Dandelyon's Worlds

Life has been hard since the election. Some of this was remembering the horribleness of that man's first term (to say nothing of the rest of his life), and dread of what he will do this time. But there have been a lot of things that have nothing to do with politics or the bad acts of politicians in the past, present, and future. But that, and problems sleeping related to that, made all the rest harder.

Skipping Windycon and there being no Chambanacon didn't help. But if I could manage one con, I wanted GAFilk more than Windycon. And I wasn't sure I could do even that.

But then, other things happened. The first one was the loss of my car, to an idiot who ran a red light. Sadly, My Angel was making a left turn and the other guy claimed he had a green light, and there were apparently no videos to prove who was lying, so was also out my deductible. But I didn't get official word of that until early on the morning of Christmas Eve, which is when my insurance company chose to call me and give me a deadline (the 30th) for getting out of the rental car, waking me up so I headed into the holiday too tired and emotionally stressed. More emotionally stressed, anyway. I mean, who could fall back asleep after that phone call?

And the need to buy a new car meant I needed to skip GAFilk, and I knew I needed to skip GAFilk before all the rest happened, though I didn't manage to act on that right away.

Next was a really horrible food reaction, much worse than usual and bad enough that I (eventually, for a while) wondered if somehow I'd caught the current terrible norovirus. The first wave of that hit the day after Christmas, when I'd hoped to go car shopping with my sister. I eventually felt well enough to drive home that night, where the second and much worse wave hit shortly after we got our stuff in from the rental car. So, the next day was a total waste in terms of acquiring a new car. I dragged my tired and hurting self to the car dealership the day after, and then for an abbreviated trip to a grocery store, which we were overdue for even before the holidays, and got two calls from Chicago that told me first that my brother had been found unresponsive and then confirmed that he had died.

Now, he was in really bad shape, medically, but we really didn't expect him to die so soon. (An autopsy showed it was a type of heart attack that, statistically, even if someone had been in the room and called 911 immediately he would have had less than a 10% chance of survival.) He was ready to go, since there were a number of things wrong the doctors couldn't fix or meaningfully improve. All in all, he got to see his whole family on Christmas Eve and Christmas, he got to taste the Mulberry Strawberry Jam I made and give it his stamp of approval, and when he died, he died quickly. But still, he was my little brother and how can you be ready for that? His memorial was during GAFilk, and I'm very glad I was at his memorial, though I missed my friends and the music and the magic of the con. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I ended up at the dealership on the 29th until they closed, and on the 30th for far too long (after going to turn over the title and get my plates from the old car, so they could be transferred), talking to a young man who I swear had never sold a car before. He couldn't answer basic questions about anything without going to ask his supervisors what to say. And finally they couldn't get the car I wanted because it was too far into the holidays to get the intense blue car from one of the other dealerships, and why get a car in a color I don't like when I can get a color I like? (Though I still miss the sparkly purple car after five+ years in the blue one.) Because the rental was due on the 30th (and they were a drop-off spot for the rental), they eventually gave me a "test drive" of a car I wasn't interested in, so I wouldn't have to start paying the rental company.

That led to me missing hours of the New Year's Eve zoom filk back at the dealership doing paperwork, because to my surprise and theirs, they were able to get the car on New Year's Eve. And all this still sick from whatever contaminated food I ate on Christmas day, exhausted from being up sick with norovirus-type symptoms, and with no emotional spoons whatsoever because my brother had just died. I'm sure that dragging myself out of bed to go anywhere, much less deal with a nice but totally clueless salesperson, did not help me recover from the bad food.

And it was a singularly odd experience to be sitting in a car dealership while being informed that people were crying on the radio in Florida, where my brother had spent decades teaching drumming and inspiring people to heal their hearts and make joyous sounds.

I had planned to do a new year's card draw, but even if the only thing that'd happened was the food reaction, that wasn't possible. At least I got focused enough to sing a little during the zoom NYE celebration, eventually.

