The narcissistic primarily autobiographical blog of the pseudonymous d.b. echo
As we left work this morning after a particularly brutish night of calls, we were greeted by flurries. Not much, and it didn't last long - the flurries were done a few minutes after I left work - but, hey, it counts. First snow in the books for the 2025-2026 season.
But the clouds stuck around, keeping me from seeing tonight's amazing auroras that are being viewed all over the country. Oh, well.
FOREWORD:
Haven't posted all summer. Summers have gotten to be particularly tough for me the last few - many - years. Generally I'm OK through the third week of June, basically to the Solstice. But after that point temperatures tend to spike, humidity soars, rain becomes an almost daily event. Blueberries and grapes ripen and sit on the bush or vine, to be eaten by birds or just wither. And I become a summertime hermit, staying inside with a fan on and the drapes drawn, hoping not to need the air conditioner.
This year, Summer ended abruptly on Labor Day. Suddenly it was Autumn, three full weeks before the equinox. Temperatures plummeted. The air turned crisp. Leaves began to change color. And suddenly, I was released from my hermit status. I could go back outside and do things. Unless something else came up.
Something else came up.
PRELUDE:
Since we returned to the office full time earlier in the year, we've been looking for little things to boost morale. Potlucks have helped. Many people - not everybody, which is actually a good thing - bring in something, and we have a daylong feast. There is more than enough to go around, with plenty for everyone. If everybody brought in food the amount of food would be unmanageably excessive. Offerings range from pizzas and chips to elaborate homemade meals and desserts. It's disappointing if your contribution doesn't get devoured, and everyone takes a wide sampling of foods.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2025
We had one of these last Wednesday, for the first night of football season. I brought in tortilla chips, queso, and salsa. I filled my plate with a huge variety of foods for both of my breaks and my lunch. At the end of the night I joked about calling an Uber to get to my car, and shared a concern that I would regret this in the morning.
I did.
My diet has become fairly simple and routine. Breakfast is a bowl of bran cereal in the morning half-filled with fruit - either chopped apples with cinnamon, or a sliced banana and strawberries, paired with a protein - plain Greek yogurt with honey, cottage cheese with grapes, or some eggs. A second lunch-ish meal usually featuring chicken, pork, or shrimp and potatoes or rice, or maybe spaghetti and meatballs with vegetables on the side. For "lunch" and snacks at work I take nutrition bars. I used to take ZonePerfect Chocolate Mint bars (which tasted just like Thin Mints) until the entire ZonePerfect line was discontinued last year. Since then I have experimented with many different replacements, but have settled on Clif Chocolate Mint bars (which contain caffeine) to keep me going at the start and end of the day, and a lemon zest Luna bar with tea for lunch. When I get home after work I treat myself to a before-bed snack of cheese or ice cream.
The party food disrupted all this, of course. I anticipated some digestive issues in the morning. I was not disappointed.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2025
I was extremely ill for several hours Thursday morning. Eventually it seemed I had purged the entire feast from the previous day from my system, and then some.
Everything was back on track by Thursday afternoon.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2025
On Friday, I advised my coworkers that I would be off on Monday to observe what would have been my mom's 92nd birthday, but I would be back on Tuesday.
RFKJr, the insane goblin in charge of health policy for the United States, decided to ban COVID-19 vaccines for most Americans, for insane goblin reasons. Within a week, Governor Josh Shapiro and Democrats in the Pennsylvania legislature took action to re-establish the ability of Pennsylvanians to get the COVID vaccine. On September 3, 2025 the State Board of Pharmacy issued a press release announcing this. I planned to get mine over the weekend. Maybe Monday.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2025
I woke up Saturday with a fever.
I didn't think much of it. Saturday was a busy day. I did many loads of laundry. I made plans for the rest of the weekend. I ran out and cashed in my Weis rewards points, set to expire the next day, getting an 18 pack of eggs for just $2.99. I got a lot of stuff done.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2025
Sunday I woke up with a painfully sore throat. Oh crap, I thought. COVID.
