Dear Bay Weekly: I share Mr. Burton’s frustration, in your recent edition, that a windmill or groups of them on a distant hill should be considered unsightly by the governor [July 22 Letter from the Editor]. We have forgotten how the toy windmill can hold a child’s curiosity and how the wind through one’s hair in a car or on a boat can relate our senses so close to nature and its sublimity.

Wonders happen in water. Capture water in a pool, and creatures can’t resist it. We gather in the liquid, and make magic. Here’s what I mean. Consider that the narrator and title character in the novel Life of Pi, named Piscine for swimming pool in French, devotes pages to second-hand elegies to the early 20th century swimming pools of Paris — despite sanitation far beneath the standards of modern pools. Consider that the Druid Hill and Patterson Park swimming pools of Baltimore have inspired the Fluid Movement performance troupe to nine years of water ballet.

CIA agent Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie: Wanted) is just leaving her spy office for an anniversary dinner with hubby when a Russian defector appears out of nowhere and spoils her bliss. In the interrogation room, he claims she’s a Russian operative who intends to kill the Russian president during a state visit. Instantly suspect, she’s detained for a moment before she breaks loose and leads a dangerous chase — rushing to save her butt and find her husband.

The last seven words in Michael Herr’s bestseller Dispatches lament: “Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam, we’ve all been there.” Well, yes and no.