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Diana, Princess of Wales, and tenor Luciano Pavarotti at the concert “Pavarotti and Friends for the Benefit of the Children of Bosnia” in his hometown of Modena, Italy, in September 1995. Cut loose from the royal family, she had by then developed th… — Diana, Princess of Wales, and tenor Luciano Pavarotti at the concert “Pavarotti and Friends for the Benefit of the Children of Bosnia” in his hometown of Modena, Italy, in September 1995. Cut loose from the royal family, she had by then developed the elegantly economical look that crystallized her last years and our sense of a woman in full.

Diana, our lady of compassion

November 29, 2020

Winter, as Charles Dickens knew, is the season of ghosts. The holidays bring memories of those who are no longer with us, reminders of those who cannot grace our tables — never more so than during the pandemic when the table is often a table set for just one.

TV, too, the great American unifier and divider, plays a role in this with sad but uplifting holiday fare and series that reopen old wounds while underscoring that the past is never really over, because it is part of the continuum that informs the present and the future.

“The Crown,” Netflix’s addictive-as-potato-chips series about the British royal family, is now in its fourth season, which brings us to the Diana years and a reappraisal of her, her legacy and what went so horribly wrong. Why does Diana, Princess of Wales, haunt us still? More to the point, why do we still haunt her — for it is the living who haunt the dead, not the other way around.

A tish, or gathering, of Hassidic Jews during the festival of Sukkot in Jerusalem in 2009. Hassids and some Roman Catholics are among the religious chafing at coronavirus restrictions. Photograph by permission of Eli Segal.

The politics of religion in the age of Covid

October 12, 2020

A federal judge has struck down an Orthodox Jewish group’s lawsuit against New York’s restrictions on worship in large groups during the pandemic. The number of virus cases is creeping up in the Northeast, the state is cracking down and religious groups, including some Roman Catholics, are upset at what they see as infringements on their religious freedoms, guaranteed under the Constitution.

No one wants to impede the practices of the religious. But we are in a health emergency, the fight of our lives in what one doctor told me is not just the story of the year but will turn out to be the story of this century. So why is it so hard for religious groups — which are, after all, supposed to be on the side of humanity — to comply? A hostess at a popular restaurant I frequent smiled knowingly before answering. “It’s about the money,” she said. And she’s right.

President Donald J. Trump is expected to name Amy Coney Barrett to the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat today. Photograph by Rachel Malehorn. — President Donald J. Trump is expected to name Amy Coney Barrett to the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat today. *Photograph by Rachel Malehorn.*

Amy Coney Barrett , 'notorious' women and the limits of sisterhood

September 26, 2020

A female relative of mine recently told be about a flurry of activity in her company that involved the possible election of a woman for the first time to a certain position. The problem was that some did not like this woman or think she was qualified.

Well, said I, just because someone shares your gender doesn’t mean you’re going to support her for a certain job. Which brings us, of course, to Amy Coney Barrett, the apparently wonderful, brilliantly successful jurist, teacher, Catholic, wife, mother of seven (including a special needs child) and soon-to-be “replacement” for the late, deeply lamented Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In this Barrett will be opposed by many women who believe she will threaten their right to choose and the Affordable Care Act. She will also be opposed by many men as well who see her as a possible rubber stamp for a Trumpian second term should the presidential election descend into a Bush v. Gore slugfest.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) -- a cultural appreciation

September 19, 2020

When I was a student at Sarah Lawrence College in the 1970s — during a seminal wave of feminism — I took a course in the Women’s Studies department on gender and the law. Our textbook, “Sex-Based Discrimination,” was filled with absurd, horrifying stories of stewardesses — as they were called in those days — and the like, who were fired for being five pounds overweight, for not being “attractive” enough, for having babies — in other words, for being women. Two decades later as President Bill Clinton announced an appointee to the United States Supreme Court, I recalled the chief editor of that textbook — Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Robert F. Kennedy addressing an Indianapolis crowd on the night of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

Leadership, race and 'the awful grace of God'

May 29, 2020

Well, so much for those “You Ain’t Black” T-shirts .

President Donald J. Trump and the Republicans — always ready to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, as their handling of the pandemic demonstrates — were all set to capitalize on former Vice President Joe Biden’s gaffe that presumed to tell black people they couldn’t really be black if they voted for Trump, as if there aren’t black Republicans and conservatives. But Biden’s remark, however maladroit, contained the kernel of a question: Might a black Trump supporter actually be voting against his own interests?

James Tissot, “The Healing of Ten Lepers” (1886-94), gouache over graphite on gray wove paper. Brooklyn Museum. Once one of the most fearsome of diseases, leprosy is one today for which the world has achieved 95 percent herd immunity.

Healing thyself

May 11, 2020

My perpetual inspirational calendar for May 10 — which was Mother’s Day — contained this quote from Daniel L. Reardon: “In the long run, the pessimist may be right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip.”

Right about now we could use a little more of the optimist than the pessimist. Each day brings bad news with no sign of let up, even as states begin to reopen and the stock market holds its own. Indeed, it’s hard to be the optimist on the trip when the pessimist in us is regularly experiencing “the dark night of the soul” at 3 a.m., tossing, turning and hyperventilating — terrified for our ill loved ones and our own mortality; wondering if our jobs are in danger or if we’ll get another and, in any event, how we’ll pay the bills; despairing that the things, places and people we cherish will never be the same.

Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald J. Trump during Trump’s November 2017 trip to China. Some see America’s ratcheting up of tensions with the Chinese as Trump’s Saddam Hussein moment. Photograph by Shealah Craighead/White House.

Are China's virus labs Trump's WMD?

May 5, 2020

Perhaps the only thing hotter than the subject of the coronavirus at present is the discussion of China’s accountability as the country of its origin. President Donald J. Trump has been pressing the Chinese for greater transparency, arguing that if the country had not been so secretive, the virus might’ve been stopped in its tracks.

Trump himself has a lot of explaining to do about his own early praise of the Chinese response to the virus and his own lax reaction. But we mustn’t allow criticism of Trump’s behavior to obfuscate the Chinese role in the catastrophe, anymore than we can let Chinese culpability obscure the lack of Alexandrian leadership — leadership from the front — on the part of Trump and other world figures like Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil, whose macho approach to the virus has decimated the indigenous people of the rainforest. If failure is always an orphan, as the proverb suggests, it certainly has many negligent step-parents.