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Thirty Years Ago MALE PROTECTIVE LEAGUE seeks members. Learn from female counterintelligence how to protect against the Disapproving Female hell bent on humbling and humiliating the convenient male. Self-addressed, stamped envelope...for membership application. -- CLASSIFIEDS: June 19, 1975

Twenty-Five Years Ago Though I am an admirer of Ms. Whoopi Goldberg as a performer, I must correct a statement in her letter which appeared in the Reader of June 12, 1980. She states, "There is presently only one Equity house in San Diego (the Fiesta Dinner Theatre)." Perhaps Ms. Goldberg is new to the San Diego theater scene. The Old Globe Theatre is the oldest professional (Equity) theater in California. -- LETTERS: "WHOOPI CAUTION," Bill Eaton, Director of Public Relations, Old Globe Theatre, June 19, 1980

Twenty Years Ago When Joan Kroc scheduled a recent vacation in Rome, Tribune reporter Robert Blair Kaiser arranged for the McDonald's millionaire to have a brief audience with Pope John Paul II. Kaiser, who is Kroc's current friend and escort, hopped aboard her Grumman G-3 jet and flew to Italy, where he wrote about the June 5 papal visit. His Vatican dispatch told readers how "the pope and Kroc made a colorful pair under the noonday sun. He was all in white. He even wore a little white skullcap. Kroc was wearing a mauve pink dress by Givenchy, with a matching straw hat." Kroc whispered to the pope that she is "praying for an end to the arms race," and later told Kaiser that the pontiff "has warm hands."-- THE INSIDE STORY: Paul Krueger, June 20, 1985

Fifteen Years Ago TV reviewing is different from print. We must get some story in, some mention of the performances in, and a general overview of the picture in, while making it interesting and informative. And we need to include a film clip, which uses more time, and we have to do that in about two minutes! Hell, I would love the luxury and option of writing about film angles and who is and isn't using deep focus and the historical aspects of a film.-- LETTERS: "ALL THAT IN TWO MINUTES," Laurence Gross, Film Critic, KNSD-TV/KPOP Radio, June 21, 1990

Ten Years Ago In the latest Paris Review, Czeslaw Milosz...said to his interviewer, "Writing religious poetry in the 20th Century is very difficult. We are in a largely postreligious world. I had a conversation with the present pope, who commented upon some of my work, in particular my 'Six Lectures in Verse.' 'Well,' he said, 'you make one step forward, one step back.' I answered, 'Holy Father, how in the 20th Century can one write religious poetry differently?'"

"And how did the pope respond?" Milosz's interviewer asked. "He smiled," said Milosz. -- READING: "CZESLAW MILOSZ," Judith Moore, June 15, 1995

Five Years Ago Another different thing about my father (how many of his other differences could it account for?) was that he came from Scotland -- came from it when he was five years old, so he didn't sound like my grandfather, though he could do the accent on request. Hence the names of his children, Jamie Donald, Duncan Scott, Laurie Ann. Hence "porridge" and "mealie Jimmy" as synonyms for oatmeal. Hence the two rows of framed portraits of pipers on the den wall. Hence the actual set of strictly decorative bagpipes. Hence the mandatory attendance at any touring performance of the Black Watch, the Gordon Highlanders, the Coldstream Guards. He was intensely proud of his heritage, and a snotty child in suburban Minneapolis could be sure to "get his goat" (another of his pet phrases), if not get him to "pop his cork" or "blow his stack" (two more), by suggesting that in reality he came not from Aberdeen, Scotland, but nearby Aberdeen, South Dakota. -- "A SIX-GUN AND BOX OF BLANKS," Duncan Shepherd, June 15, 2000