Tag Archives: personal

Quick birthday thought from an old gay guy

life, ,
“I'm not old, I'm FUCKING retro!”
“I’m not old, I’m FUCKING retro!”

I try to post at least a little something every year on my birthday. Since I have been so bad at posting much of anything here this year it felt extra important that I do.

My husband managed to turn the entire weekend into a birthday celebration. He had me open presents while we were online with our gaming group on Saturday. That’s also when they sang to me and made me blow out a candle.

Then when I woke up Sunday and started cleaning and otherwise preparing to watch some football, I kept finding birthday cards he had hidden here and there around the house. He also insisted on getting takeout for dinner.

I took today off from work and slept in a little bit. Among my presents were books that I may spend the afternoon reading.

But the main thing I need to do is post some new words of wisdom since I try to do that every year. This year I give you:

Love isn’t so much something you feel, as it is something you do. But it never hurts to tell those you love that you do love them. Don’t make them infer it.

In which we wind up eating dinner much later than we meant to…

life, ,

Two bits of background:

First, today is a day we spend the afternoon logged into a friend’s Discord server playing our current RPG campaign. (It’s a Fate-based Star Wars game at the moment, in which I play a Gamorrean named Xagg whose high concept is, “Just tell me who to clobber.”)

While I was shopping this morning I found a small roast in the Manager’s Special part of the meat department, 50% off. So I grabbed it. While unpacking groceries, I told my husband I figured we should eat it for dinner tonight. Frequently on game day if we don’t order food, we wind up discussing dinner after logging out of Discord, and then decide we’ll just graze on the leftover snacks, because there is usually too much, but then we both later admit we wish we had eaten something real for dinner.

Now the anecdote:

We log off a bit after 6pm and I start working on the roast. I chopped up the items from the veggie tray we hadn’t eaten, plus an onion and some small potatoes, season it, put it all in the InstaPot with some water and turn it on.

I tell me husband that I need to lay down for a bit. I swear I also told him, “Wake me when you’re ready for dinner.” He says I didn’t tell him I was laying down or anything else…

Three hours later, I’m still conked out in the bedroom, but I’m having a dream that our friends Jared and Katrina have come over to our apartment just for fun after the game. This is a little unlikely since one of them lives about an hour and 10 minutes drive north of us, while the other lives a four and a half hour drive south of us. But this is a dream, and dreams don’t care about stuff like that.

In the dream we’re having a lovely time. And we started talking about cocktails–because one of the birthday presents (my birthday is tomorrow, but…) my husband had me open while we online with our friends is this really cool book called The Cocktail Codex.

Note: the book and tomorrow being my birthday and such are all true, even though this is a dream.

So in the dream I’m getting some cocktail glasses out of the cabinet and we’re discussing what drink I could make with the booze and mixers I have on hand, and Katrina leans in and whispers in my ear asking me to make a special cocktail for Jared but do it without him seeing what it is.

I can understand every word in her request except the name of the cocktail.

I ask her to repeat it.

She does, but I still can’t understand her.

This repeats several times and I’m getting a bit exasperated. I take a notepad from the refrigerator and ask her to write the name down. She does.

I look at it, but I still can’t read it.

My husband then chimes in and says, “Of course not. Everyone knows you can’t read when you’re dreaming.”

At which point I sat up in bed, wide awake and a bit cranky. It took me about a minute to sort out that I had just been dreaming and apparently woke myself up because I was frustrated with the dream.

I then went to check on the roast. The InstaPot had been in Warming Mode for about 2 hours. I went to the computer room to ask my husband why he didn’t wake me or eat some dinner. He isn’t there.

It takes me a few minutes to find him. He’s deep asleep in the bedroom. When I woke up frustrated from the dream, I just literally didn’t see him there.

He says that when he laid down next to me that dinner still wasn’t ready…

Chuck is the artist, Chas is the writer

people, , , , , ,

Many years ago the famous author Terry Pratchett was going to do a reading in the city where I lived at the time, Seattle, Washington. You had to reserve seats for the reading, though the tickets were free. My husband and another couple among our friends wanted to attent, so we reserved seats and planned to attend together. Specifically, the other couple was going to show up at our place in a Seattle neighborhood about 2 miles from the venue where Mr. Pratchett was supposed to speak, and the four of us would drive over together.

