Eileen Manion and Barbara Confino talk about the state of justice in America — Eileen: Was Martin Luther King right when he said the arc is tending toward justice? He was correct in saying it’s long. Longer than my lifetime, for sure. Reading Just Mercy, I’m happy that there are people like Bryan Stevenson in the United States. …

A Neighborhood WalkAbout — with thanks to Justin Brannan and Bay Ridge Cares Like a fallen woman in an old time movie, Bay Ridge has a Past. In fact, it has several, each one superimposed over the last. Norwegians followed by Greeks, then Italians, now Arabs, the groups passing through leave tangible traces, their…

A short meditation on Pieter de Hooch’s The Card Players — Of all painting styles that of the Dutch Golden Age can legitimately be said to luxuriate in the celebration of ‘stuff’. More detailed, loving descriptions of worldly goods can hardly be found anywhere. And yet…parallel with this earthbound, tactile embrace of things lies the Dream of Reason, as it is…

A short meditation on a painting by van Ruisdael — Looking at this seemingly modest landscape by van Ruisdael, I am struck by how profoundly it embodies some of the most closely held values of this hard-working, God-fearing, modest people, and how much of those same values were conveyed by design. Its relatively symmetrical, center weighted composition emphasizes the stability…

The Forgotten Indians of Mexico — Photographs by Ximena Natera The Yuman people in Baja California carry 12,000 years of history; they have adapted and survived the Spanish colonization and the evangelization that followed, the post revolutionary development, and the construction of the “Mexican Nation Project”, built on the erasure of indigenous identity. They continue that struggle today.

When I was a kid, the Irish were my enemy. They would come tearing down the hill from their Catholic school, shouting: “Christ Killer, Christ Killer” and attack, leaving me bloodied and furious. After one such attack when I had been encircled by the neighboring clan and beaten quite badly…

­­­A Lament for the Women of Afghanistan — The bearded men, the automatic rifles, the swagger and ­­­strut of ownership — It’s all back. And the women, they know it is back. They know that once again they are history’s refuse, the trash that is left behind. Nobody is air-lifting them to safety. No rescue in sight. So…

Barbara Confino — I had been in China for months. The dust, the endless construction, the horizon filled with cranes, the streets filled with crowds, the signs written in a language whose meaning I could not fathom, all of it began to overwhelm me. In the midst of this I stumble upon two…

A Meditation on the Photographs of Jutta Hof — There it is, should you need it, proof positive of animal sentience. Jutta Hof’s bonobo covers its eyes, inclining its head in a classic posture of grief, pain, confusion, and dismay. Exactly the same attitude W. Eugene Smith caught so beautifully in one of his Country Midwife pictures. More than…