Wed. 11.30.16 – 2016 seems to be the year of endings. After the US Elections, I saw several folks on Twitter calling 2016 ‘anno horribilis’. I am not quite ready to call it a horrible year, as we still have another month to the year for a major tsunami, nuclear war, asteroid strike, a plague that kills billions, gamma ray from an exploding star, etc.
But 2016 is/was definitely the year of endings. My Grandpa Jim died. Scruffy died. My brother’s friend Art died of cancer. The American Republic may be going into hospice care come January. And Nicole Hunter Mostafa, one of the few personal bloggers who was still personally blogging for the love and joy of it passedaway. Damn cancer.
I feel even more than ever that it is time for me to take back up with my own version of personal mixed with life mixed with professional mixed with tech mixed with humor blogging, as I truly believe that making and creating in the face of adversity is how we best express our humanity. Although I may suck at blogging on a regular schedule, I will do my best to blog here a few times a week and on some weeks more.
Dear 2016, please calm down for the next 31 1/2 days.
Fri. 11.11.16 – After weeks of struggling to walk and many other old guy indignities, this week Scruffy declined to the point of being unable to stand and go to the bathroom. I was told by my Aunt Anne and Vivian Hernandez that when a dog could not work its back end that the end would be near.
After two uncomfortable days, Scruffy woke up at 3am this morning whining and tapping my leg with his front paw. I took him outside and held his back end up so he could pee, to no avail. I carried him back in, gave him so water to drink, and went back to sleep – for about a half hour until he started to make noise again. This cycle lasted for the rest of the early morning hours and by 10am he was done. Around 10:10am this morning Scruffy McDoglet ran off to the Doggy Elysian Fields.
I am gutted. Scruffy was a very good dog and occasionally a real little f’er. He was not only a great little buddy – my best dog – to me but also to my brother, Joe with whom I shared Scruffy, and to the whole family.
Scruffy-licious Alidocious T. McDoglet, Esq.- you will be greatly missed.
‘Honestly, I have nothing, other than just sadness. That once again that we have to peer into the abyss of depraved violence that we do to each other in the nexus of a just gaping racial wound that will not heal, yet we pretend doesn’t exist. I am confident though, that by acknowledging it, by staring into that and seeing it for what it is, we still won’t do jack shit. Yeah! That’s us. That is the part that blows my mind.’ – Jon Stewart
‘The Confederate flag’s defenders often claim it represents “heritage not hate.” I agree—the heritage of White Supremacy was not so much birthed by hate as by the impulse toward plunder. Dylann Roof plundered nine different bodies last night, plundered nine different families of an original member, plundered nine different communities of a singular member. An entire people are poorer for his action. The flag that Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, does not stand in opposition to this act—it endorses it.’ – Ta-Nehisi Coates
“We welcomed you Wednesday night in our Bible study with open arms,” Felicia Sanders told Dylann Roof, the suspect in a massacre that officials said was racially motivated. She was in the room when the gunman fatally shot nine people, including her son, Tywanza, and Ms. Sanders survived by pretending to be dead.
“You have killed some of the most beautiful people that I know,” she said. “Every fiber in my body hurts, and I’ll never be the same. Tywanza Sanders was my son, but Tywanza was my hero.”
But like some of the others, she added, “May God have mercy on you.”
Thur 12.05.13 – Thank you, Sir. Thank you for your patience, perseverance, hope, and the leading the push for honesty and forgiveness to crack open the very tough nut of apartheid.
Yesterday about 2pm, I was waiting on someone and decided to check my Twitter stream on my mobile, when I saw that singer Amy Winehouse had been found dead.
Russel Brand describes why best in ‘For Amy‘:
“When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone.
Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.”
While I did not know Ms. Winehouse, I have had that phone call a few too many times. Over the years, more than a fair share of the highly talented artists, musicians, and writers I have know have fallen down the black hole of addiction. Todddied. Jimmy shipwrecked his life on the siren singing razor rocks of heroin. Others woke up years later and we got the call that they were stopping. Years eaten by the locusts, not to be rewound, but now alive and trying to thrive.
I truly would have wished Ms. Winehouse had woken up one day and decided that she wanted to start on the long, hard road to recovery and sobriety rather than being found dead. But what is done is done.
Ms. Winehouse, thank you for all the heart and soul you put into your music and shared with us. I truly hope you have found peace, rather than just oblivion.
Hello lovely friends and readers,
Please forgive the lapse in posting on this blog, but there has been a big interruption that I eluded to last week in my CTIA posts. Last Tuesday, when I was at CTIA, I received a phone call from my Mom that my Grandma Grace had just been diagnosed with a terminal disease and was being put in hospice at her home. After many phone calls and talking to relatives, it was determined that I didn’t need to rush home from CTIA but that the situation was serious.
On Friday I went to visit my Grandma, who is 91, and she was somewhat awake and was surprised that so many folks were visiting her. This Monday, her health had declined and more of the family had gathered, at one point she woke up enough to greet her newest great-grandchild, Weston (as seen above), and then ask the rest of us, “Are we having a party?” “Yes, Grandma we are.”
A bit later she asked me privately, “Am I sick?” “Yes, Grandma, you are.” “Oh.”
Sick enough to die yesterday, Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 1:45pm, as myself, my Aunt Dana, my sister Allison, and my cousin Traci stood at her bedside.
I have much to say, but right now I am too sad, too exhausted, and too worried to write it all out. I owe work to clients, proposals to future folk, blog posts & photos to you all, but right now is not the time. I wish I were the type who could separate personal from professional and plow forward, but I am not.
What I would like to say right now, tonight, is that my Grandma Grace was my best Grandma and I miss her terribly already.
