Strange tales: The rocket

I got to thinking about an event from September 24, 2022. I realized I never recorded it here. I was able to track it down on Facebook, but there's a lot more to the story:

I was standing outside talking to a friend about 7:40 tonight when we noticed a glowing thing moving across the southern sky from west to east at the speed of a slow plane , but with tails like a comet (but pointing towards the sun) or an outgassing rocket. Cold war nuclear jitters are back, so that seemed like a possibility, too. Turns out it was a Space X launch from Cape Canaveral (to release more Starlink satellites.) I got lousy video of it, with me breathing heavily and saying "WHAT THE F**K IS THAT?!" Here are some excellent photos NOT TAKEN BY ME that I collected from Twitter, taken by people from all over the Northeast.

reactions:

The story actually began a few months earlier. A friend's cat had gone missing. She was fairly sure it was still somewhere in or around her apartment. I happened to know where she lived - it was a building where I had gone to poetry readings back in the before-times. I hadn't been there in a few years, and more importantly, I hadn't seen this friend in many years. I have a large Havahart trap that I have used to catch groundhogs, one mystery animal that might have been a skunk, and numerous cats, and I volunteered to bring it up to her. It was one of my first major outings since getting vaccinated against COVID-19. I made the hour-plus trip up, showed her how to set and open the trap, chose a likely-looking location to place it, and then spent about another hour catching up - all while standing ten feet apart. We eventually made our goodbyes, and, after a false alarm when we heard something moving in the dark, I began the hour-plus trip home.

The cat randomly showed up at her apartment door later that night.

For one reason or another, I wasn't able to make it back up to retrieve the trap for several months. Eventually we made plans for me to come up. I was late getting out of the house, as usual, and arrived right around sunset. My friend handed over the trap. I put it in the car, and then we stood around talking and catching up. The night got darker and the stars came out. We were looking at the night sky and talking when suddenly something came into view. 

I didn't know what it was. It looked like a comet with multiple tails, but it was moving so fast across the sky - about as fast as a distant airplane - that if it really were a comet, it would be so close that we would be in big trouble. As I noted on Facebook, I also thought it might be a rocket - or maybe a missile. Being a Gen X Cold War Kid, the terrifying thought of seeing ICBMs crossing the sky has never left me. I had not heard anything about rocket launches that day, and I hadn't heard any rumors of war. I tried to capture it with my phone, but failed, badly. 

My friend lived in a dead zone for my cell phone. I wasn't able to access the Internet to check the news, and I wasn't able to call out to see if anyone else knew what was going on. I made my goodbyes to my friend, hopped in the car, and headed home. After about twenty minutes I was in a position where I could call home, call my mother. (Back then, that was still an option.) She hadn't heard anything on the news, but would call my sister to see if she had heard anything. I continued on my drive home. 

By the time I got home my mom had gotten in touch with my sister, who confirmed that what I had seen was a planned Space X launch from Cape Canaveral. It had traveled up the eastern seaboard and been seen and photographed by many people, none of whom had been aware of the launch. Even my cousin had seen it and had gotten some excellent photos.

Three months and three days later, my mom's leg would break as she was heading out to meet some friends with my sister. That would be the first in a series of events that would result in her death on February 24, 2023 - five months after I had seen a mysterious rocket crossing the sky.

Update, 3/22/2025: So Facebook did the Facebook thing, as expected.

NOTE: Apparently, the photos above are displaying as live links to Facebook. which means that if Facebook ever changes their file structure (again), the links will be broken. Here's a screen grab of the linked content:

 

Goodbye, SuperTiff

One of my first blogger friends has died.

Tiffany's first blog that I knew of, If I Were Queen of the World, was hacked long ago and is gone. Her self-owned blog, supertiff.com, is also gone. Another one exists, with posts from 2004-2007 and then again from 2013. It also bears the SuperTiff name.

Tiffany was fun and funny and full of life. That life was not without problems, problems that she was very open about. When she was going into rehab in 2011 or so (it actually was 2009, just two years after I met her online) - which she described as an adventure, for which she would be packing her adventure hat - she sent me an address where I could write her. And write her I did, once a day, every day, in a different format each time. One was a traditional letter printed out from my computer. Another was hand-written. Another, written on a napkin. Another was written on vellum. Another, a recaptioned Dinosaur Comics panel. Still another had been cut up into a puzzle.

