Minneapolis.

James Baldwin lived in a time when, in whole swaths of the country, drawing breath while gay was just asking for a beating.

Breathing while Black, an open invitation to a lynching. Your own.

He was, proudly, publicly, fiercely, both.

Somehow, at this moment, and particularly this week, it seems more than useful to recall Baldwin and the trail he blazed.

Relentlessly reminding us that courage is always in high demand and too-short supply.

And that being willing to look impossible challenges in the face is the only possible way to overcome them.

Baldwin wrote: “Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.”

Baldwin wrote: “Once you realize that you can do something, it would be difficult to live with yourself if you didn't do it.”

Baldwin wrote: “People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.”

 Yes, I know that we’re advised to keep our opinions on these platforms constrained to the professional.

And, yes, I’ll return to writing about advertising, which happens to be my career, avocation, and passion wrapped up in one, in due course.

No question that Baldwin’s clear-eyed and disruptively truthful, and incisively penetrating philosophy could well be applied to an industry in dire need of the same.

But as we watch the unreal scenes unfolding on American streets in real time, it doesn’t feel like now is a time to focus on how to best touch up the yellow stripes running down the middle of the road.

Baldwin wrote: “Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.”

And this is no time to be blind.