Each of us had at least one of Mr. Pratchett’s books we intended to bring with us to ask him to autograph.

We discussed the reading and our attendance plans on several mailing lists associated with the science fiction shared universe ‘zine that I was Editor-in-Chief of and that many of our friends were members of either the Editorial Board or the non-profit Corporate Board of Directors overseeing said fanzine.

So on a particular Saturday afternoon my husband and I were waiting for two of our friends to arrive at our door so we could all pile into one car with the books we wanted autographed and drive to the nearby University for the reading.

There was a knock at our door. I opened the door expected to see the two friends we were expecting. Instead, another friend of ours (who was also involved in the sci fi project as a writers of stores, an illustrator of stories, a cover artist for the fanzine, and a member of the editorial board). I opened my mouth intending to say, "Oh, you’re coming to the reading, too?"

But before I could say that, our friend, Chuck, said, "I think I’m having a heart attack, and I wasn’t sure what to do, so I came to ask you guys."

Now, at this time Chuck lived only a half mile from the place where Mr Pratchett was scheduled to read, and only 3/4 of a mile from the University District Hospital’s Emergency Room. But instead of heading to the nearby Emergency Room, our good friend Chuck had gotten on a bus, which required him to change buses halfway through, and took the four mile trip to the duplex where Michael and I lived over in the neighborhood of Ballard, Washington, to ask us what he ought to do about a heart attack.

We bundled him into our car, scrawled a quick note to our other two friends, and headed over to a different Emergency Room that was barely half a mile from the place we lived at the time.

It turned at that Chuck was correct: he was having a heart attack. There were various things the doctors wanted to do before they would let us take him home.

When our friends arrived at our duplex (this was back in the late 1990s when none of us had cell phones so I couldn’t sent a message to tell them what was happening), the note had somehow blown off the door. So they waited a while for us to re-appear, then the went to the Pratchett reading, and afterword, one of them asked Mr Pratchett to give her an autograph that said, "To Gene: Where were you, you bum? Terry Pratchett."

Chuck was, indeed having a minor heart attack, so my husband and I hung out in the hospital lobby until the doctors decided our friend was physically stable and we could take him home.

Now, while the decision to get on a long bus ride that required a transfer to get to some friends to ask what he ought to do about a heart attack very much sums up some parts of Chuck’s personality, in all fairness I have to point out that he took important and wise actions related to the health situation afterward.

For years Chuck’s primary source of income had been as a administrative person for a comic book distributing firm, and the rest of his income was supplemented by writing, illustrating, and editorial work he did for several small comic book publishing companies. After this incident, Chuck went to remarkable lengths to find a steel foundry that was doing business in Seattle, and took a job that involved a lot of physical activity at the foundry, so that he wasn’t spending every day sitting at a desk. This move prevented him from having any more cardiac events for some years after this.

In addition to being the single most prolific writer, artist, and editor of the Tai-Pan Literary and Arts Project (of which I had the honor of being editor-in-chief for about 27 years), Chuck was involved in lots of other projects: he had a patreon, he had is long-running comic strip Mr Cow a fantasy comic book series, Champion of Katara, and the related fantasy series Felicia, the Sorceress of Katara.

Chuck was also–hands down, no arguments–the very best person to read a story aloud. When, at our monthly writers’ meetings, some people had a scene, or short story, or chapter from their own work in progress to read but were feeling trepidatious about reading it aloud for critique, Chuck frequently volunteered to read there stories. And even with zero-prep time, Chuck did the very best voices.

In my opinion, his writing deserved to be read by a much larger audience than found him on the various venues he published his work on. Similarly, while I am extremely happy that I own several of his story illustrations and book covers (hanging at various places around my apartment), I think that a much larger audience should have seen his stuff. And I absolutely wish that many, many more people had gotten to hear his voice talent.

