Weekend Edition Sunday

I recently looked through diaries that my father wrote as a young man in New York in the 1930s, trying to get his start in life during the Great Depression.

The man in the diaries is not the man I knew: a middle-aged father of four who commuted from the New Jersey suburbs to a job he detested in Manhattan. Instead, the 20-something Robert Fessler was eager, passionate, full of hope. He dreamed of traveling around the world, maybe getting a job as a reporter. Just out of high school, he was trying desperately to mold himself into an interesting adult.

For most of the world, Cary Grant was a Hollywood icon, but to Jennifer Grant he was simply Dad.

The screen legend retired from acting at 62 when his daughter was born in 1966. He went on to devote the last 20 years of his life to fatherhood, giving his daughter the kind of life only he could give with trips to Monaco and Christmas dinners with the Sinatras. But it was the quality of that life that left a mark.

Jennifer Grant chronicles her close relationship with her father in her new book, Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant.

On-Air Challenge: The four rarest letters in the alphabet are J, Q, X and Z. You are given a familiar word and must change one letter in it to a J, Q, X or Z to get another familiar word. For example, given the clue "enact," the answer would be "exact."

Many listeners remarked on guest host Jacki Lyden's commentary last week about author V.S. Naipaul's misogyny. Food commentator Bonny Wolf also offered a piece about how Sicily's history gives it a multicultural food tradition that is distinct from the rest of Italy. Host Jacki Lyden reads from listeners' letters.

President Obama's itinerary this week includes a trip to Puerto Rico on Tuesday, a significant event for Puerto Ricans both on the island and the mainland. The island is buzzing at the prospect of the first official presidential visit since John F. Kennedy went there in 1961. Guest host Jacki Lyden speaks to Puerto Rico's secretary of state, Kenneth McClintock, about the significance of the visit.