The day after Christmas, my two daughters and I scattered Jacque’s ashes on the small beach in the picture above. Then we watched the waves come in and carry them out to sea. I told Anne and Emily to scatter my ashes here in the very same way. Below is the eulogy I read at […]
The Painting: Red, white, and blue. Gold splattered everywhere. The American flag not a Jasper John flag of ironic contemplation, but the rippling backdrop for a full-throated patriotic moment at the 2012 Olympic games. The Bryan Brothers, at 34, have just won their first (and only) gold medal, the greatest moment of their career. Their celebration […]
For two summers in the late 1970s, I played tennis every week with a much older player named Van Nguyen–a refugee from Vietnam who played with his shirt off and had the exact same body as the man in the picture above. He was a devilishly good tennis player who never missed and moved the […]
I’ve read lots of dry prose about Suzanne Lenglen. Words words words words . . . It’s stuffy inside and I open a window. The breeze coming in feels like turning the pages of Tom Humberstone’s new graphic novel: Suzanne: The Jazz Age Goddess of Tennis. Suzanne’s not a fixed portrait, but a river, a […]
What’s the most impressive thing about the Egyptian Pyramids, the Terracotta Warriors? More widely known today than in their infancy, they have endured over 4 millennia. The pyramids and the contents within—the pharoah’s chair, his portrait hewed out of hardest stone, are built to last not only as monuments to the dead but as memorial […]