Many months ago a mutual friend (Chuck’s best friend, and a writer who is one of the few people I put in the same category as Chuck), informed several of us that Chuck was experiencing health issues but only wanted a very limited number of people to know the details.

Chuck continued to attend our monthly Writers’ Meetings for a while, but had communicated to me that he didn’t want to talk about his health situation with others. So it was only very recently that I was able to tell many of our acquaintances what was up. And when my husband and I headed into the nearby hospital this weekend for a round of sitting with him, I was convinced that there were going to be several more days of us spending part of the day sitting by his bed and either reading messages from friends far away, or talking about some story ideas I had for his universe (with his permission I had written a Christmas Ghost Story set in his Champions of Katara universe, and had discussed a few other ideas in very broad terms.)

This is not the first time I have sat at the bedside of someone I knew and loved who was heading toward what the doctors all said was the end. But on Saturday I was still very naively thinking that I would get to sit at his bedside on the the next several days I had committed to.

So I was talking about one of my silly story ideas set in his universe, trying to keep a familiar voice sounding in the room no matter how unconscious he was, when he just…

…stopped…

…breathing.

I knew that he had a Do Not Resuscitate and a Do Not Intubate Order on file, but I still (having been programmed by many years of movies and TV shows), expected something more urgent from the medical people when I pressed the red button and told them I thought he had stopped breathing.

But Chuck was gone.

A lot of our mutual friends and acquaintances have shared more interesting and illuminating stories than the one I shared above about Chuck and his many idiosyncracies and talents. I should try to see how many of those are available on line to link to.

But while I’ve been thinking about Chuck, and what he means to me, I’ve thought about a phrase more that more than one of our mutual friends have used: referencing his gentle humor. And while I’ve talked about how for years he got me again and again every month with his deadpan pretending to not know what I was talking about when I asked if he had a story to read for our monthly Writers’ Meeting, I realize that "gentle" only scratched the surface.

Chuck had a wicked sense of humor, but his humor was also always kind. I think that we, as a species, don’t always fully appreciate just how valuable kindness is, nor do we always recognize how uncommon kindness is. I, personally, am fundamentally a snarky, flippant, irreverent, and impudent a personality. Chuck was extremely clever and sharp-witted–and sometimes even impudent–but his satire and felicitousness were never cruel or biting.

Chuck was always kind.

And I think that is what is leaving the biggest hole in my heart right now. Yes, I wish I knew how several of his stories in progress would have ended if he had had more time, but I’m mostly going to miss his kindness.

Over the years I worked with him, Chuck would sometimes sign his work "Chuck Melville" but other times sign it much more formally "Chas P.A. Melville." I asked him more than once which he preferred and why. The only time he didn’t give a deflecting humorous answer he said, ‘Chas is the writer. Chuck is the artist."

So I tried to follow that guideline when his work appeard in the publication I was editing ever since. I still don’t know what precisely his two middle initials stand for. One of his sisters revealed one of the initials in a posting on his Caringbridge site. I’m willing to let the other initial remains a mystery.

Memorial Thoughts

life, , , ,

Mrs. Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian, Addresses The NRA – Two Industries that Are Above the Law Put the Killing in Killing

Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian Addresses The NRA - The Killing in Killing

Click on the image to see the video, or go here.

Memorial Day weekend just seems like a really sick time to schedule the NRA convention, doesn’t it?

Let’s move one…

There are other things I’ve rather think about today:

copyright 2014 Gene Breshears
Flowers for Grandma’s grave, I believe this was 2008.

Before the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 made Memorial Day an official federal holiday, and even before the first federal observation of a day to decorate Union Soldier’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery back in 1868, and even before the Ladies’ Memorial Association of Columbus, Georgia suggested a day to honor those who died in the Civil War there was another holiday called Decoration Day observed in many parts of the country. It was a day to have family reunions and celebrate the lives of all of our deceased family members.

