Requiem for a Blogger
How is it possible to cry for a man you only met through the blog post he asked to be published in the event of his death?
I’m dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren’t going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. (If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.) I had a pretty good life, as I noted above. Sure, all things being equal I would have preferred to have more time, but I have no business complaining with all the good fortune I’ve enjoyed in my life.
I’d never heard of Andy Olmsted or his alter-ego G’Kar until yesterday afternoon when a friend sent a link to his final words on Obsidian Wings, posted by hilzoy.
Since then, in those spare moments between my tasks here in the real world, I’ve been reading that final post over and over as well as the comments, following links to and from others who knew him — or didn’t and simply wanted to honor a good man, a good soldier, a good husband, son, and brother. I’ve cried over my keyboard at almost regular intervals.
“The flame also reminds us that life is precious. As each flame is unique; when it goes out, it’s gone forever. There will never be another quite like it.”
Ambassador Delenn, Babylon 5I write this in part, admittedly, because I would like to think that there’s at least a little something out there to remember me by. Granted, this site will eventually vanish, being ephemeral in a very real sense of the word, but at least for a time it can serve as a tiny record of my contributions to the world. But on a larger scale, for those who knew me well enough to be saddened by my death, especially for those who haven’t known anyone else lost to this war, perhaps my death can serve as a small reminder of the costs of war. Regardless of the merits of this war, or of any war, I think that many of us in America have forgotten that war means death and suffering in wholesale lots. A decision that for most of us in America was academic, whether or not to go to war in Iraq, had very real consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. Yet I was as guilty as anyone of minimizing those very real consequences in lieu of a cold discussion of theoretical merits of war and peace. Now I’m facing some very real consequences of that decision; who says life doesn’t have a sense of humor?
Such a bright light is gone, and the world is certainly a darker place.
There are no words to express the sorrow I feel for his family. May there be some peace and comfort in the thousands of blog posts honoring his memory and from the loving words of those who knew him in this ephemeral space we call the blogosphere.
Ave atque vale, Major Olmsted. May you rest in peace.
Walk Within You
If I be the first of us to die,
Let grief not blacken long your sky.
Be bold yet modest in your grieving.
There is a change but not a leaving.
For just as death is part of life,
The dead live on forever in the living.
And all the gathered riches of our journey,
The moments shared, the mysteries explored,
The steady layering of intimacy stored,
The things that made us laugh or weep or sing,
The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,
The wordless language of look and touch,
The knowing,
Each giving and each taking,
These are not flowers that fade,
Nor trees that fall and crumble,
Nor are they stone,
For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand
And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.
What we were, we are.
What we had, we have.
A conjoined past imperishably present.
So when you walk the woods where once we walked together
And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow,
Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land,
And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand,
And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you,
Be still.
Clear your eyes.
Breathe.
Listen for my footfall in your heart.
I am not gone but merely walk within you.
~ Nicholas Evans
From “The Smokejumper”
50 Things You Didn’t Know About Me
I don’t usually bother with these, mostly because some of them are too personal, and I’m still clinging to a few shreds of my pseudonymity. But what the heck, I thought when I saw it in my inbox. “It would make a totally fun blogworm for somebody.”
And then I realized, “Hey! I am somebody!”
So, I hereby tag:
Strategerie of The Little Pink Clubhouse
proudprogressive of Some Notes on Living
WhyMommy of Toddler Planet.
Here’s da rules, such as they are: [UPDATED: 1/1/07] I just realized I hadn’t made the “how” of this terribly clear. So, here’s the updated rules. 1) Post this quiz with your answers on your blog. You don’t have to do all the questions, but you must do at least 30 of them. 2) Tag three (or more) other bloggers. 3) Link back to the blogger who tagged you. 4) Post the rules with the quiz. That’s it, and you can post in sections, do one question at a time, or do the whole thing at once.
Here goes….
Total Randomness
Weird thoughts come to me as I read my blog stats page and check my Sitemeter. I’m sharing nine of today’s totally random thoughts with you.
1.) Never use the phrase “Big Dick” in any post title. I did, and now I’m probably tops in the “man with big dick” searches. Of course, the searchees are no doubt terribly disappointed when they click and find out I’m talking about the Prince of Darkness.
Most of these hits are from Asia and India.
2.) I also get a lot of people who are using the following keywords: “hot mothers and daughters” “hot young daughters” “sex with daughter” “young girl sex.” These people disturb me greatly.
Most of those hits are from the Middle East … and southern US. Ahem.
3.) What kind of person uses the keywords “potty mouth lady Scranton” while searching for info about a woman arrested for cursing inside her own house?
“Potty mouth”?! Oh-kay…. I’m guessing that’s the kind who thinks “damn” is a curse word. Continue reading
Wanna Help?
You may have noticed I’ve added something new to the top of the right-hand sidebar.
