On Thursday night, I joined several other writers represented in the current issue of The Westchester Review for a reading at Barnes & Noble Eastchester. My thanks to The Review for publishing an adaptation of a chapter from my new novel “The Penalty for Holding” and to B & N for hosting us. It was another illuminating experience, which proved to me once again that each audience is different and that a reading must be adjusted – often at the last minute – to that uniqueness. ...
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Is President Donald J. Trump racist?
It’s a question that has threaded his virulent response to the NFL players kneeling before the National Anthem to protest racism and his passive-aggressive approach to Puerto Rico’s suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
I don’t think Trump is a racist. Indeed, I don’t like to think of any American president as one. But I do think that he is a joyless, mirthless person who takes no pleasure in other people and strikes a misanthropic tone. ...
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Nancy Pelosi, the House of Representatives Minority Leader and sometime new BFF (along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer) of President Donald J. Trump told “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd Sunday that she would like to see the president as more of a unifier.
Well, Nancy, you have gotten your wish. Seems like the NFL is united – against the president.
Of course, that’s not the way El Presidente saw it. Here’s what he tweeted after players took a knee during the National Anthem in protest ...
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Writers like my pal novelist Barbara Nachman https://www.fashionmystery.net/ were front and center Sunday as Barnes & Noble Eastchester’s Local Author Festival came to a close. But the fun continues.
Join me and other writers whose work appears in the new edition of Westchester Review as we read from our works Thursday, Sept. 28 from 7 to 9 p.m. I’ll be reading from the story that became the basis of the second chapter in my new novel “The Penalty for Holding,” about a gay, biracial quarterback’s search for identity in the NFL. ...
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We think of sports and the arts – as House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi described them to “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd – as the great unifiers.
That’s partly because we expect athletes and artists of every ilk to entertain us in a manner devoid of politics. The thinking goes that since artists and athletes make a lot of dough – well, at least those in the popular sports and arts do – they should “play” and keep their mouths otherwise shut.
But what happens when politics interjects itself into sports and the arts? ...
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There are few more individualistic activities than tennis and few more fiercely individualistic people than tennis players.
“Battle of the Sexes,” which opens Friday, Sept. 22, gives us the iconic clash between two such individuals – tennis star Billie Jean King and former champ Bobby Riggs – in a 1973 match that was both a media event and a cause célèbre in the then-rising women’s movement. (King would win 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.)
At that time, there was no LGBTQ movement, and tennis players did not make the lavish livings they do today. The men were still something of barnstormers earning little more than beer money, and the women – whom they did not necessarily treat well – made squat. ...
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Amanda Hess’ Sunday New York Times Magazine piece about our ambivalence toward anti-aging is but the latest commentary about the disconnect between ourselves and our bodies, and by “ourselves” I mean women and their bodies. It is a disconnect that affects men as well – though not to the extent that it does women.
Hess describes how Allure magazine has declared war on “anti-aging,” featuring Helen Mirren on the cover, draped in a boy-toy – the same Helen Mirren who played Cleopatra, of whom Shakespeare wrote, “Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety.”
And yet, Hess notes, the same issue of Allure carried an ad for the new L’Oréal Paris moisturizer, part of its Age Perfect brand (of which I’m a big fan), featuring – you guessed it, Helen Mirren. ...
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