Toronto is one of the last places in North America still largely closed by the pandemic. Good. Because saving our lives or saving our economy isn’t an ‘either-or’ thing, though we seem hard-wired to think that way. And lord knows, the loud kid to the south is screaming that it’s time to move on, as […]
The Plague-Ground – It’s an “and-and” thing. Read More »
In America these days, pride doesn’t cometh before the fall. Lack of pride does. Yesterday, Gallup released a poll that said US National Pride Falls to Record Low. That headline caught me because I’d always thought Americans are the North Star of patriotism. Their own exceptionalism won’t let them be anything but the proudest citizens
The Plague-Ground – Stand Proud. Ok, Sit Proud then. Read More »
Denial constantly evolves in order to fulfill its destiny, which is hiding the truth. One form of denial claims: “I was just following orders,” and we all know what that was hiding. Another is: “I didn’t know.” This short list is in a devastating critique of Trump’s last week by Masha Gessen in The New Yorker.
The Plague-Ground – I Didn’t Know Read More »
Today is 13 weeks exactly since millions of us were told not to come back to our offices and stay home. Three months exactly. One quarter of the year exactly. A quarter of the fiscal. A season of the year. On Friday, March 13th, Jean and I packed our car and headed north to our
The Plague-Ground – What We Didn’t Know Read More »
There’s a flood of online courses, experts and self-improvers out there, all vying for time on my screen and my day. Frankly, I’m exhausted from all the ways I can be even better than I am. Forget “can be better.” Must! So I do what we all do when it’s all just too much: I
The Plague-Ground – The Rise of the Online Intellectual Read More »
Those 8 minutes and 46 seconds Derek Chauvin spent crushing the neck of George Floyd reveals another police problem that’s hiding in plain sight in Toronto as much as in Minneapolis and New York. How many policewomen have killed Black people in suspicious circumstances? I doubt many, if any at all. How many non-white police
The Plague-Ground – As white as the driven snow. Read More »
Doctors and lawyers have liability insurance. So do hairdressers and barbers. In fact, so does anyone who owns a car. Get a few speeding tickets and suddenly your premiums rocket – and either you slow down or you stop driving because the cost is prohibitive. Why can’t we do this with rogue cops? Why can’t
The Plague-Ground – What could stop rogue cops? Insurance. Read More »
Back in 2007 some Apple engineers fiercely resisted adding a camera to the new iPhone. “Who would ever take a picture with their phone?” It seems of the 1,436,300,000,000 digital photos and videos shot this year, enough of them are of Black people and members of minorities being shot by police. Or suffocated. Or merely
The Plague-Ground – Take your picture, mister? Read More »
Georges Clemenceau said that war is too important to be left to the generals. But civil war? Or even civil unrest? Not if General James Mattis has his way. When Mattis resigned as Donald Trump’s hand-picked Secretary of Defense in 2017, he said nothing (and I mean nothing) beyond “I had no choice but to
The Plague-Ground – Generals Read More »
I was raised on politics and the English language. Or rather, on Politics and the English Language. That’s the title of George Orwell’s essay on how thought may corrupt language, but language also corrupts thought – and now more than ever it seems. Orwell is best-known for his dystopian novels Animal Farm and 1984 which gave
The Plague-Ground – All issues are political issues Read More »
I’ve been on both sides of an intervention. Once, back in 1990 when my two great (and sadly late) friends, Arthur Gelgoot and Charles Fremes, staged an intervention that stopped my steep slide into addiction. Since then I’ve taken part in half a dozen interventions, not as the person in freefall from alcohol or drugs,
The Plague-Ground – It’s time for an intervention Read More »
I haven’t read a book in well over a year. Sure, I dip into books, extracting what I need for work. Often and ironically, this involves writers whom I invite to Ramsay Talks to speak about their . . . books. I also listen to books feverishly, gobs and gobs of them. If it’s an
The Plague-Ground – Why can’t I read anymore? Read More »