I dug out my stash of COVID tests . How old were they? I couldn't remember. The expiration dates indicated January 2023. We were told that they would still be good for a while after that. Every previous test I had taken came out negative. Could I trust a positive result on an old test?
I pulled out the kit and followed the steps. Waited fifteen minutes. Squinted to see if there was any hint of a little faint red line. If I looked at it juuust right and used my imagination a bit - yes, there it was. OK, now what?
I let my family know. My primary care physician retired a few months ago. If I wanted confirmation, treatment, or official documentation, I would need to go to an ER or a walk-in clinic on Monday.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2025
Monday morning I woke up with a runny nose, very sore throat, and laryngitis. I was feeling a general wooziness, and occasionally had a roaring sound in my ears, like driving with the windows down. Even though it was my day off, I let my supervisor know. I've never used sick days before, except for appointments, so I wasn't sure how they worked. She advised I could use up to three consecutive days before I needed a doctor's note. That would take me through Thursday without it. It didn't seem safe to come back Friday, so I decided I needed a note.
Monday afternoon I went to the local clinic for the regional megahospital. After some delays, it was finally my turn to be seen. I told the admissions nurse I was there because of COVID. She went in the back, and then came back and told me that they didn't do any testing for COVID. In fact, she advised me, there was no vaccine, no treatment, no cure, and I should just leave.
I really wasn't prepared for that. I asked if there was anything they could do for me, and she said no.
I walked out furious. I got on the family chat and raved a bit. I was going to go to the cemetery to calm down. My sister-in-law would drop off some fresh tests at my house. I resolved to go to a different clinic on Tuesday.
My at-home test Monday afternoon, courtesy of my sister-in-law, was a little less ambiguous.
Monday night I slept very little. My nose was running all night, and I had to keep getting up to blow it. My pulse oximeter - purchased back in 2020 when COVID was spreading across the country - showed an O2 saturation level of 98%, so I wasn't panicking. On Tuesday afternoon, after some misadventures, I got to another clinic. As I walked in I was greeted with a sign advising that they did COVID-19 testing, but only by appointment. It gave a phone number to call for testing.
I was the only client there, so my wait was minimal. This time, instead of immediately stating I was there because of COVID, I described my symptoms, then added that I had tested positive for COVID. The admissions nurse told me that the information I had been given previously was accurate, they did not test. I told her about the sign, and she asked me where I had seen that. I told her it was just outside the door next to us. (After she got me checked in, she went out to see the sign for herself, and called over the rest of the staff to have a look. They considered taking it down, but in the end decided to defer to management.) She explained to me that they had just gotten a directive advising that they were not testing anymore because insurance is no longer paying for tests - something new from the Trump/RFKJr regime, I suppose. But they would be able to do a basic checkup and write me a note.
All of my vitals were perfect, as usual. Temperature 98.0 degrees. Oxygen saturation 98%. Blood pressure 118/68. Lungs sounded clear. No throat irritation visible. If I didn't know I was sick, and if I weren't so woozy and tired, I would think I was healthy. The PA wrote me a note taking me through Friday, told me to keep up with the regimen of fluids and the occasional Tylenol that I've been following, and go to the ER if things take a turn for the worse. I will retest on Sunday and if I am still positive, we will take things from there.
(I experienced another, very strange, possible symptom of COVID as I drove home from the clinic: a sudden love for everyone I saw. As a child I would play a game where I would try to slip into the consciousness of anyone I saw as we drove past, trying to imagine the world as they experienced it: who they were, how they happened to be standing there, what they were thinking, what they were planning, everything that had led up to that moment in their lives. Now I saw a couple walking past, a Hispanic couple in their late 30s, in another part of the country or another part of the state they might be worrying about Donald Trump's ICE bounty hunters pulling them off the street to make their daily quota, but here on Main Street in Wilkes-Barre they were smiling and laughing as they walked along, and I wanted to smile and wave at them, which seemed weird, so I just smiled and stared as much as I could without crashing the car, which was also weird; next was a guy in his early 20s, walking along, face buried in his phone, and I thought he's talking to a friend, God bless 'im, or maybe he's talking to his mom, what a lucky guy. This happened several more times on the way home.)
