Questions of race, ethnicity, and identity are all around us. My column today is headed “Our Ongoing Dilemma.” At the top, I say, “Race is America’s sorest, stickiest subject. So let’s get sore and sticky for a minute.” If you are so inclined, that column is here.
Let’s have a little mail.
When it comes to the world of intelligence and espionage, you’ve heard of HUMINT (human intelligence), SIGINT (signals intelligence), and so on. Last Friday, I published a letter from an Air Force vet who referred to “RUMINT” — standing for intelligence, or “intelligence,” based on rumors. Enjoyable phrase.
A Navy vet now writes, “We referred to this as ‘MDI,’ meaning, ‘mess decks intelligence.’” Another good one.
This reader adds, on a completely different topic, “Love the space you have devoted to Bob Newhart. I have a copy of his autobiography that I got at a book signing, and it has many great stories.” Tens of millions in this country grew up with Newhart, so to speak.
A week ago, I had a post involving a music group — one with a peculiar name, indicating a hybrid style: Afro Celt Sound System. A reader writes,
I first listened to this band in the early 2000s, when it was known, for a short time, as simply “Afrocelts.” I think I heard a track in a movie and it got me interested in more of the same. A unique sound indeed. By the way, your post got me listening to those old tracks again.
On your comment about the deep well of musical variety: I, like you, grew up in the eras of vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs. Finding the variety of music took a bit of effort in those days. At the very least, it entailed a trip to a record store to browse the available selections. And then there was the art of making mixed tapes and CDs.
I think of this when I’m driving my middle-schooler and grade-schooler around town. These kids have the whole musical world at their fingertips. They literally speak to the car and ask for any song they can think of, and it “magically” plays the song for them. They will never appreciate our primitive methods of finding new music. All in the name of progress, I suppose.
Now if I can just get them off, at least once in a while, Taylor Swift and Eminem . . .
A phrase comes to mind: “He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible Swift sword.”
In my Impromptus of Friday, I had a note on William Calley, who has just died at 80. He was the only one convicted in the My Lai massacre. I wrote, “The debate over Calley has always been about things other than Calley, or beyond Calley: the nature of war; ‘American exceptionalism’; accountability. There are worlds within this one case.”
A number of my correspondents have made the same point — and an important one: Calley’s fellow soldiers were particularly horrified by what he had done, and particularly keen to see him convicted. They were saying, in effect, “This is not us. This does not have to be us. This is not what we’re about.”
One reader appends a lighter note:
The big courtroom at Fort Benning was used by a federal magistrate once a month to handle speeding tickets. So I can say I was found guilty in the same courtroom that Calley was.
Another reader writes,
I know you love signs and words. I took this photo, at Cornell University, with you in mind.
Behold:
