Sir Patrick Stewart (1940-2026)

This fucking year, man. Beware: Alzheimer’s and dementia; discussion of domestic violence and abuse. For many of us, Sir Patrick represented the best of what science fiction had to offer; his Jean-Luc Picard is a nigh-perfect icon of the best of Humankind for generations of people around the world, and his Charles Xavier gave millions more hope that yes, somewhere in this Earth there are people who will accept us misfits, and will give us both the space to figure ourselves out, and love to fall back on if (more likely when) we fuck up. And those are but two of the many, many roles he played in a career spanning six decades. 1 And as a human being, he did as much as he could to improve the lot of women and children around the world. Over a dozen years ago, I saw a YT clip of him talking about domestic violence, which included references to his own childhood. I remember just how hard it hit me when he said, “The people who could do most to improve the situation of so many women and…