We are heading into the last couple of weeks of the annual Halifax Examiner subscription drive, and I want to say a few words about longer investigative pieces.
Any news outlet will carry a mix of stories: you’ve got news, you’ve got opinion, sometimes you’ve got comics and crosswords too. And there are investigations.
Investigative reporting is tough. It requires time, effort, commitment, and skill — often with no guarantee that anything will come of a story. We live in a media environment in which investigative reporting is even more of a challenge than it used to be. Outlets are strapped for cash, and reporters face incredible pressure to produce content, sometimes for several different media on the same day. In these circumstances, it’s a lot easier to write quick hits than to spend months looking into something that may not even pan out.
One of the things I appreciate about the Halifax Examiner is the space and time given over to investigative reporting, and the willingness to pay staff or freelancers to chase down bigger stories. I don’t want to suggest that our colleagues at other media outlets don’t do investigative reporting. They do. But there are a lot of challenges in doing this work.
As part of the Ask Us Anything podcast I’m working on for the Examiner, Yvette d’Entremont and I were chatting, and Yvette told me about a lengthy investigative series she worked on in the 90s for the Yarmouth Vanguard. It was about the effects on veterans of having served in the first Gulf War. “My editor gave me carte blanche to work on the story,” d’Entremont told me. “My editor actually let me spend months on this.”
I asked her if she thought that kind of thing would be possible at a small newspaper now, and she said, “It would be, I think, pretty much impossible to be able to pull something off like that today.”
So I appreciate the fact that the Examiner punches above its weight in this department. Look at the battle to unseal documents related to search warrants in the mass murder case: the Examiner is still paying substantial legal bills in this fight, while some other publications have decided to drop the case.
Over this past year, the Examiner has published major stories — often multi-part — on the lobster fishery, mining fallout, Northern Pulp, hard right German radicals encouraging like-minded people to buy up land in Cape Breton, forestry practices, access to coastal areas, the illusory benefits of Nova Scotia’s casinos, and on and on.
It’s pretty impressive.
All of this happens because of your subscriptions. If you have already subscribed, thank you. If you haven’t, please subscribe here. If you sign up for an annual subscription (over $100) we will send you a free Examiner t-shirt too. I have one of these t-shirts, and let me tell you, it’s a good one.
News
1. Racial profiling at another Halifax-area Walmart
El Jones brings us the frustrating, heartbreaking, enraging story of Melissa Brushett, who went to the Dartmouth Crossing Walmart on Sunday afternoon with her son Deion. The two were there to buy children’s toys.
After paying for their purchases, Deion and Melissa, who are Black, decided to go back and pick up a few more things. Melissa says she did not want to be accused of shoplifting, so she made sure to keep her receipt in her hand.
After an altercation in the store left her upset, Melissa left, receipt still in hand.
In her story, “Another Black woman racially profiled at Walmart,” Jones writes:
“I left the store and the security guards were right on me,” Melissa recounts. She assumed that the man had reported the altercation in the aisle. “I was going to tell my side of the story,” she says, “but I didn’t even get the chance.”…
Melissa says she was in shock. “I couldn’t believe it when he said shoplifting. The receipt was still in my hand. The items were in the trunk which was open. I paid for every single item in that trunk.”
The cop slammed Melissa against the car without even allowing her to speak.
The events that Jones describes are sickening, but what really got me was Melissa Brushett’s emotion and her sense of shock at being accused:
In my 42 years,” she says, “I’ve never complained about racism. I’ve lived a great life. Today I witnessed it, and I’m glad my son was there to witness it too at his young age.” She adds:
“I’ve never had a problem with Walmart, and I’ve never had a problem with race. But today they showed me that, because there was no sign of shoplifting at all… I think I went through every feeling that a human being could possibly feel in 30 minutes. Everything hit me at one time. I was angry, but yet I was so hurt at the same time. I felt a lot of emotions today. My biggest feeling is the embarrassment. You brought so much embarrassment to me and my son today and we were having such a good day, and you accused me of shoplifting. How dare you?”
As I was reading this story, I remembered that one day I’d walked into Walmart with an item I wanted to return for which I had no receipt, and instead of heading straight to customer service, decided to pick up a few things I wanted to buy first. As I was walking down one of the aisles, I realized there was no way I could prove I hadn’t just picked the item up off the shelf and had stolen it. Oh well, I figured. I’ll tell them the truth and I hope they’ll believe me.
