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Sandro Botticelli’s interpretation of the Nativity (1473-75, oil on canvas. Columbia Museum of Art.

The greatest story ever sold

December 25, 2023

Today — Monday, Dec. 25 — is, as virtually everyone knows, Christmas Day, an occasion that has not always been about “peace on earth, good will to men.” Perhaps it was always thus, but it has become particularly more so in our politically divisive times.

There are those who resent what they see as their holy day being coopted by the commercial holiday. And then there are those who don’t want secular culture subsumed by what is essentially a religious tradition. What both groups have in common is that they see Christmas as an either/or proposition. In reality, it has always been a mix of the sacred and profane, as it were.

Taylor Swift at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards. *Courtesy* *iHeartRadioCA*.

The Taylor Swifting of the world

December 2, 2023

When Peggy Noonan, who was one of President Ronald Reagan’s speechwriters, writes in The Wall Street Journal, that Taylor Swift should be Time magazine’s Person of the Year, you know that Swift has captured the zeitgeist.

With the President’s Award, presented to me by ArtsWestchester at the Brae Burn County Club in Purchase, New York, on Wednesday, April 19. *Photograph by Westfair Communications Inc.*

A day to celebrate the transcendent nature of the arts in Westchester

April 20, 2023

ArtsWestchester’s Arts Award Celebration – held Wednesday, April 19, at Brae Burn Country Club in Purchase, New York – was a moving affair and not just because I was lucky enough to be chosen for its President’s Award for my 43 years in covering the arts.

What made it moving was to see how the 10 honorees, some 300 attendees and nine vendors continue to find the arts a transformative experience in their lives and how the White Plains-based ArtsWestchester, perhaps the flagship arts council in New York state, continues to act locally but think globally.

Floral tributes to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who was laid to rest Saturday, April 17, at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, line Buckingham Palace in London.

A funeral fit for a prince

April 19, 2021

Having logged more than 22,000 solo engagements for the British monarchy, Prince Philip – who was laid to rest at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle Saturday, April 17 -- knew a thing or two about attending funerals. And so it’s no surprise that his own, which he planned himself, was lovely – simple, straightforward and moving as befitted a no-fuss naval man and our Covid times – with hymns, selections from the “Book of Common Prayer” and 30 masked, socially distanced mourners – led by his widow, Queen Elizabeth II – who could not help but shed the occasional tear.

Standing in for flag-waving attendees, flags unfurl on the National Mall before the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States. Photograph by Brian Soward/U.S. Border and Customs Protection.

Sunrise in America

January 22, 2021

Something dies, and something is born, and the sunset begets the sunrise.

What died in the last two weeks — hell, in the last four years — was the idea of the American empire as the Trump Administration’s “America First” policy, which was really the “Donald J. Trump First” policy, absented America from the world stage even as the president himself assumed imperialistic trappings of Caligula- and Nero-like proportions.

The Kentucky Derby, the Run for the Roses, still features Stephen Foster’s poignant “My Old Kentucky Home” albeit with some changes to the lyrics. Courtesy kentuckytourism.com.

Against political correctness (with a caveat)

April 27, 2019

My cousin-hosts served up an intense political discussion along with delicious herb-crusted lamb chops for Easter dinner. As with most American families, mine is made up of Democrats and Republicans, Trumpettes and never-Trumpers. Me, I’m a moderate-independent, although I caucus with the Dems, so to speak.

About the only thing we all agree on is that we’re lifelong Yankee fans. So what did I, they wondered, think of the New York Yankees banning Kate Smith’s rendition of “God Bless America” because she sang a song about “darkies” that Paul Robeson, the great African-American actor-singer, also sang?

A mural tribute to Dean Martin in his native Steubenville, Ohio. The crooner’s 1959 cover of the newly controversial “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is heating up the charts again.

Baby, it's cold outside for culture warriors

December 19, 2018

At the office holiday party the other night, the newly controversial song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” came up on the playlist. I explained to my publisher that the 1949 Oscar-winning song – which composer Frank Loesser had actually written five years earlier and performed with wife Lynn Garland as a kind of calling card at parties – has come under fresh scrutiny in the #MeToo era for its lyrics and the way they’re performed.