She wrote me back once, in a letter I have treasured for over a decade.

She moved out to Pittsburgh three years ago. We joked that now that she was so close to me we would have to get together. Now that I look at the actual conversation it really wasn't a joke.

One trip to New York had her swing within twenty-five miles of my house. Alas, we never got to meet in person.

(Later in that same conversation I found this, and it broke my heart.)

I don't know how she died. I just know that she died the evening of Tuesday, December 19. She had been posting to Facebook shortly before she died. I found out about her death when one of her friends posted to her Facebook page referring to her in the past tense.

SuperTiff is gone, and this world is a less wonderful place without her.

Barnes & Noble to reopen January 30!

The Barnes & Noble at the Arena Hub Plaza in Wilkes-Barre Township, damaged in the tornado that tore through the plaza on June 13, 2018, is scheduled to reopen on Wednesday, January 30. A special sneak preview is planned for Tuesday, January 29 at 6:00 PM.

I may not be able to make it to the January 30 re-opening as I am planning to go to the Be Daring Open Mic in Scranton that evening, which will feature the triumphant (but temporary) return of a soldier/poet who has been stationed in South Korea for what seems like forever. I may be able to make it out to the sneak preview on January 29, if I don't have anything else going on that day...

2018: Almost over

Yeah. Another year in the books.

2018 was horrible in a lot of new and special ways. In May I told my supervisor during one of our periodic how's-it-going meetings that, after six years in the travel business, I was finally feeling happy, finally feeling like I was hitting my stride, finally making good money. So, naturally, within a week or so we were all called into a meeting and told that the company would be closing at the end of September. Our final client valued our work so highly that they invited the employees to apply for work-from-home positions - something that was simply not a practical possibility for me. So when September 30 came along, I found myself once again unemployed.

In late Spring a friend lost herself in an abrupt medical incident. I spent my final week of vacation visiting her in a hospital, hoping to aid in her recovery. Just when things were looking hopeful, her situation went from bad to worse to even worse. And that's where the year is ending with her.

As all this was happening things went sideways over at NEPA Blogs. We had been a part of WBRE's PA Live since the show's first week in September 2011. We had the odd skipped week and even the occasional multi-week hiatus. We also experienced several co-host changes, which meant that pre-recorded episodes with that co-host would have to be scrapped. I recorded my last session for PA Live! in late May, twenty episodes, enough to carry us through at least until September or so. But just a few weeks later, we were advised that the co-host I had recorded with would be leaving the show, very soon, meaning that we would be off the show until we recorded more. Unfortunately, this news came through as my friend was in the worst of her issues, and as I was losing myself in working as much overtime as humanly possible. We agreed that we wouldn't even try to record new episodes until a replacement host was chosen, something that didn't happen until early September. By then I was in the final weeks of my old job. And then, once the job ended, I plunged right into job search mode. I finally had a new job secured in early November, and reached out to the host and producer of PA Live! to let him know I was available to record with his new co-host - only to have him tell me that he was about to be leaving the station to accept a new job elsewhere, and resumption of the segment would be at the discretion of the new host.

As all this was happening, I was staying away from NEPA Blogs. I have not posted to it or updated it since - well, I'm not sure how long. But NEPA Blogs isn't just a site, it's a network of blogs and bloggers linking to each other and interacting with each other, joined by the bonds that run though Northeastern Pennsylvania. It was designed to get along fine without me. Still, I intend to resume work on NEPA Blogs in the new year, and to reach out to the new host of PA Live! sometime soon.

2018 is almost over. It sucked in its own special ways. I'd like to say I'm looking forward to 2019, but in truth, I expect it to be every bit as uniquely horrible.

Pulling up the stakes

"Pulling up the stakes" is a euphemism for moving, especially changing one's location. I'm not doing that. Today I pulled up the stakes in a much more literal way, finally removing the tomato stakes from my garden and putting them away until next planting season.

Objects tell me stories. When I touch or sometimes just see or even think about an object that is associated with a traumatic or otherwise significant event in my life, I can recall that event in vivid detail.

