My Impromptus today is devoted to one subject: Alan Simpson, the late senator. Hey, can an Impromptus devoted to one subject really be an Impromptus? Isn’t my column supposed to have a variety of items, addressed in brief? Well, we will not split hairs . . .

Anyway, my column on Simpson is here.

In a previous column, I discussed 9/11, the Twin Towers, and the War on Terror. I said I had never really liked the Twin Towers. But after monsters destroyed them, they had been among the most beautiful structures in the world, in my mind.

A reader writes,

From the first time I saw them, I thought they were beautiful: tall, straight, clean, and strong. When we visited New York in August of 1983 from Trinidad, just before I turned ten, my father took us up into the Twin Towers. They, along with the Empire State Building, were the iconic images of the New York City skyline. They meant “America.” Being up on the observation deck that summer morning was a wonderful experience.
Some years later, when we immigrated to the U.S. and eventually to New York, those towers became more meaningful to me. So many times did I stand just looking up at them, as they “disappeared” into the sky. . . .
On 9/11, I thought, “Those were my towers, they hit!”

In a post called “Falling for Putin,” I mentioned Joseph Davies, who was the U.S. ambassador to Moscow in the mid-1930s, during the Great Terror. He fell for Stalin, hard.

Several readers have written to note a detail of history. Marjorie Merriweather Post was the cereal heiress who built Mar-a-Lago. One of her four husbands was Davies. She was married to him for 20 years, from 1935 to 1955.

There is also the matter of the crest. Let me parachute into a story from the New York Times, in 2017:

The British are known to take matters of heraldry seriously, and Mr. Trump’s American coat of arms belongs to another family. It was granted by British authorities in 1939 to Joseph Edward Davies . . .
In the United States, the Trump Organization took Mr. Davies’s coat of arms for its own, making one small adjustment — replacing the word “Integritas,” Latin for integrity, with “Trump.”

In an Impromptus earlier this week, I had a language item, saying that I had seen a price increase referred to as a “price update.” Slick, huh?

A reader writes,

We realtors, when we speak to sellers about decreasing the price of their house, use the term “price adjustment” or “price improvement.” Nobody wants to be told they need to lower the price of their house.

A reader writes,

Hi, Jay,
Antonio’s is a restaurant in Bergland, Mich. [Upper Peninsula]. You will notice a choice for dinner. Just curious about what you would choose.

Hmmm. I’ll go hog-wild and choose the pasty with rutabaga plus slaw. (But the best pasties made, are made by my mother.)

A reader writes,

Dear Mr. Nordlinger,
After being saturated with the latest terrible developments, I salved my soul with the thought of baseball’s Opening Day.
I grew up outside Baltimore and was fortunate enough to come of age during the Orioles’ glory days in the 1960s and ’70s. But 1968 was especially glorious for your Tigers.
I was at the game in late July when Denny McClain won his 20th by a score of 9–0. Imagine that! Winning 20 games before August! And local boy Al Kaline homered, garnering a few cheers from the home crowd. What a wonderful memory for a baseball fan, even if the Birds lost the game.

(Kaline, I should note, was a Tiger great who had been born and raised in Baltimore.)

We all need simple pleasures in these troubled times, and thankfully baseball can still provide some. Enjoy Opening Day!

My gratitude to one and all readers and correspondents — even if they root for non-Detroit teams.