To the Editor:
Re “I Know Why I Often Cry,” by Roger Rosenblatt (Opinion guest essay, July 6):
My thanks to Mr. Rosenblatt for explaining the reasons I’m crying so much lately, at both happy and sad memories as well as almost forgotten ones.
Pop used to sing the “Carousel” song “If I Loved You” to me as I fell asleep as a child. Seventy-six years later, I still remember all the lyrics.
Thanks for the return of this memory. And, yes, I’m crying but also happy that I remembered where my love of music began.
Jan Quinn
Rochester, N.Y.
To the Editor:
As Roger Rosenblatt mentioned in his beautiful essay, he is 85. I, too, am 85. The words in his article blurred through my tears.
He sang in the elegant New York Society Library. I hum in the grocery store and sing in the shower. I hum the dear old song that reminds me of a tall young college man taking my hand and leading me to the dance floor. And the old song that comforted me when he broke my heart. The love song that my darling husband crooned to me off key.
And I cry not only for songs. The tears come when I feel the humidity of a summer day and can still hear my children laughing and shouting as they run through the sprinkler in the backyard. Is there any more wonderful sound in the world than one’s children laughing?
Where, indeed, does the time go? At times, a long life can feel like an endurance test. But mostly, I am left weak with gratitude.
Marguerite Delacoma
Evanston, Ill.
To the Editor:
Roger Rosenblatt’s charming and sensitively evocative article caused my memory molecules to come alive, despite my being some two years older than his 85.
About 71 years ago at a summer camp’s counselor talent show, playing the harmonica in the key of C, I accompanied a beautiful fellow counselor who sang the extraordinary ballad “If I Loved You” from “Carousel.” The kids and my fellow counselors loved it.
Thank you, Roger, for enabling me to shed a tear in harmony while reading your article.
Allan Brooks
Danbury, Conn.
Abortion Prosecutions
To the Editor:
Re “Support Builds for Prosecuting Women Who Get Abortions” (news article, June 26):
The push to prosecute women for obtaining abortions is chilling. This isn’t just an attack on reproductive freedom — it is also an escalation of the continuing war against working-class Americans under the guise of moral values.
Wealthy women will never see the inside of a cell. They can travel to states where abortion is legally protected, and on the off chance they are arrested, they have the financial means to secure immediate release. These criminal penalties will overwhelmingly target and punish everyday people living paycheck to paycheck by trapping them in America’s dysfunctional cash bail system.
Cash bail turns financial insecurity into a crime. When a judge puts a price tag on freedom, those with money walk back through the front door.
For a woman without deep pockets, it means being locked in dangerous jail conditions for weeks or months — denied medical care, ripped from her family and stripped of her livelihood — while awaiting trial. Under that weight, innocent people routinely plead guilty simply because freedom can’t wait.
We cannot allow our broken justice system to be the new front line of the anti-choice movement.
Devin McMahon
Los Angeles
The writer is the manager of communications at the Bail Project.
Trump and Nixon
To the Editor:
I am 91 years old, and I served as a political appointee in the Nixon and Ford administrations. One of my more challenging assignments was serving as a member of the team defending Richard Nixon in the unsympathetic courtroom of Judge John Sirica. So I have been around a block or two, politically and legally.
But whatever one makes of any of Nixon’s alleged crimes and misdemeanors, they pale in comparison with the assault on democracy currently in progress under President Trump.
We are in uncharted waters, and we had better hope for a passage to safety before it is too late.
Douglas M. Parker
Ojai, Calif.
