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Center of attention: (From left foreground) French culture minister André Malraux, wife Marie-Madeleine and President John F. Kennedy have eyes only for Jacqueline B. Kennedy in her pink Oleg Cassini. Even today first ladies like Melania Trump and first lady wannabes like Casey DeSantis channel Jackie’s look. *Photograph courtesy the White House.*

Moving forward: the endurance of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

July 12, 2023

What would Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis make of J. Randy Taraborrelli’s “Jackie: Public, Private, Secret” (St. Martin’s Press, $35, 439 pages) — out Tuesday, July 18, 10 days before what would’ve been her 94th birthday?

Domingo Germán, seen here in 2019, pitched a perfect game for the New York Yankees on June 28. *Photograph by* *Keith Allison.*

The Supreme Court, Domingo Germán and the perfect imperfection of life

July 1, 2023

The Supreme Court made what critics would describe as some imperfect decisions in the week that New York Yankees pitcher Domingo Germán pitched a perfect game. While the two would seem unrelated, they both tell us a great deal about the unfairness and seeming randomness of life.

**View of the bow of the RMS Titanic photographed in June 2004 by the ROV Hercules during an expedition returning to the shipwreck of the Titanic.** ***Courtesy NOAA/Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island***

All hands on deck of the SS Hubris

June 22, 2023

The deaths of five men in the implosion of the submersible Titan has shown us, as tragedies do, the best and the worst of humanity.

The best could be seen in the herculean five-day transatlantic effort by four nations — Canada, the United States, France and Great Britain — to save lives even as the U.S. Navy detected but could not definitely confirm the implosion on Father’s Day, June 18. The worst was, well, everything else from the foolhardy tour itself to some of the slapdash reporting to the ignorant, often mean-spirited internet reaction.

A scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” —“Madeleine” at the Golden Gate Bridge, Fort Point, right before she jumps into San Francisco Bay.

'Vertigo' and the idea of the other

June 4, 2023

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film “Vertigo” has reached what The Washington Post called in its reappraisal ‘Medicare age,’which got me thinking about my favorite movie — one that regularly appears on lists for the greatest, or one of the greatest, films to date. But is it, as The Post suggests, a story for our #MeToo times or rather a more complex tale of the human desire to project onto others our own dreams, fears and desires?

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.”

This head of Cleopatra — called the Berlin Cleopatra for its placement in Germany’s Altes Museum — depicts the last of the Ptolemaic rulers as a traditional Macedonian matron with Hellenistic features, a Macedonian diadem and her hair in a chignon. It was made in Rome about the time of her visits there in 46 to 44 B.C.

'A bourn how far to be beloved': 'Queen Cleopatra' and cultural appropriation

May 12, 2023

The latest tizzy in the culture wars pits Egypt against the Netflix series “Queen Cleopatra,” which bowed Wednesday, May 10, starring a Black actress, Adele James, in the title role. Many Egyptians and some historians have taken exception with this, pointing out that Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt and as such was of Greco-Macedonian descent. But I think with a little imagination and a lot of understanding we can have a Black Cleopatra and an historically accurate one as well.

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.

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