In Impromptus today, I begin with Martin Short, and then move on to illustrious others, including Jeff Daniels, Marian Anderson, and Abraham Lincoln. See what grabs you, here.
Let’s have some mail. I wrote recently about “the online pornography in which our country is awash.” Says a reader,
Jay,
I recently talked with a friend whose grandson had been a counselor at a Christian camp. The grandson stated that one of the main problems for his twelve-year-old campers was pornography.
Any thoughts as to how to deal with this major problem?
Let me recommend, as a start, this column by David French: “Ban Online Porn for Kids.”
I published some mail on James Fenimore Cooper. Here is another note, related:
Hi, Jay,
Charlotte Fenimore Cooper, the daughter of James Fenimore Cooper, was a rather well-known translator of travel books in the 19th century. My favorite is A Journey to Iceland and Travels in Sweden and Norway (1852), by Ida Pfeiffer. It’s a classic, written by a very opinionated Austrian woman who, as a solo traveler back then, wrote some amazing stuff.
I’ll be darned.
Somewhere along the way, I discussed “dog days.” (I can’t find the particular column or post.) We get this expression from the movements of Sirius, a.k.a. the Dog Star. A friend of mine in the Deep South writes,
“Dog days”? These are when it’s so hot that when I open the back door to let the dogs go out, they just look at me like, “What the hell?”
Last week, I had a column titled “Heebie-jeebies in ’24, &c.” I received a note from Quin Hillyer, the excellent conservative columnist:
Jay,
Darn, when I saw your headline, I thought you were writing on Louis Armstrong!
Quin is a New Orleanian — like Armstrong. And he was alluding to a record cut in 1926 by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five: here. Great stuff.
Thank you to one and all readers and correspondents.