Catherine Ellsberg is a culture writer and English teacher based in Paris.
Most people know Daniel Ellsberg as the whistleblower who came to fame after releasing the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret study of the Vietnam War, to the New York Times, The Post and a dozen other newspapers. Or they knew him as the advocate who dedicated a lifetime to the pursuit of peace and justice, a fervent anti-nuclear activist and defender of the press.
But me? I knew him as my grandfather, the movie fanatic.
Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, dies at 92
Growing up, I always considered myself somewhat plain — my mind too dull, too unvarnished next to the sparkling intellect of my grandfather. There were so many ways I couldn’t keep up. I didn’t know how to talk about the crisis in Ukraine. I didn’t have photographic recall (the number of casualties in Vietnam, the names of all of history’s infamous quislings or spineless presidents). Nor could I stomach some of my grandfather’s pessimism, his belief that we were all capable, as human beings, of great evil and cruelty.
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But we did connect in two ways.
One was through piano playing. Granddad had grown up in the shadow of his stern mother, by all accounts an imposing woman who had great (if inflexible) plans for her son. He was to become a concert pianist — the next Rubinstein. He practiced for hours a day, often leaving school early to fulfill his filial duty. This all came to a violent end at...
The Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB) has issued a formal apology to Professor Wazi Apoh, Dean of the School of Arts and Professor of Archaeology at the University of Ghana, following the c...