Thursday, October 31, 2013

The Stories We Tell

The other night some of us watched a recent Canadian semi-documentary called (I think) THE STORIES WE TELL. It's an attempt to reconstruct the life of a dead mother, her marriages, etc. It starts off slowly, but then it gets engaged in the fact that the various family members knew her in different ways--and then in vastly different ways--and who has the right perspective on her and so on.   An unusually complex film and the best I've seen in some time. 


                                          ***

Andy Lopez has become a story we tell. Yesterday I went to a demonstration at the courthouse. A 13-year-old named Andy Lopez, carrying a toy gun that resembled an assault rifle, was walking through his neighborhood. A deputy sheriff approached him from behind and yelled at him to drop the gun. When the child turned around to see what was happening, the deputy shot him seven times in eight tries, killing him. The demonstration cried out for justice, but what would that be?

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