The Covid-19 crisis created a new heroine in my eyes: my dear partner and spouse, Leola Olive Jewett-Verzuh. When the virus hit, she pondered what she could do to help. Within a few days, she began making beautiful face masks that she sent to all her family members. Some of them work in hospitals...
Read More »

Ron Shearer, Chicanery, Civility & Celebrations: Tales of Early Rossland (Rossland: Rossland Heritage Commission, 2019), 170 pages, $24.95 (paper). Kootenay history buffs have long savoured the storytelling talents of Ron Shearer, a retired UBC economics professor turned amateur historian. Now, in a randomly presented selection of stories, he takes us back to the mining...
Read More »

Graphic History Collective, Direct Action Gets the Goods: A Graphic History of the Strike in Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2019), large format, 60 pages, $14.95 (soft cover).             I just barely squeaked through my high school history class. I liked it, but I wasn’t good at memorizing dates and I had questions about...
Read More »

Recently, a friend blasted the skeptics who have been poo-pooing Medicare for All as proposed by Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. His argument pours cold water on the halfway measures that other candidates like Peter Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar are promoting. Here’s his succinct and compelling reason why. “Medicare for All...
Read More »

Codename Project 9, my short documentary film on the role of the Trail, B.C., smelter in making the atomic bomb, was judged an “official selection” at the Dumbo Film Festival in Brooklyn, N.Y.  From dumbofilmfestival.com: “Dumbo Film Festival (DFF) is a yearly event structured in monthly contests. Every month, each of the categories will be awarded and...
Read More »

White Supremacy Rising Eli Saslow, Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist (New York: Doubleday, 2018). I am only beginning to learn about the sadly enduring impact of slavery and the persistent influence of racism in the American political system. Rising Out of Hatred has helped me recognize the death...
Read More »

Jill Lepore has shown herself to be one of America’s more insightful, probing, and analytical writer-historians. Her latest article in The New Yorker (January 28, 2019), “Hard News: The State of Journalism,” proves the point: “The broader problem is that the depravity, mendacity, vulgarity, and menace of the Trump Administration have put a lot...
Read More »

Socialism with hope . . . and good humor, too. Those who recall chuckling their way through John’s Sayles’s 1979 story The Anarchists’ Convention will enjoy reading about the OPSL.
Read More »

A scan of New York Times headlines for July 8, 2018, reveals several signs of deteriorating times. So much for mother’s milk  The United States delegation to the World Health Organization opposed the promotion of mother’s milk as healthiest for children, thus “embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers,” reports the Times. “The Americans were...
Read More »

Robin Brunet, Let’s Get Frank: Canada’s Mad Man of Advertising(Madeira Park, B.C.: Douglas & McIntyre, 2018), 232 pages, $29.95. Anyone who watched the award-winning TV series Mad Menwill be equally discomfited with the advertising industry as depicted in Let’s Get Frank, a biography of Vancouver advertising tycoon Frank Palmer. Perhaps tycoon is too strong...
Read More »