The tomato stakes I pulled up today were all newly purchased this Spring. This was a hell of a Spring, and Summer too. I had carefully positioned a week of vacation in early June during what, based on my records of the previous few years, would be the last week before tropical weather settled in with unrelenting heat and rain.* I wanted to get a long-postponed home project done, which would optimally involve three rain-free days with temperatures in the mid-70s. Instead I found myself dropping everything to make a daily visit to the hospital where a friend was being kept after a series of unfortunate incidents. Seeing her in that place, it was all I could do to hang on to my own sanity. Each day, every day of my vacation, I would stop there at the designated time for the allotted hour (or was it a half-hour?) for visits. Every day after leaving, I would try to find something fun to do, to remind myself how sweet freedom truly is and, for a few minutes, to take my mind off the friend who had lost hers due to some malfunctioning brain chemistry. On one of those days I stopped at a nearby home center and picked up some stakes for my tomato plants, both wooden and plastic-coated steel.

Those were the stakes I pulled up today.

My friend is still not completely recovered, and may never be. Unfortunate incidents tend to spawn additional unfortunate incidents, and when those are complicated by some really bad decisions, things get worse very quickly. I don't even know if I will ever see her again.

But next Spring, when I pull out the stakes for next year's tomatoes, I will be sure to remember her, and everything that happened with her in 2018.


*My weather forecasting was pretty on the mark: this would be the last really nice week of the "Summer," despite taking place in Spring and having a destructive tornado touch down in the middle of it.

Worried

Tomorrow is my last consecutive day of work. I'm allowing myself Friday off - it's one of my regularly scheduled days off - but I will go in for another five hours of overtime on Saturday. Still, the day off will break the streak at seventeen consecutive days of being at work, at least part of the time.

Coincidentally, my friend will have been in the hospital for all or part of those seventeen days. She was located and hospitalized on the day this streak started. She's getting released tomorrow.

I hope she's ready to come out. I thought she was ready last time, but now it's clear she wasn't. She made a series of bad decisions that contributed to putting her back in the hospital after just three weeks. Now I worry that she's being released into the care - or at least company - of someone who actively participated in some of those bad decisions, someone who has lately been trying to separate her from her longtime friends, threatening them if they try to get in touch with her.

I may get to see her on Monday afternoon. That's another regularly scheduled day off. It's also the last day I could earn the big bonus money, though I would have to put in more than four hours of overtime to do that. From a practical point of view, that would mean working from 9:30 to 2:00. I don't see myself doing that. I hope I get to see her. It would be the first time since I picked her up after her release from the hospital on June 18.

Rainy Monday

Today was a three hour work day for me. Naturally, it turned into a three-and-a-half hour day, plus a bit more. On the way home I stopped to put fifteen dollars in the gas tank - just over five gallons at $2.959/gallon - ran in the house to brush my teeth, and then stopped at the dentist for a quick touch-up on the cap I had put in last week.

It rained off and on throughout the day, in brief but very heavy storms that have caused flash floods throughout the state. Both Knoebel's and Hershey Park have sustained some flooding, and Hershey Park will be closed indefinitely.

My tomatoes have shot up tremendously. How tall they are, I'm not sure, since most have started to flop over under their own weight, and one has uprooted its stake. I think most are now over six feet tall. I believe I'm still a week or two from ripe tomatoes.

My friend gets released from the hospital on Thursday. Here's to third chances.

In reality

If someone says to you something regarding a current situation and a plan for the future, and you know that every element of this statement is untrue, it seems to me that there are three possibilities:

1. They are lying. They are deliberately making a statement to you that they know is false.

2. They are delusional. They believe that the statement they are making is true, even though you know it is not, and you know that they should be aware that it is not.

(Which opens up possibility 2a: They are mistaken. Their false statement is based on sincerely held beliefs - even if they should be aware that these beliefs are incorrect.)

3. They are telling the truth. It is you who have been lying to yourself, or deluded, or simply mistaken in your assumptions about reality.


I'm not sure which of these is the scariest option.

