The officers who murdered Freddie Gray have been charged with serious offenses. Is this the beginning of justice? We shall see. What I know for sure is that it is heartbreaking that a young man is dead, and that we are all so surprised that these officers have been charged and that skepticism that they will be convicted is probably for the best.
Prosecutors here, in an unexpected announcement, said Friday that they had filed homicide, manslaughter and misconduct charges against police officers in the death of Freddie Gray, who died after sustaining a spinal cord injury while in police custody.
In a news conference, the state’s attorney in Baltimore, Marilyn J. Mosby, described repeated mistreatment of Mr. Gray. Time and again, she said, officers abused him, arresting him without grounds and violating police procedure by putting him in handcuffs and leg restraints in the van without putting a seatbelt on him.
Ms. Mosby also said the officers had repeatedly failed to seek medical attention for Mr. Gray after he was injured. By the time he was removed from the van, she said, “Mr. Gray was no longer breathing at all.”
Help the people of Baltimore pay their water bills.
Boys only! Women are… confusing I guess? And they stress men out? I don’t know, but it’s all hilarious.
Just before one o’clock on a Tuesday lunchtime last summer, about 30 men and three women were mingling at the bar of the Garrick Club in London’s theatre district. The broadcaster Jeremy Paxman was leaning back on a low sofa, chatting with a young man (in this context, young means under 50). Michael Gove, the Conservative chief whip, was surrounded by a small cluster of men. After a while, Paxman stood up to say hello to Gove; they talked for a moment, laughing. Shortly after, everyone – among them a former warden of Wadham College, Oxford, and a senior adviser to the government on privatisation – made their way out of the bar for lunch.
also…
Even if the Garrick votes to admit women, it will be some time before they are able to join in any number: there is a seven-year waiting list and a current member has to die before a new one can join. Still, time marches on: a board by the entrance to the dining room displays numerous typed death notices. Passing this momento mori, members and their guests go in to enjoy chicken consommé, turbot and thick slabs of beef, selected from a menu unsullied by modern culinary trends.
I want in on that consommé.
A gorgeous short story, Light.
When Enebeli Okwara sent his girl out in the world, he did not know what the world did to daughters. He did not know how quickly it would wick the dew off her, how she would be returned to him hollowed out, relieved of her better parts. Before this, they are living in Port Harcourt in a bungalow in the old Ogbonda Layout. Her mother is in America reading for a Masters in Business Administration. She has been there for almost three years in which her eleven-year-old bud of a girl has bloomed. Enebeli and the girl have survived much in her absence, including a disturbance at the market which saw him and the girl separated for hours while people stampeded, trying to get away from a commotion that turned out to be two warring market women who’d had just about enough of each other’s tomatoes. They survived a sex talk, birthed by a careless joke an uncle had made at a wedding, about the bride taking a cup of palm wine to her husband and leaving with a cup of, well, and the girl had questions he might as well answer before she asked someone who might take it as an invitation to demonstrate. They survived the crime scene of the girl’s first period, as heavy a bleeder as she was a sleeper, the red seeping all the way through to the other side of the mattress. They survived the girl discovering this would happen every month.
Many women struggle with whether or not to report sexual violence. At VIDA, Ann Glaviano writes of her own experience with whether to report or not.
Stephen A Smith is the worst.
What does it take to be great at Scrabble?
In case you didn’t hear the news, there was a major shake-up in the competitive SCRABBLE world last summer in Buffalo. Conrad Bassett-Bouchard, a 24-year old graduate student from Portland, Oregon,won the $10,000 first prize at the National SCRABBLE Championship, making him the youngest American to ever win the tournament. But the big news was that the win ended Nigel Richards’ run of four titles. Richards, a reclusive New Zealander, is widely regarded as the best SCRABBLE player of all-time—the “Michael Jordan of the game,” as one co-competitor put it. Along with five U.S. National titles, Richards has won the World SCRABBLE Championship three times, and the Thailand International—the largest SCRABBLE tournament in the world—eleven times.
An artist who worked in private.
On a Saudi princess and her shopping habits (but really this is about much more).
It’s an old gambit—slipping out of a hotel in the dead of night to dodge the bill. But it’s a bit tricky when you have an entourage of 60 people, a balance of more than $7 million, and a fleet of limousines and other vehicles waiting to collect you and your mountains of bags. That was the situation at 3:30 A.M. on May 31, 2012, when Princess Maha bint Mohammed bin Ahmad al-Sudairi reportedly attempted to make something of a run for it at Paris’s five-star Shangri-La Hotel, in the 16th Arrondissement, where she and her retinue had occupied 41 rooms for five months. After a tense standoff that involved calls to high-ranking diplomats and officials, she was allowed to leave, whereupon she checked into the nearby Royal Monceau, owned by Qatar, a friendly neighbor of Saudi Arabia.
Taco Bell is the best Mexican food I ever ate. I will say this to your face over a plate of enchiladas suiza. You will shake your head at such transparent provocation. What a shocking thing to say at a restaurant that has the best tacos in New York City!
Author Joshua Ferris is learning to FLY.
