Some Frogs Know

We are the frogs. The pot is familiar.

It’s a tenuous grasp.

Calm can give away to chaos at any moment.
Caring can slide into cruelty in the blink of an eye.

No amber alerts or national broadcast system will give us warning though.

It won’t arrive silently though.
But it will arrive suddenly.
Not at all then all at once.

Like the frogs in a pot, we’ll have hit boiling point before we know it.

Except some of the frogs do know it.
Some of the frogs have been noticing the temperature rising and they have been ringing the alarm bell for years.
Which is pretty impressive for frogs.

I went to see a play last night.
Forgiveness it’s called.

It’s based on the memoirs of Mark Sakamoto and tells the Second World War story of a Japanese-Canadian woman whose family endure cruelty in the internment camps in Canada and the story of a young man from the east coast whose dreams of adventure when joining the military turn into a nightmare of cruelty in a Japanese POW camp.
Their stories entwine and leave you… hopeful.

Which, these days, is hope-filling.

The play is impactful.
Very impactful and received an immediate standing ovation.
I encourage you to see it
I imagine the book is the same.

What was most impactful for me was the parallels between the 1940s and now.

Casual racism spun into dehumanizing power.

Canada (and the US) treated anyone of Japanese descent with contempt.
Neighbours became national security threats.
No longer people, they had transformed into sub-human.

The play isn’t an indictment solely of Canada though.
Japan doesn’t escape any scathing criticism.

Horrors no know borders.

The finger of blame points squarely at… us.
Humanity.
We humans are to blame.
We allow ourselves to raise fists instead of glasses.
Why? Because someone in power told us to.

The ICE raids and deportations in the USA are the same sad song playing on repeat.
Otherwise good people turned bad because they’ve been told another group of people are worse.

As Mark twain famously said, history doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme.

We are walking down a familiar path.

The water is starting to boil.

The frogs who create plays, books, music, art, and more are ringing the alarm bells.
Pay attention.
Let’s get out of this pot.

###

Thanks for reading.

You can find out more info on the play here

Thanks as well for all of you who bought my book, Lessons From Cats For Surviving Fascism. This past week it made the LA Times, Toronto Star, Amazon, and Oklahoma bestsellers lists. It’s officially an International Bestseller. Meeeow.
You can get it at your favourite bookstore or here: MagnaCata.com

UPCOMING BOOK SIGNINGS

‌July 18th, 2025
‌1PM
‌Indigo
‌Kitchener, Ontario, CANADA
‌
‌July 18th, 2025
‌6PM
‌Indigo (Richmond)
‌London, Ontario, CANADA