Friendship

By Nicolaus Mills Like millions of college football fans, I will be watching this year's Army-Navy game on television when it's played in Philadelphia today. With both teams holding victories over the Air Force Academy, they will be competing for the Commander in Chief's Trophy, which has gone to the winner of the three-team service rivalry for 40 years. Army, which has absorbed 10 straight losses to Navy, will try to start a winning streak of its own in the series, which the Midshipmen lead, 56-49-7.

YANGON, Myanmar - Launching a landmark visit to long- shunned Myanmar, President Obama said Monday that he came to "extend the hand of friendship" to a nation moving from persecution to peace. But his praise and personal attention came with an admonition to those in charge: The work of ensuring and protecting freedoms has just begun. On an overcast and steamy day, Obama touched down Monday morning, becoming the first U.S. president to visit the Asian nation also known as Burma. Tens of thousands of people packed the streets to see his motorcade speed through the city.

DEAR ABBY: I am delighted that you still offer the booklet How to Write Letters for All Occasions . When I was in my early teens, it taught me not only how to write letters, but it also gave me confidence to write - letters and more. I have continued to write letters throughout my life. My skills, honed at such a young age, helped me in completing the often-required writing during college and in my working life. I am always complimented on my style and form, as well as the speed with which I am able to produce the needed documents.

Adapted from a recent online discussion. Question: I really hurt my friend of 20-plus years when I backed out of a group vacation at the last minute. I e-mailed what I thought was a truly apologetic explanation, offering to try to make it up. I should have called, but I feared a bad reaction on my friend's part, which is exactly what happened. She flipped out and became very emotional, quickly sending a very raw e-mail and voice mail that frightened me in their intensity. I've apologized again, asked to get together to talk about what happened, tried to have some light communication, but I'm being shut out. It's been six weeks.

Now that the election-year shouting is over and the star turn of Tom Smith's mother has passed, we're left with the same president and a Congress that is the most ideologically polarized in 130 years. Last year, according to Congressional Quarterly, Congress set a new "party unity" record, with the majorities of each party voting against the other nearly 80 percent of the time. It didn't used to be like this. When I was growing up, there were practical problem-solvers on both sides, like Democrat Henry "Scoop" Jackson in the Senate and - locally - Republican Larry Coughlin in the House.

DEAR ABBY : I have a close friend who is obsessed with selling "finds" on eBay. I often give her little items that she has mentioned she liked - or outright asked for. I always thought she wanted to keep them for herself. Recently I saw some of the things I gave her for sale under her eBay account. I am dismayed that she is taking advantage of my generosity to make a few bucks. No, she is not desperate. And no, I don't feel comfortable saying something unless it's clever and I won't appear to be jealous or petty.

Question: In college, I had a pretty major crush on a schoolmate. She briefly shared my feelings, but after graduating and moving to different towns, it became clear she did not feel "that way" anymore. I tried to have a "where do we stand" conversation. She got very angry that I still had feelings for her, and stopped speaking to me for three months. Then she resumed friendship mode, but we were not to discuss my feelings for her, or how she reacted to them. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I was so grateful that she still wanted to be friends, I agreed.

TORONTO - Colin Farrell and Martin McDonagh are like blood brothers, really. Irishmen of similar age (the actor is 36, the playwright and filmmaker, 42) and similar sensibilities (quick, jolly, sarcastic), they haven't sliced their thumbs open and let the blood pass between them, like fierce friends in an old movie. (At least, they're not telling anybody if they did.) But they have been responsible for gushing founts of fake blood in the two projects they've made together: 2008's inspired hit-men-in-hiding dark comedy, In Bruges, and Friday's Hollywood-underbelly screwball caper, Seven Psychopaths . Especially in Seven Psychopaths - in which Farrell stars as a screenwriter unwittingly caught up in a dog abduction scam that engenders the wrath of a shih tzu-loving local crime boss - the exploding heads, exploding limbs, and exploding Buicks are everywhere, achieving a kind of Peckinpah -esque crescendo of carnage.

DEAR ABBY: My husband had an affair with the woman next door. We were close friends. I found out three months ago. We spent a lot of time with her. He swears the affair is over and wants us to become a close threesome again. She's divorcing her husband, who knows nothing about the affair. The three of us have hung out again, just like old times. My husband is thrilled; I am miserable. I am not convinced the affair is over. He says I'm being unreasonable and keeping him on a "short leash.

By Seymour I. "Spence" Toll On Friday at the U.S. Courthouse at Sixth and Market there was a memorial service for U.S. District Judge Louis H. Pollak, who died in Philadelphia on May 8 at the age of 89. A 1978 judicial appointee of President Jimmy Carter, he became one of the nation's genuinely distinguished jurists. Like his judicial service, Judge Pollak's qualification for the judiciary was exceptional. After graduating at the top of his 1948 Yale Law School class, in 1948-49 he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Wiley B. Rutledge, then joined a major New York law firm.