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Robert Redford — the actor, Oscar-winning director, Sundance Institute and Festival founder, environmentalist and activist, who died Tuesday, Sept. 16, at 89 — has been mourned with many tributes, and rightly so.
He was a gifted movie star but more important, he was a gifted artist and humanitarian whose best films blended art, commerce and civics without being pretentious, crass or preachy.
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So Friday, Sept. 5, Novak Djokovic will play Carlos Alcaraz in the first semifinal of the US Open men’s singles championship — a match that virtually everyone sees as a fruitless quest to win his 25th Slam singles title and thus break the record he holds with Margaret Court.
Even if by some miracle Djokovic could beat the magnetic, mercurial Alcaraz, he undoubtedly would have to play the flawless, flawlessly robotic Jannik Sinner on Sunday, Sept. 7. It’s the kind of back-to-back challenge that Djokovic faced and met many times in the last decade. Now 38, however, it seems an unattainable double bill, even though this will be his fourth Slam semifinal appearance this year — a not-too-shabby achievement in a career of not-too-shabby achievements — one that has brought him full circle.
What is the statute of limitations on atrocity? When do the oppressed become the oppressors?
Before and during World War II, the world did nothing about the Holocaust, nothing. Never forget, people rallied when it was all over, never again.
But they did forget. And it has happened in varying degrees again and again and again.
Which brings us to the systemic, systematic starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza in a war that has seen passive-aggression at its most brutal play out in a zero-sum game whose end strategy now is the elimination of the Palestinians from Israel in one form or another.
Whenever there’s a civic holiday coming up, the recessional hymn at our church is always “America the Beautiful.” We in the choir usually sing all four verses, and we always get a round of applause at the end — for us, for the country, maybe both.
I’ve never liked the song. It’s no “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which I find far more melodic and moving. But lately my antipathy toward “America the Beautiful” has taken on deeper meaning.
