Context

I'd never read E.B. Lyndon before her story “Goodbye, Bear” appeared as the latest issue of the literary magazine One Story - but I'll be keeping an eye out for her from now on. Narrated by a single woman in her late 20s, “Goodbye, Bear” offers up a drama in a minor key involving family, love, loneliness, alienation (all my favorite subjects), but even more, the question of how, and whether, we commit. “Have you ever put yourself in something,” Lyndon's narrator wonders at the end of the story, “really drowned yourself in it, just to have another place to call home for a little bit?

If the Rev. Franklin Graham's defense of his father's anti-Semitic remarks were correctly reported, the son has apparently inherited his once-esteemed father's foot-in-mouth disease ("Billy Graham Remarks Misconstrued, Son Says," April 4). As if getting caught in the act of Jew-bashing wasn't bad enough, now Franklin tells us the following: Billy wasn't talking about all Jews, just those nasty, nefarious ones who controlled the media (obviously to the detriment of the Christian majority)

As a Vietnam veteran, profoundly affected by by the movie, "Platoon," I read Charles Krauthammer's article (Editorial Pages, Feb. 22), "The Fog of War . . .," with more than passing interest. My initial reaction was positive. Here's some balance, I thought, a perspective counter to my emotional reaction. The fact that I'm writing this at 3 a.m. the Monday following my reading is an indication of the strength of my delayed reaction. The major flaw in Krauthammer's analysis is his neglect of the fact that in Vietnam the "Fog of War" was as strategic as it was tactical.