Cuban Missile Crisis

On the store shelves there's a brand-new version of Trivial Pursuit: The 1980s Edition. The manufacturers of the game are asking us to remember the '80s before they are over. I am not surprised by this. The entire decade has been spent in a state of nostalgia. We looked back to the '50s, then to the '60s and '70s. The '80s were bound to be next. Indeed, we now have a message from Washington that Americans are supposed to be equally nostalgic, even sentimental, and reluctant to say goodbye to another pair of instant antiques: the Cold War and the Iron Curtain.

HARRIS Wofford and John Baer's comparison of Obama and JFK has me confused. For our journey backward, let's do something radical and grab a history book. Ask what would Obama do differently? The events that actually occurred during the Kennedy administration: Large tax cuts to stimulate and revive the economy. The FBI wiretapping of MLK's phone. JFK approved the CIA-planned invasion of Cuba. Offensive missiles placed on the Soviet border (Turkey), which led to the Cuban missile crisis.

A Mass of Christian Burial for David A. Cartier, 45, a Willingboro School District maintenance worker from Edgewater Park who was killed Monday in a demolition accident in Willingboro, will be held at 11 a.m. today at St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church, Warren Street, Beverly. Cartier and five other men were working to tear down the vacant Alternative School building on Salem Road when the roof of the single-story, wooden structure collapsed. The other crew members were hospitalized with injuries from the collapse.

It's interesting, in the wake of last year's Oscar-contending Before Night Falls - Julian Schnabel's biopic of exiled Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas - to revisit Cuba, and Cuban cinema. "Cuba, S?!", the free (yes, free!) mini-festival of Cuban movies under way at International House, offers just such an opportunity. Tonight, Tomas Gutierrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment (1968), the first post-revolution film to be released in the United States, screens. This influential pic, adapted from Edmundo Desnoes' novel Inconsolable Memories, is set in the early 1960s and follows a bourgeois intellectual (Sergio Corrieri)

College students have a different perspective on the lifestyle and achievements of President John F. Kennedy (article by Marisol Bello, Nov. 12). If you ask a 19-year-old young adult, like me, and a 45-year-old parent what they think about John F. Kennedy, you will get two different answers. The first thing that comes to my mind, besides his assassination, would be his alleged affair with Marilyn Monroe, and second, how he averted World War III, especially in the Cuban missile crisis.

They were gone for a mere nine days, but for their mothers, it seemed as though an entire generation had passed by. And in a way, it did. Last night, the 112 boys and young men of the Philadelphia Boys Choir and the Men's Chorale returned home after a nine-day concert tour of Cuba to the hugs and kisses of their mothers - women who themselves were children during an era of fear and suspicion of communism. Clutching red, white and blue balloons and toting "welcome home" signs, about 150 cheering people greeted the red-jacketed singers at Philadelphia International Airport last night.

Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, a leading defender of America's involvement in Vietnam under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, died Tuesday night at his home. He was 85. Rusk died of congestive heart failure, according to a spokesman for the University of Georgia, where he was a professor emeritus. Rusk's family was by his side. As secretary of state from 1961 to 1969, Rusk became a lightning rod for anti-war activists in his staunch defense of America's role in the Vietnam War. "I remember him as the most selfless and dedicated servant of our nation," former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said yesterday.

The three March 30 Letters to the Editor deploring our show of strength in the Gulf of Sidra contain eloquence and reason, but they do not mention the context in which this has taken place. This makes a world of difference. We are facing today an unprecedented condition in which those who support terrorists have the weaponry, the determination and also the economic clout to inject a significant element of fear into the thinking of the civilized world. There are sovereign nations that dare not offend Libya, nations that would find it imprudent to express support for what America has done even if they are heartened by it. What can the United States do?

For all of my working life, I've been spending money on bigger and better ways to kill Soviets. It was nothing personal. In fact, it was quite impersonal. The government took a piece of every paycheck and used it to develop and build super bombs, missiles, airplanes and other efficient killing devices. And to pay the many people who would do the actual killing. I'm not sure exactly how much I spent over all those years. If I had it all in five-year CDs, I'd probably be sipping a cool one on a cruise ship instead of pecking at a keyboard.

A Single Man is like a big coffee table book on grief, loneliness, and loss - and mid-20th-century home design. Set in 1962 Los Angeles and starring Colin Firth as an English literature professor (he's English and he teaches literature), this meticulously crafted film has been adapted from the Christopher Isherwood novel by fashion designer-turned-director Tom Ford. Ford gets a strong and melancholy performance out of Firth, who wears his charm like a burden, because everything in his character's life has become meaningless since the death of his lover, Jim (Matthew Goode, in flashback)

COMMON PLEAS Senior Judge Albert W. Sheppard Jr. loved being a judge. "If they didn't pay me, I'd pay them," he once said. "I couldn't afford to do that, but that's how much I like it. " He wasn't the only one who enjoyed his judgeship. "I never met a lawyer who didn't enjoy trying a case in front of him," said Common Pleas President Judge Pamela Dembe. "He was just very good at what he did. " Judge Sheppard, a man of many interests, from composing music to cheering on the Philly sports teams, collapsed and died Sunday while cutting the grass at his home in East Falls.

