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This stained-glass window in the chapel of the former Academy of Our Lady of Good Counsel complex in White Plains, N.Y., contains a portrait of foundress Mother Mary Veronica as St. Veronica, the woman who wiped Jesus’ face with her veil on his road to Calvary and received the imprint of that anguished face on the cloth in return. *Photograph by Georgette Gouveia.*

Reunion and remembrance: Good Counsel revisited

September 21, 2023

When Katharine Hepburn made her first and only appearance at the Academy Awards as a somewhat old lady on April 2, 1974, she said, “I’m the living proof that a person can wait 41 years to be unselfish.”

I, now also a somewhat old lady, beat the great Kate by nine years, waiting 50 to be unselfish enough to attend my high school reunion on the former grounds of the Academy of Our Lady of Good Counsel in White Plains, N.Y.. A former classmate and friend who was on the reunion committee told me she had made it her mission to get me there and, not wanting to disappoint, again, I hustled my considerable butt to meet her at the chapel for the Mass that would begin our journey into the past.

Moving forward: the endurance of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

July 12, 2023

What would Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis make of J. Randy Taraborrelli’s “Jackie: Public, Private, Secret” (St. Martin’s Press, $35, 439 pages) — out Tuesday, July 18, 10 days before what would’ve been her 94th birthday?

No bull: ‘Fearless Girl’s’ ancient Greek evocation

April 17, 2017

The controversy over the faceoff between “Fearless Girl” and “Charging Bull” on Wall Street has raised all sorts of psychosexual and political implications.

Some have seen the 4-foot-girl – hands on hips, chest puffed like a sail heading into the wind – as a symbol of feminist ideals. Apparently, that’s what sponsor State Street Global Advisors, which wants to encourage more women in the boardroom, had in mind. ...

Whither the female gaze in the Trump era?

January 15, 2017

Years ago, I had a dream job with Gannett Inc. as senior cultural writer. One of my beats was to cover the big arts stories of the day and so it was that I found myself on one occasion interviewing Richard Cragun the American-born star of the Stuttgart Ballet and one of the finest male dancers of the 20th century.

In those days, Gannett recycled our stories in its many publications, and my Cragun piece found its way into one of the tabloids overseen by a favorite editor who was fond of the Daily News and New York Post. It was with some sheepishness then that I handed the publicist a copy of the publication with the words “Ballet Hunk” in the headlines. I needn’t have worried. He was thrilled.

I covered most of the great “ballet hunks” of the 20th and early-21st centuries ...