COVID-blues getting you down? No matter how difficult life was to begin with, the current pandemic has, for most of us, made it even harder. Families are financially strapped, kids are missing their school friends, and parents everywhere are united in their chorus of, “If I have to cook one more meal…” What follows is…
I’m back on my soapbox, and I’m angry. And I’m sorry (not sorry), but the focus of my anger has barely shifted from the gun violence I ranted about last time. Over the weekend, we saw the young people of America – indeed, the world – come together in a spectacular way to protest gun…
It’s always a little awkward, writing a blog post after a long period of silence. I decided that instead of trying to explain my absence, I would come back with a regular Soap Box feature. About once a week, I would find something that made me feel outraged, and I would vent about it. With…
This is a message for those who are equating white nationalists with Black Lives Matter. Stop it. Just stop. For you to draw any equivalency whatsoever between the two is disgraceful, disrespectful, and insulting. I really shouldn’t have to explain the difference, but here it is, just in case you really are that stupid. The…
So. Donald Trump is now the President of the United States. Very few people thought this would actually happen, including, I would venture to say, Mr. Trump himself. I think most of the world held onto an unrealistic hope, right up until the ninety ninth hour, that something would happen to prevent or delay him…
Dear friends who voted for Donald Trump, I’m going to start this letter with a disclaimer: I am not an American. I am a Canadian citizen who voted for Justin Trudeau in the last federal election. That should give you an idea of which way I lean politically. If you were to look up the…
If you’ve spent any amount of time on Facebook over the last few months, you might have seen something called the Black Dot Campaign. The concept is simple: if you see a woman with a black dot in the palm of her hand, she is a victim of ongoing domestic violence and needs to be…
When I left South Africa in 2000, many people assumed that I was wanting to be part of the “brain drain”: a flood of disillusioned young professionals getting out of a troubled country before it was too late. Although there were undeniable problems plaguing the country, that is not why I left. My reason was…
A few days ago, an eighteen-year-old woman named Sanet – the sister of one of my friends – was brutally assaulted in Cape Town. She got into a taxi to get home after a night out with friends, and the taxi driver and another man pinned her down, kicked her and beat her. She was…