Ned Gallagher:
What I’m Up To
In The Good Old Summertime
“Thy eternal summer shall not fade.”
- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 19
Vive Le Sport!
One of the delights of this June was watching the French Open tennis championships (or “Roland Garros,” if you prefer). The tournament began with a send-off for its greatest champion, Rafael Nadal, whom I’ve had the pleasure of watching compete in Paris in person a couple of times during his 14-title reign. The ceremony was pitch perfect, with appearances by Rafa’s great rivals Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray.
Since Warner Brothers Discovery won a 10-year contract for the U.S. media rights to the event, the TNT Sports coverage was available for streaming on the HBO Max platform throughout the two weeks, covering all the matches on all the courts, in addition to providing lots of studio time with the usual talking heads (Andre Agassi—with his razor-sharp mind for the game—was a welcome addition to the commentary line-up).
On the final weekend, I was pleased to see American Coco Gauff emerge victorious in women’s singles, capturing her second major title. But I could not have imagined how thrilling the tournament’s closing act would be. Though there was much anticipation of the top two seeds in men’s singles—Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz—meeting in the final round, what they delivered on the last Sunday of play was nothing short of epic. Both players brought substantial pedigree to the title bout. Neither had yet lost a Grand Slam singles final. Sinner was the current world #1, having won the last two majors in New York and Melbourne, and Alcaraz was the defending champion at the French and Wimbledon. Before the match, I would have given the edge to the Spaniard based on his proficiency on the slippery red clay surface, but as things unfolded, Sinner’s spectacular ball-striking took him to a two-set lead and at one point earned him three match points in the fourth set. It looked like it was over at that point, which still would have been an altogether satisfying conclusion. But the remaining hour or so of play turned out to be nail-bitingly exciting, as the two competitors swapped the momentum back and forth, each looking well positioned to take home the trophy at various points. The 10-point tiebreak in the fifth set was a showcase for Alcaraz’s competitiveness and shot-making flair and settled the bout decisively. I tell my team that tiebreaks are nearly always lost, not won, but this one proved the exception to that rule as Carlitos dominated with nearly perfect tennis, producing sizzling winners when the stakes were staggeringly high some five-and-a-half hours after the start of the match. When the (brick) dust settled, it was clear that an event that began with a goodbye to the Big Three era in men’s tennis ended with a memorable showdown, one that teases a future with a pair of competitors well positioned to live up to the legacy of Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic. I already am looking forward to seeing the battles Sinner and Alcaraz will wage in the months and years ahead. If their matches are anything like what we witnessed at Roland Garros this year, it will be another (a continuing?) great era in men’s professional tennis. Next up: the greensward of the All-England Club! Wrapping Up My Work at the Graduate Institute
In the first week of August, I will finish my last two courses in the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College. I could have plowed through the entire program in just over a year, but I am glad I stretched it out on a part-time basis over two years, in part for better work/life balance, and in part to extend the enjoyment of my association with the institution and its people. Along the way I have spent a few weekends on both Annapolis and Santa Fe campuses, connecting with tutors and classmates in person. This summer, I am completing the History segment with a tutorial and taking a preceptorial on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. A week one assignment in the latter course was memorizing and reciting the first 18 lines of the “General Prologue” using Middle English pronunciation; this was a task that vexed me a great deal, but in the end turned out to be something I valued. If nothing else, it’s a good party trick in academic circles! Cutting the Cord
