The last week has brought a succession of warm days to Philadelphia and I took advantage of the bright sunshine and warmth of Monday to travel by train the sixty miles to Atlantic City. The train clings to the side of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge hundreds of feet above the Delaware River as the trip starts and it makes good time passing through historic towns like Camden and Haddonfield and moving at speed across the level fields of New Jersey, through acres of scrub pine in soil getting sandier by the mile. The day was so warm that it was a surprise at last to see the marsh grasses still in winter browns and greys.

There was a chill in the sea air despite the sun, but walking on the shore was a treat, picking up pebbles and watching the swells and breakers. There's been a lot of beach restoration over the winter and protective dune-building on such a scale that the ocean isn't visible from some sections of the boardwalk that runs the length of the city. Well-designed boardwalks are good and easy underfoot, and the boardwalk in Atlantic City is certainly that. But it's best to look only eastward, sandward, oceanward. On the other hand is the culture of the casinos, and the trinket shops and palm readers that cluster near them. Donald Trump's name is on three of the casinos, including Trump Taj Mahal, an almost inconceivably vulgar building, at the same time garish and tawdry.

I don't know whether gambling on chance is intrinsically vicious or can be pursued without guilt, but it's certainly true that the Enemy has throughout history made destructive use of the activity and its environment. It's not one of my particular temptations, so it's best that I avoid any inclination to see it as especially blameworthy. And on aesthetic grounds alone it's objectionable. I walked through another of the Trump buildings, seeing the dazed and almost slack-jawed heavily represented among those sitting round-shouldered before their slot machines. The machines are of many different kinds, recalling Dryden's line about all the sad variety of hell.

Returning to fresh air came as a relief, and I spent a few minutes in the stone colonnade of the memorial to John F. Kennedy, dedicated forty years ago when the Democratic Party held its convention in the city the summer after the assassination of the president. Ask not what your country can do for you ... is there, with a bronze head and shoulders in relief. EvAngelos Frudakis hadn't yet reached his full powers as a sculptor, but there's something here that hints of the nobility and power of his later work, The Minuteman in Arlington, e.g., symbol of the National Guard, and The Signer at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

A good and fruitful afternoon, warm and pleasant, worth the trip. And, after more walking and ocean-gazing, a highlight. I'd never seen New Jersey's Korean War Memorial and I came upon it almost without warning, a few steps down from the boardwalk at Park Place. The memorial is oriented away from the boardwalk and toward Brighton Park, a wise decision on siting, giving a sense of quiet and repose, an opportunity for thought and gratitude. There are panels dedicated to each of New Jersey's four Medal of Honor recipients from that war and there are sculptures of soldiers with the signature of pain and loss, of duty and weariness, on their faces. The sculptures of Thomas Jay Warren are bronze, traditional, heroic, moving. The epigraph is from Robert Pinsky:

less eager than willing, more dutiful than brave,
brave when required, Democracy's children, they gave
their service far from home, and saw they came
as victors, not conquerors, in freedom's name.