My Impromptus today is an assortment (as the column is born to be): politics, history, human rights, the arts; serious, light, in between. If this floats your boat — here it is.
Let’s have some mail — beginning with responses to various articles and posts about Russia:
Jay,
. . . When the Berlin Wall came down, I really thought the good guys were winning in the world. There was even a glimmer of hope in China, with the Tiananmen Square protests. Boy, was I wrong.
Another:
Jay:
The death of Alexei Navalny reminds me of a book by your friend Vladimir Bukovsky, Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity.
Though I cannot call him a friend, I sat down with Bukovsky for a long — and engrossing and unforgettable — interview with him several months before he died.
Our reader continues,
Bukovsky wrote about going through the Communist Party archives and finding the minutes of the Politburo meetings where the fate of dissidents was being decided by the big-shots. Bukovsky wrote that he was amazed the leaders of this supposedly powerful country were obsessed with the activities of a relative handful of people who would not submit to Communism. It was as if these leaders could not sleep soundly knowing that there was even one person who would resist them.
Like Bukovsky, I was profoundly moved when I read that. These tyrants feel in danger when anyone resists them.
Yes. (Václav Havel wrote a famous essay called “The Power of the Powerless.”)
Sudden shift. In recent weeks, I’ve been writing about the Detroit Lions. I had a post that was illustrated by a picture of our great quarterback Bobby Layne. A reader now writes,
Hello, Jay!
. . . Layne was a letterman in football and baseball at the University of Texas (my alma mater) in the mid ’40s. One night, Layne and his roommate, Rooster Andrews (a great name; Rooster went on to open a very successful sporting-goods store in Austin), were drinking and screwing around in a dormitory stairwell, and Layne put his foot through a plate-glass window, cutting up his ankle so bad he had to have it stitched up. He was supposed to pitch in College Station the next day, and he didn’t want the manager, Bibb Falk (another great sports name), to know what he’d done. So, he had Rooster (who was the team manager) smuggle a case of beer into the dugout for him for pain management. The Aggies could tell Layne was hurt (limping and bleeding as he was), and some of our Aggie friends would bang on a drum in the bleachers while Layne was on the mound. Layne drank the whole case of beer during the game, threw a no-hitter, and gave the Aggies the bird at end of the game.
At the end of my Impromptus on Monday, I had some pictures from Montgomery, Ala. One of them was of a display of hats (as I said) in a gift shop. I made particular mention of the Montgomery Biscuits — a minor-league team. A reader writes,
Hi, Jay,
My father was a wholesaler of men’s and boy’s headwear. That picture is of caps, not hats. A hat has a high crown with a brim. A cap, no brim, but a visor. His business was founded by my grandfather in 1918 and my father ran it until his retirement in 1982. I used to help my father on Saturdays, packing the “goods,” as he used to refer to the merchandise. By the ’70s, hat sales were a very small portion of his sales. Because JFK did not wear a hat, my father blamed him for the decline in hat sales.
My thanks to one and all. Again, for today’s Impromptus, go here.