And that was it. Those were the stakes. Not being threatened with arrest, not being threatened with resisting arrest, not forced to confront fundamental injustice over something as simple as making an error in judgment while at Walmart. Just another boring day as a white person at Walmart.
I am glad El Jones has brought us this story, but I am also sorry there are so many stories like this for her to report on.
2. Management fee? Profit margin? Boondoggle? None of your business
Stephen Kimber sure knows how to write a lead:
On Thursday, lawyers for the McNeil government and Bay Ferries Limited appeared before Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Richard Coughlan to dissect the deliberative differences between a “management fee” and a “profit margin,” and to make clear that, in either case, neither is any of our business.
In his story, “When is a management fee a profit margin, and does calling it either make it any less a boondoggle?” Kimber turns his sharp eye (and a good dose of wit) on the case of Bay Ferries again, and the court case brought by the provincial Progressive Conservatives to make public the terms of the contract with the company. We are on the hook for an annual “management fee” and other expenses, while the ferry has not carried a single passenger in two years.
Kimber writes:
Back to those contractual obligations the government and Bay Ferries say we’re not entitled to know about.
Although not every single one of those taxpayer dollars passed into or through the hands of Bay Ferries — the government directly paid out about $10 million to upgrade US terminals in Portland and Bar Harbor on Bay Ferries’ behalf and will, if the service ever resumes, be responsible for paying the salaries of US Customs and Border Patrol officers at the terminal — most of those millions will have at least touched the ferry operator’s bank account.
Some of the subsidy, of course, goes to pay for supplies and services — the cost of leasing the vessel and crewing it with Americans (as contractually required), the cost of fuel, the cost of catering services, the cost of marketing and so on — but some undisclosed chunk also goes directly to Bay Ferries (Mark MacDonald, CEO and majority shareholder) as what the government used to call a “management fee” and what Bay Ferries’ legal team now prefers we think of as a “profit margin.”
Kimber does a great job of trying to follow the money, and his closing couple of paragraphs are just as great as that lead. Maybe better. You should read the whole piece. It’s for subscribers only, and you can subscribe here.
3. The case for clear writing, I guess
Zane Woodford has the final (?) word in the ongoing saga of Halifax Water’s regional development charge, or RDC. Halifax Water had asked the UARB to approve an increase in these fees, which are charged to developers for sewer and water connections, and to defray the increased costs to the system of new developments.
As part of the application, Halifax Water also asked the UARB to allow it to defer these fees for non-profit housing.
Woodford writes:
The UARB decision appeared to oppose any waiver or deferral of the fee. It read in part:
“Accordingly, while the Board is mindful of the impact of RDC rates on the development of affordable housing, the Board does not have the jurisdiction under the Public Utilities Act to waive or reduce the RDCs by reason of the affordability of those rates or charges for a segment of the public.”
Seems pretty clear… but wait! There’s a twist!
Read Woodford’s piece, “Halifax Water says UARB gave permission to defer fees for affordable housing development” for the rest of the story.
4. Opt-out organ donation a mistake, ethicist says
As of January 18, 2021, instead of opting in to organ donation, Nova Scotians who do not want to donate their organs will have to opt out. And bioethicist and Dalhousie professor Françoise Baylis thinks that’s a problem, Yvette d’Entremont reports.
It’s not that Baylis is opposed to organ donation. On the contrary. She tells d’Entremont:
“I support the overarching goal. I support the ends. I just question the means. In a democracy, in the context of making this kind of dramatic policy shift, you should’ve had an open public discussion/debate.”
One of the key issues with organ donation is families having to make decisions on behalf of their loved ones, or overriding their wishes. The opt-out legislation is supposed to help with that, by presuming consent. But, confusingly, families can still override these wishes.
d’Entremont quotes Baylis again:
“It would’ve been better, in my opinion, to stick with proper consent, not presumed consent, and to change the feature of family override. Why? Because that system would actually respect the autonomy of individuals,” she said.
“If you believe that competent individuals have the right to control their body, you should ask them what they want done and then you should not allow people to override their wishes.”
Baylis’s colleague Marika Warren, also has concerns, d’Entremont notes:
“I’m trying to really drive home for folks if there’s another way to get similar benefits that doesn’t restrict individual liberty in the same way then our obligation is to go that route,” Warren said in an interview.
This is an important and emotionally charged issue, and d’Entremont does a great job of walking us through the stakes, the data from other places, and alternative approaches. Read the full story here.
5. Where’s the accountability?
Andrew Rankin writes in the Chronicle Herald about ongoing concerns over accountability, given Premier Stephen McNeil’s decision to reconvene the legislature for a fall sitting on December 18 — just long enough to prorogue the session.
