Twelfth Night, 2014 -- Pray for Justice for Michelle O'Connell

My late friend and mentor Robin Nadeau died two years ago today at age 86.
It was Twelfth Night, her favorite holiday, when she would host a swell party where everyone got along famously, despite poliical differences. I fondly remember Robin in her 35 year old Christmasy red dress, which she made herself, sitting next to Senator George McGovern, talking about health care politics.
A convert to Catholicism and Canadian who became a naturalized citizen, she helped carry Alachua county (Gainesville) for George McGovern in 1972 -- the only county in Florida that McGovern carried).
She helped to make St. Augustine, St. Augustine Beach and St. Johns County a more beautiful and humane place, protecting trees, preserving land, halting promiscuous organophosphate spraying, reversing purchase of a luxury no-bid helicopter and protecting human rights forever.
We need more Robin Nadeaus, questing authority.
As Pulitzer Prize winning author Studs Terkel wrote of my friend and mentor Stetson Kennedy, in the New York Times Magazine in 2005 "With half a dozen Stetson Kennedys, we can transform our society into one of truth, grace ad beauty."
Robin Nadeau taught us to work for truth, beauty, justice and equality, with humor and grace.
She would be proud of the progress we've made here, winning GLBT rights measures enacted by the cities of S. Augustine Beach and S. Augustine.
She'd be plum tickled that the St. Augustine Record didn't run Ann Coulter's column today because, as Managing Editor Jim Sutton wrote me, it was "just too nasty."
She would have been appalled and delighted by the New York Times and PBS Frontline investigation of the Michelle O'Connell case -- "appalling" was one of her favorite words, and it fits what Sheriff DAVID SHOAR did when he refused to recuse himself. She would have been delighted with the perspicacity of the Times' investigation.
In Robin's honor, we're working to achieve a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. www.staugustgreen.com
In Robin's honor, let's work for Justice for Michelle O'Connell in 2014.
Let's do it for Robin Nadeau.
Yes we can!