Polo legends: Nacho Figueras, East Coast Bronze Cup awards presenter and Ralph Lauren Polo spokesmodel, hugs Mariano Aguerre, a mainstay of the victorious White Birch team. Photograph by Robin Costello.

Father's Day at Greenwich Polo Club

June 24, 2021

White Birch, Greenwich Polo Club’s home team, came from behind to defeat Palm Beach Equine 11-8 for the East Coast Bronze Cup on a hot but picture-perfect Father’s Day that saw the start of summer. All afternoon, White Birch’s Pablo Llorente Jr. and Palm Beach Equine’s Gringo Colombres mixed it up in what was a seesaw match for most of the chukkers. But in the end White Birch pulled away, anchored by tournament MVP Chris Brant, son of club founder Peter Brant.

The uses of enchantment: A garden ornament at Caramoor. Photograph by Georgette Gouveia. — The uses of enchantment: A garden ornament at Caramoor. *Photograph by Georgette Gouveia.*

A memorable, magical, musical Marsalis Juneteenth

June 22, 2021

What is a holiday if not the meaning we ascribe to it beyond beaches and barbecues, retail and relaxation?

The Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah marked the first official Juneteenth — and the opening of its acclaimed international summer music festival — with a concert of works by a composer, Duke Ellington, who understood emotionally and musically that we are one race, the human one.

No love all in Osaka meeting the press

June 3, 2021

Every once and a while a story comes along that touches us neurotic journalists to our core. The latest chapter in the life of tennis star Naomi Osaka is such a story.

As you by now no doubt know, Osaka — the No. 2-ranked woman in tennis and the highest paid female athlete in the world, one who advocates for racial justice and expresses herself through fashion —was struggling through the clay court season when she hit a roadblock at the French Open in Paris. Osaka decided she would not attend the obligatory press conferences as questions about her poor clay court play were messing with her head. Being a 23-year-old, Osaka did what any 23-year-old would do: She made the announcement on social media. Tournament officials did what tournament officials do-do so well: They fined her.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) in 2016. Courtesy Office of Liz Cheney.

Liz Cheney -- martyr to our illogical times

May 23, 2021

You have to wonder what Nathaniel Hawthorne would’ve made of ousted House Republican Party Conference chair Liz Cheney. Would she have been standing on the scaffold with Hester Prynne and her out-of-wedlock baby, Pearl, wearing a big scarlet “O” for ousted or a scarlet “B” stabbed with an interlocking “L” for “Big lLie”?

Prince Philip -- the Queen's man

April 11, 2021

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.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, greeting well-wishers in Belfast in March 2018. It’s a striking photograph that shows the bridge that the duchess could’ve been within the royal family. Courtesy Northern Ireland Office. — Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, greeting well-wishers in Belfast in March 2018. It’s a striking photograph that shows the bridge that the duchess could’ve been within the royal family. **Courtesy** Northern Ireland Office.

Lost horizon: Harry, Meghan and the monarchy

March 5, 2021

It’s the interview many will be talking about whether you’re a royal watcher or not – Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s sit-down with Oprah Winfrey, which airs on CBS Sunday, March 7, from 8 to 10 p.m.

Already snippets of the interview have provoked a strong reaction, with monarchy loyalists decrying the Sussexes’ whining about being relieved of their royal duties and patronages and Sussex supporters lambasting the crown for shutting the pair out amid an atmosphere of stultifying tradition and corrosive racism. Not since the War of the Roses – or at the very least, the “War of the Waleses” between Prince Harry’s parents, Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales – has an English dynasty been so divided, you might say. But actually a better analogy is what one poster described as a Wimbledon final played not on grass but across the Atlantic.

Henry Fuseli’s “Odysseus In Front of Scylla and Charybdis” (1794-96) depicts the Homeric hero navigating between the proverbial rock and the hard place — kind of like the Republicans wanting to oppose former President Donald J. Trump yet retain popu… — Henry Fuseli’s “Odysseus In Front of Scylla and Charybdis” (1794-96) depicts the Homeric hero navigating between the proverbial rock and the hard place — kind of like the Republicans wanting to oppose former President Donald J. Trump yet retain popularity with Republican voters, who still support the former president.

Between a rock and a hard place: From Mitch (McConnell) to Meghan

February 19, 2021

We’ve moved on from the trial of the century — involving former President Donald J. Trump’s second impeachment— but the fallout continues. The “magnificent seven” Republican senators who voted with the 50 Democratic senators to convict have faced blowback at home. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois Republican who voted to impeach Trump and is crusading for a Republican Party devoid of him, has been shunned by family members, one of whom, a literal Karen, sent his father a $7 certified letter in which she stated that Kinzinger was “a disappointment to God.” (Does she have him on speed dial?)

Perhaps most interesting is the clash of those Homeric heroes (not), Trump and Mitch McConnell, a face-off four years in the making that began when the Senate Minority Leader, like Odysseus, tried to navigate between the proverbial rock and a hard place, voting not to convict to try to appease the Republican base but then offering a blistering rebuke of Trump’s behavior before, during and after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol to try to woo back skittish Republican donors.