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025
Another fun symptom: I have completely lost track of the passing of time. Today could be Monday or Tuesday for all I know. I might have been sick for a day, a week, or a month. I am writing this account to try to organize my memories while they are still distinct.
It is possible that the digestive issues I experienced Thursday morning were a case of "something I ate," or "everything I ate," or "simple food poisoning." It is also possible that they were, along with the fever an sore throat, a symptom of this latest strain of COVID.
It is likely that I picked up COVID at work. Which means that at least one other person at work had COVID and was contagious. It is possible that I was also contagious while I was at work.
So. It finally got me, Five years and six months after the pandemic was declared, more than two and a half years after it killed my mom. All without so much as a cold, a bout of hayfever, anything. After all this time I have finally contracted COVID. We'll see how it goes from here.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2025
I've observed over the decades that one sure sign that I am sick is an increase in typos. Virtually every sentence that I have typed here has contained at least one typo. It just took four tries to spell the word "Virtually" correctly, and in this sentence I spelled the word "four" wrong. I have considered leaving all the typos in place, but that would render this generally unreadable.
Even though I feel less sick today, I am still clearly sick.
 |
| Diamond's Candy Shoppe, October 30 2004. Closed since 2011. |
I can still smell the candy in Caszh's store
sugar and flavorings permeating the air
The meat at Mike Weiss's grocery and butcher shop
where my grandmother would send me to pick up her weekly order
tick book in hand
On the walk to the Tiny Tot playground there was a yard with a gazing ball
that would shine bright as the sun
(twenty years later I bought one of my own)
I remember the day they paved the brick road in front of my grandmother's house
the bricks are still there, you can see them through the potholes
Woolworth's was a place where you could buy a bag of used stamps
Mexican jumping beans
a cheap 35 millimeter camera
and the latest KISS album
I saw Bambi at the State Theater, my first movie
and Star Wars a few years later
Chocolates from Diamond's
Comics from Koronkiewicz's
or MacDonald's newsstand
or Wadzinski's, once or twice
there was a brown and white horse and a bright red boar
that you could ride at the IGA
Burgers and fries from Carroll's came with a little toy
(My father liked to eat at the Blue Bird sometimes)
The Card Shoppe was an archive of ancient cards and little porcelain statues
Mr. Bohinski would sell the cards at the price marked on them thirty years earlier
and then give a discount on top
while telling me stories of my grandfather courting my grandmother
when he was a foreman at the Duplin Mill
The Leader Store had a chain track system for taking money to the main office
Leventhal's displayed posters featuring the latest menswear styles from the 70s well into the 90s
gone, all gone
homes and vacant lots
empty buildings or new construction
living in memory until they are forgotten
ghosts whose stories will no longer be told
I bought my first car, a two-door 1990 Toyota Tercel, in 1992. It lasted four years until an unfortunate incident involving an oil change that apparently was only done partway - they never got around to putting oil back in the engine, as I found out a few days later. (It was on Holy Thursday in 1996. I remember growling "Tomorrow had better be a Good Friday, because it's been a lousy Thursday.")
I bought my second car shortly afterwards. It was new off the lot, a Nightshade Blue four-door Tercel DX. It was roomy and comfortable, even though it was one of the smallest cars available. It served me well for over twenty years. It started to show its age after about ten years, and began to have issues after about fifteen. By the 20 year mark, after well over 375,000 miles, it was clearly in need of replacement. I only drove it a few times a year after that to make sure the battery still worked, but eventually it took up permanent residence in our driveway. I knew I had to get rid of it, but couldn't bring myself to do it - until I was advised in June 2023, four months after my mother had died, that I had to.