And then, on NYE or NYD, My Angel started to complain of belly pain, at just the point in time that she might have gotten norovirus from me if that had been what I'd had. But she had no other symptoms for a day or so, just the pain, which then developed into abdomen and soon overwhelming chest pain. "Like a panic attack" she said. But she had none of her usual triggers for a panic attack. So, on the 2nd day of the new year, I took her to urgent care, who sent us to the ER.

After the last two experiences at Sinai, we instead went to St. Luke's South Shore, which was a much better, kinder, less chaotic, and much faster ER experience than Sinai had been. They took pictures, and told her she had an enlarged, very ugly and unhappy gallbladder and admitted her. She had the gallbladder out on Jan 3. In the meantime, my sisters were scrapbooking and planning the memorial gathering, none of which I could join in on. But at least the surgery went well (the surgeon was able to do it laparascopically, though it took a lot longer than expected. My Angel is doing well, and it is a very good thing it is gone. The pathology report was appalling (no wonder her body was panicking), but at least there was no cancer or other signs of future trouble.

Before my brother's memorial, one of my niblings' significant others had a medical emergency leading one of my sisters to run off to a different state, where another ER trip was needed, and happily happened quickly enough to let the doctors prevent some very serious consequences, though we didn't know the outcome would be as good as it has been during and after the memorial. (The cause is still, so far as I know, a medical mystery, not something anyone did foolishly or wrong. But that's someone else's story, the details aren't mine to share.)

My brother's memorial was very nice, and well suited to honoring his memory. I played Jammin Hands and got the whole room to join in clapping or tapping tables or stomping their feet, since he was always doing that, until his body started to fail. A few people even played percussion instruments he'd made.

And then on this last Friday, I let My Angel drive the new car the very short distance to her dentist (I have zero desire to spend hours at a dentist office where lots of people have to lay there with their mouths open during a quad-demic) and on the way back, while she was going over a four-lane bridge, some intoxicated pedestrian decided to run across three lanes of moving traffic (not in a cross walk) and roll over the hood of my brand new car. Happily a witness (another pedestrian) stuck around to talk to the police officer, who assured me that My Angel did nothing wrong and if anyone will get a ticket, it will be the pedestrian. But still, I didn't need the emotional stress, My Angel didn't need it either, and now I have to deal with yet another insurance clam. (And probably another rental while they get the minor cosmetic damage fixed. At least, it looks minor, but someone who knows what they're looking at needs to check it to make sure.)

Oh, and in the meantime, the person who'd been promising to adopt the FELV+ kitten my daughter has been caring for didn't actually arrange for the kitten to be brought to her as promised, so we're looking for someone else to give a very sweet sick little boy cat a forever home. I'm willing to do some driving to make that happen, but not all the way to either coast. I could, however, (for instance) meet someone at Sweetwater to hand over the kitten, if someone wanted me to.

So, my family and I could really use a few less "interesting" months.

So, I've been thinking about this mass-shooting thing.

There's a few things I think are self-evident, that apparently aren't.

1. I have a lot of friends who own guns, and who have shown me every evidence of being responsible gun owners.
2. I have a lot of friends who do not own guns, who have also shown evidence of being responsible people.
3. I think that all of my friends are good people. In fact, I think most humans are good people.
4. I think demonizing gun owners and demonizing gun non-owners are both bad things.
5. I think we all agree that mass shootings in peacetime are terrible, whether they happen in schools or malls or places of employment or homes or parks or any other place.
6. I think it is morally bankrupt to say, "So, America has more mass shootings than anywhere else in the world, excepting only places actively at war, and I'm OK with that. Let's keep everything exactly the same and watch the killings and their aftermath on the nightly news." (I also think it is morally bankrupt to act like it's OK while saying it's terrible. Doing nothing is, essentially, acting like it's OK.)
7. I do not think any of my friends are morally bankrupt. In specific, I do not think responsible gun owners are morally bankrupt.

