Happy Friday! Before heading into the weekend we’re sharing columns on racism, Russia and Guantanamo Bay. Happy reading and have a safe weekend.
Last month, the day after Christmas, I taught two of our young granddaughters how to weave potholders.
This is a family tradition, in which both boys and girls learn how to stretch vertical loops of cotton onto a metal rack and then weave horizontal loops through them to form a tight weave. Eventually, this resembles a potholder, at which point it is declared a masterpiece and will never know the business end of a dirty pot.
My son’s 40-year-old faded green-and-white potholder currently rests on my desk under a glass candle jar. He is now a math professor. With his weaving roots, how could he not be?
The final step of the potholders requires a crochet hook. For my granddaughters, this was my task, along with my daughter-in-law, Stina. I don’t often hold a crochet hook, and as I began pulling one loop through the next my mind wandered back to a time when my own childhood hands crocheted a work of art.
I have the evidence.
The federal trial of former officers involved with the death of George Floyd started Thursday. And it returns the nation to a terrible scene that traumatized us all: the image of Derek Chauvin with his knee on Floyd’s neck. As with the earlier trial, that film will inevitably be a focal point for the jury. However, the most important factor in the federal trial could be the one thing missing: Chauvin.
In the trial of J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao, the prosecutors are facing a case similar to Keyser Söze’s – the elusive villain from the movie “The Usual Suspects.” The guilt of the officers is derivative of Chauvin, who is sitting in a maximum security prison.
Chauvin has already pleaded guilty to a federal charge of violating Floyd’s civil rights. These officers will face the same underlying charge of denying Floyd his constitutional rights while acting under government authority.
As the tensions between Russia and Ukraine continue to escalate, USA TODAY Opinion recently met with retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who oversaw all NATO forces in Europe as the Supreme Allied Commander.
Clark explained why the situation is important to Americans and ways the Biden administration and NATO allies can deter Russian aggression. He said Russia wants to establish dominance over regions it once held during the Soviet Union.
“What Russia wants to do is use its military to play power politics and crush independent states, take them over and make them vassal states, make them satellite states,” Clark said.