 |
| Stripped of its license plate and ready to be hauled off. I had to send the plate to the state to prove that I no longer needed to carry insurance. |
 |
| Homemade window stickers featuring an alien, Garage Mahal (a friend's band), and the classic Alfred E. Neumann portrait from MAD Magazine. I don't remember what the missing sticker was. (I think it was Binky from Matt Groening's Life in Hell.) |
 |
| The Tercel had clearly seen better days. I was afraid it would crack in half when they came to haul it away. Note the homemade window stickers featuring the cover of My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" and the Hubble Space Telescope Deep Field. |
 |
| This was a 1996 Tercel DX, a Deluxe model. I believe at the time that meant it had four doors, an automatic transmission, and power steering and brakes. |
 |
| Note the good old-fashioned manual climate controls. |
 |
| 376,483 official miles - plus a few more, since the speedometer and odometer stopped working sometime in 2016 or so. The velcro was for a small tap light I used to illuminate the speedometer when it was working - the dashboard light burned out around 2012. Apparently the Tercel went to its grave with nearly a full tank of gasoline. Fun fact: gasoline loses its functionality as a vehicle fuel after sitting around for a few years. |
I have been trying to observe and photograph flowers in my yard throughout the month of May. Unfortunately, some bloomed and faded before I could get to them, like the Daffodils, Irises, and white Azaleas. Here are the ones I did manage to photograph, arranged from latest in the month to earliest.
 |
| Double Delight rose |
 |
| Clematis |
 |
| Blaze rose |
 |
| Lily of the Valley |
 |
| Comfrey (based on a reverse image search) |
 |
| Royal Highness rose |
 |
| Rhododendron |
 |
| Azalea |
 |
| Buttercup |
 |
| Violet |
Last week was warm, but that didn't last. This past weekend was particularly rainy, and then temperatures dropped back into the 30s and 40s on Monday and stayed there. Still, the cherry tree buds have been prompted to blossom, finally starting to unfurl today. Will the birds allow me to have any cherries this year? Or will they once again eat them all before they fully ripen? Time will tell.
Forsythia are one of the first things to bloom in my yard each year. (Daffodils were already in bloom a week or so ago, but I didn't get any photos and they're probably spent already.) When I came home early Saturday morning I saw that the buds on the bush by my back steps were ready to burst open. Saturday's temperatures in the 70s gave them the push they needed to open completely - many of them, at least.
Soon the irises will blossom, and the cherry trees, and the azaleas, and the rhododendrons. Maybe I'll try to document them once again.
I am realizing that the crocuses at our family gravesite are a good indicator of the arrival of Spring and the changing Springtime climate. Eighteen years ago I was surprised to see them poking up by March 28, while this year they are already in bloom by March 18th, 2025.
 |
| (Note the simple solar vigil candle above. That's a spent wax candle with the top part of a dollar store solar stake light stuck inside. The bottom third of the candle is weighed down with clear glass beads, also from a dollar store.) |
Two years ago tomorrow, six days after she died, we buried my mom. But today, another bit of her has passed away.
For two years I have resisted changing the message on our house phone's voicemail. It was just her saying her name - with a touch of annoyance, because it took us about six tries to get it recorded. Yesterday I got a message from my phone company that they had modified the voice messaging system, and I would now have to record a new greeting. So from now on callers to our house will hear me, not her. Her voice is gone.
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:
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:
Yet another one. This time, with eggs.
Groceries purchased at Weis, 1 Weis Plaza, Nanticoke PA, 2/21/2025
Weis Quality All-Purpose Flour, 5 lb bag: $2.49 (up 10 cents since 1/25/2025)
Indian Head Yellow Cornmeal, 2 lb bag: $1.79
Celery, bunch: $1.99
White Potatoes, 5 lb bag: $4.99
McIntosh apples, 3 lb bag: $4.99
Red Seedless Grapes: $3.49/lb
Weis Quality Cottage Cheese, 1 lb: $2.19 (24 oz. out of stock)
Weis Quality Butter, 1 lb: $3.99
Weis Quality 2% milk, gallon: $4.39
EGGS
Dozen: $7.49 (did not purchase)
Carton of 18: $11.19 (purchased for $2.99 with 100 Weis Club Reward Points)
Gas prices as of 2/21/2025
Sam's Club, Wilkes-Barre: $3.09/gallon
Food Express, Sans Souci Parkway, Hanover Township (nearest): $3.159/gallon (Cash price; credit is $3.259/gallon)
Ever since my mom's car was t-boned at an intersection as she was driving to church back in 2000, she had suffered from chronic pain. She sought help with it from many sources, including chiropractors, nerve blocks, and regular visits to pain specialists. When medicinal marijuana was legalized in Pennsylvania, her pain specialist suggested that she consider giving it a try.
