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A plaster cast of Eduardo Barrón's "Nero and Seneca" (1904). Seneca, the Roman Stoic philosopher and historian who tutored and advised the emperor Nero, had a lot to say about leading a meaningful life. His ended when the narcissistic Nero forced him to commit suicide. *Courtesy Museo del Prado.*

High profile leave-takings ask -- when and how to go?

October 13, 2024

Recently, The Museum of Modern Art director Glenn D. Lowry, a man I interviewed several times in my career as a cultural writer, announced that he will step down from his post after 30 years in September of 2025.

As much as his counterpart Philippe de Montebello at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, who left that post in 2008 after more than 30 years as its longest-serving director, Lowry really shaped the New York City cultural scene at the twilight of the 20th century and the dawn of the 21st. He could’ve stayed on.

But he told The New York Times: “I didn’t want to be the person who stayed too long.”

In that, however, Lowry is a rare bird.

The pet-eating conspiracy theory -- the Salem Witch Trials of our time

September 18, 2024

Former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance blame the alleged second assassination attempt on Trump’s life on the Democrats “hateful” rhetoric. But the Democrats aren’t the ones who called Mexican immigrants “rapists,” instituted a Muslim travel ban, put babies on the border in cages, referred to women as “dogs,” “nasty” and “four out of 10” and disdained American P.O.W.s as “losers.”

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has said Trump possesses “the most hateful mind in presidential history.” This after Trump tweeted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,” all because she endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president after the debate in which Trump went on a tangent about pet-eating Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.

Thoughts on the US Open

September 9, 2024

The US Open began on a brilliant August day (the 26th) that hinted at autumn and ended on a brilliant September day (the 8th) that delivered it.

In between, there were upsets — women’s No. 1 Iga Swiatek, last year’s women’s winner Coco Gauff, last year’s men’s winner Novak Djokovic and the No. 3 Carlos Alcaraz — and some insightful tennis as Taylor Fritz and Francis Tiafoe squared off in a semifinal that gave hope to American fans of a possible U.S. champion.

But only false hope. I saw men’s No. 1 Jannik Sinner practice with Paris bronze medalist Lorenzo Musetti on Media Day — Friday, Aug. 25 — and thought Sinner would win the men’s final, which he did, beating Fritz in straight sets 6-3. 6-4. 7-5.

'The wings of the dove' -- Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, a reappraisal

June 6, 2024

May 19 marked the 30th death anniversary of Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis — editor, style icon and former first lady of the United States (1961-63). Those of us who cover and mark such figures and occasions have already noted that in two months, almost to the day, we will commemorate the 25th death anniversary of the son she loved so much and the daughter-in-law she never knew.

On July 16, 1999 — as the evening, the century and the millennium began to draw to a close — publisher John F. Kennedy Jr. lost control of the plane he was piloting, killing himself; his wife, former Calvin Klein company publicist Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy; and her sister, Morgan Stanley executive Lauren Bessette.

In the quarter-century since, there has been an almost radical reappraisal of Bessette-Kennedy — by a generation of influencers who’ve adapted her classic, minimalist, monochromatic aesthetic; and by authors sympathetic to a lovely, empathetic woman ensnared by the image she helped to create.

Mug shot from O.J. Simpson’s arrest for the murder of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Time magazine would be criticized for darkening the photograph when it ran on the cover, underscoring a trial that proved to be less about domestic violence and more about race in the United States.

O.J.Simpson's 'Appointment in Samarra'

April 11, 2024

When I think of O.J. Simpson, who died Wednesday, April 10 of prostate cancer at age 76 in Las Vegas, I think of the short story '“Appointment in Samarra,” often retold in novels. The protagonist encounters the figure of Death, and to elude the dreaded specter, runs off to Samarra, only to find Death waiting there at the place where they were destined to meet. You cannot escape fate — or the consequences of your actions, no matter what else you do in life. Such is the Hindu and Buddhist principle of karma.

Taylor Swift, seen here at “The Golden Globe Awards” last month, has become the subject of a conspiracy theory to get out the vote for President Joe Biden after boyfriend Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs win a rigged Super Bowl LVIII Feb. 11. *Photograph by* *iHeartRadioCA*.

The witch hunting of Taylor Swift, 'secret agent'

February 3, 2024

When my publisher asked me to write about what has made Taylor Swift a billionaire, I noted that she seemed, as a singer-songwriter who began her career in country and branched out to pop, to bridge the American cultural divide.

Silly me. I should’ve known that everything and everyone in this society at this time can be politicized and thus divisive.

First Lady Barbara Bush and Diana, Princess of Wales, have tea in the White House’s Yellow Oval Room in October 1990 as Mrs. Bush presents the princess with a copy of "Millie's Book as Dictated to Barbara Bush,” chronicling the adventures of the Bush family’s English Springer Spaniel. *Courtesy the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library & Museum.*

Tribalism -- 'The Crown,' Claudine Gay and 'The Age of Innocence'

January 7, 2024

In “The Age of Innocence,” novelist Edith Wharton’s 1920 Pulitzer Prize-winning “backward glance” at the Gilded Age New York of her childhood, lawyer Newland Archer is set to marry May Welland in a match of illustrious families. The couple’s prospective marital bliss is soon clouded, however, by the New York return of May’s cousin, the beautiful, independent-minded Countess Ellen Olenska, seeking to escape her unhappy union with a Polish count.

Newland is asked to dissuade Ellen from the scandal of divorce — in Martin Scorsese’s 1993 film adaptation, he’s asked to facilitate the divorce on her behalf — but instead falls in love with her and particularly her unconventionally view of society, both of which threaten its norms. What transpires are the efforts of everyone — the honorable Ellen; Mrs. Manson Mingott, the family’s redoutable matriarch; but especially May, who turns out to be less demure and more devious than expected — to ensure that Newland remains in the marriage’s, and society’s, folds.

I thought a lot about “The Age of Innocence” as I binge-watched the fifth season of “The Crown” — even as the sixth and final season concluded on Netflix — and read about the ouster of Claudine Gay as president of Harvard University after her disastrously naive performance before a Congressional committee on anti-Semitism on college campuses in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.