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I was shocked when Detective Dmaine Freeland, an active duty officer on the NYPD force, publicly condemned the Minneapolis officer who killed George Floyd and the other cops who witnessed the murder and did nothing to stop it. To say this is unusual is a massive understatement. It's absolutely unheard of. Being the first person to speak out in a culture that demands silence is incredibly difficult. When one person speaks out against evil and stands up for justice, others will follow. Next, four more New York City police officers joined Dmaine Freeland: Deputy Inspector Winston Faison, Detective Carl Achille, Sergeant Melody Peguese (retired), and Detective (retired) Michael Bell. These men are heroes. (Calling a cop a hero -- that's a first for me!) Soon apologies and statements started flowing from police departments across the US. By now, I'm guessing there is some pressure on departments to release these statements. I know that police officers speaking out against the

The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers may be the most shocking  disturbing of any I've been aware of for a very long time, possibly since the murder of Amadou Diallo , way back in 1999. Police murders of unarmed, and often completely subdued, African Americans have lost all power to shock, piling up at such a fast rate we can barely track them all. When I saw the hashtag #RememberThemAll, I thought, we can't. No human can. The original  New York Times  story said George Floyd "died after being taken into police custody". There is  no excuse  for that headline. Watch the video of George Floyd being slowly murdered by a police officer, while other officers look on and do nothing, while Floyd and bystanders plead for his life. Now imagine the two roles reversed, white cop on the ground, black man with foot on his neck. Murder? As of the time of this post, no charges have been brought against the murderers. They hold the universal get-out-of-jail-free

We activists like to paraphrase the legendary labour activist Joe Hill  by saying "First mourn, then organize". Larry Kramer, who died yesterday at the age of 84, defined the phrase. He taught a generation -- he taught an entire culture -- how to use grief as fuel, how to channel anger into action. How to use a nearly constant state of mourning to propel an entire movement into the next phase of liberation. As if that wasn't enough, Kramer was a talented and powerful writer. Kramer's play "The Normal Heart" broke new ground in the New York theatre landscape. He also wrote the film adaptation . If you haven't seen it, you should: it's great . The obituaries will tell you Kramer was a provocateur, that he understood how to use shock power to gain attention for his cause. That is true. But his cause was always the greater good -- health, justice, love, liberation. He understood those as necessary and inextricable. The obituaries will also tell you how p

I read Little House on the Prairie when I was very young, and eventually went on to read the whole Little House series. I didn't know any other girls named Laura -- there were at least five in my Master's program, but it wasn't a popular name back then -- and I was infatuated with the idea that the Laura in the story grew up to write the book I was holding in my hands. Even then, I wrote stories, and fantasized that I would write a similar series that children would love. The series was always said to be autobiographical, but it is also fiction. When I picked up Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser, I was curious how much the books reflected Wilder's life -- and how that pioneer girl came to write such an enduring (if now dated) children's series. Prairie Fires is revelatory. It's meticulously researched, and the writing is both precise and accessible. It's a fascinating read. The elephant in the room We can't

It's that time of year again. With no baseball, and home most nights, even before the lockdown, I spent a lot of time watching. First, my annual recap. (This is killing me because these posts had hundreds of comments.) - Canadian musicians and comedians (2006-07 and 2007-08) - my beverage of choice (2008-09) - famous people who died during the past year (2009-10) - where I'd like to be (2010-11) - vegetables (2011-12) (I was out of ideas!) - Big Life Events in a year full of Big Life Changes (2012-13) - cheese (I'm getting desperate!) (2013-14) - types of travels (2014-15) -  famous people who died plus famous people who died, part 2 (2015-16), - the picket line (2016-17), - movies (2017-18), and last year... I stopped this. I changed to a more conventional 1 through 5 rating system, using ☮ as a meaningful symbol. I'll change symbols every year. This year, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the symbol could only be 💉. (That's Blogger's syrin