Today on the homepage, I have a piece about abortion. Not about Roe v. Wade or the law, primarily, but about abortion itself. What happens in an abortion? What, or who, is aborted? My piece is personal, and filled with memories — about the development of my views on this issue, long ago. Some may find it interesting.
My latest Q&A is with Harvey Sachs, one of the leading writers about music. He composed a mammoth, and superb, biography of Toscanini several years ago. I reviewed it in two parts, here and here. Sachs has now written a book called “Ten Masterpieces of Music.” In our podcast, he has fascinating things to say, about his mighty ten; about an assortment of personalities; about his own life.
In a series of notes on Ukraine and Russia, I quoted Illia Ponomarenko, a defense reporter for the Kyiv Independent. He wrote,
What America is doing now in terms of sending weapons to Ukraine is a masterpiece of logistics. In all regards, starting from bureaucratic hurdles.
I commented, “Americans can be proud of this.”
A friend writes,
What the defense reporter said reminded me of Rick Atkinson’s trilogy about World War II. He describes what a mess the Allies initially made of the North African invasion and how they ultimately prevailed. The quote I remember was from a British general, who said something like, “The Americans don’t solve problems, they overwhelm them.”
In a different series of notes, I quoted the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Foreigners, he said, “see this war on Instagram, on social media.” And “when they get sick of it, they will scroll away.”
A reader writes,
Jay,
. . . Those of us who think and read about Ukraine a great deal throughout the day may seem a bit obsessed, but why shouldn’t we be? Yes, I scroll away to that New Yorker article on deep-sea marine life, or go help my wife with planting the new flowers. But the thoughts return, and the scrolling back to Ukraine goes on.
Finally, a bird. A glimpse of nature. Hans Goeckner, a physics prof in Chicago, writes,
I enjoy your columns, and your photos. While I don’t have a particular comment on today’s column, I thought I’d share one of my own photos, like for like. It’s a northern flicker seen in Forest Park, Ill., in a preserve just across the road from Loyola University Hospital. I was returning to my car, having been wandering in the woods along the Des Plaines River, when I happened to look up and saw it.
Marvelous. Thank you to one and all. And to this flicker, too:
