Essays

Landscape. Kanō Isen’in. Edo period, c. 1802-1816, ink and color on paper. Honolulu Museum of Art It is useful to reflect on what happiness is. The Sierra Nevada mountain range near Lake Tahoe is one of the most beautiful spots…

I interviewed Fred Rogers, creator and host of television’s Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, by telephone a few years before he died. The occasion was the publication of his new book. Mister Rogers arrived on television after I grew up but I’d…

Photograph by Sapan Patel Meeting death with dignity With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started…

The Plays of William Shakespeare. John Gilbert, oil on canvas, 1849. Dahesh Museum of Art, New York City “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players….” When I had reached the end of the first…

Transforming repetition into renewal Marc Chagall (1887-1985), “The Shofar,” 1911 The conjunction “new” and “year” is in itself a kind of inner contradiction, for a year is something that repeats itself again and again while “new” represents change, the way…