Last weekend I was in Kyiv, where European, American, and Ukrainian officials were mingling with journalists and policy experts at the Yalta European Strategy conference. With Ukrainian troops liberating Izium, Balakliya, and other northeastern towns, the atmosphere was triumphant.

For millennia, poets have tried to describe the animals in their lives. Some of the most famous verses concern a particular creature—wild or adorable or filthy or dignified—closely observed. Take Elizabeth Bishop detailing the shallow, yellowed eyes of her caught fish; Mary Oliver looking up at wild geese sweeping across the sky; D. H. Lawrence tenderly cheering on a baby tortoise, “a tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.

JAY, Maine—Services at the New Life Baptist Church had just wrapped up, and in the parking lot outside its tiny chapel, Paul LePage was standing behind me with his arm wrapped around my head. He held a cellphone inches from my face, as if he were filming an extreme close-up.

Is it permissible for private schools in this country to disregard state standards of proficiency in English, math, and U.S. history? This is the question at the heart of a recent wide-ranging investigative report from The New York Times. The article focuses on the Hasidic educational system in New York, whose students almost uniformly fail state standardized tests in reading and math.

The Queen is dead. Long live the King. How strange this process, how archaic and theatrical, moving and melancholy, mixing the worlds of King Arthur and Netflix. We are often told that it is this connection to the deep past that gives monarchy its meaning. But as the world prepares for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in London tomorrow, the unchanging continuity is less significant than the subtle evolution of the nation that it conceals.