Nova Scotia is the only province whose legislature has not sat at all during the pandemic. It has sat for 13 days total this year.
Rankin talks to Ather Akbari, an economics professor at St. Mary’s. Akbari is particularly concerned about a lack of transparency when it comes to how the province is planning to spend its $228 million COVID stimulus funds.
Rankin writes:
Akbari questioned the premier’s decision to avoid the rigorous checks and balances of the legislature during a crisis when government transparency and accountability are needed most. That’s particularly true when it comes to spending hundreds of millions of public dollars, said the professor.
The McNeil government announced the stimulus fund back in May and projected the program would create 1,500 direct and 520 indirect jobs during this fiscal year. The money is intended to be spent repairing and building roads, bridges, buildings and waterfront properties.
CBC reported in October that the Department of Transportation Infrastructure and Renewal had backtracked on its pledge to provide the media outlet with a detailed list of tenders awarded and their value under the program.
Is there any compelling reason why the government should keep secret the information on these tenders? Other than that a party that ran on being the most open and accountable in the province’s history has become addicted to secrecy?
6. Oh God, not cancel culture again
Sydney ER doctor Chris Milburn is back in the news. A year ago, he wrote a Chronicle Herald op-ed that drew a lot of attention — and criticism. Here’s what I wrote for the Examiner at the time:
After the conviction of two special constables over the death in custody of Corey Rogers, Sydney ER doctor Chris Milburn wrote an opinion piece for the Chronicle Herald in which he said he “shuddered” at the decision.
“The starry-eyed view of medicine is that we spend our time helping appreciative people who are polite and reasonable. In reality, on a very regular basis, we deal with “the criminal element.” … I have seen criminals spit at, assault and threaten officers and the officers’ families. I am constantly amazed by the grace, compassion, and patience shown to these patients, which often exceeds that from our physicians and hospital staff.”
The story uses the words “criminal” and “criminals” more than a dozen times: “dangerous criminal behaviour,” “violent criminals,” “intoxicated criminals,” “these criminals” — you get the idea.
A group of people filed a complaint with the Nova Scotia College of Physicians and Surgeons over the op-ed, saying it constituted misconduct. Now, Nicole Sullivan writes for the Cape Breton Post, the college has cleared him of any wrongdoing.
Milburn has framed this in the most irritating way possible, as a victory for free speech over “cancel culture.” Sullivan writes:
“I’m not the first victim of cancel culture and I won’t be the last,” [Milburn] said after the ruling was posted on the college’s website on Wednesday.
“Twenty years ago we could not agree with each other, think the other person is an idiot, walk away thinking they are an idiot but still let them have their point of view … Now people don’t feel comfortable publicly voicing their opinions (for fear of being shamed or professionally reprimanded).”
The investigating committee did offer some cautionary advice though, Sullivan writes:
While the decision was made to not pursue, the committee did tell Milburn they believe it’s “generally advisable where practical to air concerns of this nature within the health-care system before going public.” They also said they found some of his language to be “based on negative stereotypes that could be interpreted as stigmatizing to a segment of the population.”
I find it interesting that the people who are most vocal about cancel culture seem to have no problem at all voicing their opinions. Regardless of the college’s decision, Milburn’s op-ed (and its follow-up) would have remained freely available. I like Desmond Cole’s take on cancel culture. He says he prefers to frame it as facing consequences for your actions.
Views
The deafest era in baseball
I have written before about the Baseball by the Book podcast, hosted by veteran baseball journalist Justin McGuire. One of the things I love about this podcast, which features interviews with the authors of books on baseball, is that it is about a lot more than baseball. McGuire and his guests explore all kinds of social, political, and historical issues.
I’ve been meaning for some time to write a few words about the “Deaf Players in Major League Baseball” episode, with historian R.A.R. Edwards. She teaches courses in the history of baseball at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in New York state — a school where she says about 10 percent of the students are deaf. Edwards was led to write the book when she realized she was unable to answer a lot of questions about the history of deaf players and their contributions, and, she tells McGuire, “I thought, this is not going to do.”
Edwards says the last decades of the 19th century and the early 20th century represent a high point for deaf players in Major League Baseball, in part because so many schools for the Deaf played the sport and produced a slew of talented players. The best-known among these (though not the first) was William Ellsworth Hoy. Like many deaf players at the time, he was nicknamed “Dummy” — a name Edwards says he was fine with, because it connoted someone who signs, and not a lack of intelligence.