As one historical society defined it: “Decoration Day is an annual observance at many privately owned graveyards during which families gather to clean up the graveyard, reconnect with family, and honor the memories of their ancestors… Traditionally, Decoration Day is in part a ritual, with families arriving on the day before Decoration Sunday with hoes and shovels for a graveyard workday. They scrape the ground, trim the grass, make new plantings, and prune old ones… The cleanup is followed by a Sunday picnic dinner, singing in church, placing flowers on graves, and visiting with friends and family. Sunday participants come dressed for church and participate in what amounts to a family and community reunion. Family members that have moved away often return on this day, giving them an important opportunity to teach children about their ancestors and the communities in which they once lived. Outdoor tables of concrete or wood, marked to identify participating churches, hold the food for the meal.”

I have mixed feelings about Memorial Day. On the one hand I get really tired of the tendency some have of turning every even-slighlty patriot holiday into another Veterans’ Day. Today is not the day to thank Veterans for their service. Today is a day to remember and honor the memories of the dead. Since the Uniform Holiday Act, it has officially been a day to honor those who gave their lives in service to our country. Those of us with a longer memory think of it as a day to honor all of the dead, not just those who died during military service.

I have particularly strong feelings about it because my Grandmother, who observed the holiday every year by putting silk flower arrangements she had made herself on the graves of our relatives in western Oregon and Washington–and also by sending money to friends all over the country to make certain that flowers were put on the graves of her parents (my great-grandparents) and all of her aunts and uncles. Then, fifteen years ago, on the Friday before that Memorial Day, Grandma, having just finished arranging the flowers on the grave of my great-aunt Maud, looked up at my step-grandpa, said, "I don’t feel good…" and she dropped dead.

So Memorial Day now, more than ever, makes me think of my Grandma, and all the people she loved her preceded her into death. So, it’s time to reprint this (first published in 2014):

Memorial, part 2—for Grandma

Grandma always called it by the older name, Decoration Day. As I’ve [written before](https://fontfolly.net/2013/05/27/memorial-2/), the original holiday was celebrated in many states as a day to gather at the grave sites of your parents, grandparents, et cetera, to honor the memory of their lives. It was often a time of picnics and family reunions. At least as much a celebration of their lives as a time of mourning. The connection to military deaths didn’t happen until 1868, and particularly in the south, was often seen as a pro-Union, pro-war, anti-southern celebration.

I didn’t understand most of those nuances when I was a kid. The modern version of the holiday, celebrated on the last Monday in May, didn’t even exist until I was a fifth-grader, when the Uniform Monday Holiday Act went into effect.

Grandma observed it faithfully. Every year, as May rolled around, she would begin calling distant relatives and old family friends. Grandma knew where just about every person descended from her own grandparents was buried, and she made certain that someone who lived nearby was putting flowers on the graves of those relatives by Memorial Day. She took care of all the family members buried within a couple hours drive of her home in southwest Washington.

She was putting flowers on the grave of my Great-aunt Maud (Grandma’s sister-in-law) on the Friday before Memorial Day when she died. My step-grandfather said he was getting in position to take a picture of her beside the grave and the flowers (there are hundreds and hundreds of photos of Grandma beside graves with flowers on them in her photo albums) when she suddenly looked up, said, “I don’t feel good!” and pitched over.

One weekend she had blown out the candles on the cake celebrating her 84th birthday. The following Friday, while putting flowers on Great-aunt Maud’s grave, she died. And one week after that a bunch of us were standing at her graveside. It was just down to a few family members, and we were at that stage where you’re commenting on how pretty the flowers that so-and-so that no one had heard from in years were, when someone asked, “Isn’t Grandpa’s grave nearby?”

Grandpa had died 23 years earlier, and was buried in one of a pair of plots he and Grandma had bought many years before. And after Grandma re-married, she and our step-grandfather had bought two more plots close by.

Anyway, as soon as someone asked that, my step-grandfather’s eyes bugged out, he went white as a sheet, and said, “Oh, no!” He was obviously very distressed as he hurried toward his car. Several of us followed, worried that he was having some sort of medical issue.