I began my long-term status as a cable television customer when I first moved to Connecticut. That means I’ve been shelling out subscriber fees for decades now. But the cost of a basic cable subscription was probably less than half of what neighbors in my town have been paying, because those of us who live on campus could access a bulk rate subscription deal through the school. That deal is going away at the end of the summer, as the institution no longer depends on video services as it once did. So last week I dropped off the cable boxes with Comcast/Xfinity and disconnected my coaxial service. I already had slashed my plan drastically a few years back, once I started adding various streaming services. It has been years since I watched “live TV” via cable, but I was unwilling to cut the cord entirely at that point because I still valued access to channels such as CNN and ESPN, among others. But now one can subscribe to a live streaming package that includes local channels from each of the major broadcast networks, as well the usual range of traditional cable channels. DirectTV, Sling, YouTube, and others have such offerings. After doing some research, I settled on upgrading my existing Hulu+ subscription to include a live streaming package that pretty much gives me everything I want (and still folds in Disney+ and ESPN+ as part of the bundle at no extra cost). Also, for the first time, I am able to access TCM for classic films. I thought I might lose access to the broadcast feed of Tennis Channel, but it turns out my ongoing Tennis Channel+ subscription started providing that in 2024 anyway. Almost nothing in my media consumption pattern will change, as I’ve been using dedicated apps on my laptops and tablets and on Apple TV devices at home for years now. (These apps work well while traveling; this is even true abroad, thanks to VPN technology.) The next thing to consider is whether I will continue paying for SO MANY different streamers every month! Going For Baroque
I found myself back in Rome a week ago. I spent five days in the Italian capital—one of my favorite cities—on a trip I rescheduled from March. Among the chief attractions this time around was the Caravaggio exhibition in the Palazzo Barberini, conveniently right across the street from my hotel. Rome is chock full of cultural and artistic treasures, of course: in museums (the Borghese Gallery, the Vatican), in local churches (e.g., Bernini’s masterful sculpture “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” in Santa Maria della Vittoria), and right out in the streets (another Bernini sculpture, of Triton, was situated right in front of my hotel, for instance). The Eternal City is a wonderful mix of the (very) old and the contemporary: layers upon layers of history are there to be oberved as Rome is almost literally a palimpsest. It’s an eminently walkable city, too. Its shops and restaurants are in close proximity to iconic venues such as the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, and the Forum.
So This Happened . . .
This nice thing was a personal highlight of the last all-school meeting of the year in May:
What I’m Reading
Working On Now:
- Mark Hodgkinson, Searching for Novak: The Man Behind the Enigma
- Philip Shenon, Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church
Recently Finished:
- Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again
- David Mitchell, Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England’s Kings and Queens
- Maureen Corrigan, So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures
- Christopher Clarey, The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay
- Pico Ayer, Aflame: Learning from Silence
- Patrick Hunt, Caravaggio (Life & Times)
- Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House
- John H. Arnold, History: A Very Short Introduction
On Deck:
- Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
- Daniel Silva, An Inside Job
- Paul Elie, Reinventing Bach
- Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun
- John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
For Courses I’m Taking This Summer:
- Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
- John Milton, Paradise Lost
- C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost
- The Bhagavadgita in the Mahābhārata
- Augustine, City of God
- Giambattista Vico, The New Science
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophy of History
- Karl Marx, The German Ideology
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History
- Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
