Baseball players have their good luck quirks, the special bat, the rally cap, the favorite mitt. So too with painters. Mine is I NEVER throw out a brush. You’re right, there’s no good reason for this. But after a lifetime of painting, we have quite an assembly: flats, brights, longs, shorts, bristle, oil, acrylic, water color, liners etc., etc ...
As COVID-19 is on everyone’s minds, along with fear of the unknown, concern for public health and safety, social distancing, plummeting markets and countless unnamed consequences for millions of Americans and the world, it may seem like the Constitution is beside the point. Let’s suggest instead that at times like this the Constitution ...
In a week hopping with news, an 8-member Supreme Court opened its new term with oral arguments in a case that could define what “critical habitat” means under the Endangered Species Act, America’s most important law protecting biodiversity. The case involves one of America’s most endangered species, the Mississippi Dusky Gopher Frog
With Justice Kennedy’s retirement in July dovetailing into the Fall midterm elections, can We the People have a constitutional conversation, or just a political one? Partisan hyper-politics will line up red versus blue, liberal versus conservative, either-or, door number one or door number two. But let’s remind ourselves there’s a ...
On June 27, 2018 the Supreme Court issued its most important labor law decision in the past 40 years. In those four decades, a case named Abood was the leading precedent that allowed public sector unions to charge a so-called “agency fee” to nonmembers of the union for collective bargaining activities of the union. No more.
In its 5-4 decision ...
The Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop decision by Justice Kennedy follows the the unwritten Slender Reed Rule which goes like this: If SCOTUS has to decide a case with narrow facts that could lead to a precedent that’s either slender or rotund, go with the slender reed and save the big issues for another day. The slender reed Justice Kennedy ...
What do Leonardo and Emojis have in common?
Let’s open by noting the irony of writing words about visual symbols. But that’s nothing new in art history. Big book narratives of the 30,000 year story of art use words, but there’s an inevitable shortfall in writing about visuals. An example is the latest of many biographies of Leonardo, a book by ...
In his spare time, when not saving Western Civilization from Nazi domination, Winston Churchill never stopped doing that which helped recharge his relentless energy. He put on a long smock over suit and tie, a shade hat on his famous head, a cigar between his teeth, strolled outdoors with his mobile easel in tow, set out a blank canvas, squinted into ...
Okay, fans, the full title of America's greatest baseball poem isn't Casey at the Bat.
Ernest Thayer entitled his poem: Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888.
So, what's with the subtitle? Let's suggest Thayer's masterpiece is not just a semi-comic melodrama about history's most famous strikeout. As the title says, it's ...