2016! What a bloody awful year!  Too many celebrities shocked us by dying.

People are going hungry on this day – some are literally starving to death, some are being tortured, imprisoned, executed, some are in refugee camps.  And the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen.

Meantime, we in the west, it being after Christmas,  are raking through the sale counters for more tat, more toxic shit, enjoyed for a day or so, and then dumped in the landfill.  Except for those amongst our number who are unemployed, or on zero hours contracts, those who barely manage to put food on the table, and whose function in the economic system is that of scapegoats for  the Alt Right, along with the  refugees and immigrants.  And I hate to sound prejudiced but it occurs to me as I scroll down on the social media pages, that the Alt Right have a high proportion of bad spellers. The Alt Right seem to be falling into an ‘unpresidented’ sinkhole of illiteracy.

To the litany of injustice, brutality, terror,  hatred and ignorance (and bad spelling) add  the recurring Headline News —  (name the celebrity) has died! Then biography, discography, et al, and quotes from other celebrities about the deceased.    An inside page chronicles all antecedent celebrity deaths of 2016.  In case we’d forgotten.   It’s a lot of paper and ink.

Please make it stop.  I don’t mean the deaths.   I mean when a singer/songwriter/actor ceases to breathe, can we please have an announcement and a modest obituary?  How about five to eight hundred words?  On the back pages?

Yes. Even for Leonard Cohen. I was a big fan of Cohen.  But his death is not headline news, nor a cause for international mourning.  Exact same goes for the many other celebrities who died in 2016. God rest their souls.

We don’t need circuses.  We need to get better at sharing our bread.

Many Humans were Born Today.  Many Died.  None Went Hungry.   That’s a headline I’d like to see.