“You could have heard a pin drop”

Anecdotes from correspondence

Edited by Moristotle

JFK’s Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60s when De Gaulle decided to pull out of NATO. De Gaulle said he wanted all US military out of France as soon as possible.
    Rusk responded, “Does that include those who are buried here?”

Boldt Words & Images: When the stars begin to fall

Art Institute of Chicago, original building

By Bob Boldt

In 1962, I was attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. For 13 days that October, the world was poised on the brink of universal destruction over the Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember crossing Michigan Avenue on my way to class and noticing a construction crew pouring curbing at the corner of Michigan and Monroe Streets immediately north of the Art Institute. I wondered whether, before the concrete had set, we might all be dead. The fear and apprehension was just that immediate, just that concrete in everyone’s minds.

Correspondence: Irony...and a public dole

Current events

By Moristotle

“Weaponizing irony”: could this be one of Trump’s greatest offenses? “Trump Ruins Irony, Too” [Moises Velasquez-Manoff, NY Times, March 20]. Excerpt:

Growing Up in America: American Movies in the 1950s (Part 2)

Billy Wilder, itchy and hot for Marilyn

By Rolf Dumke

The Seven Year Itch (1955). This film must have excited millions of adolescents and men in America and in the world in the last sixty years. It has an iconic scene etched in my memory. Marilyn Monroe is standing on an iron grate before a shop in New York City when a rumbling subway thrusts its way through the tunnel below, causing cool air to explode upward through the grate to swirl up her wide, white summer dress. She tries to push it down, to contain the swirling skirt and limit exposure of her thighs, smiling and giggling in delight, because the cool blast is so pleasant on a hot day.

Movie Review: The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe

Not so merry

By Morris Dean

Marilyn Monroe may have posed for a number of “Merry Christmas” photos, but she didn’t seem to have had many merry Christmases herself. Not to go by Lifetime’s four-hour miniseries, The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, which was based on the NY Times best seller by J. Randy Taraborrelli.

Fourth Saturday's Loneliest Liberal: Fifty years later

JJK remembers JFK

By James [Jerome] Knudsen

For the past week this nation has been remembering, reliving, and rehashing the assassination of John F. Kennedy. We’ve heard from the usual suspects; people who were there in Dallas, or at the inauguration, or in the situation room during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The cable television world has been awash in docu-dramas and biography pieces, the latest conspiracy theories along with the old ones. I’m not interested in critiquing them, I don’t want to discuss the “what ifs” or shine a light on the dark, musty corners of castle Camelot. And with good reason, I wasn’t around back then. On that fateful day in Dallas that saw the end of the JFK era, the JJK era was still 474 days away. My perspective is that of one who has no memories of his own, only the memories of other people’s memories.

The first words I heard about JFK's death were "I'm glad they shot him"

By Paul Clark

It is Friday, November 22, and the radio crackles with stories about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy exactly 50 years ago today. Many stations are encouraging listeners to call in with their memories about where they were when they heard JFK was dead, and what they remember about the day and the era. Most remembrances are positive, thank goodness for that. I grew up in Southwest Virginia, at a time JFK was forcing public schools to finally desegregate. My first remembrances of JFK's death are unfortunately not positive ones.

Sunday Review: Who was Lyndon Johnson?—Part 1 (book review)

The Passage of Power

By Jonathan Price

Lyndon Baines Johnson was our 36th President and held office for five years—from the assassination of John Kennedy in November 1963 until 1969 and the inauguration of Richard Nixon. Those of us who, like the writer of this review, lived through that period, do not on the whole, I think, remember Johnson fondly, for he was so intimately associated with the continuation of the Vietnam war and the apparent intransigence with which he pursued its policies and managed to alienate previous supporters and allies, including many of our international allies.

Fish for Friday

My favorite cartoonist is a genius named Dan Piraro. He draws a one-square strip named "Bizarro." Don is a vegetarian and often writes gags with a vegetarian theme. I saw this one today and thought of Jim Rix, whose article "What is the cause of Heart Disease?" was published on Moristotle on November 20. [personal communication]