Relax, relax. It’s nothing too big.
Yes, I created a new blog. No, it’s not a replacement for this one. I know I’ve been inactive here, and there are a lot of reasons for that. But as I’ve already said… I’m not leaving. I’m working out stuff in my personal life. But I will get back to making this blog active again… I promise… (would help if publicize would start working, again… but anyways…)
So. My new little WordPress blog…
Grandpa Sal as a Young Man in ROTC
On the morning of Friday, December 1st, I had dropped my parents off at the airport. They were heading to Atlanta for a conference. Later in the day, I drove over to work to get my schedule for the coming week. While I was heading there, Dad had rented yellow Mustang convertible for their week, and had texted me a picture of it. So I got to work, got my schedule, and hung out for a bit.
Then I got a phone call from my mom, who was crying. At first, she could barely talk, and two horrible thoughts went through my head. First, I thought she and Dad had gotten into a bad accident. Then I thought my brother, and best friend, Aaron, had gotten into an accident.
What she finally told me did not make me feel better.
At all.
Her dad, my grandpa, in Connecticut, had had a heart attack. He was in the hospital on life support.
Not long after, Dad called me. Grandma was taking him off life support, so he wouldn’t suffer.
I picked up my parents and my brother at the airport the next morning, and we went straight to Connecticut.
That side of my family is Catholic. The wake was Wednesday. The funeral was Thursday. And we came back home on Thursday night.
Cassini gazes across the icy rings of Saturn toward the icy moon Tethys, whose night side is illuminated by Saturnshine, or sunlight reflected by the planet.
Tethys was on the far side of Saturn with respect to Cassini here; an observer looking upward from the moon’s surface toward Cassini would see Saturn’s illuminated disk filling the sky.
Tethys was brightened by a factor of two in this image to increase its visibility. A sliver of the moon’s sunlit northern hemisphere is seen at top. A bright wedge of Saturn’s sunlit side is seen at lower left.
Okay… I should probably qualify that title a bit… thanks to my anxiety, I haven’t actually participated in many protests (though I’m working up the courage to actually start participating in more… and I have participated in dialogues and such). Plus, despite realizing that I’m not a pacifist, I’m actually a coward who’s usual reaction to face-to-face conflict is to curl up into the fetal position and cry for Mommy. So… you know…
However, I do support Antifa and consider myself Antifa, and I’m friends and comrades with Antifa. Despite the qualifications above, I am part of it… or at least I try to be…
So… that title? It’s not clickbait.
The DHS has officially classified Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.
I apologize for the massively decreased posting here. I’m not leaving. A lot of things are in the way right now. So there’s a few reasons for my seeming silence here…
The first is the fact that the publicize feature is broken. In the past, when I published a post, it automatically got sent out to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, and even LinkedIn. Now I have to do all that manually. I don’t have a problem with this for APotW and GGS, but for more in-depth posts I want people to dig into, the extra step of manually putting these out on my social networks is kinda annoying.
The second is that things in my life have taken an… interesting… turn. I work at Teavana, and Starbucks has announced that it will be closing all Teavana’s by Spring 2018. Unless I’m working at Starbucks by that time (they will have to hire me as whatever their equivalent of a team lead is, or as an assistant manager, and at a higher hourly wage than what I’m making now, which is $10), I’ll post my thoughts on all of this, on Teavana, and stuff like that. I’d call it a “tell all”, but it’s just going to be my opinion, others will disagree, and, well…
Teavana is, perhaps, not the most popular place in the tea community, and there are good reasons for that. But there’s a lot of good at Teavana, as well, not the least of which is that it has actually served as a reliable stepping stone for people interested in giving up soda and coffee and the like and want to move beyond the bagged stuff… so it won’t all be bad.
As for the third thing…
I just want to remind readers that Self Care in general, as well as Great Guitar Solos and Astronomy Picture of the Week are open for submissions. I’m eventually going to run out of stuff to post in these series, and would love to know what space pictures/videos/ideas you find interesting, what guitar solos you love, and what videos, pictures, recipes, etc you just enjoy and make you feel good, so I can post them here.
Don’t be shy! I’m genuinely curious, and I’d be happy to share it!
Sorry I forgot the Self Care post today. My brother got into town last night, so I stayed up getting kinda drunk on really expensive scotch with him and Dad, and then I woke up at 12pm today and had work at 3pm. So… apologies.
As for news about the Circus Peanut administration… it’s been kinda light in terms of stuff worth highlighting, to be honest… although that’s partly because I decided, what with Passover coming up and my vacation the week after, to take a break… my anxiety’s been spiking horribly again, to the point where 10mg of Lexapro a night is doing fuck all for me. Although I’m sure that’s been obvious considering how my posts have been pretty much since Agent Orange was elected (nothing but anger, cynicism, and hatred).
I need some laughter and happiness.
But anyways… that ableism post has been coming along, and in fact I’m going to focus on it for a bit, so I can put that and my commenting policy up before I start my vacation in Georgia next week.
I’ll see y’all with Great Guitar Solos on Monday at 12pm.
One thing about me people should know… I hate phone calls. I just don’t want to talk on the phone. Text, email, chat… all good.
But a phone call?
It’s the one thing I’ve avoided while doing my own acts of resistance. I’ve emailed, signed petitions, and the like. I’ve wanted to fax, but never had a way to do that.
And now I do, and you, can, too.
It’s resistbot.io, and Teen Vogue has a great write-up about it…
This really should be obvious at this point, but the series has basically become anything that’s positive or good news and not related to the administration (the only time it will be related is if I have good news to report about the 2018 midterm elections, although my hope for that is non-existent).
You may also start seeing it more than once a day sometimes.
There’s so much terrible shit coming from the government that I need to subset that with happy, feel-good, unrelated stuff as often as possible, so…
There will still be a continued Self Care post around noon; but you’ll probably see it more often on some days.
You’ve already seen this over on the Resist blog and at Affinity. I’m putting it here, too.
Avaaz has a global letter going, and they’d like to get 6 million signatures. I’ve signed. Please, sign yourself, and boost the signal! We can make our voices heard.
Please make sure you sign it. I did.
Here’s the letter in full…
This is not what greatness looks like.
The world rejects your fear, hate-mongering, and bigotry. We reject your support for torture, your calls for murdering civilians, and your general encouragement of violence. We reject your denigration of women, Muslims, Mexicans, and millions of others who don’t look like you, talk like you, or pray to the same god as you.
Facing your fear we choose compassion. Hearing your despair we choose hope. Seeing your ignorance we choose understanding.
As citizens of the world, we stand united against your brand of division.
Sincerely,
[Add your name!]
Go ahead and add your name. Everyone needs to sign it.