Charles Wilson Peale’s “Col. George Washington” (1772), oil on canvas. It’s on loan to Mount Vernon from Washington and Lee University.

In George (Washington) we trust

December 26, 2018

Standing in George Washington’s study at Mount Vernon, his Virginia estate, I was unexpectedly overcome by emotion. It was there that he would dress at 4:30 in the morning so as not to disturb wife Martha upstairs, perhaps getting down to the business of running his farm at a small desk with its fan chair. (You pedaled it and a fan moved back and forth overhead, the technology of the day.) In the corner stood a handsome, polished secretary.

For one brief shining moment: President John F. and Jacqueline B. Kennedy admiring the White House Christmas tree on Dec. 12, 1962. Photograph by Robert Knudsen. Courtesy the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

A not so Merry Christmas?

December 24, 2018

’Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was happy, not even a mouse. Where to begin to recount all the reasons for the winter of our discontent. Start with the stock market collapse. As of 2:52 p.m. EST on Christmas Eve, the Dow was down 653.17, or almost 3 percent., for the worst Christmas Eve plunge in its history. But that may turn out merely to be the tip of the Titanic-slaying iceberg. I know, frightening, isn’t it?

A mural tribute to Dean Martin in his native Steubenville, Ohio. The crooner’s 1959 cover of the newly controversial “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is heating up the charts again.

Baby, it's cold outside for culture warriors

December 19, 2018

At the office holiday party the other night, the newly controversial song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” came up on the playlist. I explained to my publisher that the 1949 Oscar-winning song – which composer Frank Loesser had actually written five years earlier and performed with wife Lynn Garland as a kind of calling card at parties – has come under fresh scrutiny in the #MeToo era for its lyrics and the way they’re performed.

Saving face while losing themselves?

December 18, 2018

It was no minor metaphor when British Prime Minister Theresa May’s car door stuck as she strove to exit recently to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who waited with characteristic stoicism on the red carpet for yet another go-round in May’s futile attempt to negotiate a better Brexit deal. Brexit has been the ultimate stuck car door for May and the British people, a frustrating rigmarole with no satisfactory conclusion in sight.

“The Rainbow Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I” (1600-02), oil on canvas, Hatfield House.

Queen to pawn in a game of love and death

December 12, 2018

The new movie “Mary, Queen of Scots” — which I am reluctant to see for reasons that will become clear — belongs to what I like to call the Sylvia Plath school of storytelling. That is, if your telling the story of the suicidal poet, the husband will always be the villain. (That he had two wives who killed themselves in exactly the same way doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in him as a spouse. You know what they say. Once is a tragedy. Twice is an unsettling coincidence.)

The quiet man

December 5, 2018

The passing of President George H.W. Bush – whom the nation mourned officially Wednesday – was a reminder of all that we have lost and that still remains.

French President Emmanuel Macron and American President Donald J. Trump in happier times only months ago at the United Nations General Assembly. Pundits say the bromance is over, but what looked like a bromance was really just Macron taking one for … — French President Emmanuel Macron and American President Donald J. Trump in happier times only months ago at the United Nations General Assembly. Pundits say the bromance is over, but what looked like a bromance was really just Macron taking one for the Euro team. Photograph by Shealah Craighead for the White House.

Of time and Trump

November 13, 2018

In the movie “Cast Away,” a driven Fed Ex official survives a plane crash, isolation on an island and a daring open-sea voyage only to be rescued and discover that his fiancée has moved on – marrying and having a child – during his four-year absence.

“You were the great love of my life,” he observes in their farewell reunion, realizing that though he has lost her, she was there when he needed her most – on that island, in his mind, keeping hope alive during all those years of solitude.

Spoiler alert: At the end of the movie, he delivers the one unopened package from the crash and, though the last shot shows him standing at a crossroads, we’re lead to believe that he will form an attachment with the woman the package was intended for. Indeed, you could say that everything he went through was designed to lead him to that moment.

I was reminded of this listening to President Donald J. Trump’s continuing rants against the French and their president, Emmanuel Macron.