Sunday Roundup

This week, as the debt ceiling debate inched its way closer to the Aug. 2 deadline, the acrimony became internecine, with former GOP standard-bearer John McCain deriding Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, and "Tea Party hobbits," and one-time Tea Party poster boy Allen West bemoaning the faction's debt ceiling "schizophrenia." Cut, Cap, and Bicker. This week also saw the funerals of two very different artists: Amy Winehouse, a talented but troubled performer, who died at 27 (joining Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, and Cobain in a "forever" club you definitely don't want to be a member of), and Michael Cacoyannis, the 90-year-old director of my all-time favorite life-affirming film, Zorba the Greek. Winehouse's untimely passing drew worldwide attention, her legacy destined to be a cautionary tale; Cacoyannis, who died in my hometown of Athens, went quietly. But both deaths, in very different ways, remind us of Zorba's message to live each moment fully.