New York’s Hudson Valley and the nearby Berkshires and Taconics are alive with art galleries. When people buy second homes in these
scenic treasuries they look to local galleries to provide them mementos of their new environment. They’re missing a huge bet.
If I were a fledgling or even a seasoned collector of contemporary and recent [...]
We live in a society that has reached an incredible consensus, in spite of all the red state-blue state talk: we agree that it’s something akin to a terror alert to talk straight.
Read More...Parallels too closely drawn invite intellectual train wrecks, but it might not be too far a reach to connect yesterday’s Supreme Court decision overturning the District of Columbia’s strict handgun control law to our gunpoint involvement with Arab society.
Every Arab civilization since the advent of Islam in the 7th Christian century has been forced to [...]
In a certain plot contrivance in television serials and films the conscientious subaltern makes a fool of his pretentious jerk of a supervisor. The gimmick is overused to a fare-thee-well in such productions as the three CSI shows. What intrigues me about it is that, as so often in television scripting, it seems to appeal [...]
Read More...The CNN crawl this morning declared the Flip-Flop Wars. Barack Obama had changed course about campaign finance, deciding not to limit himself to a federal contribution, and John McCain had decided offshore drilling is okay after all.
The more important issue is the press’ mindless acceptance of the received boobism that changing one’s mind, one’s [...]
The gray region between sexism and misogyny is a gloaming filled with turned around street signs and delusions. I ought to know because I’ve been wallowing in it. I wrote in this space that Senator Hillary Clinton was marching like the Energizer Bunny off a cliff. I faulted her for playing the race card. I [...]
Read More... John McCain, who knows a thing or two about the Navy, thinks military recruits should be instructed in our foreign policy. But foreign policies fluctuate with our political EKG, while our national ideals, however soiled they may be by scare tactics, hold fast.
My most memorable experience in Navy boot camp in the early 1950s [...]
Sometimes I think the all news all day formula is traumatizing society. The news—if you can call that weird concoction of anchor bonhomie and drivel news—is surpassingly negative, and in the interest of ratings the media rarely lose an opportunity to exaggerate the negative side of the news. News or what passes for it [...]
Read More...Is that your start scuffed in your coat? I asked my wife the other day. I meant, of course, to ask if that was her scarf stuffed in her coat. It was a humble example of a spoonerism. I love spoonerisms. I think if we declared one day a week Spoonerism Day and observed [...]
Read More...Have you ever wondered long after a party about that certain somebody you didn’t meet but can’t forget? This is the subject of Gatecrasher, my short story in the June issue of The Country and Abroad. The beautiful woman whose image accompanies the story is my mother, the artist Juanita Guccione.
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