I want — we’d like — respite from the loopy. The extraordinary, ubiquitous loopy that has turn out to be the stuff information reporting is made from. I wish to learn. I wish to know what’s going on on this planet. And I want to concentrate on the loopy. However, for the love of God, don’t take away my little holidays from all of it.

Fairly please, preserve Date Lab.

Tara C. Woods, Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

I’ve had it with Evan Birnholz’s crossword puzzles. His metapuzzles have been cute at first, however he has slowly perverted his puzzles into trivia contests. The Dec. 4 puzzle included 23 clues asking for the primary and/or final identify of an obliquely recognized particular person. I’m fairly nicely educated, however I had heard of solely three of the 23. That’s not what a crossword puzzle needs to be.

Both Birnholz ought to return to actual crosswords or The Submit ought to get a brand new crossword editor.

I used to be struck by the odd caption accompanying the stunning {photograph} of the Kennedy Heart honorees applauding the arrival of President Biden and first girl Jill Biden on the Dec. 4 award ceremony [“All the right notes.” Style, Dec. 5].

The caption did not determine award honoree George Clooney clearly standing within the left aspect of the image, however as a substitute selected to determine the husband of Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Paul Pelosi, who is generally obscured on the picture’s proper aspect. And, in fact, in step with The Submit’s editorial coverage, there’s no point out of Hunter Biden, who’s applauding within the very heart of the {photograph}. With Hunter Biden, there’s at all times nothing to see there.

J. Patrick Boyle, Arlington

She left the world a greater place

“Oscar-winning filmmaker centered on Rust Belt life, labor,” the detailed Dec. 6 obituary for Julia Reichert, a filmmaker and activist, omitted that “A Lion within the Home,” a documentary on 5 households who had kids with most cancers, received an Emmy Award. I had the privilege of working together with her and her superb crew on this documentary. Reichert was an unassuming and humble human being who sought the proverbial tikkun olam (Hebrew), making the world a greater place.

Larrie Greenberg, Potomac

This ‘supporter’ deserved higher

The Submit ought to have recognized the supporter of same-sex marriage in {a photograph} that accompanied Jonathan Capehart’s Dec. 1 Thursday Opinion column, “Gee, thanks for this tiny step to guard my marriage.”

The person recognized as “a supporter” is Vin Testa, who was then the president of Dignity/Washington, a outstanding LGBT Catholic group. He’s nonetheless a member and lives and works in D.C.; in truth, he was the topic of the (sadly soon-to-be-canceled) Washington Submit Journal’s Oct. 31, 2021, Date Lab, “Issues received hazy by the tip of the evening.”

This isn’t the Fifties. This picture has been floated world wide for years and needs to be appropriately described.

As a father who misplaced his son to suicide, I applaud The Submit’s continued protection of this tough matter [“Mental health issues swamp schools,” front page, Dec. 6]. Understanding the scourge of suicide is difficult by the various doable causes, from bodily to psychological, and, as we now know, pharmacological. However too typically in reporting on suicide, together with two latest articles in The Submit [“After 2-year decline, U.S. suicide rates increased in 2021,” news, Oct. 2, and “Veterans’ suicides ‘unacceptable’ despite decline,” Federal Insider, Oct. 8], when itemizing causes, there isn’t a point out of the pharmacological, or “medication-induced psychosis,” as a doable reason for suicide. Such an omission is itself unfathomable when it’s proper there within the Black Field warning on sure prescribed drugs — antidepressants specifically — that these medicines are identified to trigger “suicidal ideas and behaviors.”

A severe omission akin to this solely provides to the fog of confusion suicide. And it perpetuates the blame-the-victim angle widespread towards suicide, e.g., “Effectively, they have been depressed.” In actuality, already weak people are typically induced to take their lives by the very factor prescribed to assist them. And due to “intoxication anosognosia,” or the spellbinding impact of some medicines, they don’t even notice that these lethal ideas usually are not their very own.

Michael Okay. McLaughlin, Laurel

Instructing Black historical past is crucial

The Dec. 5 front-page article “Embracing an embattled topic” purported to explain and maybe clarify the dangers of educating Black historical past in our polarized political setting. Sadly, the article, whereas describing a category in Baltimore, did not discern the forest from the bushes, so to say.

