Pat Taub
Amazing Teens
This past Wednesday’s coast-to-coast school walkouts were extraordinary. Some 3,000 schools participated. Student leaders delivered intelligent, inspiring speeches. They made it clear they won’t stop protesting until our gun laws are reformed. They may turn out to be Trump’s most formidable opponent! Let’s all try to join the March 24th national protest for gun control. Let’s back our future generation that wants and deserves a future!
“Faces/Places”
This week I saw the magnificent documentary, “Faces/Places” featuring the 35 year-old street photographer JR and the legendary French filmmaker and photographer, Agnes Varda, who at 90 is still bursting with creativity. The pair visited small French communities photographing ordinary people and then blowing up the images and plastering them on buildings, making stars of unlikely folks. This celebration of humanity is the perfect antidote for the anger and cynicism that surrounds us.
From “Faces/Places”–an old woman refusing to leave her home in an abandoned mining community.
A Sad Anniversary
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam where American soldiers wiped out entire villages, killing 500 defenseless women, children and old men. “Democracy Now” interviewed several vets who witnessed and/or were in combat at the time and after My Lai were converted to the anti-war cause. Tragically the American military carnage goes on. Will we ever learn?
March Madness
I’m not referring to Washington, which seems truly mad as if it were performing Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” I’m referring to the college basketball tournament, which takes up most of March and started this week. My team, Syracuse, barely made the tournament, yet won their first game. I will cheer them on for the second round but, given their mediocre season, I’m not hopeful they will get very far this year. Still there’s plenty of excitement for basketball fans, like yesterday’s buzzer beater where Loyola beat the higher ranked Arizona by making the winning basket a second before the end of the game buzzer went off.
Syracuse in Wednesday’s winning game against Arizona
Caring Connections
To offset the mounting anger and hatred in the country, I’m making an extra effort to practice compassion in the form of trying to perform a random act of kindness daily. We need political reform but we also need kindness—perhaps they go hand-in-hand in the form of compassionate poitics.