Nope. He and Grandma had been driving to various cemeteries all week long before her death, putting silk-bouquets that Grandma had made on each relative’s grave. Aunt Maud’s was meant to be the next-to-the-last stop on their journey. Grandpa’s silk flower bouquet was still in the trunk of the car. My step-grandfather was beside himself. He’d cried so much that week, you wouldn’t have thought he could cry any more, but there he was, apologizing to Grandma’s spirit for forgetting about the last batch of flowers, and not finishing her chore—for not getting flowers on Grandpa George’s grave by Memorial Day.

The next year, several of us had the realization that without Grandma around, none of us knew who to call to get flowers put on Great-grandma and Great-grandpa’s graves back in Colorado. None of us were sure in which Missouri town Great-great-aunt Pearl was buried, let alone who Grandma called every year to arrange for the flowers. Just as we weren’t certain whether Great-great-aunt Lou was buried in Kansas or was it Missouri? And so on, and so on. One of my cousins had to track down the incident report filed by the paramedics who responded to our step-grandfather’s 9-1-1 call just to find out which cemetery Great-aunt Maud was in.

copyright 2014 Gene Breshears
Flowers from us, Mom, and my Aunt Silly on Grandpa’s grave.
Mom and her sister have been putting flowers on Grandma’s and Grandpa’s graves since. Our step-grandfather passed away three years after Grandma, and he was buried beside her.

Some years before her death, Grandma had transferred the ownership of the plot next to Grandpa to Mom. So Mom’s going to be buried beside her dad. Mom mentions it whenever we visit the graves, and I don’t know if she realizes how much it chokes me up to think about it.

We had put the flowers in place. We had both taken pictures. Mom always worries that she won’t remember where Grandpa’s grave is (it’s seared in my head: two rows down from Grandma, four stones to the south). Michael helped Mom take a wide shot picture that has both Grandma’s and Grandpa’s spots in it.

I thought we were going to get away with both of us only getting a little teary-eyeed a few times, but as we were getting back into the car, Mom started crying. Which meant that I lost it.
Flowers from Mom, my sister, and I on the grave this year for Grandma and our step-grandpa.
Flowers from Mom, my sister, and I on the grave this year for Grandma and our step-grandpa. I believe this was 2010.

Grandma’s been gone for fifteen years, now. Every time I have taken the two hour drive to visit Mom, there would be a moment on the drive when my mind is wandering, and I’d wonder what Grandma will be doing when we get there. And then I would remember I won’t be seeing her. It took me about a dozen years to stop having those lapses about Grandpa. I suspect it will be longer for Grandma.

After all, she’s the one who taught me the importance of Those Who Matter.

Those Who Matter

life, , , ,
Grandma & me
Me and my maternal grandmother. I think I was four?

(Originally published on my old blog June 7, 2007)

"Don’t let anyone tell you how to live your life. You just pay them no never-mind!"

"You darn-tootin’ better not let me catch you carrying on like that. That’s all I’ll say!"

Grandma’s advice was often contradictory. She had no trouble saying, one moment, that we shouldn’t let what other people think guide our decisions, then the next moment admonish us for not doing things her way. While it could be very aggravating, it was actually less meddlesome than it sounds. She really did expect you do to what you thought best. Just as she would do what she thought best. And if what she thought was best was to tell you that you were making a big mistake, then by god that’s what she’d do.

If you didn’t agree, she expected you to say so. That was a lesson not everyone understood. There was a point where she would agree to disagree–if you had the backbone to stand up for your opinion and to stand up to her. And sometimes it took more than just backbone.

My Great-uncle Lyle, her oldest brother, used to love telling the story of her school lunch box. One day, when grandma was in grade school, she came home with her lunch box battered out of shape, hinge broken, and so on. Seems there was an older boy who teased her. She went after him, swinging the lunch pail. He ran. She caught him, tackled him, and wolloped him with the lunch pail until he apologized.

Her parents (my great-grandparents) punished her for fighting and ruining the lunch box. Great grandpa got her another lunch box, but warned her if she did it again, she’d start taking her lunch to school in an old water bucket.

