Taking Time to Take Time Off
John Roberts was quoted the other day that "While some of the tales of woe emanating from the Court are enough to bring tears to the eyes, it is true that only Supreme Court Justices and school children are expected to and do take the entire summer off." But, he added, there was an upside to that break: "We know that the Constitution is safe for the summer."
Nice quote and shows the humorist side of Judge Roberts, but it got me to thinking about our increasingly frenetic lives. I have memories of my grandparents in tiny Tipton, Iowa. GrandDad had a business downtown as well as a farm twenty miles out, but he walked the four blocks home every day for lunch, took a brief nap and walked back ‘downtown.’ Evenings we sat on the porch, talked to one another, invited a neighbor up if one happened to pass and complained about noisy starlings roosting in the two huge old maples in the yard. It wasn’t terribly intellectually stimulating, but that may have been more because my grandparents w…