It took some doing, but eventually we got her a medical marijuana license. We went to the store recommended by her pain specialist. It was a little storefront in a strip mall that I had never noticed before. The store itself consisted of a small waiting room, a receptionist, a tiny consultation room, and a larger back room. I was with her for the consultation, making sure she wasn't getting ripped off or otherwise taken advantage of. The place seemed adequately legitimate. Only she was allowed into the back room to be presented with the available product, so I waited in the waiting room, perusing the printed catalogue with product names that sounded straight out of a drug dealer's vocabulary (the one I remember was "Birthday Cake," though another one I remember involved a gorilla.) I watched a television loop through presentations on issues facing today's marijuana enthusiast community hosted by two likely-looking guys, and learned how to make hemp milk with hemp seeds. I flipped through the stack of marijuana-related magazines. Eventually my mom emerged from the back room with a medicine bottle containing a few gelatin capsules with what was purported to be just the right ratio of THC to CBD.
She wasn't especially happy with the results, which made her feel spaced out but didn't particularly address her pain issues. We went back a few more times to try different formulations. It was always a bit of an outing for us: somewhere new and strange, different from anywhere we usually went. I tried to observe and absorb as much of the environment as I could. Eventually the catalogue went away, and then the TV, and then the magazines that had articles about artistic macrophotography of marijuana buds and the science of terpenoids and aromatic terpenes, the pungent scents associated with unburned marijuana and some other things, including citrus fruits. (I have learned that some marijuana preparations include artificially adding citrus terpenes to give them a characteristic scent.) In the end - I think this was before I had a smart phone - it was just me and my thoughts, and the other people in the waiting room.
I remember the last visit pretty clearly. It was a cool and rainy day. The waiting area was fairly crowded as I waited for my mom to emerge from the back room. I listened to the conversations around me - the burly motorcyclist with chronic back pain, the 20-something woman who announced how wonderful the smell of marijuana hanging in the air was as she entered - but eventually I heard the tap-tap-tap of my mother's cane as she prepared to exit from the back room. I rose up out of my tiny cramped plastic chair, stretched out my spine to my full height, and squared my shoulders. The door opened and my mom came out, a little old lady in her mid-80s, immaculately dressed, tapping along with her cane. The room was filled with murmured "Awww"s and a "How cute!" from the 20-something as I approached my mom and gave her my arm to walk her out of the shop.
Her license expired soon after that and we didn't renew it. She was never happy with any of the formulations she tried, and we decided that the bother and expense were not worth it. Still, I have my own fond memories of the place, and the smell of marijuana-associated terpenes - even from a peeled grapefruit - remind me of my mom.
(This post was inspired by a Twitter post by Dr. Ally Louks, Ph.D. about the scent-associations of cigarette smoke, and a response regarding the particular smell of marijuana smoke.)
(Yes, I realize I just did one of these for a shopping trip two weeks later. But this one has some items that I want to start tracking - produce and, most especially, eggs. We're currently in the early stages of an Avian Flu pandemic, and egg-laying chickens are being culled by the millions, so egg prices are rising dramatically.)
Groceries purchased at Weis, 1 Weis Plaza, Nanticoke PA, 1/25/2025
Weis Quality Flour, All-Purpose, 5 lb bag: $2.39
Sunkist Navel Oranges, 8 lb bag: $9.99
McIntosh Apples, 3 lb bag: $4.99
Celery, bunch: $1.99
Red Seedless Grapes: $3.49/lb
Onions, 3 lb bag: $2.99
Iceberg Lettuce, head: $2.49
Dozen Large Eggs, Weis: $6.59
Gas prices for 2/16/2025, 87 octane unleaded:
Sam's Club, Wilkes-Barre: $3.09/gallon
Food Express, Sans Souci Parkway, Hanover Township (nearest): $3.16/gallon (Cash price; credit is $3.26/gallon)
I don't particularly like English Muffins. But a while back I remembered I do like English Muffin bread. I had only ever had one type: Cholmondley's.
