Raven shared his sad news with us this morning.
What a wonderful life you gave him, Raven. And what a beautiful photo.
We knew it was coming, but I am still in tears. ?
Sad Day for Raven and All of Us: Goodbye BohdiPost + Comments (140)
This post is in: Absent Friends, Furry Friends
Raven shared his sad news with us this morning.
What a wonderful life you gave him, Raven. And what a beautiful photo.
We knew it was coming, but I am still in tears. ?
Sad Day for Raven and All of Us: Goodbye BohdiPost + Comments (140)
by ruemara| 61 Comments
This post is in: Absent Friends, Open Threads, RIP, Stream of Consciousness
I was back in NYC the first week of May because it was time to say a formal goodbye. My mother passed away on April 25th, probably around 5 am PST. I seem to only get to return to the city after some major change and, in a small personal way, this was as big as returning after 9/11. Just like that time, things are now permanently different than my memories.
We all start from somewhere and someone. For me that’s NYC and my mother. Granted, there was a brief stop in Jamaica but let’s go with what we can remember, shall we? Leaving NYC was a grand adventure for me, but I had no idea that it was going to be this long or that each time I returned, time kept changing the city and the woman. As discomfiting as change is, it also reveals. We grow more into ourselves as we age and some of the aura of infallible authority parents have drops as they age. NYC, with all it’s grimy magic, became more vulnerable in my eyes after 9/11 and much the same, when I returned in 2012, I realized my parents had somehow grown old too.
The NYC that is gone has revealed a NYC that is more crowded, even more split between the haves & have-nots but still teeming with energy and a diverse population that makes me proud and soothes. My mother that is gone revealed that she had a nickname to her friends and my stepfather; she was an active, busy beaver of a street minister and she even had plans of traveling next year to minister in South America. She had a large group of friends who are reeling from her loss, sisters that loved her and that she looked out for, mothering all of them in her own way. She adopted women as bonus daughters and my brothers’ friends knew her as a second mother as well. Which infuses me with pride and joy. The personhood we leave behind reveals our lives because death drops every barrier. It’s a good end when people mourn you.
My mother left me once as a toddler, to come to America and build a future for us both after she became a widower. She found my stepfather, bore 2 sons, had a long secretarial career and a retirement where she got to serve her faith. This time she’s left me in a different way. We get to see each other either again either as the flashing memories of my dying spark or when the spark of my spirit joins the fire that animates life. I don’t know which one it is. That’s the last mystery to uncover.
The loss of a parent brings a finality to your childhood that even growing your first set of greys doesn’t. Parents are permanent, right? Not so fast, says time. It’s not just the transition from care receiver to caregiver. It’s not explaining their cellphones and time zone differentials to them. You’re still their kid, even with your fancy expertise. Saying that last goodbye, though. That’s it. That’s when you aren’t a child any more. You are now changed into an actual adult. Not because of power, experience or your own money. Just that sense of loss of where you came from. That home is now just a memory because that parental presence is gone. Adulthood is where you have to be your own reassuring presence. I worry about my stepfather, who misses his best friend and partner of 50 years. I worry about my brothers who’ve never lived without their mom. Luckily, all the relationships my mother had have bound together to carry them. Church family reach out to them and pray with them, our blood & found family visit, our tenant drops off homecooked food. On top of that we also have each other. Like NYC, though, we are all changed. Hopefully, we will all live as mom lived, faithful, enjoying her Marvel movies and happily working to make the world a better world. After all, it’s not so bad to go if you leave them wanting more.
Open thread & obligatory cat pic.
by John Cole| 19 Comments
This post is in: RIP
Sorry to stomp on the sweetness below, but I learned yesterday that Lance Mannion, one of the old school bloggers from the early aughts, died in his sleep from what appear to be natural causes.
I am sure many of you knew him and read him at one point and would like to know this. The link to the gofundme can be found here.
This post is in: Absent Friends, Open Threads
I had an early dental appointment this morning. Getting a deep cleaning of my teeth since I have not been in for almost two years because of the pandemic, and last Friday I woke up and discovered the crown on my molar was missing and is presumably now with the mustard somewhere in the aether. At any rate, I was out of the house bright and early, and as I opened the front door I observed that the Penthouse Suite nest on the front porch had been demolished:
All that remains are some straw and cotton lying in a pile on the porch:
I don’t know if the nest (which I leave up every year so they know they are welcome back) was destroyed as part of an annual remodeling, or if perhaps there is about to be a vicious turf war for nesting privileges. Regardless, it made me happy because spring is here. The cycle of life, they say.
***
It was on this day, a year ago, that the Balloon Juice community received the shocking and horrible news that Alain had died in his sleep. It feels like it was both just yesterday and a lifetime ago, but nonetheless, it has been a year. Now that the initial shock and grief are over, it’s so much easier to remember who Alain was as a person.
Oddly enough, I was in the basement the other day grabbing some of the remaining cans of peaches and pears, and I grabbed the last jar of peach jam and ginger that Alain had made and sent me. He’d sent me several different types of jellies and jams- peach/ginger and grape are the two I remember the most, and while I don’t recall the specific details, I do sort of think I remember the peaches were a special kind grown in Colorado. I stared at the jar for a while and looked at the thoughtful label, then went upstairs and ate it. It was so good I finished it in two meals, the second a sumptuous peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a heaping of the jam and an ice cold glass of milk. The classics never go out of style.
