In today’s Impromptus, I have many political items — but I also have an item on romance. (Even one on math, which is darn rare for me.) The Eiffel Tower was shut down for a while, because of a disturbance. People already in the tower were stranded there. A man decided to propose to his gal. (He was going to do it later, elsewhere in Paris.) A reporter from the Associated Press happened to be stranded with them.
A reader of ours writes,
I actually proposed to my wife on top of the Eiffel Tower (at the entrance to Eiffel’s tiny apartment) back in 2010. It was entirely planned, although when a volcano eruption in Iceland stopped trans-Atlantic flights, I started wondering whether God was trying to prevent me from making a mistake of my life. But the flights resumed just two days before our flight, so off we went (and I achieved complete surprise).
On Friday, I had a column headed “The fear factor, &c.” In response, a reader — a splendid lady from the South — writes,
In the late ’80s or early ’90s, I attended a women’s Bible study where we had monthly guest speakers. One month, our guest was a local leader of the Concerned Women for America. She used Nehemiah and the building of the wall as her text. She pointed out that Nehemiah instructed the people of Jerusalem to join with their neighbors to build the wall, and did not tell them to make sure they were ideologically aligned as a prerequisite. They had a common problem, and worked together on that problem. The speaker urged us to join hands with people, even those we might otherwise disagree with, on those issues where we agreed.
I have been thinking about that a lot lately. Today, both major parties seem to be held hostage by members who consider any cooperation with “the other side” to be not just wrongheaded but treasonous.
My mind is blown that I am more in agreement with Biden and Fetterman, of all people, on Israel and Ukraine than with some people on “my side.”
Also responding to Friday’s column, a different reader writes,
There is so much seriousness in the country and in the world in general — but I want to comment on Burt Young, whose passing you mentioned. Yes, people think about Rocky. But I also think about Back to School. Burt plays Lou, the loyal chauffeur and righthand man to Thornton Melon. He does not have very many lines in the movie, but he conveys a sense of security: You’re glad he’s for you, not against you.
Heh, we could all use a Lou.