Oh, frabjous day

Mitchell called this morning quite exhausted. He’d been up since 3:00 am watching the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Mitchell has a big screen TV, and so I am sure that he had an expansive and lovely view of the event. On the phone he seemed rather breathless at the spectacle, though his lack of breath may have resulted from his climb up the stair in home to find the cell phone to place the call. He did make some mention of Kate’s wedding gown, but I couldn’t quite make out if he admired its full train or its cost: he was certainly hoping that the wedding reception wasn’t serving spaghetti with tomato sauce for fear she would stain the bodice. I urged him to recall that wedding couples don’t usually eat at their own receptions, and I think this news relieved his concerns. As for me, I couldn’t get myself up that early to watch the event live, but I have been following the proceedings on YouTube. There, at least, I have a better choice of what I want to see. 

Over the past months and weeks, Mitchell and I have spent not an inconsiderable amount of time and energy thinking about the Royal Wedding. I mean, what with the involvement of the United States currently in three seemingly futile wars, what with the continuing and particularly vicious attacks on teachers and education (a field in which Mitchell and I have spent not an inconsiderable amount of time in our lives), along with the presence of a flailing economy, a series of horrific natural calamities causing untold death and destruction, amidst unconscionable stupidities questioning the birth history of our current President, and terrible hair on one of the prospective Presidential candidates (aside from his absurd political stances and remarkably senseless, even inane statements); what with the increasing polarization of the country into the haves and the have-nots, the refusal to hold accountable those who engendered this present financial crisis, the voluble demagoguery emanating from the radical Christian Right in the United States and the willing option for ignorance amongst too much of the population; what with the current attack on the working and middle classes by the Republican majorities, the increasing de facto segregation of our public schools and increasing gap in achievement between advantaged and disadvantaged populations, it seems the sanest recourse to attend to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Here is an event that doesn’t address reality at all and which has finally and absolutely no effect on our daily lives whatsoever. 

So Mitchell asked me what I sent as a gift to the couple. I told him I had sent them 456 mezuzot to hang on every door of their new palatial residence. Mitchell says that he sent the newly married couple a $50.00 United States Savings Bond. As he rightly says, it only cost him $37.50, but in 20 years William and Kate will have $50.00!