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John Hassall’s 1899 lithograph of John Martin-Harvey as Sydney Carton in “A Tale of Two Cities. *Courtesy the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon.*

The challenge in letting go

May 24, 2023

Last summer on a very bad day, I attended the funeral of an affable, older relative whom I hadn’t seen in a long time. Distracted by problems at work, I made a wrong turn and arrived just as the priest was finishing the Gospel that is usually read at funeral Masses. In it, Jesus says, “I am the Resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me. though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whoever so lives and believes in me shall never die” — complementary, mirror-image phrases, like so many throughout the New Testament, that Charles Dickens uses to brilliant effect in the denouement of his French Revolutionary novel of dissipation and redemption, “A Tale of Two Cities.”

The newly crowned King Charles III and his wife, Queen Camilla, wave from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. *Courtesy the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, government of the United Kingdom.*

Threading the needle – the coronation of King Charles III

May 7, 2023

After all the buildup, the scandals and the controversies – How stripped down would the affair be? Would Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, attend? Would people take the oath of allegiance? – the coronation of King Charles III Saturday, May 6, at Westminster Abbey in London emphasized the profoundly religious aspect of the ceremony. Like a baptism or confirmation – with its special rituals, symbols, clothing and music – the coronation underscored the covenant between an individual and God, which in this case must also be a covenant between a king and his people, who are going through a tough time.

The tombs of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette at the Basilica of St. Denis, the royal necropolis. Note her anachronistic Empire-style dress. Louis appears as he did on his coronation day, while his wife wears a dress in the style of 1815, the year Louis XVIII, Lous XVI’s brother, had the late couple’s remains reburied in St. Denis. *Photograph by Calvin Kramer.*

King and Queen to pawn in a game of love and death

May 4, 2023

We’ve got our teacup all set for the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on Saturday, May 6, but what we’ve really been obsessing about is a distant relative of the king’s by way of another Charles — Charles I of England.

He was a direct ancestor of Louis XVI of France, whose marriage to a certain notorious Austrian archduchess is the subject of the revisionist, feminist “Marie Antoinette,” finishing its first season on PBS Sunday, May 7. Quite the royal weekend.

A Dominion ImageCast precinct count optical ballot scanner. *Photograph by Douglas W. Jones.*

A voting system has 'Dominion' over Fox

April 14, 2023

Defamation — the slandering (spoken) or libeling (written) of another — is notoriously hard to prove in the United States, where you must demonstrate not only that the person lied about you but also knowingly or recklessly inflicted harm.

This is the famous malice clause, which became precedent in the 1964 case The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Legal experts have said that Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network — which was slated to go to trial Tuesday, April 18, in Delaware Superior Court after a one-day delay that may have involved settlement talks — would have had equally far-reaching implications, not only for the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and of the press but for the continuing conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 presidential election. But Dominion and Fox settled out of court for a staggering $787.5 million, with Fox acknowledging the “court's rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.” Yeah, and who made those claims?

Giotto’s “Washing of the Feet” (1303, fresco), from his “Cycle of the Life of the Christ.” Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. *Photograph by José Luiz. In the* *public domain in the United States.*

In Holy Week, a day of reckoning for Trump

April 7, 2023

In the end, it was, as one observer said, like Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade — only without the talent. On one side of the police barricades in a small Manhattan park were the Trumpers; on the other side, the anti-Trumpers. In the middle was a whole lot of booing, shouting, whispering and whistling, the last courtesy of the Trump whistle guy.

Donald J. Trump, seen here in his 2017 presidential portrait by Shealah Craighead, has become the first American president to be indicted by a grand jury.

Interlude with the vampire -- the Trump indictment

March 30, 2023

I’ve just returned from one of the worst meals of my life. A bit of background: I meet virtually every week with two couples — one liberal, one conservative, with me as the swing vote — for dinner at a local restaurant. Indeed, we used to all eat at separate tables until a waitress put us together — an arrangement that has proved mostly harmonious. Mostly.

Tonight things got a bit acrimonious as the conversation turned to former President-turned-writer-and-editor Donald J. Trump. I was accused of hitting the subject hard by the conservative bloc. But I think that’s because I insisted on delivering a message that they and other conservatives and Republicans don’t want to hear: You’re screwed.

Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald J. Trump during the G20 in Osaka, Japan in 2019. *Shealah Craighead/White House.*

Bad hombres, tippy-toes edition

March 20, 2023

Well, we’re all walking on eggshells aren’t we, waiting for the Gucci pump to drop. No sooner was Russian President Vladimir Putin indicted as a war criminal in the International Court of Justice for forcibly bringing Ukrainian children to Russia — an utter disgrace — than new BFF, Chinese President Xi Jinping, showed up in Moscow offering his support and a joke of a peace plan to end the war in Ukraine that would keep Russian troops in place.

Meanwhile, erstwhile Putin BFF, former American President Donald J. Trump, is facing an indictment of his own in New York over his alleged coverup of hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels, a misdemeanor that could be bumped up to a felony if it is tied to campaign finance. For Trump — a man for whom there is no such thing as bad publicity — this plays into the martyr aspect of a paradoxical personality in which everything he is and has is the best but yet, poor, poor, poor, poor him.