In 2018, the March on Washington Film Festival paid tribute to the great Sonia Sanchez on its Opening Night. Seminal figure of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, now in her 80s, Sonia Sanchez continues to raise her indomitable voice for art, power, racial justice, women’s liberation and peace.
Picture this: climbing Kilimanjaro and a Mayan pyramid, scuba diving in a school of sharks in Tahiti, riding on top of a vintage train in the English countryside. Along with pursuing these adventuresome experiences, Michael Crichton was a medical doctor, a bestselling author, a film and TV director/producer, and inveterate adventurer of the outer and inner realms whose fame and fortune continues to outlive him.
By now you probably know someone, or know someone who knows someone who is positive or has died from the virus. And even if you don’t, you’ve seen the virtual funerals, body bags, refrigerator truck morgues, plain wooden caskets and mass graves on the news.
One of the Corona paradoxes has been that in order to survive together we must stay apart. We’re practicing physical and social distancing but still need to maintain social connection in ways old and new. We’re desperate for it – on phones and online chat rooms, on balconies, across driveways, on the other side of a window or street or world – we’re reaching out with space in between.