The world keeps on

I awoke on Thursday morning to the news that Brittney Griner had been freed and was on a plane on her way home. I cheered! I had feared she would disappear into a Russian gulag, and we would never know what had become of her. Of course, Republicans rushed to criticize President Biden for exchanging Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer known as the Merchant of Death, to secure the life and liberty of a 6-foot-9, Black, lesbian, WNBA star with locs who had been convicted in a Russian court of possessing vape canisters containing cannabis. 

Given the immediate and sustained "Free Brittney" outcry in the States, Putin finally had a political prisoner he could use to secure the release of Bout, who was serving a 25-year sentence in the U.S. for his crimes. They'd been trying to bring him back to Russian for years. Biden tried to bargain for the simultaneous release of another American prisoner, U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, jailed since 2018 as a spy, but Putin would only grant freedom for Griner, or nothing, and in the end Biden opted for the bird in the hand. 

The Republicans crowed that Brittney Griner's Black gay life was not worth the deal, and that Whelan had been left to languish. Trump crowed loudest of all, despite the fact that when he was in office, he did nothing at all to try to bring Paul Whelan home. As Whelan's own brother tweeted, Trump never once mentioned Paul Whelan's name, so he doesn't understand all his self-righteousness on the matter now. Heaven forbid Biden should ever get credit for positive outcomes, however mixed. I'm glad he chose to bring Brittney Giner home, even as he continues to work for the release of Whelan and another American, Marc Fogel, a former teacher at the American School in Moscow, who was also sentenced for cannabis possession last year. 

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Time magazine chose Volodymyr Zelenskyy as its Person of the Year. A good choice. Also in the running were the protestors in Iran, who would also have been very deserving. The magazine editors also had Elon Musk on the short list—ugh. I find that just typing his name is as distasteful to me as typing Trump's name. They are two of a kind, the worst.

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I've been watching the Netflix documentary series Harry & Meghan, and I definitely recommend it. It's not bitter and snarky, it just means to set the story straight from their side of the lens, and the real villains, three episodes in, are not the royal family so much a the British tabloid media and the deeply ingrained attitudes to race born of Britain's past colonial relationship with much of the developing world.

Episode three in particular puts in stark contrast just how that colonial relationship worked to enrich Britain and impoverish the colonized countries, with all their precious natural resources being plundered and shipped to the British Isles. Even when slavery was abolished, the plantation owners were compensated to the tune of many millions of dollars each for the loss of their human "property"—crazily, this was a fact that neither my husband nor I had known. We both looked at each other in shock.

I have great respect for Harry, who talks about unconscious bias at one point, and how we all have it, but that once it is pointed out, brought into awareness, one has a responsibility to do better. Most of all, the documentary is a portrait of a couple simply falling in love, and it's quite beautiful to me to see they way they each glow in the sight of the other. I don't know what the final three episodes will bring, whether Will and Kate and Charles and Camilla will ultimately escape unscathed, but I will be watching this Thursday along with so many others, lovers and haters both. But as Trevor Noah said in his farewell speech on the Daily Show this week, he is grateful even to the haters, because they, too, added to his ratings score. Unsurprisingly, Harry & Meghan is number one in viewership on Netflix right now. I, for one, am pulling hard for their family. I'll leave you with a tweet someone posted that made me laugh. 

 

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In case you had any doubt, we are most definitely following World Cup football in our house, and what hard-fought quarterfinal games there were this week! I'm rooting for Morocco to win it all, as they're the first African team ever to make it to the semi finals, and they beat powerhouse teams to get there. Next they play France, another team I like a lot, so I'm guaranteed one of my fave teams in the final. I'm rooting hard against Argentina on the other side, and hope Croatia sends them home and advances. While the man and I were home with Covid, World Cup games were all we watched most days, and yes, I certainly developed some opinions.

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The kids are coming over today to help us decorate out little table top tree and to drink mulled apple cider and decorate cookies and generally get in the holiday spirit. In other news, the hoped for project seems to be coming through. I won't say any more except that, I'm excited and nervous, and once again leaning hard on the idea that in a parallel universe this book is already written, and so I just have to be an open channel. As my mother would say, Courage, dear heart. Just breathe.