It was through a fraught, restless and uncertain America that I rode the train to Cranbury, New Jersey. Clinton and Obama were at it hammer and tongs, the prison population had reached new heights, recession loomed, and my newspaper told me that 30 Americans died of gunshot crime every day of the year. All this I think of as today’s “American scenario”.

When I was resident in Cranbury more than half a century ago, it was a rustic haven in flat farmland country, with the remains of slave shacks, an 18th century inn, proud memories of the revolutionary war and a firehouse where firemen chewed the cud on kitchen chairs on the sidewalk outside, exchanging bucolic prejudices. How would that complacent little backwater be reacting to the confused America of 2008?