The peach jam really sums up who Alain was. He’d sent it to me because I had been making a bunch of jam and talking about it, and he was also making jam, and with his omnipresent thoughtfulness, decided he would send some to me. Alain was kind that way. He was generous with his time, spending thousands of hours on this website simply because he loved you all so much. And he was thoughtful- doing the little things, the generous things, the kind things, the things that make this crazy world bearable. Not because he wanted something in return, but because being kind made him happy.
In a world full of little men acting like big shots, throwing around money on grotesque buildings that are little more than vulgar vanity projects, or slapping their names on schools so that THEY WILL HAVE THEIR LEGACY AND THEY WILL BE REMEMBERED, we’re so lucky to get to know people like Alain. Buildings crumble, but the ripple effect of Alain’s kindness will be passed down by those who received it for generations.
Now that’s a legacy.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute, Open Threads, RIP, Our Failed Media Experiment
NEW: NYT columnist David Brooks draws a second salary for leading an Aspen Institute project funded by Facebook, Jeff Bezos’ dad, & others. He didn’t disclose this to readers. The Times refused to say if the paper was aware of Brooks’ second salary: https://t.co/7WN3zrtrKp
— Craig Silverman (@CraigSilverman) March 3, 2021
Professional ethics are for the little people, eh, Mr. Brooks?…
At the Applebee’s salad bar, these men with younger wives discuss the importance of David Brooks being given a mulligan for this one. https://t.co/YMLPhylfXu
— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke) March 4, 2021
Along with columns about Weave, Brooks published Times columns that mention Facebook, its founder Mark Zuckerberg, and the company’s products without disclosing his financial ties to the social networking giant.
— Craig Silverman (@CraigSilverman) March 3, 2021
here’s some of the ways he responded: called the reporter ‘totally unethical,’ asked ‘if this was the way you want to start your career’ and told him he wasn’t ‘acting in the spirit of an honest reporter’
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) March 4, 2021
this seems like an open-and-shut violation of what i have to assume is NYT internal company policy. not that i think that will actually dictate whether any action is taken. https://t.co/ZX0XSijNw0
— cobras for alligators scheme machine (@golikehellmachi) March 4, 2021
i’m a broken record here, but most of the NYTs problems are not editorial in nature, they’re managerial. the editorial problems are downstream from the managerial ones.
— cobras for alligators scheme machine (@golikehellmachi) March 4, 2021
bit worried about Brooks’ upcoming title WHY NOT TO MURDER PEOPLE AND LEAVE THEIR BODIES IN THE SWAMP https://t.co/0IuGE1dlaD
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) March 4, 2021
Easy Targets Open Thread: BoBo Brooks Is Back on His… Thought LeadershipPost + Comments (159)
by DougJ| 8 Comments
This post is in: Absent Friends
From friend of the blog Batocchio….you can nominate anything you wrote on your blog, whether it’s this one or someone else. Al Weisel was a great wit who died too soon, so I always like to remember him.
******************************************
It’s time once again to continue a tradition started by Jon Swift/Al Weisel, the “Best Posts of the Year, Chosen by the Bloggers Themselves.” Jon/Al left behind some wonderful satire, but was also a nice guy and a strong supporter of small blogs. (Here’s Jon/Al’s massive 2007 and 2008 editions. Our smaller revivals from 2010 through 2019 can be found here.)
If you’d like to participate, please write to me (Batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com) with your best post of the year before 12/25:
Blog Name
Title of Post
Link
Author of Post
Brief Description/Pitch of the Post (1–2 sentences)
(If it’s not a reply, adding “best post” in the subject line would also help.)
To modify Jon Swift’s 2008 solicitation:
I would be very honored if you would participate and send me a link to what you think was your best post of [2020], along with a short description of it. Please make the hard choice and send me only one link. I would like to post it before the end of the year, so if you could get it to me before Christmas, I would really appreciate it.
One submission per blog, please, otherwise things can get messy. Group bloggers can pick a piece among themselves, but are also welcome to submit their work via their individual blogs, if they have them.
As usual, I’m aiming to find the right balance between “inclusive” and “manageable.” If you know a few excellent blogs (preferably on the smaller side) that you suspect might not be on my radar, feel free to send me their website address (and contact info, if you have it).
Thanks,
This post is in: Absent Friends, RIP
My parents had to put down Ginny this morning, who died of a particularly aggressive cancer of the blood. I had not mentioned this to you all because there was so much else bad going on in the world, but over the past few months she had developed bleeding tumors all over her body, and twice had to have surgery to remove them. This is a particularly nasty cancer that does not respond to chemo or radiation, and Ginny quite never got over the second surgery, and even as she was recovering more tumors were appearing.
Harry, our family vet, came over and helped ease Ginny out of her pain this morning, and suffice it to say mom and dad are devastated, so keep them in your thoughts. It’s hard to imagine life without Ginny- she was just such a big presence crammed into a tiny little body, with dozens of personality quirks that made her an absolute delight to know.
She will be very, very missed.