I don't remember how old I was the first time I had this. It's a heavier sort of bread, full of holes that recreate the "nooks and crannies" of Thomas's English Muffins, and it has a unique taste. I last had it a few years ago, probably before the COVID-19 pandemic began. I looked for it again in my local supermarket recently and simply couldn't find it. I tried looking it up online and found it available from a few scattered shops, but the price plus shipping was ridiculously high. So then I decided to look for some recipes online. I found one that looked easy enough and used only a few ingredients. I tried it out - I haven't tried making bread in about 30 years - and the end result was delicious. I've made it every weekend since then, gradually refining my process, and it has never failed to please.
 |
| Last week's loaves |
I may start doing these more often. My last one was in June of 2024.
This wasn't a big shopping trip, so I'm listing everything here.
Groceries purchased at Weis, 1 Weis Plaza, Nanticoke PA
Weis Quality Whole Bran Flakes (17.3 ounces): $2.50
Maier's Seeded Italian Bread: $3.49
McIntosh apples, 3 lb. bag: $4.99
Red Seedless Grapes: $3.49/lb
White Potatoes, 5 lb. bag: $4.99
Turkey Hill Ice Cream, 1.44 quarts: $3.99
Weis Quality Cottage Cheese, 24 oz: $2.89
Weis Quality Whipped Butter, 8 oz: $2.79
Weis Quality 2% milk, gallon: $4.39
Fancy Feast dry cat food, chicken & turkey, 7 lbs: $9.99
Large plain pizza purchased at Antonio's, Nanticoke 2/9/2025: $16.32 (cash price)
Gas prices as of 2/11/2025
Sam's Club, Wilkes-Barre: $3.08/gallon
Food Express, Sans Souci Parkway, Hanover Township (nearest): $3.16/gallon (Cash price; credit is $3.26/gallon)
Exchange rates for 2/11/2025 from xe.com
$1.00 =
This week saw the deaths of two great and beloved storytellers. Problem is, one of them is still living.
Neil Gaiman was a widely revered and admired writer. His comics, short stories, novels, and TV episodes have inspired millions. He was a master of the power of imagination, the magic of words. Many lonely and isolated readers read his words, watched the episodes of Babylon 5 and Doctor Who that he wrote, watched the movies based on his stories, and thought: I can do that. I want to learn how to do that. For many years, his New Year's Eve messages filled readers with hope and strength to face the coming year.
David Lynch was a filmmaker. He was seen by some as an absurdist, by others as a transcendentalist. I suspect he saw himself as a realist. His films dug into the best and worst of humanity. The struggles, the dreams, the nightmares, the crimes, the love, all excised and laid bare and exposed to wind and sunlight. His movies and TV shows inspired both cult followings and enormous unease and confusion among many viewers. Time and again people who worked with him came away loving him.
In 2024 allegations emerged about Neil Gaiman, allegations that he had used his wealth and position to force sexual favors from women he had drawn into his orbit. On January 13, 2025, an article in New York magazine's Vulture ("There Is No Safe Word") revealed the enormity of these acts, and fleshed out these allegations in sickening detail, revealing a perverse and manipulative monster behind the mask of floppy hair and soft, gentle voice. The Neil Gaiman that fans thought they knew was dead.
David Lynch developed emphysema after a long smoking habit, and had isolated himself in his Los Angeles home throughout the ongoing era of COVID-19, knowing that contact with the unmasked public posed a threat to his life. The Los Angeles area wildfires in early January 2025 spared his home, but the smoke-filled air forced him to evacuate. It was all too much. On January 15, 2025, David Lynch died.
The revelations about Neil Gaiman resulted in two days of scorn and condemnation, which ended only when news of David Lynch's death came out. David Lynch's death has resulted in an outpouring of love and appreciation, with fans sharing their favorite scenes and clips, co-workers telling loving stories of time spent with him, and many people telling tales of random encounters with him in public.
The loss is enormous. David Lynch's work will live on, a testament to his vision of the world. Neil Gaiman's works are being tossed aside, their characters and stories forever tainted by the true nature of the man who wrote them.