What stood out for me listening to Edwards was that in some ways, this era in baseball seems like a model for inclusion. Deaf players were (generally) valued for who they were, and not seen as lesser. And this, Edwards said, is significant given the context of the era:
“[Hoy] was representing his community in the late 19th century, at a time when it was under attack. Deaf people were under a lot of pressure to abandon sign language and to speak. They were under a lot of pressure to appear more hearing, act more hearing. They were under a lot of pressure to effectively abandon their own community, the Deaf community altogether… And that is not what Deaf people wanted at all. They wanted to be included in mainstream society… but they wanted to do it on their own terms, as deaf Americans.
Hoy, she said, embraced his deaf identity:
“He wanted to be known as a Deaf player who preferred to sign, who used sign language to communicate, who insisted on teaching his hearing teammates to sign to communicate with him. He wanted to be a part of the team, but he didn’t want to have to deny who he was to be part of the team… It’s a message that still resonates.”
Edwards said she doesn’t believe teammates, coaches and managers used American Sign Language, but they did learn to fingerspell.
Deaf players — in particular Hoy — also played a role in the development of umpire signals. Edwards said when Hoy came to bat, he couldn’t hear the plate umpire’s calls, and turning around after every pitch was impractical. So he developed a set of signs the third base coach used to relay the umpire’s call to him. The first umpire to use those signs, early in the 1906 season, was Francis “Silk” O’Loughlin (the nickname comes from his smooth voice), who had lost his voice prior to a game in Washington.
O’Loughlin umpired in the World Series that year, and when the crowds were so raucous that nobody could hear his calls, he started using gestures. Edwards said the Chicago Tribune wrote, “umpires were using Dummy Hoy’s code.” It worked so well, that umpires adopted the system permanently.
We see this over and over, right? Curb cuts are designed for people in wheelchairs, but benefit just about everybody. Grab bars in showers don’t just prevent people who are elderly or frail from falling over, they protect everyone.
The whole interview with Edwards is worth a listen, and she shares some great anecdotes, like the stories of Luther “Dummy” Taylor, who conducted contract negotiations during a game from the pitcher’s mound by signing, and umpire Hank O’Day, who learned sign language in the off-season so he could understand when Taylor was cursing him out in signs from the mound and eject him from the game.
Noticed
I used to have banal dreams in which I do things like shop for groceries. Every so often I’d have a dream that was cinematic, or frightening, or scary, or emotionally harrowing. I also had a couple of recurring motifs common to many: weird airplane dreams, often ending just before a crash, and dreams in which I lost a tooth.
My dreams were occasionally memorable, but on the whole not remarkable — and there were many mornings when I woke up unable to recall any dreams at all.
No more.
Now, since the onset of the pandemic, I go to sleep wondering what the heck the night will bring. A couple of nights ago, I was at Harvard for a seminar and my sister-in-law was there too. She had a fellowship and was going to spend a semester teaching at the university, but she was pissed off because Jill Biden had taken her apartment and now she had nowhere to stay.
I’ve dreamt that I was in a band with an otter for a lead singer, and one in which Dr. Theresa Tam told me I couldn’t attend a writers’ gala because I needed to get more sleep.
And, of course, I’m not alone. Many articles have been written on the global phenomenon of pandemic dreams.
In a National Geographic story published in April 2020, Rebecca Renner writes:
Though these processes happen nightly, most people don’t typically remember their dreams. Living through the coronavirus pandemic might be changing that due to heightened isolation and stress, influencing the content of dreams and allowing some dreamers to remember more of them. For one, anxiety and lack of activity decrease sleep quality. Frequent awakenings, also called parasomnias, are associated with increased dream recall. Latent emotions and memories from the previous day can also influence the content of dreams and one’s emotional response within the dream itself.
There are a number of projects collecting these dreams, and I spent a bit of time with a couple of them, including the appropriately named Pandemic Dreams Archive.
Visitors to the site are invited to share their dreams. These are published (with permission) on the site, and/or used for an ongoing data project seeking to map commonalities among dreams.
The pandemic influence on some of these dreams is pretty obvious. Take this one, from Jessie Jack of Oslo:
Everybody knew that the spiders were the new rulers of the world. Noone could see them, but we knew they were there. My friend showed me a red massive books with all the spiders laws. The two terrifying dictators were called “the soft one” and “the hard one”. The soft one was the worst, and everyone knew it. They were an invisible force that controlled all of us.
