In my Impromptus today, I have lots of politics, relieved by . . . well, not relieved by much. Anyway, it is what it is. (That is my least favorite expression, along with “That ship has sailed.”) My politics-heavy Impromptus is here.

A speck of mail? I want to publish the beginning of a letter, just because it’s so charming. It responds to a little article of mine, here.

Jay,

I read your post on “woke” a few days ago, and your note about The Nutcracker caught my eye because I have two ballet-dancer daughters and, thus, have seen The Nutcracker more times than I can keep track of. . . .

Anyway, as a “ballet dad” who, I must admit, occasionally envied a good friend with three sons who all played baseball through college, over the years I’ve developed a genuine appreciation of ballet.

Yesterday, I published some mail about Hamlet. Subsequently, a friend shared with me a statement by T. S. Eliot:

. . . probably more people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found it interesting, than have found it interesting because it is a work of art. It is the Mona Lisa of literature.

On June 6, David Churchill Barrow sent me the following note:

Howdy, Jay:

Most folks assume that victory on D-Day, though costly, was inevitable. That simply isn’t so. What if it had been a disaster? We secured the beachheads, but what if the English Channel had been filled with wreckage — and the bobbing corpses of thousands of American, British, and Canadian boys? Who would have taken responsibility for a bloody fiasco on such a scale?

That question had been decided before the first ships left English ports, and an American general had already written his letter:

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air, and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.”

Thank God that announcement never needed to be made, and instead we got this from Ike:

“People of Western Europe — A landing was made this morning on the coast of France by troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force. This landing is part of the concerted United Nations plan for the liberation of Europe.”

Notice that the “I,” “my,” and “mine” in the first announcement are nowhere to be found in the second.

Eisenhower is one of the men who make me proud to call myself an American.

Let me close with an iris — a simple, wonderful iris — snapped by our colleague Molly Powell at her New England home: