The virus

I last wrote about COVID, in this space, on July 29th.  On that date, more than 150,000 Americans had died due to the virus.

Today--fifty-five days later--there have been an additional 50,000 deaths.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The death of Justice Ginsburg is a profound loss for the country.  She was brilliant, humane, courageous, remarkable. 

The photograph, below, was taken in 1972, the year she joined the faculty at Columbia Law School, with tenure.  At the time, she was 38 years old, and was the first woman to be hired by the school as a full professor. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Photo: Librado Romero/The New York Times)

The New Year

Rosh Hashanah--which begins the ten-day period, in Judaism, known as the Days of Awe--starts this evening, at sundown.

A good and happy New Year, to those who are observing the holiday. 

September 11th

I posted the above photograph last year, on the anniversary of September 11th.  I thought I would post it again.

It is, I think, a haunting image--that of the second airliner, a moment before it crashed into the South Tower of the Trade Center.

The picture was not published until 2002.  As I wrote last year: The picture, taken by Will Nuñez, appeared in the September 2002 issue of Vanity Fair, with other previously unseen images of the September 11th catastrophe, in an article titled "Two Towers: One Year Later." Mr. Nuñez's photograph also appeared in a book released the same month, Here is New York: A Democracy of Photographs (Scalo Verlag Publishers).

The caption in Vanity Fair noted, in part: "After the first plane hit Tower One, bond analyst Will Nuñez went to his corner newsstand and bought a $14.99 disposable camera, hoping to record the scene for history's sake.  Minutes later, from his downtown office window, he captured United Flight 175 as it sped toward Tower Two."

(Photograph ©Will Nuñez, and Scalo Verlag Publishers, 2002)