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Vice President,and Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris at a San Francisco Pride event in 2019. *Photograph by* *Quinn Dombrowski* .

The month that was -- from the Democrats' gambit to the Paris Games

July 30, 2024

It figures that my birthday break would bring big news: There’s just something about the second half of July.

On July 21, President Joe Biden went George Washington on everyone and announced that he would put patriotism and party before personhood and renounce the nomination for a second term, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.

Perhaps the most surprising thing in an announcement that was devoutly desired and yet still shocking was the way people rallied around Harris, who raised $200 million in her first week on the campaign trail.

Julius Kronberg’s “Hypatia” (1889), oil on canvas. The particularly brutal murder of this fifth-century Alexandrian philosopher and mathematician shocked even the Roman Empire. It’s recounted in Islam Issa’s new book “Alexandria: The City That Changed the World” (Pegasus Books, $35, 476 pages).

Humanity's continuing mean season

May 18, 2024

When I was thinking about what my next blog post should be, there was no lack of ideas. Should it be about the student protests, which, however sincere, lack historical perspective, or dog-, goat- and horse-shooting Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota or the Republicans’ “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” at former President Donald J. Trump’s trial in New York or the continuing wars in Ukraine and Gaza? Or how about Speaker-vacating Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene going after Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s eyelashes verbally, which led to Crockett’s sly rebuke “about somebody’s bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body”?

Then I had an unsettling personal experience that made me realize that what all these events and people have in common is further proof that despite the upward arc of civilization, we live in cruel world.

Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” is a lightning rod for climate activists. But why?

Environmental outrage -- whose art is it anyway?

February 6, 2024

On Jan. 28, activists from the environmental group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) tossed soup at Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” to protest the state of the French agricultural system.

The painting 1503-06, poplar on panel), which hangs behind bulletproof glass in the Musée du Louvre, was unharmed and guards soon restored order.

This isn’t the first time the painting has been attacked nor is it alone in its appeal to climate activists looking to make a statement. Their point seems to be we care more about art than the environment. But is that a valid point?

M. Elizabeth Magill resigned as president of the University of Pennsylvania Dec. 8 after a disastrous performance at a Congressional hearing in which she failed to denounce anti-Semitism and the genocide of Jews in relation to protests on her campus. As of Dec. 10, this photograph of Magill, who had only been in the post a year and a half, was still up on the university’s website.

Low tide for higher ed

December 10, 2023

My maternal grandmother had a phrase we could apply to Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth, the presidents of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) respectively, and M. Elizabeth Magill, the now-resigned president of the University of Pennsylvania — “book-smart and life-dumb.”

Andrey Rublev at the 2023 Monte Carlo Masters. After losing to Carlos Alcaraz at the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, Italy, recently, he reacted by hitting himself in the knee to the point of drawing blood. *Photograph by* ***si.robi***.

Tennis, Congress and anger (mis)management

November 19, 2023

From the courts of the Nitto ATP Finals in Turin, Italy, to the halls of the United States Congress, these have not been the best of times for men and anger management.

President Joe Biden, seen here at left with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Oct. 18, is pressing Netanyahu for a three-day pause to secure the release of hostages. *Courtesy the White House.*

Are Biden and Israel losing the war of words -- and images?

November 8, 2023

All life is narrative. Control the narrative, and you control public perception and opinion.

At the moment, Israel and President Joe Biden seem to be losing the narrative thread. I say “seem,” because I haven’t interviewed everyone in the world on this, of course. But based on what’s making news, former President Donald J. Trump and the Palestinians seem to be winning the battle for hearts and minds, in large part because the battle is being waged not primarily with words but with images.

Gordon Parks’ 1946 photograph “American Gothic: Portrait of Government Cleaning Woman Ella Watson” plays off of Grant Wood’s iconic painting of the same name, stating in no uncertain terms that Watson’s contribution to American society was no less important or dignified than Wood’s dour White farmer and his wife. *Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs.*

The paintbrush and the gun

October 28, 2023

Many years ago now, I interviewed Renaissance man Gordon Parks — photographer, composer, writer and film director (“Shaft”), a man whose photojournalism in the 1940s through ’70s captured both the civil rights movement and Hollywood.

Parks had grown up poor and Black in Kansas. I asked him what kept him from being embittered by poverty and racial prejudice. He said something that has stayed with me ever since and that I have thought about a lot in the past few weeks of war and other violence: “It’s easier to pick up a paintbrush than a gun.”

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