Kabul International Airport, technically Hamid Karzai International Airport, in the winter of 2011, with the Afghan Air Force’s Sukhoi Su-22M-4 on display. Photograph by Peretz Partensky.
Success, it is said, has many parents, whereas failure is always an orphan. But in the case of Afghanistan, failure has four fathers. (I use the word “fathers” specifically as men have traditionally held power and so can be held accountable for most of the world’s ills to date.)
Read MoreJohn Trumbull’s “Surrender of General Burgoyne” depicts the end of the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, the turning point of the American Revolution, in which New England and Hudson Valley militia, under the command of Gen. Horatio Gates, defeated the British, led by Gen. John Burgoyne. Saratoga paved the way for French assistance while demonstrating that you can’t win a war against a people you don’t understand. (The star of the day was brilliant field commander Benedict Arnold., who galvanized the Americans. Three years later, he would be America’s greatest traitor.)
The Americans have left Afghanistan and though President Joe Biden and the public are happy, many of us have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, at 20 years it was the United States’ longest war, and no one wants to fight a forever war. On the other hand, there is a sense of a mission unfulfilled, or perhaps one extended beyond its original purpose and thus unfulfilled.
Read MoreA portable typewriter that belonged to Ernest Hemingway. Unfortunately, much of what is “written” on the internet today is not Hemingway-caliber prose but rather what H.L. Mencken or Truman Capote once referred to as merely typing. Photograph by Jim Heaphy.
Lost in all the hoopla surrounding former President Donald J. Trump being banned from Facebook for two years is the news that his blog and website are kaput after 29 days. As a blogger myself, I was more than intrigued by this. Apparently, it was due to lack of interest on the part of the public. But could it also be that domain contracts, like prenups, have shelf lives? Maybe 30 days was the free trial.
Read MoreThe Ryanair Boeing 737 that was hijacked on May 23, seen in 2019 in Poland. Photograph by Andrzej Otrębski.
Though we should never court tragedy, we know our true selves really only in it. Catastrophe, adversity of any kind, reveals character. So what does the Belarusian hijacking of a Ryanair jet tell us about ourselves?
It tells us what we have known all along in our fractured age, what we have seen with the pandemic, which is that we can’t come together in a crisis, because we can’t think clearly about it.
Read MoreJustify streaks home with the Belmont Stakes win and the Triple Crown in 2018. The Bob Baffert-trained beauty would later face a drug-doping charge that was dropped. Photograph by Mike Lizzi.
It’s Triple Crown season, and once again controversy is afoot — or rather, a-hoof.
After the gallant win of little Medina Spirit in the Kentucky Derby, news broke that the horse had tested positive for Betamethasone, a steroid used to treat inflammation but banned on race day. throwing a cloud of suspicion on trainer Bob Baffert. The trainer of TC winners American Pharoah (2015) and Justify (2018) — who was also involved in a banned substance charge that was ultimately dismissed — Baffert has denied the allegations, claiming foul play, sour grapes and “cancel culture” were behind them. (More on “cancel culture” in a bit.) Turns out the anti-inflammatory was in an antifungal ointment that was being used to treat Medina Spirit’s dermatitis. But what Baffert knew and when he knew it remains subject to question.
Read MorePrince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (left), examines building models at the University of Salford in 1967. During a 70-year career as a working royal, he carried out more than 22,000 solo engagements in addition to being what Queen Elizabeth II called her “strength and stay.” Courtesy the University of Salford Press Office.
Among the photographs The New York Times used to commemorate Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh — who died on Friday, April 9, at Windsor Castle two months short of his 100th birthday and will be buried from there Saturday, April 17 — was a 2017 photo in which the natty duke faces the camera smiling amid a sea of red-garbed Canadian soldiers, who are virtually all facing right. It encapsulates Prince Philip, a part of and yet apart from the British monarchy, “the strength and stay” of Queen Elizabeth II (her words) through 73 years of marriage, the longest in British royal history, who served crown and country with a confounding mix of devotion, action, humility, crotchety humor and a patronizing snobbery that critics have called impolitic at best and prejudiced at worst.
Read MoreThe 2009 All-Star Game in St. Louis. This year’s game has been moved to Denver from Atlanta to protest Georgia’s new restrictive voting law. Photograph by Barbara Moore.
Major League Baseball recently decided to relocate the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver, because of Georgia’s new voting law. The Georgia Legislature would have you believe that the new regulations improve voting, and they do — for Republicans. Let’s face it, they lost the presidency and two U.S. Senate seats, because Black voters turned out for the Democrats. So to mix our sports metaphors, the Republicans decided to move the goal posts by changing provisions to make it even harder for poorer people of color to vote.
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