It’s the hold music that gets me.
Category: death
Six years.
It has been six years since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I mark this anniversary as I have previous anniversaries, by providing a link to a site that provides its own links to information about some of the children and adults murdered on Dec. 14, 2012.
This year, I add a link to Sandy HookPromise – an organization that works to educate students and educators about how to spot potential violence in schools, before it happens.
Hail and Farewell
I thought each call would be easier than the previous, but it’s just the opposite. Perhaps my numbness is fading, and my grief is sinking in. Or perhaps I’m just tiring of sharing with others the reality that my mother has died — tiring of sharing the circumstances and the details of how we’re all reacting, what we’re planning, how we feel.
A Settling Sea – Family Vol. 5
I am grateful every day to have been born into a nautical family. Continue reading “A Settling Sea – Family Vol. 5”
A Sadness Revisited
You don’t need to have lost a child at Sandy Hook.
You don’t need to have lost a close friend at Sandy Hook.
You can still recognize John Donne’s universal message – a meditation he wrote nearly 400 years ago – that each passing affects us all, as we are all members of the continent, all part of the main.
Flights of Angels Sing Thee to thy Rest
I’m may be the only person who has been attacked by a Navy SEAL – and lived to talk about it. Continue reading “Flights of Angels Sing Thee to thy Rest”
Happy Birthday, Lauren Rousseau
I never met Lauren Gabrielle Rousseau, who was murdered in December 2012 by a disturbed young man who had likewise never met her, but whose doting mother had provided him with access to high-powered firearms and who had made sure he was well trained in how to use them. Continue reading “Happy Birthday, Lauren Rousseau”
RIP Gregg Allman
“Will the Circle be Unbroken”
Performed by Gregg Allman
There have been many verses written for the Gospel hymn “Will the Circle be Unbroken.” The original was written in 1907 by Ada R. Habershon, with music by Charles H. Gabriel, but the song has been reworked and rewritten many times, most notably by The Carter Family. Among the probably hundreds of recordings of the song is this one, featuring Gregg Allman – founder of The Allman Brothers – from his first solo album, “Laid Back.”
Gregg Allman passed out of this life on Saturday, May 27, 2017.
James Mercer Langston Hughes – (Feb 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967)
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
Aunt Marcia – Family Vol. 4
My heart is breaking, but it’s not just for me. It is breaking for my mother’s brother Ken Viard, for Ken’s children Melissa and Carl (with whom, at some relatively minor physical distance, I grew up), for Melissa’s husband Jeff and Carl’s wife Agnes, and for all those who love Marcia Leete Worthen Viard, who, on Feb 22, 2017, passed into what awaits us all. Continue reading “Aunt Marcia – Family Vol. 4”
A Woman & the Vegetable – Family Vol. 2
Read up a bit on Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American essayist of the 19th century, and you may run across this: “The greatest delight the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.” Continue reading “A Woman & the Vegetable – Family Vol. 2”
Kiss Like Your Kiss
It has been four years – Continue reading “Kiss Like Your Kiss”
My World’s Fair
What I really wanted to be when I was growing up was a famous novelist – at least as famous as Jules Verne, and maybe even as good. Now I’m resigned to having once visited an event, probably as a seven- or eight-year-old, that was also visited (possibly on the same day, perhaps at the same time) by Kurt Vonnegut, who was then within a few years of becoming what I really wanted to become. Continue reading “My World’s Fair”
2 Cats Driving 