A water mistress who masters the pool

In addition to a daily newspaper I subscribe to fifteen publications, some weekly, semi-monthly and monthly, but Vogue is not one of them.

I picked up a copy of the April issue, however,  because a good friend's granddaughter is the subject of a feature story - Free Style - (page 250) dealing with her amazing accomplishments as a young swimmer. 

It is safe to say the six-feet tall Kathy Ledecky of Bethesda, Maryland, could out swim Tarzan, Jane, Boy and Cheetah all at once. Heck, she has already bested every one else. 

At the age of 15, this phenomenon made her debut at the London Olympics four years ago, winning a gold, and has since won golds in the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 meter freestyle races at the FINA World Championships in Russia last August. 

The swimming world is wondering what Miss Ledecky, now 19-years of age, will do to top all this at the Olympics in Brazil this summer. She trains up to 30 hours a week, and has broken her own 800 meter freestyle world record four times since 2013. 

The Vogue feature deals with the maturity and pose of this 19-year old who has deferred her scholarship to Stanford for a year to train for the Olympics.  Last fall she took a couple of classes at Georgetown: Chinese history and politics, to keep herself sharp.

Even if I was not acquainted with her grandmother, the Vogue (April 2016) essay, Free Style, would be enlightening and entertaining reading for the simple pleasure of knowing about this "once-in-a-lifetime" American swimming phenom. 

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Off we go into the wild blue yonder...

One of my grandsons left for Air Force basic training at Lackland Air Fore Base in Texas yesterday.  His family had a launch party for him on Sunday, with about 30 friends and family members on hand to wish him well. I did not make the tips but earlier sent him a letter expressing my pride in his enlistment and wishing him well. This is that letter:

March 20, 2016 

Dear Matthew,

When you go to bed next Sunday night, Easter 2016, you will close a chapter in the book of your young life. On Monday, March 28, you will turn a page and begin to write the next chapter entitled,  My Air Force Life. 

What you write will depend on many things, not the least of which is the interest you take in the new and exciting world you will discover around you. When I entered the Air Force, also on a Monday, April 21, 1951, it was a major eye-opener for me. Like you I had lived all of my life in one town surrounded by family and friends whose lives were much like mine. But when I boarded the train all this changed. Family stayed behind, friends scurried around some where, and I was with new faces who had different backgrounds and histories. But, before long we were a small part of a large team: the USAF.

I served the Air Force well and it did well by me. You will get out of it what you bring to it and what you put into it. On that basis I know you will do well and this new chapter will be filled with memories you will cherish forever. Be true to yourself, your fellow Airmen, your superiors and your country. Be proud of the uniform you will wear and remember the sacrifices of thousands who have gone before you and built the finest Air Force in the world.  They have left you with a heavy charge to carry on the traditions.

I am proud to be your Grandfather. You are a fine young man and your late Grandmother Mary, who also served in the Air Force, would be as proud of you as I am.

God Bless you, Matthew, may He keep you safe and strong. With you in the Air Force, I know our country will always be safe and free.

Love from Grandpa

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The Overcoat: Stolen, Worn, Gone

A film editing error

A couple of week sago I went to see Bridge of Spies, a film based on factual events recounting the swap of convicted Soviet Spy Rudolph Abel for U.S. U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. The film stars Tom Hanks in the role of James Donovan, a New York Attorney, who is pressed into defending Abel when he is caught by the FBI, and is later enlisted by the CIA to negotiate the swap. The time is the late fifties and early sixties: the early days of the late and unlamented Cold War. 

Over the weekend, I bought a DVD copy of the film to add to my collection of such films. Last night I viewed it again,

As the story develops, in 1962, Donovan (Hanks) is on his way to the Soviet Embassy in East Berlin in bitter cold weather when he is stripped of his overcoat by some street thugs. 

In the Embassy he talks with a man who claims to be only a Second Secretary, but we learn later is the KGB chief in Germany, who makes fun of the lost coat. He gives Donovan the address of an East German lawyer named Wolfgang Vogel, representing an East German woman who claims to be the wife of Abel. 

In the meeting with Vogel, Donovan is wearing his stolen overcoat. Later when he is back in the CIA safe house nursing a cold, sipping tea, and wrapped in a blanket he asks the CIA chief to get him a coat since he lost his own doing “spy stuff.”  For the rest of the film he wears a new coat. 

Obviously, as is often the case, scenes were short out of sequence to be later put together in the editing process, and something like this should have been caught by the editors and the scene probably re-shot.  It doesn’t materially affect the fine film that Steven Spielberg has produced but it is an interesting oddity. 

Mark Rylance plays the role of Abel, and for his performance won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor this past Sunday night.

The Abel for Powers swap was only one incident in the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, but this exciting film helps us to understand the dangerous times the Cold War presented for the world. 

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