Last week, my job was reduced to per diem status – meaning they’ll call as I’m needed. Unfortunately, thanks to the wonders of the Bush economy, they aren’t needing me very often. As in, my paycheck will be for a whopping 8 hours in two weeks.
Also unfortunately, my electric, water, telephone, and internet providers seem to still expect payment for their services while I’m looking for other work and trying to build my eBay sales. And, there’s the rent, heat, and food issues.
So…
If you like what you’re reading here, and you’d like to see it continue, click that tip jar and donate whatever you feel my efforts are worth. Any amount you feel like contributing would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Happy 14th!
Happy Anniversary to The Little Pink Clubhouse’s Strategerie and her hubby, the Dauphin!
Fruit drinks with umbrellas are on me!
The View From My Window
I wrote about WhyMommy and her fight with inflammatory breast cancer in my inaugural Saturday Potluck, and wanted to share this lovely, perfect metaphor for online communities she wrote:
It’s hard to explain my affection for blogging and blogfriends to those not intimately familiar with it, but I think it goes something like this. […]
It’s as if one day last August I walked into my room, turned on the lamp, and suddenly noticed the window on the far wall, where none had been before. When I opened the curtains, the room was flooded with light and warmth, and I could hear a chorus of voices spilling through. I looked out, and discovered an amazing view — not the restful mountains or the popular beach — but a courtyard, filled with children of all ages, laughing, playing, crying, inventing, growing up together, and a sea of other windows — moms — each in a room of their own, writing their own lives, but pausing intermittently to check on the children and to be inspired by them and the women who love them. The windows are close enough that we can call to each other on the spring breezes when we are stuck, when we have something to celebrate, when we have something to mourn.
And it’s a beautiful way to live.
I love this description of blogging and commenting. All of us calling out to one another from our windows, finding that one shared interest between us — be it parenting or politics or technology or … anything — and, through our chats and discussions, discovering more and more commonalities on which to base a friendship.
We share our hopes and our fears and our dreams, we share the good and the bad times, we discuss the mundane and the life-changing, and with each comment, each post, each chat, our friendship grows, just as it would in the real world. And just like the real world, we share our blog friends with others, hoping they, too, will become friends.
The difference is – in the real world, we might pass by some people, seeing only the external, thinking they had nothing to offer us because of their age, appearance, economic status, or gender – and we would lose out on an important group of voices that educate, entertain, encourage, and enlighten us; we’d lose what could have been a wonderful friendship.
Here, through my window, I see just friends. Some of you are close friends with whom I chat daily — or as close to it as possible, what with work and family commitments — and some are newly-made friends I hope to spend more time with, and others are passersby on this blog or others, giving a quick wave before continuing on your own journey.
Each and every one of you enriches my life. As I hope I, in some way, have enriched yours.
D-Day Interviews Me
I asked to be interviewed by D-Day of Liberally Mirth at the end of June, but then I forgot I was supposed to be on the lookout for his questions, and so I forgot to check the blog email for… well, a few days…. okay, okay – a lot of days.
So, after much delay, here’s the questions and my answers:
1) Describe your history as a political activist/blogger. What made you decide to do The Lady Speaks? Were you always active/interested in politics?
I originally started out thinking it would be a journal of sorts. I put up one post (about the joy of school starting again) and then came Hurricane Katrina. I was so infuriated, and I couldn’t stop talking about how angry I was, so I put it on the blog. After that, it was kind of hit and miss posting, until Jan 2006, when illness forced me to leave my job. I had lots of time on my hands – and a tendency to make long-winded comments at C&L. I started taking those comments and expanding on them. From there, it just kind of…happened.
As for politics, I wasn’t very interested with politics on a national level until El Chimpy came along. I knew from the beginning of his campaign that he was going to be trouble, but I felt like I was the only voice opposing him.
2) You do a regular feature called Jenn’s Sunday Sermon. While there isn’t usually any religious overtones to it, do you consider yourself religious and do those views affect how you write and view the world?
I’m not religious at all, but definitely spiritual. I believe there’s a force at work in the universe, but it goes by many names, many ideas. I once called my beliefs a “patchwork.” Little pieces of this or that religious view, that spiritual idea, that resonated within me when I found them. I believe we as humans are called to be good to one another, to help each other through the good and the bad, and that we’ve lived multiple lives in that goal. There is no Hell, just a continuing of life outside the Divine until we’re fit to join it.
I started calling it the “Sunday Sermon” to mock the Talibangelicals who sermonize and proselytize, but fail to live up to the basic tenets of their faith. Christ said nothing about abortion, nothing about homosexuality, nothing about stem-cell research. He did tell us to care for the sick and dying, the poor, the imprisoned.
What I believe definitely impacts what and how I write, and how I see the world. For example, I cannot find it in myself to hate someone because of their orientation or their color or even their politics. We’re all part of humanity, and to deny them is to deny a part of myself.
