It was a sparkling climax to the season at the Greenwich Polo Club Sunday, Sept. 7 as Royal Salute held off a surging Casablanca 10-8 in a taut match for the Royal Salute Cup.

The match, spectators were told, featured the highest quality polo in the Northern Hemisphere, with Facundo Pieres, the No. 1-ranked player in the world, the legendary Martin Aguerre and Peter Brant, the Greenwich club’s founder, anchoring the team for Royal Salute, the Scotch whisky company, while Nick Manifold, who oversees the club, and 9-goaler Hilario Ulloa (10 is the highest ranking) doing the honors for Casablanca, a polo-gear company that has a store on tony Greenwich Avenue.

If you’ve never seen this ancient sport, which dates from the Persian Empire, then you’re missing something. Polo is fast, exciting and, I suspect, more than a little bit dangerous. Just to see the horses thunder down the green expanse (10 football fields), the riders swinging their mallets as they sometimes mix it up – nose to nose and haunch to haunch – is, well, thrilling.

And did I mention sexy? Polo players are among the most attractive, masculine men in the world. ...

Seeing the front-page photo in The New York Times of Michael Brown’s body lying in the street – like so much road-kill – after he was shot to death by police officer Darren Wilson filled me with revulsion and anguish.

In a previous post, I wrote about the desecration of the dead from the Malaysian airline flight that was gunned down and the need to observe the proper rites for the them, not just for the departed but for ourselves as civilized human beings. I also wrote about “Antigone” – a tragedy by Sophocles that’s been reinterpreted by many, including playwright Jean Anouilh – which hinges on the moral consequences of failing to honor the dead.

So I was heartened to see this Aug. 27 letter to The Times’ editor by Jean P. Moore of Greenwich, Conn. ...

Polo and the essence of modernism

‘Antigone’ in Ferguson