Stone Street is Back

After a regrettable hiatus of many months, the Stone Street podcast is back.  Check out the interview with Ambassador Robert M. Beecroft here, or click on the RSS feed to the right of this post.


Ambassador Beecroft has worked on virtually every major U.S. foreign policy question of the second half of the twentieth century. From the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) of the 1970s to Egypt-Israel relations, to the post-Warsaw Pact enlargement of NATO, to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, the Ambassador’s career encompasses some of the most complex global issues in history.  I caught up with him while he was in Vilnius as part of a Dept. of State inspection team conducting a review of the embassy.  One note: if you listen to the interview, you'll hear me referencing another interview he gave several years ago, in which he gives extraordinarily detailed accounts of the policies, events and personalities he's worked on, for and with over the years.  It's an extraordinary document, which you can read here.

Enjoy.

The Unexpected Applicability of J. Alfred Prufrock to a Memory of Chemotherapy

The other day I thought of a line from the great T.S. Eliot poem (I grow old... I grow old.../ I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled), and so went to my old Norton Anthology to check out the text.  And saw this there:

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am not a prophet--and here's no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, 

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

In short, I was afraid.  It's the starkness of this, the bare admission.  And the obliquely apropos reference to baldness...

Nothing else to say about it, really.  It just caught my eye and felt right.