Note the date; it is significant. I wrote this for presentation to a literary club that I belonged to at that time. It was mostly older men, mostly Jewish, mostly professional, liberal, smart, assimilated.

I was originally scheduled to give the talk at the October meeting, but our baseball team made it to the playoffs, and the Board cancelled a meeting for the first time since World War II.

In the weeks before the reschedule date, in January, the country had been stumbling toward war in the Persian Gulf (as it is again now, even as I write this!). When I arrived at the country club where the Board held its dinner meetings, everyone was clustered around a couple of TV sets, which were showing anti-aircraft fire and missile explosions, live from Baghdad. I offered to postpone the talk again, but the Board members very graciously urged me to deliver it that evening, which I did, and I must say that I was grateful for the attention that I received, despite the very distracting action on that other front.

Again, the story of the Mahabharata has resonance...