Happy Cinco de Mayo!

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I should start by saying Happy Cinco de Mayo, but I assume there is little difference between this Cinco de Mayo, the dearly departed St. Patrick's Day, our recent nature-deprived Earth Day or next Tuesday morning.

An old college friend named Gary shared a meme on facebook that sums it up nicely.

The Twilight Zone's Rod Sterling says, "Imagine if you will a world where Cinco de Mayo falls on Taco Tuesday only to be ruined by a virus named after a Mexican beer."

Yep, it's been that kind of bizarro world lately.

In any case, I can't actually remember going out to celebrate Mexico's otherwise forgotten victory over the French Empire at Puebla beyond possibly having some tortilla chips at happy hour, but I still miss it.

Not as much as I miss the freedom to travel, and I like to think the beaches miss all of us.

Unfortunately, the goal posts keep moving, and I have no idea if the game is soccer, football or Russian Roulette. Mexico and Greece are among some of the world's great beach destinations on schedule to open within weeks for summer, as are many other destinations throughout the world.

It seems the United States has not only flattened the curve but now is behind the curve, if not just plain behind the eight ball.

In any case, when a friend asked today if I thought France's announced requirements for 14-day quarantines for anyone who is not a European or UK citizen who visits before July 24 would stand, my best chance would be to shake the Magic 8 Ball, but I don't know what happened to it. I lost that answer machine sometime after high school, I think.

My guess if I shook it, I would read, "Reply hazy. Try again," or something similar. In the past, after all, US citizens have routinely shared the visa-free entry rights of the 26 Schengen Area European countries. I think French President Macron just wants to prove some kind of point or win some concession, like promise of reciprocal entry of French citizens into the USA this summer.

In any case, sanity must return some time, because to paraphrase Groucho Marx, every contract has a sanity clause, even if his brother Chico said he was too old to believe in Sanity Claus.

What is our Bill of Rights if not a binding contract?

We have the rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." If you want to know more about how the Constitution got hammered out, I happened to write a blog on the subject this week, and it's linked here.

Yes, my "travels" have become mental journeys into the great ideas of philosophy lately.

I'm beginning to feel just like the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, not because I've written complex critiques on concepts like justice and books about what it means to be enlightened, but rather because Kant never traveled more than fifty miles from home during his lifetime.

Okay, we're all thousands of miles ahead of Kant in terms of places we've had the pleasure to travel.

Let's hope when the doors to freedom open --- as they inevitably will --- that we have not been so totally brain-washed as to never leave our homes again for fear of what frightening virus or boogie man may be lurking.

Vaya Con Dios!

Wes