* * *
I was never a huge David Lynch fan. I enjoyed his Dune, an admirable attempt at making a film of an unfilmable story - if anything, I thought it was too conventional, too willing to condense complex details into simple action tropes. My friends were fans of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet, which I felt were trying too hard to be weird for the sake of being weird. I enjoyed Wild at Heart and Lost Highway. I didn't know too much else of David Lynch's work, though I seem to recall in the early 2000s he had gotten heavily into furniture refinishing. But he has long had a persistent and enthusiastic fanbase online, and over the past few years I have learned to love him as a man and a creator through the clips they posted and anecdotes they told.
I was a pretty big Neil Gaiman fan. Not at first - I never got into the Sandman comics, and I only learned decades after I had bought it that he had authored "Don't Panic! The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion." My first intentional purchase of a book by him was a used copy of American Gods from the Vintage Theater , the meeting place of my writing group, when the owner briefly experimented with used book sales. (Turned out the copy I bought was donated by a woman in my writing group. I eventually lent it to a girl I liked, who then gave it to someone else before she moved to Florida.) I later bought several of his short story collections in my first shopping outing after the release of the COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, and bought Anansi Boys in my first out-of-the-darkness shopping trip about six months after my mother's death in 2023. I enjoyed his "Silver Age" continuation of Alan Moore's Miracleman comics. I also enjoyed Bitter Karella's characterization of him in the Midnight Pals online series, where he was a brilliant but tedious magician of imagination - to the point that I considered auditioning to play him in the audio podcast. Neil Gaiman's name became a password among writers and poets, a way of showing that you were good and enlightened and willing to face the terrors of the world with love. In some readings I appended a passage* from his Hellblazer story "Hold Me" as a coda to my poem "Hands," and then ended by holding up the comic book from which I had just read Gaiman's words. All that is gone now. Neil Gaiman is gone now.
* "When we hold each other, in the darkness, it doesn't make the darkness go away. The bad things are still out there, the nightmares still walking. When we hold each other we feel - not safe, but better. "It's all right" we whisper, "I'm here, I love you." And we lie: "I'll never leave you." For just a moment or two the darkness doesn't seem so bad.”
Just had a dream that I hated to have end. I wanted to preserve it.
I had been walking along Main Street in downtown Nanticoke. It was a Nanticoke from my childhood - a thriving place full of little shops, a place clearly past its prime yet still alive and functioning, The street was full of people shopping, walking, chatting. It was winter, but not bitterly cold.
Three people stopped me on the street. They were in their twenties or early thirties, two men and a woman. They knew who I was, and invited me to join them and their friends for a get-together. I agreed. We entered one of the buildings along the street, and took the stairs to the apartment on the top floor - it seemed like we went up four flights of stairs, though none of the buildings along Main Street are that tall, and even in my dream I was winded by the third landing.
As we approached our destination I heard singing. The place we entered was spacious and decorated in what seemed like a Victorian style, much like the older buildings in Scranton that have been turned into apartments. A group of older people in their 50s and 60s were gathered around a piano being played by a nun. They were singing a song that was vaguely familiar, perhaps "Santa Lucia." My hosts introduced me to several of their housemates, also in their 30s. I admired the views from their spacious picture windows of the city's downtown and the river and mountains beyond. The woman I had met in the street flirted with me, and I flirted back. The sing-along ended, and we all applauded and cheered. I met with several of the singers, including one who was running for political office in a nearby community, some minor office involving the sanitation board, but he was very committed to it.
One of the housemates accidentally dropped a glass into the stairwell and it somehow tumbled down four flights without smashing. I offered to retrieve it, but several others beat me to it.
The dream ended shortly afterwards. There was no point to it, other than to remind me of the warmth and sense of community I have experienced in various groups I have been a part of, from college to my writing and poetry groups of recent years. So much of that has been taken away by the COVID-19 pandemic, and I long to once again be a part of it. Has all that been lost forever?
Crash the party. Dance with the prettiest girl in the room. Act like you belong.
Posts
All Comments
