The announcement of a Rafanole exhibition in Saudi Arabia. Will the show go on?
A journalist, a tennis player and the president of the United States walk into a bar….
No, it’s not the setup for a joke. Indeed, it’s no laughing matter.
Tennis stars Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic – the No. 1- and No. 2-ranked players on the men’s tour – find themselves in the midst of an international crisis not of their making….
Read MoreIl Sodoma's "Marriage of Alexander and Roxane" (1517), a fresco in the Villa Farnesina. Alexander and Roxane figure in Rudyard Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King," a cautionary tale about demagoguery.
Caption: Statue of Alexander the Great, third century B.C. Istanbul Archaeology Museums.
This past weekend commemorated the birth of Alexander the Great – in 356 B.C. Pella, northern Greece – so I thought I’d offer a meditation on a subject that has often occupied me as a writer and as a manager and that is leadership.
I myself have learned a lot about “leading” from Alexander, who conquered the Persian Empire in 331 B.C. and whom I began reading about when I was a child. But what made him a great leader? What is leadership?…
Read MoreIn the latest chapter of “Helsinki Hath No Fury Like a President Scorned,” President Donald J. “Donnie Two Scoops” Trumpet has doubled-down on his Finnish performance and invited his BFF, Vladimir “Vladdie the Laddie, Rootin’ Tootin’” Putin to the White House.
Oh, sure, some 3-year-old Mexican kid gets locked up in a cage but hey, let team Putin waltz right in. Riddle me this: Who do you think is the bigger threat? …
Read MoreThere’s much outrage on the left and even on the right about President Donald J. “Donnie Two Scoops” Trumpet’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir “Vladdie the Laddie, Rootin’, Tootin’” Putin in Helsinki Monday, in which he threw U.S. intelligence under the bus and sided with his BFF. But really at this point why is any of this surprising? What else was he going to say? …
Read MoreOn Saturday, people took to the streets in more than 700 cities in every state to voice their opposition to separating children of undocumented immigrants indefinitely and perhaps forever from their parents. They carried signs and, in Atlanta, dog crates containing baby dolls to signify the cages in which the children have been held.
Saturday’s protest was the culmination of a week of civil disobedience that has drawn the usual backlash: Oh, these are just abortion-loving feminists protesting in support of illegal children they would never carry to term. Honestly…
Read MoreIn Luke 7: 36-50, the writer paints a portrait of limitless love and the limits of the unloving. Jesus dines at the house of Simon the Pharisee, where a woman known to have led a sinful life washed his feet with her tears, dried them with her hair and anointed them with perfume, an expensive commodity. It was a profound display of contrition, humility and love, though the Pharisees saw it as an extravagant outrage, given her reputation.
After offering a parable, Jesus “turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? …
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