It’s starting to dawn on me that my personal campaign to eliminate the use of the word issue to mean difficulty, misapprehension, disturbance, irritation, objection, and a dozen unrelated words is doomed. My parallel campaign against reaching out is probably in trouble too.

Having safely deposited our daughter in Williams-town, Massachusetts, for the summer, my alluring wife and I decided to shunpike our way back home to Washington—a picturesque way to describe avoiding metropolitan New York, Interstate 95, the New Jersey Turnpike, and their attendant horrors.

W hen I returned to Washington in 1992 after a 13-year absence, I was frequently asked what changes I observed. Of course, the obvious answer was volume: Big buildings had appeared where humble shops once stood, and automobile traffic seemed considerably more congested. Crosstown excursions that had once taken 15 minutes now seemed to require three-quarters of an hour.

Oh, sure, there’s enough particulate matter in the New York City air to turn a white shirt gray by the end of the workday. And a couple whiffs of a narrow West Side cross street tightly enclosed by high-rises on a hot summer day when the trash is overdue for pickup could put even the strongest stomach to the test.