The sky on garbage night

The last time my friend was hospitalized - about five weeks ago - I happened to be on vacation. I had managed to get nearly an entire continuous week off. I had plans of all sorts, plans that had mostly gone out the window even before I became aware of her situation. But once I knew about it I rearranged my entire schedule. I made time to visit her every day during the permitted visiting hour, except for the one day I had a scheduled commitment from months earlier. I spent my days half-waiting for calls from her, for requests to look up addresses and phone numbers for things that she would need to take care of once she was out. When the big day came for her to get out, I had already resumed my work schedule, but by sheer coincidence her release was on my day off. I was the one who picked her up when she was released from the hospital and drove her off into a world of freedom and second chances.

Three weeks after she was released, when her second breakdown occurred, things were different. I didn't have any vacation scheduled, so the possibility of overtime loomed large, overtime I needed to start working for reasons I'll disclose sometime. A massive overtime incentive - a huge hourly bonus on top of time and a half pay - made it impossible to pass up. So I've been working overtime every day that I can. The last day off I had was the day of her breakdown, when I spent most of the day communicating with the one person she regularly talks to anymore, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. When I went to work the next day she was still missing, and I was steeling myself for the possibility that she was dead of exposure in a field or drowned in a pond in a small town on the other side of the state. I was overjoyed to hear when she was found later that day, even though it meant she was probably going back into a hospital for a long, long time.

But this time the hospital she's in is on the other side of the state, not just a quick ride away. I haven't talked to her since she went in, but I'm trying to get in touch. I won't be able to visit her every day, or drive her out whenever they decide she's ready to come out. I have no idea what a third chance will look like for her.

So I'm losing myself in work. Neglecting other things I cared about. Work helps keep my mind off things, and there's all that money. So much money.

I don't remember the last time I went outside and looked at the night sky. Summer is a rough time for this: it doesn't get dark until late, and the sky is usually thick with haze. But tonight is garbage night, and while I tried to get that tedious task done early, the outside cats had other ideas, showing up for their dinner just was I was walking out with the second bag of garbage. So I had to wait, and wait, and wait. By the time I judged it safe enough to take the garbage out without scaring the cats as they ate, it was nearly 10:30.

I stepped off the porch with cans and bottles for recycling and glanced up at the night sky. It had a strangely mottled appearance, like it was covered with clouds. But stars were clearly visible, even dim ones. As I took out the bags of garbage, I realized the sky was not cloudy, but extremely clear. The mottling I was seeing was actually the Milky Way Galaxy stretching across the summer sky.

I switched off the outside lights to get a clearer look. The sky was quite bright with light pollution from artificial sources and the first-quarter Moon. Still, I could easily see constellations and asterisms that I hadn't seen in a long time. Soon I saw more: wee dim satellites crossing the sky in every direction, and one immense, bloated, deep-red object glowing low in the south. At first I thought it was an approaching plane, or a slow-moving Chinese Lantern. But after I had carried the garbage and recyclables to the curb I realized the red object had barely moved at all. A quick check showed that it was Mars, just nine days from Opposition, the point where it will be directly opposite the Sun from the point of view of Earth, and appear largest and brightest in our sky.

Last time my friend was in the hospital, we had a stretch of incredibly beautiful and comfortable weather, punctuated by a single horrible storm and massively damaging tornado. This time, the weather will not be as nice, but she will be missing other things just as rare and beautiful.

Cherish your freedom, and your sanity. You could easily and quickly lose both.

More

Three hours of overtime today. Left on time, for once. Regular work week begins tomorrow.

On the way home I stopped at the drugstore for my mom. Took the laundry that I had hung up before heading to work off the line, because it looked (briefly) like it might rain. (It didn't. It will possibly rain tonight.) Went to the dentist to get a cap put on a tooth. Went grocery shopping after that. Came home, put away the groceries, and worried about my friend. (I have heard nothing from her since she was hospitalized. Last time she called me five times a day. This time, nothing.)  Made a week and a half of lunches, then made a week's worth of dinners. Washed the dishes. Emptied and changed the litter boxes. Watched some commentary on Putin's puppet's performance in Helsinki. Got my stuff ready for tomorrow.

The work week begins again tomorrow. Three ten-hour (minimum) days, followed by two days off during which I will work at least two more hours of overtime, and possibly a lot more, followed by another ten-hour day, another day off possibly spent working overtime, and then the cycle begins again. I'm not just sucking up the overtime for the money. This is also helping keep my mind off my friend, since there isn't a damned thing I can do for her. But it's mostly about the money.