The article offered some statistics purporting to point out how controversial it’s to show Black historical past in the USA right now. What the article failed to notice (aside from a short reference to a latest Florida anti-Black historical past regulation signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican) was that the motion to suppress and discredit the educating of Black historical past on this nation is predominantly, if not solely, the most recent effort by the Republican Get together to make use of race as a part of its ongoing cultural wars to divide People.

The present, widespread state-level Republican efforts to suppress and delegitimize the educating of Black historical past — usually mischaracterized as “vital race concept” — takes its inspiration from President Donald Trump’s 2020 government order proscribing variety coaching within the federal workforce. Since then, Republicans on the state degree and their right-wing allies have aggressively sought to enact such legal guidelines in states throughout the nation and have discovered success in a number of Republican-dominated states.

The intent of such legal guidelines, in fact, is to have a chilling impact on the educating of Black historical past. This subject is worthy of great and in-depth remedy, greater than was discovered on this article.

Edwin Stromberg, Takoma Park

No point out of that notorious day

The Dec. 7 subject of The Submit made no point out of the shock assault on Pearl Harbor that brought on greater than 2,400 deaths and the destruction of many naval vessels and airplanes. The occasion, which triggered the USA’ entry into World Warfare II, occurred 81 years in the past, and Dec. 7, 1941, is, within the phrases of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “a date which can reside in infamy.” Certainly The Submit might have stated one thing about it on Pearl Harbor Day.

George H. Spencer, McLean

I used to be stunned that the caption to the {photograph} of “the Holocaust Memorial” that illustrated the Dec. 3 letter “It by no means ends for survivors or their descendants” didn’t determine which Holocaust memorial was pictured.

There isn’t a “the” Holocaust Memorial. There are numerous world wide, along with the one in D.C.

Considerably, the picture confirmed the memorial in Berlin, the capital of the Third Reich, close to the buildings through which the regime’s leaders deliberate and orchestrated the decimation of European Jewry. Designed by American architect Peter Eisenman, it’s positioned solely a protracted Hail Mary cross from the positioning of the Führerbunker, the place Adolf Hitler spent his closing days.

Additionally considerably, its identify doesn’t use the phrase Holocaust, a time period whose which means isn’t essentially universally understood. Mincing no phrases, it’s known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

I had the event to go to the positioning this yr and was surprised by its energy to evoke the horror of what occurred beneath the Nazi regime. The concrete slabs don’t want phrases to convey the sense of an enormous subject of tombs representing the hundreds of thousands of Jews killed in the course of the Holocaust. The memorial isn’t out of public view inside a constructing however positioned on a busy avenue, a relentless reminder to the tens of 1000’s of Germans and others who stroll or drive by it every single day of the results of authoritarian rule by racists and antisemites — one thing all of us want to bear in mind right now, 77 years after the autumn of the Thousand-12 months Reich.

Xi in all probability hasn’t met the pinnacle penguin

The Dec. 5 information article “A extra pragmatic Xi goes on a appeal offensive for China” reported that Chinese language President Xi Jinping “has met formally with not less than 26 heads of state or authorities from each continent.” With whom from Antarctica, pray inform, did he meet?

Arthur F. Manfredi Jr., Rockville

The Dec. 7 Sports activities headline “A rout sans Ronaldo” apparently needed to say “A rout with out Ronaldo.” Cristiano Ronaldo performs for Portugal, and in Portugal the language is (duh) Portuguese, and the Portuguese phrase for “with out” is “sem.”

“Sans” is the French phrase for “with out,” and French is admittedly certainly one of 4 nationwide languages utilized in Switzerland, Portugal’s opponent. However certainly, if The Submit was attempting to point out off its language chops, a extra acceptable headline would have been “A rout sem Ronaldo.”

Fight sports activities want further scrutiny

The Dec. 6 Sports activities article about boxer Gervonta Davis, “Davis returns to the nation’s capital for a light-weight title bout with H. Garcia,” was informative and well-written but additionally troubling, for a number of causes.

