5/1/2022

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            Congratulations on your performance at last night’s event. All of my papers quoted your joke about “the horrible plague.”  The NYT noted that “Mr. Noah offered equal-opportunity mockery of everyone,” including the press. So it seems that good fun was had by all. I hope you did not get CV.

            Today’s stories about Myanmar & Ukraine have me thinking about “man’s inhumanity to man” (MI2M). I learned about that in 8th grade. My teacher, Mrs. Blau, taught us it was one of 4 kinds of conflicts that could be found in any story. The others included man against nature, man against self & man against the supernatural. My colleague, who professes to know something about English teaching, tells me that this view of literature is overly simplistic, but it has stuck with me nonetheless.

             The phrase MI2M appears in Robert Burns’ 1794 poem, Man was Made to Mourn. You might want to read it on AF1 today as you head off to Walter Mondale’s (WFM) funeral. I found these lines intriguing, “The sun that overhangs yon moors, Out-spreading far and wide, Where hundreds labour to support, A haughty lordling's pride.” That critique of the wealthy resonated with me. I think it would resonate with WFM, too.

         BYBS,