Day 7 of whatever

Today was my seventh sixth consecutive day of work, and tomorrow will be my eighth seventh.

I worked my usual ten-hour shift on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I worked two hours of overtime on Friday and five hours of overtime on Saturday. I worked another regularly-scheduled ten-hour day today, and tomorrow I will work another three hours of overtime. Nearly every one of these days has been extended by fifteen minutes to an hour. My regular schedule begins again on Tuesday, and I'll work at least one but probably three hours of overtime on Friday. After that, who knows.

I'm doing this because I need the money, and there's a huge incentive being paid for overtime right now. I'm also doing it to occupy my mind and my time, to keep me from worrying all the time about my lost, sick friend for whom I can do nothing right now. Will the person I knew ever come back? Or is this the new normal, the way things are going to be? (At least, until they get worse.)


CORRECTION, 7/16/2018: Yesterday was my sixth consecutive day of work. Today is the seventh. I have corrected this in the post, but left the title as-is. Maybe I'm overdoing this a bit. Then again, I used to work four consecutive twelve-hour shifts at the DVD factory, with an hour (or up to an hour) commute at either end, and routinely tacked on a fifth or sixth twelve-hour day of overtime. I should be able to do this easily. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Trumpet vine

My two hours of overtime yesterday became two-and-a-half. My five hours of overtime today became six. Tomorrow I go in for a regularly scheduled ten hour day, and then on Monday I have another three hours of overtime and a dental appointment.

It helps me not think about a friend who has made an utter mess of her life, a friend I'd like to help but can't do a damned thing to help.

Here are some more flowers. I planted a single Trumpet Vine (or Hummingbird Vine) in 1997 because I like hummingbirds. The vine quickly became "vines" and spread all over the yard, faster than I could fight them back, but didn't put out any flowers for a good ten years. Now, they flower in profusion - sometimes the first sign that the vines have moved into an area is the appearance of flowers that look like the Rolling Stones lips logo.

This was on July 4 in the upper (south) side of the yard, near the mulberry tree. I'm not sure if these were just budding or had not yet opened for the day.

July 13. This is the location of the original vine, to the left of the driveway on the north side of the house.

Close-up in color. These flowers are not wet - it hasn't rained in a while. 

In high contrast monochrome. The surface texture of the flower is more obvious here.

Twenty-one years since I planted them, eleven years since they began to flower profusely, and I have yet to see a hummingbird attracted to one.


UPDATE: Shortly after I posted this, we had a brief but heavy downpour.

Scattered

Thoughts of homunculi and hibiscus dance through my head, pushed aside by worry over the damage a friend has done to her life and herself. Where does brain chemistry end and the person begin? Is there even a distinction? To what extent are we responsible for our own actions, and not puppets of our hardwiring and coding errors in our wetware?

The days are growing shorter. Working the shift I'm on, I can see that clearly. I wanted to take pictures of the numerous varieties of Hibiscus syriaca - Rose of Sharon - that have been blooming in our yard since shortly after the Fourth of July, but the light is fading almost as soon as I get home. Granted, each of my work days has been pushed out an extra fifteen minutes to a half hour lately. Not that I'm complaining - more overtime putting cash in my account. Tomorrow is my day off, but I have signed up for two hours of overtime, so I should have a chance to get some photos in the garden.

(Or not. Today I had a call that lasted 4 hours 17 minutes 23 seconds - quite possibly a personal record. I did manage to talk someone down from doing something ridiculous with her reservations, and saved her many thousands of dollars in the process.)

Found

My friend has been found, and is now in a position, I hope, to get the treatment she needs.

Things were rough the last time through. We had amazingly beautiful weather, and she was locked up. We had a tornado, and she was locked up. Every day I wanted to see her get out. When the time came for her to be released, I was the one who drove the getaway car. It was a hot and humid but otherwise gorgeous day - June 18.

Three weeks later she was having another breakdown. I have no idea where she slept last night, or even if she slept. But she's been found, and she's going to get help. She'll probably be inside for a lot more than ten days this time, and I don't have any idea what things will be like when she's released.

