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A Death in the Village

On Janna’s way to work this morning, she snapped this image with her iPhone and emailed it to me.  She’s done that in the past with a copper moon, and a Steve Jobs memorial, but these flowers, and this mourning this morning was different.

This shrine was filled with hurt and rage and you can find it all right now at the Barnes & Noble bookstore on the corner of West 8th Street and the Avenue of the Americas; for this is the spot where Mark Carson, a 32-year-old Gay man, was gunned down a few days ago — shot in the face by an impromptu stalker just for being who he was — and so the latest Greenwich Village New York City hate crime is now on the police blotter, written in blood on a public sidewalk.

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The Pain of Removing Racism

It is difficult to change who you are once you have lived a certain way for years, even decades. For people who struggle to lose weight, for example, part of the problem is not that the workout routines or proper nutrition is difficult on a day to day basis — but actually changing the lifestyle to become that in which those routines are the norm and the nutrition is a healthy one is the challenge. This is just as difficult when, for example, a person is trying to break away from a bad way of living — a criminal lifestyle, gang membership, or similar affiliation.

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Did Tyler Clementi Leap to His Death, or Was He Pushed?

The recent, leaping, suicide death of 18-year-old Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi from the edge of the George Washington Bridge reads like “Lori Drew: Part II” in so many sad ways.  Two Rutgers students are charged with “invasion of privacy” because they secretly streamed live internet video of Tyler making out with a guy in his dorm room.

Continue reading → Did Tyler Clementi Leap to His Death, or Was He Pushed?