For Courses I’m Teaching This Summer:
- James Q. Wilson et al., American Government: Institutions and Policies
- Leon P. Baradat and John A. Phillips, Political Ideologies: Their Origins and Impact
- Homer, The Iliad
- Pericles, “Funeral Oration”
- Sophocles, Antigone
- Peter S. Bennett, What Happened on Lexington Green: An Inquiry into the Nature and Method of History
What I’m Watching
Ongoing—Television:
- Murderbot (Apple TV+)
- Lazarus (HBO Max)
- Grantchester, season 10 (PBS Passport)
- Stick (Apple TV+)
- Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld (Disney+)
- The Gilded Age, season 3 (HBO Max)
- Mr. Loverman (BritBox)
- America To Me (Starz)
- Love Death + Robots, season 4 (Netflix)
- Long Way Home (Apple TV+)
- Ironheart (Disney+)
Recently Finished—Television:
- Treason (Netflix)
- The Class (PBS Passport)
- coverage of Roland Garros tennis (TNT, HBO Max)
- Hacks, season 4 (HBO Max)
- Light and Magic, season 2 (Disney+)
- Carlos Alcaraz: My Way (Netflix)
- Your Friends and Neighbors (Apple+)
- Black Mirror, season 7 (Netflix)
- The Residence (Netflix)
- Rafa Nadal Academy (Prime Video)
- James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction (AMC+)
- Adults (Hulu)
- Department Q (Netflix)
On Deck—Television:
- coverage of Wimbledon tennis (ESPN, ESPN+)
- Moving (Disney+)
- Flowers (Prime Video)
- Carême (Apple TV+)
- Tanner ’88 (Criterion)
- Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 3 (Paramount+)
- The Bear, season 4 (Hulu)
- Foundation, season 3 (Apple TV+)
- Nautilus (AMC+)
- The Summer I Turned Pretty, season 3 (Prime Video)
- The Sandman, season 2 (Netflix)
- The Lazarus Project, seasons 1 & 2 (TNT)
Recently Finished—Films:
- Sergeant Rutledge (d. John Ford, 1960), streamed on iTunes
- The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (d. Wes Anderson, 2024), streamed on Netflix
- The Grand Budapest Hotel (d. Wes Anderson, 2014), streamed on iTunes
- The Darjeeling Limited (d. Wes Anderson, 2007), streamed on Hulu
- The Royal Tenenbaums (d. Wes Anderson, 2001), streamed on Criterion
- The Apartment (d. Billy Wyler, 1960), streamed on Pluto
- Psycho (d. Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), streamed on Netflix
- Bono: Stories of Surrender (d. Andrew Dominik, 2025), streamed on Apple TV+
- Elio (d. Domee Shi, Madeline Sharafian, & Adrian Molina, 2025), cinema
- How to Train Your Dragon (d. Dean DeBlois, 2025), cinema
- The Phoenician Scheme (d. Wes Anderson, 2025), cinema
- Mountainhead (d. Jesse Armstrong, 2025), streamed on HBO Max
- Friendship (d. Andrew De Young, 2024), cinema
- Pee-wee As Himself (d. Matt Wolf, 2025), streamed on HBO Max
- Mr. Polaroid (d. Gene Tempest, 2025), streamed on PBS Passport
- Fountain of Youth (d. Guy Ritchie, 2025), streamed on Apple TV+
- Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (d. Christopher McQuarrie, 2025), cinema
- Sinners (d. Ryan Coogler, 2025), cinema
- La Strada (d. Federico Fellini, 1954), streamed on HBO Max
- Star Trek: Section 31 (d. Olatunde Osunsanmi, 2025), streamed on Paramount+
- Thunderbolts* (d. X, 2025), cinema
- Stromboli (d. Roberto Rossellini, 1950), streamed on Criterion
- Number One on the Call Sheet: Black Leading Women in Hollywood (d. Shola Lynch, 2025), streamed on Apple TV+
- Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith (d. George Lucas, 2005), cinema
- Rome, Open City (d. Roberto Rossellini, 1945), streamed on HBO Max
- Ossessione (d. Luchino Visconti, 1943), streamed on Prime Video
- Toni (d. Jean Renoir, 1935), streamed on Criterion Channel
- Number One on the Call Sheet: Black Leading Men in Hollywood (d. Reginald Hualin, 2025), streamed on Apple TV+
What I’m Listening To
Music:
- Bruce Springsteen, Tracks II: The Lost Albums
- Bastille, &
- Sting, Sting 3.0
- Elton John & Brandi Carlile, Who Believes In Angels?
- Bono, Stories of Surrender EP
- Fleetwood Mac, Rumours
Podcasts:
- Good Hang with Amy Poehler
- Club Random with Bill Maher
What I’ve Been Attending
- Caravaggio exhibition, Palazzo Barberini, Rome, June
- Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel, Rome, June
- Borghese Gallery, Rome, June
- Kyoto, RSC production, Soho Place, London, April
- ”Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300–1350,” National Gallery, London, April
- Richard II, Bridge Theatre, London, April
- University of Chicago Graham School Movie Night on 1944 film of Henry V, virtual discussion, April
Where I’m Traveling
Recent Trips:
Upcoming Trips:
What I’m Learning
What I’m Looking Forward To