“I’m no Charles Kuralt, but I get around the country a bit, and I am struck by something: Never have I seen so much begging.” My Impromptus today begins that way, and I take up that question and a number of others. See what you think, here.
An Impromptus earlier this week ended with a couple of photos from Manhattan Beach, Calif. There is a 9/11 memorial outside the fire department there. A reader writes,
You reminded me of a similar monument in, of all places, Winslow, Ariz., which is slightly famous for the Eagles’ song “Take It Easy.” The Twin Towers monument in Winslow is quite compelling.
See it here.
I had a piece about American politics and entitlement reform. Many responses went like this one:
I’m on the eve of retirement, and I’m blessed in that I don’t have to depend on Social Security, but I worry about my sons and the other young ’uns.
A reader writes,
We have had politicians who have tried to address the debt and deficit. They seem to leave office in frustration: Tom Coburn, Paul Ryan, Judd Gregg, Phil Gramm, Warren Rudman . . .
In that piece on politics and entitlements, I mentioned that someone had accused me of something like “Boomer nostalgia.” I then quoted the historian Barbara J. Fields: “The habit of generational generalization shares a fallacious premise with astrology without the entertainment value.” A reader writes, “Is Barbara Fields generally that funny? Because that quote made me laugh out loud.” The answer: yes.
Paul Johnson, the English historian and journalist, died earlier this month. I wrote a piece about him, here. Many readers wrote simply to express their gratitude for Johnson. Many said they had gone to Amazon to buy this or that book. What Johnson books ought a person to get? I say, just glance at the bibliography and see what appeals to you.
Thanks to one and all.