In Impromptus today, I lead with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running for president — as a Democrat. As Kennedys do. Yet most of the warm words I hear about him — in fact, all of them — come from the right. American politics is in an interesting place (to put it mildly).
What else is in today’s column? Or who else? Harry Belafonte, Robert De Niro, and Idi Amin, for three. Anyway, if you’d like to try it out, here it is.
Yesterday’s Impromptus was a San Diego journal. I mentioned, and pictured, Barrio Logan. “A little investigation,” I said, “reveals that the neighborhood is named after a 19th-century congressman, John A. Logan.” A reader writes to say that, while I was not inaccurate, I did not quite do justice to the man — and our reader is right. Logan was a Union general in the Civil War, and he was also Blaine’s running mate in ’84.
You know Logan Circle in Washington, D.C.? Same, illustrious fellow.
San Diego has a Little Italy, and honored in this neighborhood is John Basilone. A snippet from my journal:
Basilone, born in 1916, was a gunnery sergeant in the Marines. He was brave — legendarily so — in World War II. Medal of Honor. Navy Cross. Killed at Iwo Jima, February 19, 1945.
I heard from an old friend of mine — an old friend who is young — Will Allen. He writes,
Hi, Jay,
Your travelogue of San Diego (one of my favorite cities) just prompted a recollection that I thought you might enjoy. When my platoon returned from deployment in 2019, we went to visit a teammate at Walter Reed and do some sightseeing in D.C. Not a great picture, but here is our medium-machine-gun team leader (in the Fordham shirt, 21 years old at the time) reciting, from memory, to a rapt audience the biography and combat record of Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone, beside his grave in Arlington.
Will’s picture:
Will continues,
Young Americans may not know Washington or Jefferson (alas), but if they become 0331s in the Marine Corps, they will at least learn the story of Gunny Basilone by heart.
And a kind of P.S.:
Incidentally, this hasty shot includes Marines from Chicago, Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina, as well as immigrants from Russia and Bolivia. A typical all-American infantry platoon.
God bless them all. Without such Americans — we are cooked.