December 2017

11 Dec

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

This is the season of Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Christmas, and other holidays invoking the light, all renamed from ancient festivals, all born from the scientific reality of the Solstice: Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and simultaneous Summer Solstice south of the Equator. Here in the United States, where I am, it seems fitting that after 2017 we’ll be observing the longest, darkest night of the year. But never forget, the light does return. So let's hold our noses and burrow through this, fast as we can. Wildfires in California (Southern Cal, this time) rage on, as 2017's hurricane and flood and drought survivors try to piece their lives and homes back together—the now daily normalization of intensifying climate change still not properly identified as such in news reports. Trump's announcement of moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem (de facto declaring it the capital of Israel), alienated allies, delighted...

04 Dec

Posted at 06:00h in Uncategorized

In the frigid winter of 1905, many of the craftswomen who exquisitely hand painted the world-famous Limoges vases and figurines went on strike in France—not over their low wages or long hours but because they were sick of being prey to the factory overseers’ sexual demands. Their protest was against a custom, the droit du seigneur (right of the lord), dating back to the Middle Ages, in which feudal lords—and, later, bosses—demanded sexual services from women subordinates. The Limoges porcelain workers won their fight only after the strikes turned violent and the army opened fire, killing one male supporter and wounding four others. A funeral procession of 30,000 workers, almost all women, carried flowers as a last homage to someone who had died fighting for their dignity. So #MeToo, brilliant and powerful as it is, is hardly new or, as we're witnessing, restricted to any one walk of life in a...