The boy teased her again some days later. Not wanting to get beaten again, the boy chose a location where he could run into some thorny blackberry bushes. He started taunting her, and when she came after him, he ran into the bushes and brambles.

Grandma didn’t hesitate. She chased him through the thorns and vines, tackled him again, sat on him, and beat him with the lunch box until he apologized.

For the rest of the school year, she carried her lunch to school in the water bucket.

Every time my great-uncle told that story, Grandma would point out that the boy stopped teasing her after the second incident. One time after the tale was told, someone asked what the boy had teased her about. Great-uncle Lyle said, "She would never tell us." But after a bit of prodding Grandma finally agreed that maybe it was okay to tell that the boy had said Great-grandpa was an outlaw, a bad influence, and few other unpleasant things.

Great-uncle Lyle pointed out that Great-grandpa was a moonshiner, a moonshine runner (this was during prohibition), and involved in several other questionable activities. "So, he was an outlaw."

"Yeah, but that didn’t give that boy any right to insult my daddy!"

The story is even funnier when you know that at an earlier age Grandma had tried to dispose of a whole shed full of moonshine. Another time she had threatened to tell the revenuers where the still was. Great-grandma once said that Grandma was a member of the Temperance Army by the age of five. Great-grandpa shot back that she’d been born a Temperance Soldier and Crusader.

We buried Grandma last week. I’ve had several sad moments the last couple weeks, but I keep remembering that silly bucket story. Including one other part: Grandma said she wasn’t a bit ashamed to carry her lunches in the water bucket the rest of the year, because she’d gotten it defending her father. What the boy had said may have been true, but it was wrong.

I think these stories represent the most important lessons I learned from Grandma: just because you disagree with someone doesn’t mean you don’t respect them or love them. Something can be both true and wrong at the same time. Finally, stand up for family and loved ones, whether you agree with them or not.

At the funeral, so many people talked about feeling adopted by her–in many cases that she was the mother or grandmother they never had–that one of my cousins finally said, "I never knew I had this many brothers and sisters. Welcome to the family."

Which brings me to the lesson she taught that I can’t sum up in an essay (she spent her whole life living it, after all): treat everyone as family, because all we have that really matters is each other.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind. –Dr. Seuss

Copyright © 2007 Gene Breshears. All Rights Reserved.

Finally turning off the xmas screen saver

life, , , , ,

So today I finally turned off the Christmas screen saver on my laptop. It isn’t an installed app, I used one of the macOS options that brings images up from a folder you designate, and I have this one folder that is full of Christmas themed wallpapers and some similar images. Most years I point the screensaver at that folder some time during the Thanksgiving weekend. When I point the saver back to the usual folder varies.

I used to leave it going about a week or two after I took down the Christmas decorations. Part of the reason was simply that changing it is something I have to go in and do, so I wouldn’t think of it until the first time I noticed the screen saver after the decorations were put away. But the other half was that as soon as I saw one of the images I would feel a little sad that Christmas was over.

Yeah, I’m one of those people.

I don’t want the decorations up year round, but I’m always a little sad when I take them down. One time when I mentioned this at work a co-worker said that her kids sometimes get upset at her because she wants to start taking them down on Christmas day. "I love putting them up," she said, "And during the Christmas season I think they’re wonderful and so on. But it’s like switch flips in my brain after we finish Christmas dinner. The decorations don’t look pretty and sweet and fun to me, they just look tacky!"

And there are folks who don’t like them at all, but we don’t need to dwell on such dark, twisted souls.

So I leave the screen saver on for some time after the holiday. And since it’s just my laptop it shouldn’t matter to anyone else, but I still sometimes feel a twinge of silliness that I still have them up many weeks past Christmas. But since my brain works like a noisy committee meeting, there is almost immediately a stubborn, "Well, why can’t I leave it that way as long as I like?"

I do like having routines and rituals. So I don’t listen to Christmas music before Thanksgiving dinner or after Three Kings Day, for instance. I don’t allow myself to start grinding the holiday blend coffee beans to make my coffee before Thanksgiving (unless it’s one of the years that I picked up Starbucks’ Thanksgiving Blend as one of the holiday coffees, then it’s okay to start drinking that in the run up to Thanksgiving).

