© Merle Harton, Jr. | About | XML/RSS

NPR reported today on Ben Macintyre's new book The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004]. Macintyre came across the journals of Josiah Harlan while researching Afghanistan and was riveted by the 19th century story of this soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist, traveler, writer, revolutionary agent for the exiled Afghan king, and commander-in-chief of the Afghan armies. I am a fan of Rudyard Kipling's story and the John Huston movie by the same name, and there seems to be good evidence that Harlan was their inspiration. Not a shabby accomplishment for someone born to pious Quakers in rural Pennsylvania.

A popular professor at the University of Chicago, Karl Weintraub, died on March 25 at the age of 79.  What's amazing is not so much that he taught Western Civilization for 50 years, but that students would actually sleep in line to register for his class. That wasn't for tickets to a rock concert, but to a history class! Weintraub was born in Germany to a Jewish father and Christian mother and during WWII was hidden by a Christian family in Holland. Quakers arranged for him to come to the US. [Sources: Obituary, University of Chicago; AP, March 27.]

Is that wry wit caraway seeds or wit-out?  Sometimes my humor gets me into trouble or, worse, is misunderstood. I had earlier written about my daughter L.'s amusing adventure playing hooky from school, but for one of her girlfriends that just wasn't a proper thing to do. The friend wrote me the following email, sent via AOL at 3:07 AM this morning:

hey mr. H, this is a freind of l[]s, i think you are violating and taking advantage of l[]s life by broadcasting her life in your "website"... i dont think sh ewould want the world to know what she does or how u feel about what she does on an internet page. You are broadcasting her life and making her sound liek she is a bad person to practically the whole world! You wonder why she lies to, when she finds you writing websites about her. i really think you should have a healthy conversation face to face wiht her instead of putting things off, or ignoring them like nothing wrong happened, and stop letting the world know wha thappens between the two of u or what differences u have! if i found my mother or father doing that to me, i would feel violated and mistusted and i woudn't think highly of them again. id get on the right foot wtih your daughter before you dont have one. She's growing up you know, shes not always going to be your little girl, you've got to accept the changes shes going to go through. Stop trying to preserve teh past

To which I must respond by saying: (1) Use spell-check, please, and (2) why are you still up at 3 in the morning?

Kids, don't try this stunt at home.  A personal past is very much like a tattoo, except that laser surgery doesn't work with these. Inebriation helps, but not if someone else remembers it. I just found out that a letter of praise I wrote back in the 1980s to Phillip Morris Magazine is now a part of Tobacco Documents Online. At the time, I still smoked and was a fist-on-the-table Libertarian and I really did like the magazine, so I wasn't being disingenuous, even if that letter was the only thing they would publish of mine.