Impromptus today begins with the subject of secession. The Republican Party of Texas has adopted a platform plank calling for a referendum on secession in 2023. I used to think that secession talk was good clean fun (mainly); I think it is something darker now. In any event, I have some lighter items in today’s column as well.
Let’s have some reader mail.
Responding to a post about culture, a reader writes,
Years ago, WFB wrote about getting the autograph of his boyhood hero, Arturo Toscanini. I couldn’t help thinking that, in the schools of my youth, you would probably have gotten a wedgie for admitting that. Hell, I might have done the administering.
Responding to a column headed “Woke hell, &c.,” a reader writes,
It feels like the tide is turning. My wife and I attended the Bare Naked Ladies concert in Chicago tonight. You may not be familiar with BNL, but they are a Canadian pop group with very talented members who cross many genres of fun music. They sang a song called “Gonna Walk” and the lead singer was teaching the chorus to the audience so we could participate. The chorus goes, “Gonna walk. I won’t quit. Until I get to the bottom of your heart.” Pretty simple. Then the singer said to us — good-naturedly — “And if you don’t sing the chorus part . . . you’re racist.”
In the column I linked to, just above, I had an item or two about baseball. I asked, “Isn’t ‘Los Angeles Angels’ a redundancy?” A language-whiz friend of mine writes, “Yes, but ‘the Los Angeles Angels’ is a double redundancy” — because “the” and “los” are the same.
Ah!
I published a letter from a reader who spoke of a taxi driver in Chicago, Algerian-born. The driver was thrilled that his son could be “an all-American boy.” A reader — a different reader — says that this reminded him of one of his favorite songs: “The Men That Drive Me Places,” by Ben Rector, an Oklahoman born in 1986. Here it is.
In an Impromptus last Monday, I spoke of Mitt Romney, and his vilification by all and sundry (or by many and sundry). A reader writes,
Dear Jay,
Regarding Mitt Romney: I am his age. My mother would have turned cartwheels if I had been half as successful as a student, businessman, and family man. (I think I am doing okay as a family man — 52 years of marriage.) Amazing that Mitt is so vilified.
In any case — on to the 53rd, and congratulations.
Lately, in a nostalgic mood, I have been penning notes about my home state. A reader writes, “I hear echoes of Bruce Catton’s ‘A Michigan Boyhood.’” Catton, one of the most famous historians in the country, wrote that in 1972. Here it is.
And my thanks — hearty thanks — to all readers and correspondents. Again, for today’s Impromptus, go here.