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Eugène Thirion’s “Joan of Arc Listening to the Voices” (1876, oil on canvas). Joan heeded the voices of St. Michael the Archangel, pictured with her here, St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Margaret to rally the French against the British during the Hundred Years’ War of the Late Middle Ages. Burned as a heretic in 1431, she was canonized in 1920 and is revered today by the French, the Roman Catholic Church and feminists alike as a woman who remained true to her beliefs.

Transcending in the new Trump era

November 10, 2024

I’ve been thinking a lot about transcendence in sports and politics — two fields in which the quantitative and the qualitative collide.

At the Democratic Convention Thursday, Aug. 22, Vice President Kamala Harris made her case for why she should be president. *Courtesy the White House.*

The Dems go all in

August 23, 2024

Well, the Democratic Convention has me feeling a lot better about the Democrats’ chances in the November election and Kamala Harris’ chances to be the first woman — and woman of color — to become president of the United States. To says she has surprised me with her sheer focused magnificence is the understatement of the year.

Did the first couple of nights run long? Sure, but then it’s always prime time somewhere in the world. Do some politicians love the sounds of their own voices? Always.

At the convention, though, we got not only joy — in short supply in the “American carnage” years — but the sorrow of officers assaulted in the Jan. 6 insurrection, parents waiting for the American hostages of Hamas to be released and women whose health was risked by abortions denied. And we got the sobriety of what we’re up against — the autocracy of the Republicans’ Project 2025 and the lunacy of former President Donald J. Trump’s tariffs. As former President Bill Clinton — still as shrewd a pol as they come — said, we underestimate the opposition at our own peril.

'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.

Nikki Haley, seen on the campaign trail in Iowa, has vowed to fight on for the Republican presidential nomination, even after losing the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary to former President Donald J. Trump. *Photograph by Gage Skidmore.*

The Republicans fail to move on

January 23, 2024

As I returned a purchase in a shopping center on a particularly cold Sunday, an extraordinary thing occurred: A flock of pigeons came running up to me in the parking lot as if it were 1964, I were the Beatles and they were a gaggle of teenage girls. One “fan” even aggressively perched on my car roof.

For a moment I was reminded of Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” but only for a moment. Extricating myself and securing the car, I returned the merchandise, wandering around the store a bit. Poor things, I thought of the birds. They were probably only looking for some crumbs. But with several eateries in the center, I was sure they wouldn’t go hungry.

When I returned to the parking lot, the birds were gathered around another car and driver, with a lot more of them perched on his roof. (Adulation is so fickle.) That’s when I realized in Sherlock Holmesian fashion that they were not looking just for food. They had figured out that each new car that arrived offered momentary warmth against a cold, mostly open space.

Nature is so smart. Human nature, not so much. Witness, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Exhibit A — the Republican caucuses and primaries.

The Taylor Swifting of the world

December 2, 2023

When Peggy Noonan, who was one of President Ronald Reagan’s speechwriters, writes in The Wall Street Journal, that Taylor Swift should be Time magazine’s Person of the Year, you know that Swift has captured the zeitgeist.

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.”