One day a time.

From bad to worse

I have a friend who is in a great deal of trouble right now. The things that led to her being institutionalized almost exactly a month ago have led to another breakdown. This time she has done some things in public and to strangers, and currently can't be located. Authorities - lots of people - are looking for her, and when they have found her, I am hopeful that she will get the treatment necessary to heal her mind. Whatever was done last time simply didn't work.

Dinner conversation: Sex, politics, and religion

THE SETTING: University of Scranton, 1988. A Presidential election year, with Michael Dukakis running against the incumbent Vice President George H.W. Bush. A group of us were gathered for dinner in the upstairs cafeteria of the (now demolished) Student Center, a room also known as the Pocono Northeast Room. Joining us was a Born-Again Christian friend who had been expressing opinions about the subservience of women, and how they do not belong in public service.

ME: "So if there were a presidential election between a highly-qualified Christian woman and a man who is a Satanist who believes abortion should be mandatory and all Christians should be put to death..."

HIM: "I would vote for the man. Women don't belong in public office."

I just realized that I foresaw the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election, or at least the reason for the Evangelical vote, back in 1988.

Mental illness is not a weakness

In the wake of Anthony Bourdain's suicide on June 8, 2018, there was a common refrain heard: "He had such an amazing life. He got to travel all over the world. He knew so many famous people. He was so successful. What did he have to be depressed about?"

Depression is not sadness. Depression is not disappointment with your station in life. Depression is an illness. Asking "What did he have to be depressed about, he's so rich and successful?" is about as dumb as saying "How can she have cancer, she's so pretty?" or "How can he have diabetes, he has such great hair?"

I know someone who has experienced a mental breakdown. I am no psychologist, but I expect this was a result of various stresses in conjunction with previously unrecognized chemical imbalances in the brain. But people ask, "How can this happen to this person? They've always been so strong." Mental illness has nothing to do with strength. Mental illness is not a weakness. Mental illness is a chemical imbalance in the brain. Mental illness is an illness.

Do what you can. Send love, sure. Pray if it makes you feel better. Wish upon a star. But when it comes down to it, people with mental illness need treatment and support. If you are their friend, that means support from you, too. Learn what you can do to help them, to keep them going. Then do it.

The college dream

Had a dream last night and want to write it down before it fades away.

I was back in college, but it was a highly specialized college, with only a handful of students, who ranged in age from very young children to adults older than me. The setting of the college was apparently the old  quarters for our DVD Compession, Encoding, and Authoring facility at WEA Manufacturing, in a building that, in the real world, is closing forever shortly. That layout of that space in real life is - or was - two long, parallel hallways with large offices, storage space, and work rooms on the two outer walls and in the space between, and connecting halls between the two main ones.

In the dream this space held living and sleeping space and rooms for at least three separate classes. The first is the one I least remember: it was a large class, taught by an older woman, apparently focusing on the nature and history of the subjects being taught in the college. This wasn't an ordinary college, but it wasn't a flat-out Hogwarts-style college of magic. I think I can best describe it as a college of the unusual.

The second class I easily remember: it was a history of toys, taught by two magicians / showmen, one of whom was Todd Robbins, who is someone I have met in person and communicate with over Facebook on a regular basis. You entered their classroom through the double doors that once led to my DVD Asset Library, where all of the assets that were used in individual DVD projects were stored in project-specific banker's boxes. (I was in the process of consolidating those boxes and shipping back the assets from older projects when my position was cut in 2007, leaving a jumbled mess for whoever had to complete that project after me.) But when you went through those double doors you were confronted with a wide, shallow room with two desks facing the double doors and flanking a large space of blank wall. Todd and the other professor (who I just realized was The Amazing Kreskin, who I saw interviewed locally a few months ago, and he gave a hell of an interview) would sit at these desks and harass and abuse anyone entering the room until they figured out that the blank wall actually concealed another set of double doors. Going through these doors, which seemed to be made of foam board, led to a series of interconnecting rooms that were filled with shelves displaying fantastic and unusual toys, apparently grouped by era or decade of release. (One that I remember clearly was a winged giraffe with a unicorn horn, part of a collection of animal toys with unicorn horns.) Some rooms had only empty shelves, but these had dates from the future on the doors.