Or this one, from Christina in Liverpool:
I am on a train going through green and verdant country side when suddenly masks start dropping from above our heads like on an aircraft in a disaster movie and we are all gasping for air and fighting each other to grab them. Outside the train the landscape is on fire.
One of the things I love about some dreams is how they can be incredibly specific on certain details, and vague or contradictory in others. Like this one, from Amsterdam (no author listed):
i was in philly doing something like getting ready for a show (but really it was philly/nyc/london b’cause dream space) i stopped in a building to look at some historic architecture — a ceiling of gold chandeliers – and then went for a short walk on my way to a train station to get my favorite vegan brunch…
In the dream, Philadelphia can also be London and New York, and that’s fine.
You know how when you have a dream you sometimes get all fired up and want to share every detail? That’s what this “philly/nyc/london” one is like:
i also walked past a church/community center that had been turned into a mecca for all hot femme queers which were all hanging out it the parking lot in short shorts or cute skirts, tattoos, hairdos lipstick etc. hot hot sunny day (everyone wanted ice cream) i get to the place to get brunch… so i get my food to go- let’s say it’s a sourdough vegan bacon egg n cheese.. or some shit with vegan hollandaise sauce and home fries and vegan mayo or it’s a greasy fatty delicious thing with fucking toast! and a side salad! i contemplate getting vegan ice cream, but then i don’t because the line is too long and everyone is getting ice cream and plus i have to catch a train home on my way out- the person is still at table with friends so i go up to them and say ‘hey what are you doing right now?’ i guess they say something like ‘nothing’ so i ask them if they want to come hang out at my house. no i ask them if i can kidnap them.
It goes on for awhile, but I’ll leave it at this for now. You can read the whole thing at the link above, if you like.
Several dreams in the archive are from Canada, including one by Meredith Wilson of Halifax. I would say its pandemic roots are pretty clear:
I was standing in front of my mother’s linen closet. I kept taking out towels and sheet sets and unwrapping them to find used bottles of hand sanitizer stashed away. By the time I was done, I had about 6 or 7 bottles lined up. They were all different sizes and brands, and some were almost full, some 1/2 empty, and some 3/4 empty. Once I had discovered them all, I lined up against the pile of towels and sheets and thought “Phew.”
Some are not directly about the pandemic, but they are quite obvious metaphors, like this one, from Diane Buchanan of Bowen Island:
Sleeping in a friend’s cabin a bear came in and was attacking me…screamed for help. Friend came and helped. Went back to sleep and the bear came back….screamed again. Friend came back and was very annoyed. My response….”don’t be mad at me, you left the door open”.
And some, like this dream from someone named Vinky in Canada, are just pure generalized anxiety and confusion:
I was being chased through a mall by an international police force. I needed to get out to be safe but I had forgotten my passport back in the store where I was from. They were going to catch me. I was a small creature, maybe a marmot or a lemur?
Another site collecting dreams, i dream of covid, allows you to browse dreams by location and keyword, and also provides illustrations, along with a bit more detail about the dreamers.
Here is one by a Canadian in their 20s. I love the contrast between the outrageous dream and the mundane concern. Very dreamlike:
I was cleaning the bathtub in my home when all of a sudden the bathtub was flooded and multicoloured goldfish came out of the drain and swam around the bathtub. All of a sudden the bathtub starts leaking and then flooding the house and the fish all fall out and flip around. All I could worry about was how we’d get a plumber to come by during this time.
Finally, this dream from a Californian in their 20s:
I have plans to zoom with two friends tonight, and a couple of nights ago I had a dream about it! I dreamed that too many people were invited to the zoom and we couldn’t have a regular conversation. Overall, it was a very chaotic zoom hang out. I got upset that I wasn’t able to chat with my two friends. I woke up right after the dream ended and had actual ANXIETY! I think I just had a zoom nightmare!!!!
Sometimes I wake up from a dream feeling this intense desire to share it. And I can feel it slowly falling apart as I recount it, realizing the elements that made perfect sense in the dream don’t hold together, or are even just incoherent. What’s left may be a feeling or a lot of seemingly disconnected details.
So, dreams often make unsatisfying narratives — they may inspire great storytelling, but they are rarely great stories themselves. Still, they can be utterly fascinating in their own way, and I appreciate the opportunity to read so many of them, shared during our strange times.
Government
City
Monday
Board of Police Commissioners (Monday, 12:30pm) — a live webcast. More info here.
Advisory Committee on Accessibility in HRM (Monday, 4pm) — virtual meeting, agenda here.
