Dear Mailing List,

Five years without setting foot in the US came to an end last month when Andrea and I landed in New York to start a five-week promotional tour. I was on the lookout for seismic cultural shifts, but the only difference I detected was the aroma of legal marijuana wafting through the windows of our friend’s Greenwich Village apartment, morning, noon and night.

The tour took us hopping and skipping across the country, sometimes sharing the stage with luminaries such as Yosva...