Where it all began: Novak Djokovic becomes the No. 1-ranked male tennis player in the world in 2011, defeating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the semifinals en route to the first of his seven Wimbledon titles. Photograph by Carine06.
I knew Novak Djokovic would win his seventh Wimbledon title. As a Djokovic fan, this one is all the sweeter given the strange, Nole year he’s having.
Read MoreCassidy Hutchinson testifying before the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attacks. Courtesy the committee.
I always knew former President Donald J. Trump would be done in by a woman, but I never imagined it would be this woman and in this way.
I always thought the Trumpian comeuppance would come at the skillful hands of the estimable Stormy Daniels or the equally estimable House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, skilled in a different way but with the same results.
But there she is. No, not Miss America but Ms. America, Cassidy Hutchinson — earnest, principled, detail-minded, determined and crisply attired in summer-ready black and white, looking for all the world like something out of a John Grisham movie. (Back in the day, she would’ve been played by Julia Roberts. Today, she’d probably be played by Dakota Johnson.)
Read MoreLucas Cranach the Elder’s “Lady Justice” (1537), oil on panel. Collection of Fridart Stichting, a foundation in Amsterdam.
It’s hard to know where to begin with the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade. The repercussions are that great.
For women who seek abortions, the 6-3 decision marks an eventual return to coat-hanger, knitting-needle days. If the pro-life crowd — which is generally pro-guns and pro-death penalty — thinks it has seen death, it’s hasn’t seen anything yet. Women have always sought abortions and will continue to do so, now less safely. But now death will come in other ways, too.
Read MoreThe official Congressional portrait of Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. As vice chair of the Select Committee of the January 6 Attacks, she has drawn praise for her matter-of-fact, methodical approach to dissecting the events of that horrific day. Courtesy U..S. House Office of Photography.
If you’re a reader of this blog, then you know that I have often said that two things will destroy our world — the failure of Alexandrian leadership (leadership from the front) and the lack of education, with the second creating the first.
We are living in a time when education has failed badly, when students and teachers have been straitjacketed by the far right and the far left so that many lack any real knowledge and concomitant respect for language, history and science. As a result, the public, or at least the minority that controls many elections in this country, has given power to those who do not best serve the people but those who best serve their baser instincts, who reflect their own narcissism.
This chicken has come home to roost once again in the Jan. 6 hearings into the insurrection at The Capitol that are now being televised, with coverage resuming 10 a.m. EDT Wednesday, June 15.
Read MoreQueen Elizabeth II greets employees on her walk from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center mission control to a reception in the center’s main auditorium in Greenbelt, Maryland, 2007. Photograph by Bill Ingalls/NASA.
I promised you a post about Queen Elizabeth II and seniors in the workplace, and I always try to keep my promises. So here it is and a much needed change of pace from the world’s ills it offers — but only to a certain extent.
The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee takes place June 2 through 5, celebrating her 70 years on the British throne. When she turned 21 in 1947, then Princess Elizabeth pledged her life, “whether it be long or short,” to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth Five years later, her beloved father, George VI, would be dead and she would be queen.
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Read MoreFirst responders on the scene of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Courtesy Voice of America.
If you’re a reader of this blog, then you know that I’ve developed a theory I call the “literature of rejection,” in which men both historical (John Wilkes Booth, Adolf Hitler, Lee Harvey Oswald, Timothy McVeigh, Osama bin Laden) and fictional (Achilles, Milton’s Lucifer, Heathcliff) display a disproportionate rage at rejection, an overbearing sense of entitlement and grievance.
To this we can now add — as if we didn’t know this before — the Uvalde shooter, whom I refuse to name, just as I will not name the Buffalo shooter. Part of the M.O. of these malignant, nihilistic narcissists is their “notice me” moments of manifestos and livestreaming. I’m not going to add to their 15 minutes of infamy.
Read MorePeter Paul Rubens’ “The Massacre of the Innocents” (1611 and 12), oil on oak panel. Art Gallery of Ontario.
I was going to write something about Queen Elizabeth II coming into her own in old age and seniors in the workplace — and I will do that in the next post — but once again I had to interrupt the pleasures of a quintessential spring night (a cup of herbal infusion, my writing, my warm but not-too-warm floral bedding) to weigh in on another mass shooting in the United States. This one — in Uvalde, Texas, a small, working-class city on the Mexican-American border — took the lives of 19 second through fourth graders at Robb Elementary School and a teacher. (The gunman was reportedly killed by police officers.)
Second through fourth graders: Let that sink in. “There are no right words,” the N.B.A. team the San Antonio Spurs said in a statement. No, there are no words at all. How could there be? And yet we are going to hear a lot of words in the coming days, the same words that will result in no action — “thoughts and prayers,” “our hearts are broken,” “Second Amendment rights,” “filibusters” and the famous “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”
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