April 4, 2018 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee. The much-lauded civil rights leader, whose impact on legal racial equality in the US cannot be overstated, had spent the better part of his adult life fighting for freedoms which White Americans took for granted, but which were habitually denied to Blacks.
On Valentine’s Day, 14 February 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz shot and killed 17 people at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, wounding 14 others. A former student, Cruz began his rampage at 2:21 PM, after taking an Uber to the school.
“It was like an asteroid fell from the sky.” — Eric Paddock, brother of the Las Vegas shooter, on his stunned reaction to the news
Unfathomable. The amount of carnage one determined human being can wreak, in ten minutes of indiscriminate shooting into a crowd, is simply unfathomable. 59 dead, 527 wounded, in the worst mass shooting in US history.
On Friday, September 8, 2017, I had a minor medical procedure called a cardioversion. It’s a simple outpatient procedure, necessitated by my heart being out of rhythm.
July 16, 2017 saw the death of horror film director George Romero, often credited with creating the modern zombie.
On July 15, 2017, stage and screen actor Martin Landau passed away, at the age of 89, of “unexpected complications” after a brief hospital stay.