Which gets us to why today is the day I turned off the screen saver.

Since every year I buy as many of the Christmas/Holiday Blend Coffees I can find, I never managed to drink them all by Christmas. The last several years I’ve usually finished them all over by about mid-February. A couple of years ago I decided that if I was going to have a rule about when I turn off the Christmas screen saver that it would be this: I can leave the screen saver on until I grind the last of the Christmas coffee beans.

You may recall that when I wrote about acquiring this year’s Christmas coffees that it was a slightly larger haul than the year before. Well, that was on November 22. I found some more Holiday Blends during December. So this morning, St Patrick’s Day, March 17, I finally ground up the last of the Christmas coffee beans and have been drinking that coffee today.

Tomorrow it’s back to not-Holiday coffee.

Blast from the Social Media Past

blogging, ,
Lisa Simpson reading her friends' posts in an image from The Simpsons © Gracie Films, © Fox Television, et al
Lisa Simpson reading her friends’ posts in an image from The Simpsons © Gracie Films, © Fox Television, et al

I was kind of shocked while checking email this morning to see a notification from LiveJournal. It’s been nearly five years since I wrote Time to say bye-bye to LiveJournal. It was the culmination of several years of the Russian-based company that bought LiveJournal turning off features, closing down mirror sites, and replacing the terms of service.

The terms of service mention needs a bit of context. At one point they locked out all sorts of functions, including cross-posting from elsewhere, until you logged in and accepted the new terms of service. If your LiveJournal was set to a language other than Russian, they served up a translated terms of service… but at the top it literally said that the translated terms were not enforceable, only the original Russian-language terms. But you couldn’t log in without accepting the translated terms.

And those translated terms included all sorts of bad things. For instance, if you made any mention at all of anything gay, you must mark the post as "not suitable for children" or get your journal deleted. Of course, they also claimed that if you didn’t post for two years it would be deleted. Yet more than five years since my last post the old journal is still there.

Not to mentioned that they had disabled secure socket security on log ins, leaving you vulnerable to digital eavesdropping when you are logged in.

I double-checked and I’m correct, I haven’t posted anything on LiveJournal in those five years, though I was amused to see that four years ago an old acquaintance decided to post a reply to a 6-year-old post. I’m not sure what’s up with that.

To get back to the notification. A friend who hasn’t been posting anywhere much recently posted on LiveJournal a reminder that her blog there is essentially dead and you should follow her over on Dreamwidth (which is also where I moved my old LiveJournal and supposedly cross post from here but I often forget, since I haven’t found a way to do it automatically).

Thus it seems like a good time to say: follow my WordPress-based blog on FontFolly.Net (you don’t have to have a WordPress account to do so); follow me on Twitter at @FontFolly, follow the not-automatic cross-posting from FontFolly.Net to my Dreamwidth journal. If you don’t mind the dozens of reblogs of weird and fannish stuff, you can even follow me on Tumblr (where FontFolly.Net does automatically cross-post).

Please note that Facebook is not on that list. The only reasons I haven’t outright deleted my Facebook account are that 1) Facebook doesn’t really delete your account when you delete it, and 2) the only means I have to reach some relatives is Facebook messenger. Also, Facebook’s just unreliable. The algorithm hides stuff from your friends and followers all the time. As one relative found out after being disappointed that a lot of people she expected at her wedding didn’t even know when it was because the only time she announced it was once on Facebook.

I was, by the way, happy to confirm that the friend who posted on LiveJournal is already someone I’m following on Dreamwidth…

Good-bye Betty

news, , , , , , , ,

I first remember watching Betty White when I was thirteen years old. She had just joined the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore show as the host of a fictitious show-within-showed called the Happy Homemaker. Her character, Sue Ann Nivens, was super cheerful and upbeat while on her show, but was a sharp-tongued nymphomaniac behind the scene and often played the antagonist to other characters on the show.

And she was hilarious.

