The very premise of Brad Bird’s 2004 Pixar film, “The Incredibles,” pits “a world of born” against “a world of made,” and comes down strongly in favor of the former. The villain of the story is Buddy Pine, a.k.a. Syndrome, Read More …
In April of 1952, at the age of twenty-five, Hubert de Givenchy arrived at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in New York, with eight elaborate couture gowns. He was making his American début at the first annual April in Paris Ball, a Read More …
R. Kelly was scheduled to perform at the “Pre-Mother’s Day Love Jam,” at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion, on May 5th, alongside other R. & B. artists including K. Michelle and the girl group Xscape. The set would Read More …
Baseball has started again, and not a moment too soon. I’m a Yankees fan, but I wasn’t always a Yankees fan. Growing up in New York, in the nineteen-fifties, I was a Dodgers fan and a Yankees hater—the two went Read More …
It would be easy to cast Billy Graham, the evangelical superstar who led prayer crusades in football stadiums, as a harbinger of the current ideological hardening. Graham, who possessed an incandescent charm, paired with a snow-white smile and eyes of Read More …
When the last lingering Munchkin from “The Wizard of Oz,” Jerry Maren, died in May, at the age of ninety-eight, I took the news harder than I had thought possible. “People come and go so quickly here” is the camp Read More …
Like many teachers, every time I read about a school shooting somewhere in the United States, I think about what I would do if some maniac kicked open my classroom door and started firing at my students. I think, I Read More …
It is no surprise that Monday night’s Met Gala was one of the most satisfying in years. Dressing to this year’s theme—officially the Eucharist, but better summed up by the title of the Costume Institute’s new exhibit, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion Read More …
During the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, I didn’t expect to cry when athletes from two Koreas marched as one into the stadium, carrying the flag of unification, but tears filled my eyes. It was as if Read More …
Anna & Elizabeth is a band whose name is a nod to Hazel & Alice, the all-woman bluegrass duo that was recorded on the Smithsonian Folkways label at a time in the mid-sixties when the bluegrass musicians being recorded were Read More …