NEARLY everybody loved Adrian Lee, but you had to be sitting as far right politically as you could get to agree with him. Because that's where Adrian sat. He was a gentleman's gentleman and a conservative's conservative. On the occasion of his move from his job as a columnist for the Daily News to Washington, in 1988, to work for then-Attorney General Edwin Meese, an editorial writer for the paper commented that Adrian's conservatism, "sometimes of such strength to take the breath away from Genghis Khan, is pure and undiluted.

Fine Art High five. "5 Into 1," the annual student exhibition organized by Philadelphia Sculptors and hosted by Moore College of Art and Design, presents selected works by graduates of five area art and design schools. These pieces vary widely in personality, breadth of outlook, and special focus. Of special note are artists aiming to repurpose discarded objects, such as the University of the Arts' Tyler Held, who presents an imaginative retake on an outworn kitchen stove, and Moore's Laurel Patterson, who remade shiny twisted pipe forms into sculpture.

AS A REPUBLICAN, Thomas Baggio must have known he didn't have much of a chance for elective office in a Democratic city. But he went for it anyway. He ran on the Republican ticket for the state House in the 182nd Legislative District against Babette Josephs in 1996 and lost. "It was something he wanted to try," said his wife, the former Geraldine Evans. "He always wanted to see if he would be good at it. He worked at it, but afterward he decided politics was not for him. " Thomas C. Baggio Sr., a banker who started as a clerk and worked his way into an executive position, died Saturday of complications of heart failure.

VINCENT PAUL ZANE JR., who was on a Navy ship during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, died yesterday of complications of Parkinson's disease. He was 64 and lived in Prospect Park, but had lived most of his life in Southwest Philadelphia. Vincent was aboard the destroyer USS Basilone when it was assigned to participate in the quarantine of Cuba after the Soviets had placed nuclear missiles, capable of reaching most of the U.S., in the island nation.

Samuel A. Cummins, 84, formerly of Strafford, a retired mechanical engineer and Naval Reserve rear admiral, died of pulmonary fibrosis Tuesday, June 15, at Tidewell Hospice in Sarasota, Fla. Mr. Cummins grew up in Washington County, Pa. During World War II, he served in the Navy. As part of his officer's training, he attended Ursinus College, where he met his future wife, Elizabeth Hochbaum. After he earned his wings, he served in a fighter squadron aboard the aircraft carrier USS Midway.

Theodore Colangelo, 90, of Cinnaminson, a sailor during World War II who went on to be director of the Defense Mapping Agency distribution center in Philadelphia, died of prostate cancer and multiple system atrophy Monday, May 17, at the Masonic Home of New Jersey. When Mr. Colangelo was transferred from a Defense Mapping Agency office in New York state to the Philadelphia distribution center in 1959, he was a supply clerk. By the mid-1970s, he had risen to director, managing more than 120 employees, said former colleague Gerald Bonner of Cinnaminson.

A Single Man is like a big coffee table book on grief, loneliness, and loss - and mid-20th-century home design. Set in 1962 Los Angeles and starring Colin Firth as an English literature professor (he's English and he teaches literature), this meticulously crafted film has been adapted from the Christopher Isherwood novel by fashion designer-turned-director Tom Ford. Ford gets a strong and melancholy performance out of Firth, who wears his charm like a burden, because everything in his character's life has become meaningless since the death of his lover, Jim (Matthew Goode, in flashback)

HARRIS Wofford and John Baer's comparison of Obama and JFK has me confused. For our journey backward, let's do something radical and grab a history book. Ask what would Obama do differently? The events that actually occurred during the Kennedy administration: Large tax cuts to stimulate and revive the economy. The FBI wiretapping of MLK's phone. JFK approved the CIA-planned invasion of Cuba. Offensive missiles placed on the Soviet border (Turkey), which led to the Cuban missile crisis.

Mexican consulate in New York blasted by improvised grenades Two improvised explosives were thrown into the rear of the Mexican Consulate in New York early yesterday, causing small explosions that blew out some windows, authorities said. No injuries were reported. Police believe someone on a bicycle threw the devices - made from replica grenades packed with explosive powder, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. Putin: U.S. missile-defense plan compares to '62 Cuba crisis Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday evoked one of the most dangerous confrontations of the Cold War to highlight Russian opposition to a proposed U.S. missile-defense system in Europe, comparing it to the Cuban missile crisis of 45 years ago. The comments - made at the end of a summit between Russia and European Union that failed to resolve several festering disputes - were the latest in a series of belligerent statements from the assertive Putin.