Domingo Germán, seen here in 2019, pitched a perfect game for the New York Yankees on June 28. Photograph by Keith Allison.
The Supreme Court made what critics would describe as some imperfect decisions in the week that New York Yankees pitcher Domingo Germán pitched a perfect game. While the two would seem unrelated, they both tell us a great deal about the unfairness and seeming randomness of life.
Read MoreA Department of Justice image of files found at Mar-a-Lago.
On the eve of his 77th birthday, former President Donald J. Trump was arraigned in a Miami courthouse on 37 felony counts of holding and withholding government documents, charges that range from obstruction of justice to espionage.
Reporters, legal scholars and political commentators have already weighed in on the activities of the day and the merits of the case far better than I could. Instead, as a cultural writer, I’d like to focus on the thing I find most striking — indeed it has haunted me from day one — and that is the placement of the documents at Mar-a-Lago.
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Read MoreJohn Hassall’s 1899 lithograph of John Martin-Harvey as Sydney Carton in “A Tale of Two Cities. Courtesy the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon.
Last summer on a very bad day, I attended the funeral of an affable, older relative whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. Distracted by problems at work, I made a wrong turn and arrived just as the priest was finishing the Gospel that is usually read at funeral Masses. In it, Jesus says, “I am the Resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me. though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whoever so lives and believes in me shall never die” — complementary, mirror-image phrases, like so many throughout the New Testament, that Charles Dickens uses to brilliant effect in the denouement of his French Revolutionary novel of dissipation and redemption, “A Tale of Two Cities.”
Read MoreThis head of Cleopatra — called the Berlin Cleopatra for its placement in Germany’s Altes Museum — depicts the last of the Ptolemaic rulers as a traditional Macedonian matron with Hellenistic features, a Macedonian diadem and her hair in a chignon. It was made in Rome about the time of her visits there in 46 to 44 B.C.
The latest tizzy in the culture wars pits Egypt against the Netflix series “Queen Cleopatra,” which bowed Wednesday, May 10, starring a Black actress, Adele James, in the title role. Many Egyptians and some historians have taken exception with this, pointing out that Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt and as such was of Greco-Macedonian descent. But I think with a little imagination and a lot of understanding we can have a Black Cleopatra and an historically accurate one as well.
Read MoreThe newly crowned King Charles III and his wife, Queen Camilla, wave from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. Courtesy the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, government of the United Kingdom.
After all the buildup, the scandals and the controversies – How stripped down would the affair be? Would Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, attend? Would people take the oath of allegiance? – the coronation of King Charles III Saturday, May 6, at Westminster Abbey in London emphasized the profoundly religious aspect of the ceremony. Like a baptism or confirmation – with its special rituals, symbols, clothing and music – the coronation underscored the covenant between an individual and God, which in this case must also be a covenant between a king and his people, who are going through a tough time.
Read MoreThe tombs of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette at the Basilica of St. Denis, the royal necropolis. Note her anachronistic Empire-style dress. Louis appears as he did on his coronation day, while his wife wears a dress in the style of 1815, the year Louis XVIII, Lous XVI’s brother, had the late couple’s remains reburied in St. Denis. Photograph by Calvin Kramer.
We’ve got our teacup all set for the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on Saturday, May 6, but what we’ve really been obsessing about is a distant relative of the king’s by way of another Charles — Charles I of England.
He was a direct ancestor of Louis XVI of France, whose marriage to a certain notorious Austrian archduchess is the subject of the revisionist, feminist “Marie Antoinette,” finishing its first season on PBS Sunday, May 7. Quite the royal weekend.
Read MoreWith 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.
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.
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