Saturday night I watched the last installment of Ken Burns’ documentary on the Vietnam War. There were scenes I didn’t remember – Spiro Agnew debating with war protestors on the David Frost Show – and scenes I remembered incompletely. I of course knew that Jane Fonda visited Hanoi (as did Joan Baez and Susan Sontag) but I had forgotten Fonda saying that the American POWs should be tried and, if found guilty, executed. My favorite scene was of a group of those POWs on an airplane flying home.
At the end of the documentary, statistics appeared on the screen: over 58,000 American dead, over two million Vietnamese. My thoughts go out to them all today.
Someone on social media recently opined that the book is always better than the movie, and invited people to persuade him otherwise.
The Wizard of Oz, wrote one responder. Jules and Jim, wrote another.
I was on a plane Monday after attending the memorial service for my friend Sam Graff, who died a few months ago at the age of 86. The mass at Sacred Heart Church was followed by a reception at the Trenton Country Club, not far from where Sam and Sally (my first newspaper editor) lived in a house designed by Sam’s grandfather in 1907. Sam had left the Trenton Times by the time I arrived, working as a photo editor at the New York Daily News. “Photo,” he used to answer the phone, “Graff.”
On the flight back home from Philadelphia on Monday the man sitting across the aisle from me sported a message tattooed across his thigh that was partially covered by his shorts. At one point the shorts inched up, revealing the words: JESUS WEPT.
It is rare these days to take pleasure in the news, but I was delighted to read in this morning’s Miami Herald that a yacht sank off of Miami Beach with over 30 social media influencers on board. They were all rescued, but it's possible their invaluable phones were lost.
I'm heading to Buffalo and Cleveland (aka the Lake District) to eat some pierogi and do some book readings. Back here on the 29th.