I have a small house, just my size. The problem is that what happens in one room echoes in the next. The television in the living room I hear in the library, even with the door closed. The radio in the kitchen speaks into the hallway and downstairs bedroom.  

All sounds waft to the loft upstairs: the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air.  

I heard such sound effects forty years ago. The sound of explosives, the bombast of speech. This morning's mail brought me back to that other place in the most thrilling and terrible time of my youth.  

I'm too old to be ducking the news. But the headlines continue to follow me.  


NOW, 2000+: The Mysterious Package  

The eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch envelope has been tossed negligently on the porch, where it freezes. It is a chilly day in early spring, March 10, whose date will echo in this history. When I pull the envelope loose from the icy cement I find that the contents have been pried from my own life.  

The face of the white envelope is gaudy with instructions: stickers in the green family, blue-green and forest green, and an imperious red sticker, all having to do with postal matters: completing the return address on the back, acknowledgment of certified mail, return receipt requested.  

I am free enough and old enough to choose when to encounter weather. On this unpleasant day I stay indoors. No bell is rung. No postal worker requests a signature or acknowledgment. I become agitated. It is an old reaction to unsolicited mail, whose contents can range from mildly intrusive to threatening.  

Studying the envelope, I note, among other data, that the cost of pos...