I’ll be reading from my new historical thriller (JMS Books) at Westfair Communications Inc.’s first literary luncheon, Feb. 23 in White Plains, New York, and March 25 at the Greenburgh Public Library in Greenburgh, New York.
I pause here from my usual ruminating — and venting — to mention several upcoming appearances involving my new historical thriller “Riddle Me This” (JMS Books), part of “The Games Men Play” series, as well as my day job.
Read MoreIn 1976, President Gerald R. Ford presented the Congressional Medal of Honor to Rear Admiral James B. Stockdale for his leadership as a prisoner during the Vietnam War. Stockdale, whom I interviewed when he was a vice presidential candidate on Ross Perot’s 1992 independent ticket, said that the writings of Epictetus helped him get through his ordeal. U.S. Navy photograph by Dave Wilson.
I no sooner arrived in Washington, D.C., for Christmas than the sister I was traveling with came down with Covid and the sister we were visiting developed a non-Covid virus. Other family members became sick as well. (Miracle of miracles, I never got Covid.) On my return, I had a sinus attack that has left me tired, which is why this New Year’s post is so tardy. Apologies, dear readers.
As I sat alone at breakfast in the hotel, shuttling between drop-offs for the Covid sister in the room next to mine and visits to the non-Covid sister, I had an opportunity to read a book that has had a profound effect on my life and that I believe can help you navigate the world as well.
Read MoreLady Susan Hussey, a godmother to Prince William and a lady in waiting to the late Queen Elizabeth II, found herself in the middle of a racial firestorm after she grilled Ngozi Fulani at a Buckingham Palace event to fight gender-based violence.
The Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are facing off with different awards in different East Coast cities featuring different members of the Kennedy clan…..In addition to dueling couples in rival cities with different branches of the Kennedy family, we get the contretemps over Lady Susan Hussey’s encounter with Ngozi Fulani at a Buckingham Palace event to fight against gender-based violence.
Read MoreEugène Delacroix’s “Medea About to Murder Her Children” (1862), oil painting. Musée du Louvre. The ancient Greek myth — the subject of Luigi Cherubini’s “Medea” at The Metropolitan Opera — has also been misinterpreted, most recently in Maureen Dowd’s column on Vladimir Putin.
In his perceptive eulogy for Queen Elizabeth II, Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, observed: “People of loving service are rare in any walk of life. Leaders of loving service are still rarer.”
Ain’t that the truth. At the risk of sounding like the hammer always in search of a nail, I must nonetheless note once again that we are in an increasing crisis of leadership, from Vladimir Putin’s bungling attempts to conquer Ukraine, which would be laughable if they weren’t so horrific and dangerous, to the ham-fisted handling of Miami Dolphins’ quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s concussion. (The doctor/consultant who cleared him to play was fired. Really? The team’s front office and ownership should all be fired.
What does it mean to be a leader? it means you are a steward of everything and everyone in your care, a servant of others. It means you take responsibility, even when you are not directly involved in the action. Say what you want about QEII, put she saw herself as a steward, one who remained on the job till her dying day.
For most, however, it’s me, me, me all the time, and it doesn’t help that people don’t really understand this, because they have a limited understanding of culture.
Read MoreWhen someone dies, every decade of his or her life become’s contemporary. Here the future Queen Elizabeth II in a 1933 portrait by Philip de Lázló.
One of the advantages of longevity is that you eventually outrun everything and everyone else – friends, family, critics, even history. And so it is with Queen Elizabeth II, who began her reign as a 25 year old in the blush of postwar promise and ended it as the world’s sovereign and matriarch with her passing Sept. 8 at Balmoral Castle in Scotland at age 96. The death of England’s longest reigning monarch (70 years) begins a period of mourning in Great Britain that will be crowned by her funeral, led by her eldest son and heir, now King Charles III.
Read MoreA macaque at Ngarai Sianok, Bukittinggi, West Sumatra. Monkeypox is so-named because it was first isolated in monkeys. However, it comes from Western and Central African rodents, not monkeys. Photograph by Sakurai Midori
I became a cultural writer in the age of AIDS,. And because my beat, the arts, intersected with the gay community, which was disproportionately affected by the disease in the United States, I was assigned by the newspaper I worked for then to help cover a subject few would touch with a 10-foot pole.
It’s hard to remember now more than 40 years ago as well as to overestimate the feeling of dread AIDS engendered. A wave of it came flooding back with Covid. And another wave of a different variety has come flooding back with monkeypox, wihich the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a global health emergency even as the Biden Administration weighs appointing a monkeypox coordinator.
Read MoreThe.Greek mythological figure Narcissus — seen here in a fresco in Pompei — gives his name to a quality and disorder that may be the defining attribute of the day. r
You know how people ask what your pronouns are nowadays, or include them in email signatures, as a result of nonbinary and trans people who identify as “they” even though it’s a plural? Well, we don’t have to ask many people in the news what they’re pronouns are. Let’s just assume they’re the unholy trinity of me, myself and I.
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