Therefore, I believe the gun owners and gun non-owners in this country can find a common moral ground to address this terrible problem.

I know we cannot eliminate all murder or even all mass shootings. But look at the numbers! Mass shootings in this country have gone from rare to commonplace. That is evidence that we, as a society, have screwed up!

Perhaps we need to shift the conversation from "guns" to "violence". What makes a person more likely to be violent? How can we address the things that make a person (whether otherwise mentally healthy or mentally ill) more likely to be violent?

Another thing to look at is responsibility and awareness of consequences. What makes a person able or unable to behave responsibly? What prevents a person from being aware of consequences to his behavior? Maybe more importantly, what makes a person stop caring about consequences?

Empathy is important too--punishment doesn't stop crime, we have more people in jail than ANY other country in the world, and we still have plenty of crime. But a person realizing in the moment that his or her behavior will hurt somebody else, and caring enough to not want to do that--I've seen that stop a lot of people from acting on an angry impulse.

But addressing these basic lifestyle issues is hard--a lot harder than chanting pro- or anti-gun slogans.

But we have, over and over, led the world in succeeding at doing hard things. And we are not a morally bankrupt people.

The Muse Fusion has started! It’s over [Poll #1862289]

It’s easy to sponsor the story—just link to the Muse Fusion (http://torn-world.livejournal.com/116759.html) in your blog, your facebook, your twitter or other appropriate public internet space, and then stop back here to give me a link to your link. I reserve the right to count linkbacks I find out about in some other way, but I won’t be out looking for them. I’ll be getting ready for Worldcon and writing/drawing.

And probably visiting the hospice again. I have a friend who I’ve always really liked, but our schedules never meshed. Still, I always thought that someday…well, there won’t be a someday. She was very recently discovered to have stage four lung cancer, and I just heard about it this week.

I know nobody can do everything they want to do. There’s always more friends to see, more stories to write, more songs to sing, more of everything worth doing than there is time to do those things in. This lady has always been one of the most alive people I know—I believe she lived her life well and fully. But still, she should have many years left to be the wonderful, vital person she’s always been, instead of a just few more days or hours to be with her friends and family. The news hit me hard.

So, I forgot all about posting a poll, thinking instead about roads not taken, and remembering that you never know how short life will prove to be.

In the second half of last year, ellenmillion  ysabetwordsmith  and the others involved in the beginning of Torn World started holding contests.   So I entered a few contests, and in time got more involved in Torn World.  And thus I met valdary .  

This is another friend who I only actually met online.  And very shortly after meeting her, I learned that she had terminal cancer,  that the doctors had sent her home to die before I'd ever met her.  The whole time I knew her, she was in and out of the hospital, but always cheerful and friendly, creating art, poetry and stories for Torn World, tweeting updates about the site, and being a lively presence in the forums.

She was the first, after me, to write about skycats, one of the  animal types I entered into the second Torn World contest.  I remain delighted by her poem,  Bathing a Skycat.  Go check it out.  I'll wait.

She also has other art and stories on Tornworld.net, including her last story which was just posted in the last couple of days. 

She blogged about her experiences with cancer on the Severn Hospice site.

I just learned that she has died.  It was expected, of course, though not at any particular time.  And, of course, if the doctors had been right, I'd have never met her at all, and we'd never have had her contributions to Torn World to enjoy.  And I'd have never read about the Joys of Negative Thinking or her Secret Tattoos.  My connection to her  was one of the blessings of the year.

But even knowing she must leave us soon, I wasn't ready for her to die. 

Go gently, Val, you will be missed--and remembered.

Today I went to a gathering in honor of a friend who has passed. It was a picnic for her friends, for her husband, and for her daughter, who is middle-school aged. It was very relaxed. People played croquet, because she used to set up obstacle-course croquet games, though this game was much more tame than I remember those being. There was food, kids played, and grownups talked.