This is the best thing I have read in a long time. I can't tell you how much I love hearing your memories, large and small. This makes me want to keep writing my memories of what it was like to grow up in the 70s for my children and - Lord willing - grandchildren. And of my time at Duke, similarly life-changing. I'd better stop now, or I will start telling anecdotes. So for now, just two things - stellar movie. I could not have loved it more. And second - "One morning in the breakfast line I watched former prime minister Ted Heath spray orange juice on his shirt as he tried to work the drinks machine." Well, that's a sentence for the ages.
Having worked with Tom Ricks at The Washington Post and been his friend for more than 20 years, I thought I knew him pretty well. I certainly appreciated his genius, and I do not use the word lightly. Tom's genius is one of originality. He always manages to see things, small and large, is very original and often unusual and idiosyncratic ways. I always learn things from him. And now, having read this beautiful little essay, I feel I know him even better, and appreciate his genius even more.
Bart Giamatti best known to non-Yalies for his brilliant "It breaks your heart" baseball essay and for his sadly way to short term as MLB commissioner.
I haven’t seen this movie, but I will. In 1976 I was just up the road from you at Trinity (Yale Lite?). Ground Zero for white privilege, but a great party school AND the professors were wonderful. Your brilliant, charismatic Yale President Bart Giametti even came up to speak to our French (?) Lit class and he was wonderful too. There was a boy at Trinity I knew who had been accepted at Yale. I remember being so puzzled as to why (his rich father went to Yale and served in a Republican presidential cabinet, so MAYBE that was it). Unlike your weeping student friend in the cafeteria, though, this boy was smart enough to realize he wasn’t smart enough to be at Yale. So he chose Trinity instead. WOW. Of course it wasn’t all that easy a ride. He used to knock on my door to borrow my notes from English class. He never cried in front of me, but he did smirk.
This is the best thing I have read in a long time. I can't tell you how much I love hearing your memories, large and small. This makes me want to keep writing my memories of what it was like to grow up in the 70s for my children and - Lord willing - grandchildren. And of my time at Duke, similarly life-changing. I'd better stop now, or I will start telling anecdotes. So for now, just two things - stellar movie. I could not have loved it more. And second - "One morning in the breakfast line I watched former prime minister Ted Heath spray orange juice on his shirt as he tried to work the drinks machine." Well, that's a sentence for the ages.
Having worked with Tom Ricks at The Washington Post and been his friend for more than 20 years, I thought I knew him pretty well. I certainly appreciated his genius, and I do not use the word lightly. Tom's genius is one of originality. He always manages to see things, small and large, is very original and often unusual and idiosyncratic ways. I always learn things from him. And now, having read this beautiful little essay, I feel I know him even better, and appreciate his genius even more.
Bart Giamatti best known to non-Yalies for his brilliant "It breaks your heart" baseball essay and for his sadly way to short term as MLB commissioner.
A wonderful reminiscence of time, place, and youth.
I haven’t seen this movie, but I will. In 1976 I was just up the road from you at Trinity (Yale Lite?). Ground Zero for white privilege, but a great party school AND the professors were wonderful. Your brilliant, charismatic Yale President Bart Giametti even came up to speak to our French (?) Lit class and he was wonderful too. There was a boy at Trinity I knew who had been accepted at Yale. I remember being so puzzled as to why (his rich father went to Yale and served in a Republican presidential cabinet, so MAYBE that was it). Unlike your weeping student friend in the cafeteria, though, this boy was smart enough to realize he wasn’t smart enough to be at Yale. So he chose Trinity instead. WOW. Of course it wasn’t all that easy a ride. He used to knock on my door to borrow my notes from English class. He never cried in front of me, but he did smirk.
Wonderful memory and time, thanks for sharing