The third class was...odd. It was held in a room a little larger than a dorm room, and was something like Anime Studies. The room was a dorm room, as far as I could tell. There were two little girls there, students, both asleep in chairs with blankets, and a teacher who had a blanket over her head. There was a small, old-style CRT TV in one corner, showing a cartoon of plump fuzzy kittens with bows in their hair. As I took my place - late, I guess - the teacher pulled the blanket off her head and revealed herself to be someone I was involved with for several years, who we shall call Dolly S. In real life I have not seen her since before she got engaged, and have not spoken with her since shortly after that. In the dream, as in real life, she was married. But she was glad to see me, and I was glad to see her, and she checked my schedule and saw that I had a free period coming up (I think it was listed on my paper schedule as a "study period"), and she suggested that we spend that time catching up.

...and then I woke up, to the sound of a cat crying for breakfast.

I have had college dreams before, but they have mostly been anxiety dreams: I have a final coming up and cannot find the room where it is being held, and I seem to have forgotten to go to that class most of the semester, that sort of thing. This dream was nothing like that. Instead it was strangely comforting, which made it an odd contrast to my real-world experiences of a few hours earlier, going to a hospital to visit a friend who has had a breakdown. Maybe my dreaming mind has decided that my waking mind has quite enough on its plate for now.

Wind out of the sails

Something has happened to a friend that I cannot write about. Suffice it to say that I am thoroughly dispirited, and not in much of a blog post writing mood. This is the sort of thing that, if it happened to someone else, I would want to contact this friend to talk about what I'm going through. But that friend isn't there to talk to right now.

Maybe I'll take some more photos and post them. We'll see.

National Poetry Month: Last Words (for Marc)

Marc Lederman died on December 11, 2016.

I met Marc and his wife Joy through a mutual friend several years years ago. We got together that first time, and several times afterwards, for a session of tabletop games. The first was "Kill Dr. Lucky," but there were many after it. Marc loved these games, and he took special pleasure in reading the rules aloud for all players before each game. He also loved entertaining, and any gaming session at his house would be accompanied by a feast, often featuring pork prepared in a variety of ways.

Outside of my experience, Marc had many other sides to him. He was a proud and active member of Mensa, the high IQ society. He was a practicing magician for many years. He was a collector of many things. He loved movies, and outside of his regular job he would also usher at a theater, taking in many first-run movies along the way.

Marc loved to engage in disputations of all sorts. His comments appear throughout my blog and on many of my Facebook posts. Sometimes it seemed like he was being contrary just for the pleasure of engaging in an argument. I'm still not sure if he really held some of his positions, or just assumed them to be contrary - or to challenge the person on the other side of the argument to think carefully about their own positions.

Marc was a big guy, with a big heart and big appetites. In the end, that may have been what killed him. His last words to Joy, as she revealed at his memorial service on March 31, 2017, were "Is this it?" When I first heard that I immediately thought, "Well, that depends what you mean." I took that as the starting point of this piece.

At the end of each game we played, Marc would poll the players to get their opinions of the game. Two questions were always asked: Did you enjoy it? and Would you play it again?

Yes, Marc, I did. And yes, I would. I wish we could.


Last words
for Marc

"Is this it?"

Depends on what you mean.

Has your heart stopped? Are you drawing your last breaths? Have you had your last cheeseburger, watched your last movie? Have you thrown your last dinner party, read your last set of rules? Are you about to die?

If that's what you're asking, the answer is "Yes."

Or are you posing a more metaphysical question? Is this the end? Is this all there is? Is your life, your existence, over?  Will the universe go on without you?

That's a bit trickier to answer.

I can still hear your voice. I can still read your words. Nearly sixteen weeks after you died, I watched you perform two magic tricks in a video salvaged from a broken computer's hard drive.

Your voice lives on, inside my head. I hear you, questioning, challenging, assuming the opposing point of view. Are you being contrary just to be contrary? I never knew then. I do not know now.

As long as we can still hear you, are you really gone?

"Is this it?"

The game is over. The board has been put in the box, the pieces in the bags. The box is back on the shelf.

Did you enjoy it? Would you play it again?