My friend Peggy Rae died.
I just got the news last night. I got home from the mountains super late, and I couldn’t really process it until today.
The first con I ever went to (Capclave) is one of the cons Peggy was always heavily involved in. Capclave set the bar high (it still does), and I have compared every con I have attended to that standard. Every con I went to that had Peggy Rae working behind the scenes met that bar, or set it higher.
There’s no point in freelancing unless you take advantage of some of the perks.
So when it was freezing, rainy, and miserable in Chapel Hill yesterday, I headed to Wilmington. Not only was it twenty degrees warmer in Wilmington, but my friend and teacher Matt White opened for Orlando Jones at TheatreNOW.
Leonard Nimoy spent a good chunk of his acting career hating Spock. For an actor, I can see why being typecast as Spock would be frustrating. Why would any actor want to play a character with no emotions? From an actor’s point of view, Spock was a dry psychopath who had a few good quips. I can see how that would get boring.
Yet Spock broke boundaries. Here was this character who, despite his lack of emotional intelligence, wasn’t a mad scientist or a mass murderer or any of the other stereotypes Hollywood shoved introverts into back in the 1960s. He was a hero.
When I see the photographs coming out of Ferguson, MI, this picture of Mary Vecchio mourning the death of her classmate in 1970 comes to mind. For those unfamiliar with the events leading to the shootings at Kent State, you can get the gist of it all here. Pretty much it was a case study in tragedy arising from an overzealous police force mixed with a mob of very unhappy people.
I feel as though the protests in Ferguson won’t end until another tragedy strikes. The police force in Ferguson may be using non-lethal crowd control techniques. Yet tear gas and flash bangs can still harm people. Rubber bullets are still bullets. They might not kill, but they can injure and maim. These non-lethal tactics aren’t non-violent.
One main thought actually: It’s distracting as shirtless Jeremy Renner arriving at my door with pizza, beer, and a box of chocolate-smothered cherries.
::Sigh:: Hmph? Sorry. Got lost in the fantasy for a bit.
Maybe Twitter doesn’t quite have that effect on me. Twitter is probably more like Ann Coulter on speed. Arguments on Twitter can be entertaining, yet they can also be overwhelming and the high drama quotient tends to drain my brain more than stimulate it. Mostly because there is a LOT of STUPID out there and no amount of arguing seems to put a dent in it.
Snow is to North Carolina what oil is to water. You’re just minding your own business when this sticky crap comes out of nowhere and smothers you. You freak out for a bit. Then you realize there’s nothing you can do except endure it. Plus, it’s a bitch to clean off.
Things were pretty chaotic this past week. Cars were abandoned by the dozen. Buses got stuck going up hills. People endured epic 4-6 hour commutes. Raleigh even joined Atlanta in the Southern-snow-freakout meme category when some poor soul’s car caught on fire.
Keep all that in mind when I say that this snowtastrophe couldn’t have turned out any better.
Reminder: This is my PERSONAL blog. The following words are my OWN opinions and I am not stating them as an official representative of my employer. The statements contained in this post (or any other post on this blog) do not reflect the views, opinions, or political positions of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing in any capacity.
If you live outside of the fine state of North Carolina, you may not have heard about the Moral March. The march is a social justice rally pulled together by the ForwardTogether movement, the North Carolina NAACP, and the HKonJ movement. The intention is to march through Raleigh on Saturday, February 8th to demand equal access to healthcare, sustainable economic policies, stronger labor rights, and fair elections.
Things I have done since my last post on September 19, 2013 (NOTE: if you read through the entire list, the best cat picture is at the very end.):
The television was on when I walked into Mr. Martelli’s classroom. At first, I thought he was cuing up a video for us to watch. But since we had barely cracked the 1800s in our AP US History class, I thought it was odd that there was a skyscraper on screen.
By the time I got to my seat, I realized that we were watching the news. Two planes had hit the World Trade Center. We were watching smoke billow in real time. We were watching people die in real time. We were watching evil in real time.
There are so many great new things going on at NPR, it’s no surprise that the old has to make way for the new. Today will be the last time that my very favorite NPR show, Talk of the Nation will be on air.
Neal Conan’s voice got me through college and graduate school. It kept me company when I was sick. And it sure as heck always made me smile when combined with Ken Rudin’s voice during the political junkie segment. Wednesdays will just never be the same without that goofy political sound montage.
Before blogs, before forums, before commenting, call-in talk radio shows were the the first form of interactive news outside of sending a letter to the editor. They brought the audience into the discussion in real time and gave them a bigger platform to share their stories.