First, although point out was made from Davis’s authorized issues (“He’s dealing with 14 costs stemming from an alleged hit-and-run in Baltimore in 2020”), there’s extra to the case than only a “hit-and-run.” Actually, he’s dealing with the potential of severe jail time. As well as, Davis has had different scrapes with the regulation (together with allegedly assaulting his former girlfriend in public), making clear that he’s one thing lower than a mannequin citizen and hardly worthy of being glorified as certainly one of “boxing’s all-time luminaries.”

Additional, it’s questionable whether or not The Submit ought to even be protecting boxing in its Sports activities pages. Although I’m reluctant to confess that I’ve lengthy been a fervent fan of boxing, I’ve now, in the end, acknowledged that the long-term results of being punched within the head repeatedly are even worse than these seen in soccer. Consequently, I’ve given up on boxing and have even begun to (reluctantly) draw away from soccer.

The rising reputation of “fight sports activities” is a tragic commentary on the extent of intelligence (and empathy) of the American sports-loving populace. The unhappy truth is that boxing, blended martial arts and supreme preventing championships usually are not sports activities, and their members shouldn’t be glorified within the sports activities pages. No competitors through which the first goal (and routine consequence) is to bodily harm or incapacitate your opponent needs to be categorized as a sport. A contest? After all. Are the opponents expert? Actually. However the competitors is a barbaric relic of the age of gladiators and shouldn’t be touted within the sports activities pages of any society that considers itself civilized. Actually, with the present and growing medical data of the dangerous results of blows to the pinnacle, these so-called sports activities ought to in all probability be banned.

King Charles III might be topped

I’m wanting ahead to the coronation of King Charles III and was to learn within the Dec. 7 information article “Coronation crown despatched to be resized” that the aim of the St. Edward’s Crown is to “coronate a British king or queen in Westminster Abbey.”

This error is turning into all too widespread. I’m not stunned to listen to it spoken with some regularity by tv information reporters, who’re considerably susceptible to errors, however I count on extra from The Submit, and seeing it within the paper was a shock. At a coronation ceremony, a king or queen is topped, not coronated. Apparently, a number of paragraphs later, the article talked about that “solely six monarchs have been topped with St. Edward’s Crown” since 1661. It was good to learn that these six weren’t coronated.

Simply to make it possible for I used to be not mistaken, I appeared up the phrase “coronate” within the dictionary. It was not there. I have to confess that I used Merriam-Webster, not the Oxford English Dictionary. Please don’t inform me that the latter dictionary has allowed this new phrase to enter its lexicon. I’ve had sufficient of a shock for someday.

Although the Dec. 7 article “Coronation crown despatched to be resized” famous the absence of diamonds in England’s St. Edward’s Crown, it omitted the weird and barely weird backstory of this re-created coronation crown.

After the destruction of the coronation regalia within the Commonwealth interval, the English Parliament commissioned two crowns in anticipation of the restoration of Charles II: St. Edward’s Crown and a separate state crown. English monarchs had lengthy been a fan of diamonds, however the one place these stones have been mined within the 1600s was India, and so they actually value a king’s ransom. In supplying the brand new crowns, Parliament offered for only one crown to be set with valuable stones: the state crown. Solely the bare gold framework of St. Edward’s Crown was bought. This financial system however, the value of the 11-piece full set of regalia, together with the crowns, scepters, gold orb and different equipment, was equal to the fee to assemble and equip three warships of that period.

The end result was that St. Edward’s Crown, getting used solely as soon as in every monarch’s reign on the coronation ceremony, was quickly set with diamonds and valuable stones rented from jewelers at a value of 4 p.c of their appraised worth. After the coronation, these employed stones have been unceremoniously faraway from the crown, returned to the jewelers and changed with glass or crystal imitations in order that it might be displayed with the opposite crown jewels on the Tower of London. In not less than two of the coronations the place St. Edward’s Crown was not used to crown the monarch, however merely positioned on the altar in the course of the ceremony, St. Edward’s Crown was carried into Westminster Abbey set with a budget imitation stones.

Extremely, this follow continued for greater than two centuries. Not till the coronation of George V in 1911 was the crown completely set with real valuable and semiprecious stones. Regardless of that the invention of diamonds in South Africa within the nineteenth century made diamonds considerably extra inexpensive, not one of the stones in St. Edward’s Crown right now are diamonds.

Thomas J. McIntyre, Arlington