3) Time out for a little personal info about you. What’s your favorite music? Food? Color? Book and/or author? Movie? Why are they your favorites?
Favorite music: I love listening to late 70’s and 80’s rock. AC/DC, Queen, plus Foreigner, Bon Jovi, Metallica, Judas Priest. Why? I was a teen in the 80’s and grew up on it.
Favorite food: It’s hard to narrow it down, but if I could pick only one thing off the menu, it’d be Chicken and Biscuits. My mom used to make this, with homemade soda-biscuits.
Favorite color: Fire-engine red. I have no idea why, but I love it anyway.
Favorite book/author: Grapes of Wrath. Why? Steinbeck shows how the suffering of the people, yet also shows their strength. Your average middle-class family wouldn’t have endured what the Joads did. Being poor, for all the awfulness of it, teaches you to take nothing for granted, to waste nothing, to make something of nothing.
Favorite movie: It’s a toss-up between The Never-ending Story and The Princess Bride. Why? I think because they share the “movie within a book” theme, and the idea that books can transport you to amazing places populated with amazing people and creatures. Plus, they’re just fun.
“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
4) Is there a defining moment or event in your childhood that has affected how you have become today? If so, How?
I thought about this for a long time. There was a lot of bad in my childhood that made me more sensitive to other people’s needs and fears, but it was something my grandmother did when I was 8 or 9 that made me more aware of the need to help others.
We lived in a tiny little “town” – more a collection of houses on one road – and there was an Amish community a few miles away. The older daughter and a couple of the younger sons of one Amish family sold baked goods at a little table near the store. One of my favorite “jobs” back then was walking the short distance to the store and picking up the mail and a few groceries for Gramma. She always said, “And don’t forget, tell me how much is on Dora’s table.”
I never understood this until the time I spent the weekend with her. That Saturday evening, Gramma put her walking shoes on, slipped her gigantic purse over her shoulder and walked down to the store – and bought as much as we could carry. A couple cakes, three dozen donuts, a pie, and three loaves of bread.
As we walked back, I asked her why, and she told me Dora would get in trouble with her father if she hadn’t sold enough. It wasn’t until I was much older that I found out Dora’s father would beat her if there was too much left unsold, but that was when I started to realize each of us is called to help each other, as best we can.
5) Please answer one of the two following: What is the square root of Pi? 🙂 OR when you look at your life so far, would you describe it as happy, partly happy or not very happy?
Acck! Math question! I’ll take happiness for $1000, Alex.
Looking at it so far, I’d say…. mostly happy. There have been bad times and hard times, but the good stands out. There’s always been love and laughter, even in the worst of times.
Now it’s your turn!
– – –
Do YOU want to be interviewed? Interview rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with a post containing your the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Steve Gilliard 1966-2007
I found Steve and the News Blog by following a link, probably from FDL, and I was hooked from that first visit. I visited at least once a day, usually more.
I wasn’t a commentor, just a devoted reader – though I did once send Steve an email complimenting him on a well-written article (as I sit here, I can’t remember what it was about) and thanking him for giving me a new perspective.
Like so many others, I thrilled over the new site when the News Blog moved and worried endlessly over Steve after he went into the hospital.
My thoughts and prayers are with Jen and all of Gilly’s family.
And how else to conclude this, but with his favorite phrase?
FUCK THE FUCKING YANKEES!!
Thinking Blogger Award
I’ve been tagged for a “Thinking Blogger Award” by Camel’s Nose for a post I wrote in January on war and sacrifice as part of my Sunday Sermon series.
How cool is that?!
Quoting Nijma:
The Thinking Blogger Award, then, is a grassroots attempt to select blogs based on interest to bloggers themselves, and not just the number of links or clicks measured by an impersonal commercial enterprise.
I can’t tell you what a warm fuzzy feeling I got after finding out I’d been selected by someone as a blog of interest. It’s just big and warm and fuzzy … and I can’t stop smiling. Big thank-yous to Nijma!!
From The Thinking Blog, the rules are:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.
I hereby tag:
Latina Lista Great insight into issues affecting Hispanics in America.
Egregious Discusses a variety of issues, not the least of which is working with Russian hospitals.
VichyDems For the post on the US and its debts that scared me and got me thinking.
Pacific Views Lots of great feminist and environmental posts. I discovered a new interest in science as a result of some of their posts. Wouldn’t my high school teachers be amazed?
Days of My Life Life through the eyes of a 15yo Iraqi girl nicknamed Sunshine.
You Have Spoken
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“I don’t have an agenda, I don’t have a program. I’m not a communist or a socialist. I guess I’m a left-libertarian and a populist, and I believe in the Bill of Rights the way some folks believe in the Bible.”
– Molly Ivins, 1944-2007
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