I was at an evening party with friends of my brother. The hostess’ brother joined the conversation at one point—we were outdoors on a warm, exceptionally clear night, marveling at the firmament—and it developed that he did not know what stars were, or how distant they are, or that our own Sol is a star. This was a long-unemployed actor (he was the public face of a cigar brand in television commercials, losing that gig when tobacco ceased to be advertised on television after 1971) of about fifty. One might conclude from this episode that, as the forty-third president might have put it, our children hasn’t been learning for quite some time.

(I might mention that the hostess was to all appearances well-educated and sophisticated. She and her brother were actually British by birth, although this fact was not apparent in either speech or mannerism. I met the parents on a few occasions: the mother was an elegant, extraordinarily handsome woman who had clearly been staggeringly beautiful in youth, a conclusion borne out by photographs from the period; the father was an RAF veteran of the Battle of Britain—as I recall, there was a photograph in their home of him having a medal pinned to his chest by George VI. So the guy wasn’t, you know, raised by wolves. I blame his marijuana habit.)

cordially,