting on their flashers. Managing to look further down the road, I saw two limousines in the lead. I had managed to join a cortege. At a convenient spot I pulled over to let the cars full of mourners regroup.

At Whalley Avenue, I glanced up Fitch Street. Police cars were arriving and a young woman in distress sat on the ground next to a car in the middle of the street. The windshield was shattered. A man sat with her providing comfort. The light changed and I was on my way again. If Caesar’s soothsayers had been with me, they might have pointed to these as warnings for the day to come. My friends with more cheery dispositions might have told me these were reminders that things could be much worse. Either way, I continued on the road destiny had set for me.

Wednesday came, and it seemed as if we were thrust unprepared into summer, surprising us with unexpected record heat. I went to Wesleyan to hear Larry Lessig talk about the wrongs of corporate speech. Memory and desire mixed as I traipsed across the college campus. Students sat on Foss Hill, enjoying the summerlike weather as they talked about their studies, their dreams, their loves, or just nothing at all.

Wesleyan has a beautiful campus and it reminded me of my Alma Mater, especially those spring days when it was just too hard to study. My thirtieth reunion is rapidly approaching.

I saw the young professors with their own desires, perhaps hoping for a student that would love their subject material as much as they do. “Someone had blundered”. Mr. Ramsey, in ‘To The Lighthouse’ cannot reach ‘R’. I had once dreamed of being a philosophy professor on a campus like this yet the design of my life did not turn out that way. “Memory and desire”.

Design. Have I ended up in a small rental house in Woodbridge, CT by design? By some sort of fate? By some set of decisions; some good, some bad? And what is around the next corner? I’m thinking much more about design as I read Frederick Brooks new book, The Design of Design. It is a great book which I will write a review of soon, and which is shaping some of my current thinking.

As I sit at my computer writing, Simon and Garfunkel’s “Kathy’s Song” comes on Pandora.

My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
…
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe

All of this is a long path to Lessig’s talk. Larry is a great speaker. I had heard parts of what he has said before, just as during various campaigns, I could recite stump speeches of candidates that I was supporting. Other parts were new to me. A key thought emerged to me, what sort of country were our forefathers trying to design when they wrote our founding documents? What sort of country are our leaders today trying to design? Are they even thinking about the master design of our country?

Lessig spoke about the Constitution’s framers concern about Princes.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Yet Congress seems all too willing to accept presents from the Princes of Wall Street and the Kings of the Health Care Industry.

“mixing memory and desire” Lessig’s talk seemed well designed to mix memory and create a desire for a country where our leaders are not dependent on the lobbyists and the special interests they represent.

Will it make any difference? Can the path of our republic be changed? What might a change mean for our economy? For taxes? For Government Services? For you and for me? It is hard to tell.

“The answer my friend is blowin in the wind.”