Postcard From Fredericksburg

Fearless Forecasts

Preston on "Nightline" Friday night: The 20-percent loss in refining capacity, which is the worst-case scenario, could in fact lead to five-dollar gasoline. So, you wouldn't expect $5 gas to last all that long—a month would be a long time—but it could be a long time before we're back to $2.50 gasoline.

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I was happy that CDG invited me to his well-played, honorably lost soccer game today. It helped me remember CPM's grammar-school soccer games. My strongest memory is that Her Daintiness could belch louder than the boys, loud enough to turn heads two soccer fields away.

Fifty Percent More For Your Money

Tonight in the Camp Concert Hall, with spirit and precision, the Shanghai Quartet played a program of Brahms sextets.

Fran Holland, 1913-2005

Word arrived today that Fran Holland died. Sitting at dinner with friends, she had a stroke and passed out in mid-laugh. Fran was an estimable person, interested in everything, and a tough old bird, one of the extravagantly opinionated women I have always found irresistible. "She was an incredible woman," JCC says, "and hell on wheels." I hope I have the luck go the same way, suddenly, with friends, and in mid-laugh. Only not quite yet.

Burning Romances

Damn those hidden cameras:

Happy Birthday, Babe.

There's a little girl in our neighborhood,
Her name is Charlotte Preston and she's really lookin' good.
I had to go and see her, so I called her on the phone.
I walked over to her house, and this was goin' on:
Her brother was on the sofa eatin' chocolate pie,
Her momma was in the kitchen cuttin' chicken up to fry,
Her daddy was in the backyard rollin' up a garden hose,
I was on the porch with Charlotte feelin' love down to my toes,
And we were swingin', yes we were swingin'.

Little Charlotte she's as pretty as the angels when they sing.
I can't believe I'm out here on the front porch in this swing,
Just a-swingin'.

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Customer: You're a very polite young man.
JRP: I blame my parents.

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From the Arts & Leisure Section of this morning's Times: You'll have to take my word for it, but that's me in the background at the circulation desk of Firestone Library. Forty years I have not understood why the photographer chose to focus on Philip Roth.

From Frank's Archive

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.