Given her career before that, I’m sure that I had seen her before she joined The Mary Tyler Moore Show on the many daytime game shows that she frequently appeared in during the 60s and 70s. I’m also fairly certain that I had seen the political thriller Advise and Consent in which Betty played the one and only woman Senator in Congress. But it was Sue Ann who wriggled her way into my heart.

Sue Ann wasn’t the only iconic character she played. Many more people hail her portrayal of Rose Nylund in The Golden Girls. Rose was a very different character–though one who like all characters Betty assayed, had a bit of steel in her.

Being as funny, personable, and playing such a diverse set of characters was an incredible accomplishment. But there was so much more to her than that. There was her activism for various animal charities. There was the time in the 1950s when she defied the network executives that she was letting tap dancer Arthur Duncan (who was black) have too much screen time in her variety show. Betty gave him even more screen time after that. And she became not just someone the gay community idolized, but one of our fiercest allies.

And every person who met her in persons said that neither the personability nor the wittiness was an act. It was who she was.

Betty was famous for loving vodka and hot dogs–and for refusing to apologize for not being into anything more fancy or stylish. So, join me in raising a glass as we bid farewell to the great Betty White.

Others have thoughts on her passing:

Betty White, ‘Golden Girls’ Star and TV Legend, Dies at 99

Longtime LGBTQ+ Ally Betty White has died at 99 – The beloved actress who was set to celebrate her 100th birthday on January 17, 2022 died overnight in Los Angeles

Betty White Understood Gay Men, and We Loved Her for It – I never felt ‘handsome,’ but when I met Betty, she made me feel like I was

Betty White defied racist demands with her 1954 variety show – Betty White Once Helped Launch the Career of a Black Tap Dancer by Hiring Him for Her Variety Show

On the seventh day of Christmas vacation…

life, , , , , ,

Saw this above screenshot of a tweet being shared and found it funny. Though I immediately wanted to compose my own:

  • Dec 23: Vacation Day
  • Dec 24: Christmas Eve (company holiday)
  • Dec 25: Christmas Day/Saturday
  • Dec 26: Boxing Day/Sunday
  • Dec 27: Christmas Holiday Observance (company holiday)
  • Dec 28 – 30: Combo of vacation days and odd company holidays
  • Dec 31: New Year’s Eve
  • Jan 1: New Year’s Day/Saturday
  • Jan 2: Sunday
  • Jan 3: New Year Holiday Observance (company holidays)
  • Jan 4: Back to Reality

I’m totally on board with the idea that for those of us who take at least a week off for the holidays that time does become a fog and the notion of weekdays and non-weekdays is tenuous at best.

My husband went back to work Tuesday. Which means that I kept thinking it was Monday.

Seattle and the surrounding area is currently under a blanket of snow. The first flurries hit our neighborhood late on Christmas Even, but the real snow didn’t start until very late Christmas. I’ve bee trying to keep the hummingbird feeder thawed out with mixed success. The birds have been extra competitive for food in the cold.

The main roads seem to be drivable, but we can’t get out of our street without dealing with one steep hill or the other, and I have been hearing tires spinning out on the closer of those hills. I may have to head to the grocery store on foot if for no other reason to pick up some prescriptions if the roads don’t improve.

I’d had hopes for today, because the weather report a few days ago said the temperature would get above freezing for a while that day… but now it’s 28° and the forecast is it’s going to stay below 30F.

Nine Years Ago Today

life, , , , ,
The service made me cry a lot.

I’ve written a few times about how I and my husband got married on the very first day it was legal to do so in our state. And how our fabulous friends assembled a beautiful wedding chapel in their home and how many other wonderful friends attended and played music (secretly organizing the music without us knowing) and so many other great things.

I cried a lot.

Rather than recap all of that, I figured this story about other weddings that happened that same day, a few miles away at Seattle City Hall would suffice:

60 Moments That Gave Me The Chills During Seattle’s First Day Of Marriage Equality – Relive one of the most emotionally exhausting days of my life, when 138 couples got married in downtown Seattle on the first day gay marriage was officially lega