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There’s a ad on TV that claims that the oldest trees produce the sweetest fruit. I grew up on an orchard, and I know that this is wrong. The oldest trees produce the sourest fruit. At 89, Harper Lee has proved the truth of this in her new book, Go Set a Watchman. In it, one of America’s greatest fictional heroes, Atticus Finch, is portrayed as a segregationist. Worse, the story is set years after the events in To Kill a Mockingbird, suggesting that he has acquired has prejudice as he has grown older and, sadly, less wise.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee says that it’s a sin to kill one. Well, that’s just what she’s done by mistakenly publishing this text, which should certainly have remained in the safety deposit box where it was found.
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When we lived in New York, Whitley and I had season tickets to Yankee Stadium, and we’re still fans. Whitley was a fan when he was a kid, largely because a local radio station in San Antonio carried the Yankees Radio Network. In those days, there were no major league baseball teams west of the Mississippi.

Since I can’t get to any games anymore, I’ve gotten involved in watching baseball movies instead, and there are some great ones, with Bull Durham and, of course, the immortal Field of Dreams leading the league.
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What a difference a pope makes! Benedict was a clothes horse. He used so much ermine in his regalia that there was an ermine shortage while he was enjoying his papacy. He dusted off thousand year old vestments and tiaras. Meanwhile, he insisted that he hadn’t done anything significant in the Hitler Youth, even though they were the most fanatical Nazis next to the SS. Did he worry about the poor? He seemed to think that the important thing was to awe them with his clothes!
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