In Impromptus today, I have an item about Abimael Guzmán, the Shining Path leader — and his longtime lieutenant and lover, Elena Iparraguirre. They’ve gotten married, those two have: in prison. The groom is 75, the bride 62. After a lifetime of murdering and terrorizing, the kids are settling down, apparently.

Isn’t it interesting that these hard-bitten radicals, who did everything they could to bring down the civilization they knew, have entered the “bourgeois” institution of marriage? The fundamentally human will out, it seems.

(I can just hear the gay-marriage advocates now: “If these Shining Path monsters can marry . . .” And that is a good polemical gambit.)

Also in Impromptus, I have a note about Nantucket — several notes, actually. And I mention the companion island, Martha’s Vineyard. A reader writes,

Been going to Nantucket annually since I met my (now) wife in ’87. She’s been going there since 1965. Anyhoo, I describe the islands as follows: “Barbra Streisand goes to the Vineyard; the people who finance her movies go to Nantucket.”

In the course of my Nantucket notes, I murmur about the sweet smell of the place, at night. And a reader sent a quite beautiful letter, in which he quoted Henry IV, Part II: “And we shall be merry, now comes in the sweet a’ th’ night.” (There are many different renderings of this line.) Then our reader says,

I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, and each summer night, between eight and nine, the trees, crops, and flowers would release their evening pollen, for which the world was indeed sweeter.

One more thing, before I quit this lil’ post: I begin my column today, “. . . I’m addicted to Chris Christie videos like some people are addicted to porn. I could watch them all day.” By my mail, I’m not the only one.