SHE BOUNCES, almost tumbles onto the stage, All-American. But with the look of a French écolière as well. The high-necked, long-sleeved gray smock-dress, red beret and a single tightly-braided pigtail provide the Gallic touches. Continue reading “A Phenom to Watch and Hear in 2018: Not Taylor, But VERONICA Swift” »

IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN. It’s The Media Beat‘s annual celebration of entertaining media errors (and efforts to put things right) that have caught my eye since our last unashamedly un-collegial exercise in journalistic schadenfreude … lo, these full twelve months ago.

I’m going to continue my tradition – in keeping with this festive time of year – of dealing largely with light-hearted examples of the genre. That’s despite the mood of media criticism having changed, changed utterly this year. Continue reading “2017 Comes To An End … Media Mistakes, Corrections and Apologies March On” »

TRAVEL JUST FOUR MILES from Heraklion International Airport on the Greek island of Crete, and you have gone back four thousand years to the Minoan Civilization.

You appear to have arrived in the heart of a ritualistic society devoted to fearful reverence for the bull. I say ‘appear’, since just about everything you know and much of what you are told on-site concerns a monstrous mythological creature, the bull-headed Minotaur.     Continue reading “Discovering A Society. Or Rather … Imagining it?” »

IT’S NOT MY TRADITION – indeed I don’t really have one – but I appreciate the Jewish practice of Yahrzeit, honoring the dead one year after their death, in part by lighting a candle.

Here’s my lighted candle.

Continue reading “The Medium of Personal Memoir: Words about and from Melissa” »

IT CANNOT BE OFTEN that the work of a septuagenarian artist goes viral. Patrick Hughes, a trompe l’oeil specialist from the UK has just opened an exhibition in the art Mecca of Chelsea, New York, one of several held here during his long career. But he comes on this occasion trailing clouds of digital glory.   Continue reading “Nineteen-Sixties Pop-Artist Gains Digital Media Breakthrough” »