When Princess Anne presented Daniel Craig with the Order of St. Michael and St. George — the same order his character, James Bond, is presented with — all I could think was that right now, we could use 007, Craig, the Princess Royal, St. Michael, St. George, Elizabeth I, Elizabeth II, Henry V and anyone else who can lend a hand to right the RMS Titanic that is otherwise known as the United Kingdom.
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Read MoreMy contractor and friend gave me a telling gift for Christmas – a Veronese bronze of the Greek Titan Atlas.
He brings a mature, Herculean masculinity to a collection that includes several younger Apollos, Davids and St. Michaels, along with, of course, many Alexanders. But beyond that Atlas’ burden is both illustrative of and instructive for our time.
After the Titans lost their battle with the Olympians, sky/chief god Zeus condemned Atlas to hold up the sky at the western edge of the Earth, so sky and Earth could not resume their amorous relationship. In ancient times, Atlas was depicted shouldering the celestial spheres, a tradition upheld in Lee Lawrie’s colossal bronze at Rockefeller Center. ...
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Read MoreThat sound you hear is the inevitable back-peddling that results when something blows up in a public figure’s face. In this case the figure is the ever-popular, nary-a-misstep Pope Francis, who, it turns out, met during his Washington D.C. visit with Kim Davis, the rogue Kentucky clerk who went to jail rather than issue gay marriage licenses.
It’s a measure of the esteem in which the pope is held that many have been falling over backward to make excuses for what has been viewed as a miscalculation. The Vatican had intimated it was no big deal. Davis’ lawyer, of course, countered, Oh, yes, it was. ...
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