January 2011

Fiorello La Guardia was indeed a “master of dramatics,” as Geoffrey C. Ward writes in his review of Thomas Kessner’s biography of the colorful New York City mayor (“The Life and Times,” February). I was present for one of his memorable performances.

The occasion was a summer concert of the National Symphony in Washington in 1939 or 1940. There had been no advance notice, but the orchestra’s founder and conductor, Hans Kindler, announced midway through the evening that a guest conductor would share the podium: Mayor La Guardia. Maestro Kindler reminded the audience that the mayor’s father had been a bandmaster and that the mayor himself knew band music. But, Kindler added, many of us might not be aware of the mayor’s deeper musical talents that went beyond marches into the classical realm. That evening, he told us, La Guardia would conduct excerpts from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The murmurs that rippled through the audience suggested we were both surprised and impressed.

James Thomas Flexner’s Washington mythology (“Postscripts to History,” February) is intriguing. As he points out, Washington was a deeply religious person. Yet Flexner’s assertion that he avoided the word God is debatable. Washington wrote the following about Shays’ Rebellion: “What, gracious God, is man! that there should be such inconsistency and perfidiousness in his conduct?” At his inauguration in 1789, after the constitutional oath had ended, Washington added his own declaration: “So help me, God.” And at the start of his last will and testament, he wrote: “In the Name of God, Amen!” It would seem that the documentary evidence is sufficient to show that Washington did indeed mention God.

Watery is the first word that comes to mind as you enter the main gate of the U.S. Naval Academy, at the foot of the Maryland town that has become the school’s other name, Annapolis. The broad Severn River greets the sea reaches of Chesapeake Bay a few hundred yards away. A few miles farther out is the Atlantic. Just across Prince George Street is Annapolis harbor, crammed with sloops and power boats. This is obviously a good place for a school for sailors, a nursery of admirals.

Ricketts Hall, just inside the gate, is where most visitors start their tour of the Academy. Here they can see an enlightening video about the midshipmen’s four-year experience, study a diorama of the Yard, and if they are so inclined, sign up for an informative onehour-and-ten-minute official tour at a cost of three dollars. Similar tours of the Academy and other sites are run by Historic Annapolis Tours and Three Centuries Tours of Annapolis.

There was no greater love in my father’s life than for his nine grandchildren. He was the most tolerant and indulgent of grandpas and would say to us, the anxious parents, “It’s your job to raise them, not mine.”

Pop always had a special empathy for the trials and tribulations of growing up. He had no illusion that childhood is a golden time. As he put it, “Someone is always telling you ‘No, you can’t,’ or ‘Yes, you must.’ ” With a sense of irony that was typical of him, he also observed that “raising your parents is hard work as well.” He never forgot that in childhood there is so little freedom and that in growing up the gaining of freedom is never easy.

The road to Bodie, California turns to gravel as it meanders upward from U.S. 395 on a 13-mile climb through sagebrush to an elevation of almost 8500 feet. I paused at the crest of a hill where a small sign marked the entrance to Bodie State Historic Park. The air was still, and the silence absolute; but I was most struck by the intensity of the light and colors. A spectacular June sunrise illuminated the imposing wall of the Sierras to the west. In the other direction, Bodie Bluff loomed in silhouette against a cobalt sky crisscrossed by the condensation trails of airliners. Below, in a shallow valley, was Bodie, the weathered pine of its buildings russet and yellow against a sea of gray-green bunchgrass. Here I was, a lawyer from the big city of the big deals, musing about color and light after arriving two hours ahead of schedule for my first day as a volunteer intern at the fledgling Bodie Archives.

The Bodie State Historical Park is open from 9:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. in the summer and reduces its hours as the days get shorter. Visitors should call ahead in winter to be sure the roads are clear. The admission fee is $3.00 per car. Smoking in Bodie is prohibited. For further information, call or write the Bodie State Historical Park, P.O. Box 515, Bridgeport, California 93517/Tel: 619-647-6445.

In one of Willa Cather’s earliest novels, the heroine has been reflecting on the settlers who had come to Nebraska a generation earlier and on the great changes that have taken place in the intervening years. “We can remember,” she says, “the graveyard when it was wild prairie ...and now....” Her companion, however, responds not to this change but to consistency. “Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.”

We did it because we thought it looked more interesting that way. Now we’re sorry.
Give Me Breakfast! La Guardia Conducts Beethoven Washington Theology Just Curious Garden History Family Pride Grooving More on the Model T More on the Model T Where They Were in the War