Love & Basketball, AKA the greatest romance ever, has turned fifteen. Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan share some thoughts on the movie and its longevity.
Sue, on VEEP, is the greatest.
I cannot get this poem, by Adrienne Rich, out of my head. The poem says so much, so beautifully, with such heat. It is succulent.
The old men at those gentlemen’s clubs are so terrified of women it’s almost hilarious. The whole article was fascinating and bizarre and kind of funny?
SUE ON VEEP YES
I want Sue to manage my WHOLE LIFE.
Face Off Live How Did This Get Made!!!!
http://earwolf.com/episode/face-off-live/
Face waterfall, jerks, let’s make it a widely known term.
Randall Park!!
Nic Cage is still one of my favorites and Joan Allen needs to be in many more films.
Oh my word the discussion about whether the differing blood types would cause an issue with the face transplants had me giggling.
Thanks for the reminder!
Speaking of intriguing historical nuns, did you all know about this?
http://www.salon.com/2015/01/15/nuns_gone_bad_why…
A 19th century lesbian sex cult in a convent in the Alps?
It is…very lurid.
That would make more sense than Castle Anthrax.
Even though we have no clue how the Freddie Gray case will turn out (and probably it’s wise to be skeptical, still), Marilyn Mosby’s words give me some hope.
On a more frivolous note, I could read Roxane Gay’s writings about Scrabble for the rest of my life and be entertained by every word. (Translation: thank you for the Scrabble link, even if you didn’t write it yourself!)
Don’t get too excited – I smell a whitewash. The charges are consistent with the “Rough Ride” theory – that they handcuffed Grey to the bar in the middle of the van then took corners crazy fast so he gets all beat up against the walls of the van (apparently a Baltimore Police standard) and then oops his spinal cord snapped. That’s why they’re charging the driver of the van with 2nd. But that’s ludicrous – even if all that happened the driver would have (legally mind you) only reckless intent, not enough for a murder charge to stick. No way he’ll be convicted of murder, and possibly not even voluntary manslaughter. There’s no “plain and strong likelihood of death” from a rough ride if you do it to people all the time and they’ve all lived before. The actual evidence, with Gray’s feet dragging limply on the ground in the video, sounds to me like it was the bike cops who killed him by kneeing him in the back of the neck and pulling his head back while he was on the ground, he was thrown into the van dying with a snapped spine, and the bike cops are guilty of 2nd degree murder while everyone else is guilty of voluntary manslaughter (for not seeking medical help) and most importantly imo, accessory after the fact. But they’re not charging the right people with the right crimes. They’re going on a much weaker theory of prosecution not as well supported. The cops will get off because of “oops, bad prosecutor!” Or oops, corrupt one.
that made me ill to read, but thank you for your insight. ugh.
Thank you for linking to the Taco Bell essay. It’s heartwarming and authentic to an extent I haven’t seen in many essays about food.
one Parisian grande dame, who is a friend of the royal family and characterizes Saudi fashion taste as flashy and accessories-oriented: “They tend to like gimmicky things—Vuitton or Chanel. They are not very Hermès.
BRÛLURE MALADE, SOEUR.
Also, I wonder if her excesses are a form of rebellion against her family. “They won’t let me do anything, so I’ll bankrupt them out of spite,” like Emily’s rage-shopping on GG.
For a brief, beautiful period back in Fall 2014, Conrad Basset-Bouchard and I were Facebook friends and everything was right with the world. It was like getting my favorite boy band member to follow me on Twitter, but waaaaay nerdier.
My boyfriend got to dine at the Garrick Club once, and I have never been more jealous of anything in my life.
(I just read the article, and it’s very nice to see that John Mortimer argued in favor of women joining. I always had a great deal of affection for him, and now I like him even more).
Hahahah, that Garrick Club article.
Peregrine Worsthorne and his wife Lucinda Lambton (seen here on their way home from Hogwarts’ Annual Yule Ball)
In other Saudi royal family news, a Saudi Prince has a better vision for women characters in video games than most big name publishers.
““Women on the whole gossip about their intimate lives; men banter: they discuss things objectively in ways which are not emotional,” said the writer Tom Bower”
Ohmigawd. Did you see Hugh’s socks today? Who wears argyle anymore? And I mean that in an objective unemotional way.
the hell?
Light was really, really beautiful. Thank you for sharing.
I also recommend reading Famished Eels story that is part of the same Commonwealth Writers set. Good for ocean-soaked diaspora feelings.
Thanks for the reminder!
That would make more sense than Castle Anthrax.
the hell?
“There was, in response, much studying of the club’s rules by senior lawyers on both sides (senior lawyers are not hard to find within the Garrick). These rules contained nothing that stipulated that women could not become members”
HAHAHA. The “Air Bud” case for admitting women to the Garrick Club!
That’s a slippery damn slope. Because that’s how you get Buddies.
See also: the climactic sheep-herding scene in “Babe”.
That’ll do, male chauvinist pigs. That’ll do.
That's a slippery damn slope. Because that's how you get Buddies.
I am not the best-read in poetry, but I do know a great place to start in reading Adrienne Rich: her collection Diving Into the Wreck.
It's also mind-blowing.