Goodbye to all that

I am folding up my tent early this year and moving to a newneighborhood, the Living/Arts section. In the past three years, I'vewritten columns for the Business, Metro and Op-Ed sections. TheReal Estate, Food and Calendar departments still beckon.

In the year's final column, I like to mention the various columnsI didn't write, so readers can count their blessings. I never didget around to eulogizing Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, the British airmarshal who devised the Allies' carpet-bombing strategy during WorldWar II. Right-thinking pundits everywhere condemned Queen Elizabethfor erecting a statue in his memory; I wanted to defend him. Whenyou see "Schindler's List," you'll understand why.

I never wrote about the Internet (thank heavens!), and I never gotaround to publicizing the World Fax Society, because founder IraWexler said I was the only person who sent in the $5 membership fee.Nor did I compile my list of 1993's Ten Worst Op-Ed columns, mainlybecause Mikhail Gorbachev abandoned the profession after just a fewweeks. Yes, I did clip some of Irving Kristol's screeds from TheWall Street Journal, but rereading them is sheer pain.

In my new job I won't be able to flay the airheaded levelers whoare waging war on school "tracking" programs across the country. Onthe other hand, I can finally give the annual Sacco-Vanzetti RoadRace the coverage it deserves. Life is a tradeoff, I guess.

Now to the mail bag. Here's one of my favorite comments,delivered to the Globe's ombudsman by a Cambridge reader: "What'sthis about the ultraliberal Globe? All I can find on the op-ed pageis conservative junk: Tony Snow, Mona Charen, Alex Beam. Iespecially winced at the garbage about Thomas Jefferson."

Ah, yes, Tiresome Tom, whom I hailed as a dipsomaniac, pedant andfop on his 250th birthday, the same day that washed-up columnistGorbachev orated on liberty at TJ's birthplace. Writing on April 22-- birthday of another defrocked son of liberty, V.I. Lenin -- areader in Buffalo suggested that I consult Reader's Digest to learnthe truth about Jefferson. From Portsmouth, N.H., E. G. Foster toldme that "Thomas Jefferson was a great man who did wonderful thingsfor this country. You're jealous!"

Well, at least someone got the joke. Daniel Jordan, the executivedirector of Monticello, offered me the "Benedict Arnold-DavidLetterman-Star Trek award for the most extraordinary combination oftreasonous, humorous and fanciful ideas about Thomas Jefferson."Rick Theis of the Sonoma County Grape Growers Association spotted mytongue in cheek and offered me a tour of the Jefferson winery. I(hic) plan to accept.

I have a letter from an MIT professor who complained that hecouldn't find the classic Menckenism "to bloviate" in his dictionary.Politely, I replied: Hey, babe, get a bigger dictionary.

Ah, the professorate. One of my favorite correspondents, acontentious professor emeritus at the World's Greatest University(and the real-life model for Professor Woollyhead, who occasionallygraced this space) said I erred in calling The New Republic magazine"intellectually audacious." TNR, Woollyhead writes, is "a propagandahouse organ for the interests of Israel as seen by (owner) MartyPeretz. By very definition a propaganda organ is intellectuallytimid, not audacious."

I mentioned The New Republic in a column about "the BostonDisease," a heavy-handed knock on the Athens of America. Gov. Weldalluded to the column in a speech plumping for the megaplex, aRepublican workfare scheme for his downtown lawyer pals.

And several readers wondered if I had read Elizabeth Hardwick'sdevastating critique of Boston ("With Boston and its mysteriouslyenduring reputation, `the reverberation is longer than thethunderclap,' as Emerson observed about the tenacious fame ofcertain artists"), which can be found in a collection called"Locations." Yes, I had. First published in 1959, it is still oneheck of a read.