Ken Trainor

Seriously, folks, when’s the last time you felt this damn good? Filmmaker/author Michael Moore following the Democratic National Convention

England is a cup of tea, France, a wheel of ripened brie, Greece, a short, squat olive tree. America is a gun.

Earlier this year, I wrote about a train-crossing episode that seemed intriguingly inexplicable (“ Comfortable in the Mystery Zone,” Jan. 24). Driving north on Oak Park Avenue on a cold winter night, I was stopped by the crossing arms at the tracks near the Mars Candy plant (alas, no more). I was late for an appointment and uttered a deeply felt challenge to the universe: “Why does this always happen to me when I’m late?!” (or words to that effect).

It was the summer of insects, cicadas and their aftermath, the oak leaf itch mites. It was the summer of Wednesday adventures with my grandsons, downhill-cycling, woodsy-hiking, maze-navigating, mini-golfing, water-sliding, dolphin-watching, art-appreciating, ice cream-slurping, bumper-bowling, sand-castling, animal-carouseling, Bean-mirroring, Grant Park-orchestrating, dinosaur-hunting, fireworks-gazing, and one unforgettable ride on the Metra. Trips to the zoo and the arboretum and the Art Institute, and Millennium Park and Lighthouse Beach and Bahai Temple and dreaming of college on a campus like Northwestern.

The election is a mere month away. No one knows which way it will go, least of all the pundits and pollsters. The pundits worship at the altar of polls, even though the polling results are topsy-turvy. One day Trump is ahead in the swing states. The next day it’s Harris. The one report I haven’t seen from mainstream media is why the polls are so unreliable and what’s wrong with their methodology.

In a 2020 essay published just before the last presidential election, novelist Marilynne Robinson asked the question: “What does it mean to love a country?” That is the question facing us again with two weeks left in the election that will determine this country’s course for the rest of our lives — and our children’s and grandchildren’s lives.

The following is not the official position of this newspaper, just the “closing argument” of one countryman:

I don’t know how the election turned out. We may not know for a while. Maybe the worst thing ever for this country. Maybe the best thing ever. One or the other. Or maybe both, with 50% believing one, 50% believing the opposite.

Based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris, the new film Conclave is about the traditional gathering of cardinals (red hats, not redbirds) to pick a new pope. It has garnered an aggregate score of 92% from critics on the Rotten Tomatoes website (and an 85% audience rating, which goes by the new moniker “popcornmeter”). Here is the critics’ consensus, distilled to one sentence: “Carrying off papal pulp with immaculate execution and career-highlight work from Ralph Fiennes, Conclave is a godsend for audiences who crave intelligent entertainment.”

When a clown moves into a palace, he does not become a king.