Tuesday
Halifax Regional Council (Tuesday, 1pm) — virtual meeting; more info and agenda here.
Province
Monday
No meetings.
Tuesday
Veterans Affairs (Tuesday, 2pm, Province House) — Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage – Legion Capital Assistance Program; Natasha Jackson from Communities Nova Scotia, and Bill Greenlaw from Communities, Sport and Recreation. More info here.
On campus
Dalhousie
Monday
Chemical exposure during pregnancy (Monday, 12:30pm) — Jillian Ashley-Martin from the Environmental Health Science and Research Bureau of Health Canada will talk about “Exposure to and health effects of environmental chemical exposure during pregnancy: An overview of the Maternal-Infant Research on Environmental Chemicals Research Platform.” More info and Zoom link here.
Bring your own environmental chemicals. On second thought, maybe don’t.
Quantum Symmetry (Monday, 3:30pm) — Chelsea Walton from Rice University will
discuss “quantum symmetry” from an algebraic viewpoint, especially for symmetries of algebras. The term “quantum” is used as algebras here are usually noncommutative. I will mention some interesting results on when symmetries of algebras must factor or do not factor through symmetries of classical gadgets (such as groups or Lie algebras), that is, when we must enter the realm of quantum groups (or Hopf algebras) to understand symmetries of a given algebra. This all fits neatly into the framework of studying algebras in monoidal categories, and if time permits, I will give some recent results in this direction. I aim to keep the level of the talk down-to-earth by including many basic definitions and examples.
Tuesday
Generators and Relations for the Group On(Z[1/2]) (Tuesday, 2:30pm) — Sarah Meng Li will talk about her joint work with Neil Julien Ross and Peter Selinger.
We give a finite presentation by generators and relations for the group On(Z[1/2]) of n-dimensional orthogonal matrices with entries in Z[1/2]. We then obtain a similar presentation for the group of n-dimensional orthogonal matrices of the form (1/\sqrt{2})^k M, where k is a nonnegative integer and M is an integer matrix. Both groups arise in the study of quantum circuits. In particular, when the dimension is a power of 2, the elements of the latter group are precisely the matrices that can be represented by a quantum circuit over the universal gate set consisting of the Toffoli gate, the Hadamard gate, and the computational ancilla.
Saint Mary’s
Monday
Citing and Refworks: A Survival Guide (Monday, 11am) — webinar registration here.
Show Me the Numbers: Stats and Data Discovery Tools to Support Your Research (Monday, 7pm) — webinar registration and more info here.
In the harbour
09:30: Atlantic Kestrel, offshore supply ship, arrives at Pier 9 from sea
10:30: Viking Queen, car carrier, arrives at Autoport from Emden, Germany
10:30: CMA CGM Elbe, container ship, arrives at Pier 41 from Colombo, Sri Lanka
14:00: Ardmore Sealifter, oil tanker, sails from Irving Oil for sea
15:30: Viking Queen sails for sea
16:00: Tropic Hope, container ship, sails from Pier 42 for Palm Beach, Florida
Footnotes
No witty note to close on today.
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Why doesn’t Walmart overhaul its security department???
Thanks for the ‘dream ‘news story on dreaming during covid. As a dream follower recorder for a long time a la Carl Jung, it is reassuring to have a newspaper acknowledge the importance of dreams for us individually and socially. The convergence of our exterior life and our interior life. The inner world is the unseen depths like that of an iceberg. It seems like we live today and never acknowledging the influence of the unconscious. Trump a totally unconscious man. And duh it never occurred to me that my many dreams lately could arise from anxiety about covid.
Re #6 on cancel culture, I’ll quote Ayishat Akanbi (a young writer with many thoughtful things to say on free speech and cancel culture) “We need to be able to discern between things that we find uncomfortable and things that are hateful.”
Deirdre Barrett has already published a book of pandemic dreams. I’ve been having a lot of yearning dreams about traveling lately. Very obvious.
https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/pandemic-dreams-excerpt/
Ms Brushette should sue Walmart. Everyone who is falsely accused and detained has a right to sue. Get a lawyer.
Otis Nixon (Expos/Braves) was the only deaf or partially deaf MLB player that I knew of. He communicated with coaches and team mates mostly with gestures. It was thought that he was adept at stealing the catcher’s signs when on base.
I have never heard this about Nixon (who I remember, and I don’t see him listed at Baseball Reference under Deaf players. Is it possible you are thinking of Curtis Pride? He was playing for the Expos while Nixon was with the Braves.
Yes, you’re right – it was Pride.