The Traveling Cremains of Dorothy Parker
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Fifty-three years after her death, Dorothy Parker’s cremains have just been buried in their forever home at Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, New York. This protracted ordeal began on June 7, 1967 when Parker died from a heart attack in her Manhattan hotel suite. The wry author and wisecracking mainstay of the famed Algonquin Round Table […]
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Michelangelo and the Tale of the Empty Tomb
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“Tombs are clothes of the dead,” R. Buckminster Fuller said. “A grave is a plain suit, while an expensive monument is one with embroidery.” There are many examples of heavy-duty embroidery: –The Taj Mahal in Agra, India, a mausoleum which is the final resting spot for Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and his fourth wife, Mumtaz Mahal. –The Lenin […]
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Viktor Frankl: Find Meaning to Survive Covid-19
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Viktor Frankl was faced with the most consequential decision of his life. He was in a classic double-bind: any option he selected would produce human death, perhaps his own. It was 1942 in Vienna, Austria. What could have been peak years in Frankl’s career as a psychiatrist and neurologist had been thwarted when the Nazis […]
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Seventy-Two Years of TV Coverage at National Conventions
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Television made its debut at national political conventions in 1948. The audience was confined to the east coast, national coverage still four years away. Conventions in those days were not tightly scripted affairs: they featured some entertaining gaffes and “hot microphone” moments. At the ’48 Democratic gathering, President Harry Truman was nominated and gave his acceptance […]
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I Witnessed the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
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When President Abraham Lincoln, his wife, and guests entered their terrace box at Ford’s Theater at 8:30 pm on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, the audience erupted in a spontaneous standing ovation. Our American Cousin, a comedy by playwright Tom Taylor, was well into its first act, but the arrival of the President brought the production to […]
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