The NY Times ran a story about Obama and affirmative action earlier this week. The first question I asked was: why was it buried inside? Is this subject not as important as oil drilling or wind farms?

To me, there is...

Let me confess at the outset I have never met T. Boone Pickens: I don't even know what the T stands for (I just looked it up. It's Thomas, after his father. Pickens has a website that puts most to shame)....

How are we going to live in the rest of the 21st century and beyond?

It's a big question, one that is becoming ever more urgent as resources diminish with few answers from our largely dysfunctional government which has repeatedly refused to grapple with...

Maybe it's because I actually decided to miss my high school reunion last week, or maybe it's because there has been a lot of chatter about Hillary's having beencastrating or maybe it's because Obama claims to be aloof from the psychodrama of the baby boom generation, or columnists from

More people than I can count are aggravated, even downright hostile, to the Clintons, especially Bill. His ranting during the primary campaign was a turn-off to those who had supported him in the past as well as those who abandoned him after they felt abandoned by him long ago.

But...

It turns out that most of us have dreams about dancing with stars. I am probably the only person in the whole country who has not been watching Dancing with the Stars or So You Think You Can Dance, two very highly rated television shows and I am going to...

In the no woman's land between artist and public lies a phalanx of people who are ready to tell you what to think: critics, art historians, curators, dealers and your friends. The cacophony of voices who remind you if it's commercial...

Do you believe that writers are born not made? Do you believe that people have some kind of innate gift for storytelling, for stringing words together, for capturing dialogue, for getting under the...

We all have a fantasy about taking off for six months or a year, getting away from the grind in order to have the time to muse and contemplate. We know we would be the better for it, our ideas sharper, our vision about our work clearer. We might even...

On Tuesday afternoon, unexpectedly in New York for 24 hours, I was lucky enough to catch the final dress rehearsal of Twyla Tharp's new ballet, Rabbit and Rogue which premiered at the American Ballet Theater that night.

I had just been given a sneak preview at Molissa Fenley's...

In 1971 and 1972 if you walked down the corridors of almost any woman's dorm (yes, Virginia, there were still single sex dorms in the 1970s) you would certainly hear snatches of (a record, or possibly an 8 track), I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, traveling,...

I promised my sons I would not write about them again; the last time

I wrote about graduation one of them didn't talk to me for over a year as he reminded me that he had indeed graduated even if I hadn't attended the ceremony. (If...

[Images front and below]
(c) 2008 Jean-Louis Blondeau / Polaris Images

Staring into the jaws of a paper monster, even or especially one of our own construction, or teetering high over a chasm between impossible choices can be just as terrifying as...

I met Kenna, this week's guest curator, as we sat next to each other for six hours on a transcon planeride, always a good test of anyone's mettle. Before I tell you more about this amazing musician, I have to set the stage for our meeting.

I'm generally a resolute...

It's easy to forget that the only response to electoral politics and war isn't a snarky blog or a scathing editorial. Another way to parse the frenzy of red and blue or devastation and death is a more considered, but no less passionate reaction: reading or writing a poem.
...

Nathalie Daoust's Pilatus

Growing up, we often learn that keeping within the lines, behaving, is best. It's easier for one thing: you make an outline, or you trace something that already exists and then you color it in, not quite painting by numbers, but almost....

"Under African Skies"
Photo: Jack Vartoogian"

What do the following songs recall for you?

The Sounds of Silence
The 59th...

What is it about women, men and water? This week it seemed as if everyone I saw on stage or screen was jumping or landing in cold water to make a change in their lives. This is a fairly straightforward way of shaking off the blues, or conversely, putting an...

The Getty is Back.

Well, it never really went away, it was just that they had folded their tents a wee bit as they recovered from internal and external strife. Administrative woes have been resolved and James Wood and Michael Brand are leading a newly invigorated pack of curators...

Anthony Minghella, man for all cultural seasons, has died of complications from a surgery to remove a tumor. I, and thousands who love his work in film, television and opera, are mourning this tragic, unexpected loss.

It had just been announced that Minghella's pilot based on The Number One...