Like a little kid who just won his first event, Novak Djokovic can’t contain his pride and joy in holding Olympic gold at last.

NBC, the Olympics and American exceptionalism

August 6, 2024

The Olympics were just getting underway July 27 when the American swim team was reminded of how Australian swimmer Cate Campbell reveled in her country having had more gold medals than the United States (13 to seven) at the 2023 World Swimming Championships.

There has long been an intense rivalry between the swim teams that has spilled over into trash talk, but Campbell really went off on the cowbells in the stands that support Americans in the pool and even the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” If nothing succeeds like success, nothing irks like it either.

While the National Anthem comment seems petty, Campbell may have a point when you consider NBC’s cheerleading coverage of the Paris Games as we roll through the second week of competition….

Environmental outrage -- whose art is it anyway?

February 6, 2024

On Jan. 28, activists from the environmental group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) tossed soup at Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” to protest the state of the French agricultural system.

The painting 1503-06, poplar on panel), which hangs behind bulletproof glass in the Musée du Louvre, was unharmed and guards soon restored order.

This isn’t the first time the painting has been attacked nor is it alone in its appeal to climate activists looking to make a statement. Their point seems to be we care more about art than the environment. But is that a valid point?

The blog goddess, an appreciation

July 19, 2018

Today is said to mark the birthday of Alexander the Great, who has figured prominently on this blog, in my writings and in my life. But that’s not what I want to talk about today.

Today also marks the last day of work for the administrator of this site and my social media – the blog goddess, as it were …

Diana’s summer reign

August 30, 2017

She was born at the beginning of one summer and died toward the end of another. And like the season that framed her life – deceptively soft, blinding in its glare – hers was too short.

Thursday marks the 20th anniversary of the passing of Diana, Princess of Wales. Time is a funny thing. It heals, they say, all wounds, carrying us out on its merciless tide. But what it really is is another country. The world is a very different place now than the one Diana left. ...

New York, New York

January 18, 2016

As a lifelong New Yorker, I love going to the city and I love leaving it.

My happiest journey was always riding the Madison Avenue bus up to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in spring with my Aunt Mary for work. I still love riding the bus there for work.

But I always exhale when the train hits the ’burbs. Something about seeing a greater ratio of greenery to concrete eases me.

New York is a tough, tough place. Come to it with a chip on your shoulder, someone once told me, and it will crush you. Approach it humbly and it will open like a flower. ...

The terrorist bombings and the literature of rejection

November 19, 2015

If you’re a reader of this blog, then you know that one of its motifs – which also occurs in my forthcoming novel, “The Penalty for Holding” – is what I call “the literature of rejection,” that is the disproportionate rage at rejection found among certain antiheroes in literature and among assassins, mass murderers and terrorists.

I was reminded of this – or rather, my sharp-as-a-tack blog administrator reminded me of it – in reading an interview with Arie Kruglanski, co-director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), founded in 2005 at the University of Maryland with funds from the Department of Homeland Security.

Kruglanski has walked the walk. He was born in Nazi-occupied Poland and spent 15 years teaching psychology at Tel Aviv University. In this interview he echoes 19th-century psychologist-philosopher William James’ view of heroism as a primary spur in human nature, even unto, and perhaps especially if it means, death itself. ...