I started The Rational Rebel a couple of years ago to share thoughts related specifically to my home in Howard County, Maryland. These may not be of interest to all my regular readers, either because of the specificity or because of my political philosophy; but I’ve decided I will start sharing them here so you’re aware they exist. This essay was inspired by a recent trip Renee and I made to Niagara Falls, a return, after 35 years, to the site of our honeymoon.
I keep my political life relatively quiet here. I don’t necessarily keep my opinions about issues quiet, but I haven’t talked much about my day-to-day political activities. I have friends across the political spectrum, and I mostly don’t want to drive wedges based on labels.
So many of you may not even realize that, for the past four years, I have been an officer of the Howard County Republican Party, and, for two of those years, its Chairman.
A few weeks ago I resigned from the Republican Central Committee, with apologies to the over 4,000 voters who put me there. I could not do what they elected me to do. The committee and I, indeed, were just in each others’ way.
But my conscience forced me to share with the voters—all the voters—my concerns about the state of politics and government in Howard County, Maryland and the U.S. I wrote a brief Op Ed for the Baltimore Sun, and that led me to be interviewed by the insightful Claudia Barber, Esquire for her Being Well Informed podcast. I wanted to give everyone a chance to read and hear what I said. My most-used social media platform, no doubt trying to improve user experience by sheltering users from hearing things that would make them think, seems to have kept my post about this off of most people’s feeds. So here it is again.
A lot of people are already angry, and no doubt more will be when they hear what I have to say. But some, like Claudia, might be pleasantly shocked at this Republican’s words. Please keep your minds open. Of course, if you’re a friend of mine, I know you’ll do that anyway.
July 25, 2023
It was 22 days ago that I wrote that Kirby was home. It was three days ago that we said goodbye to her. Start to finish, our journey with her illness was 28 days. I knew on July 3rd that the future was uncertain (isn’t it always?) and I said I was grateful for every day.
In between, we had learned that her tumor was still on her abdominal wall, albeit reduced in size. Cytology revealed almost nothing: necrotic cells and spindle cells. Could be a sarcoma, could still be a hematoma that was dying. We opted against surgical intervention in an almost 12-year-old dog. She was happy, she was outwardly healthy. Then, on July 19th, she refused her breakfast. We were concerned, but then she ate dinner ravenously. The next day (sorry if this is gross) her stool was black. That means blood in the digestive tract. We took her for bloodwork.
Continue readingThe headline is the important thing here. Inverted pyramid style, I put the most important fact even above the lede. That Kirby is home is the most important piece of news I have to share this week. And then I can tell you how she almost didn’t come home.
Kirby is my family’s dog, a shepherd/husky mix. She has a drinking problem, but only with water. She has a bad habit of silently creeping from the room where the family is and slinking upstairs to see if anyone left a toilet lid up, so she can binge. Barring that oversight by a human family member, she pulls up the bathmat in the tub and licks from it Every. Drop. of Water. She loves peanut butter and ice cubes. She will stare fixedly at you if you eat in front of her. If she slips her leash, she approaches escape velocity and quickly leaves the zip code. She pulls hard on the leash, because, if you come from Siberia, everything and everyone looks like a sled. She has barked less than a dozen times in her life–about once a year. She talks frequently, especially if she believes it’s time for peanut butter and none has been delivered. (If you have never heard “husky speak,” visit YouTube and search the term. It’s enlightening.) More than one friend has referred to her as a “therapy dog,” because he very presence relieves tension and anxiety.
Continue readingSunday, WBFF TV / Fox45 showed up to do a smear piece. We were selling porn to children in the dealer’s room!
“Ethel, they’s pitchers o’ Cap’n Kirk an’ Doctor Spock in ther, and they’z nekkid as jaybirds n’ touchin’ each others’ doodads!”
Oh. The humanity.
Continue readingJuly 7, 2021
Dear Jessica —
Yesterday marked thirty days.
Thirty days since we last looked on your beautiful face.
Thirty days since we watched you draw your last breath.
Thirty days since we were able to hold out a shred of hope that life might go back to being what we expected it to be.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I still just can’t believe you’re gone. Your stuff is still everywhere. Your name is still on mail and packages that come to the house. Your account pops up when we watch TV. Your reading room—“the shecava”—still smells like a gentle herbal tea. Goodreads still shows the books you’re working on finishing. Your pens and coloring book are still waiting to be used. Your study guide for working at the Aquarium is still on the shelf, waiting for you to make more notes.
Milo’s meow has gotten louder, as he checks each room to see if, maybe, you were there all the time and he just didn’t notice.
We’re in no hurry to change any of that. Except maybe the volume on the meows. If you can’t be with us, it helps to be reminded that you were. As the old woman says at the end of “Ever After,” if you and Ethan did or did not live happily ever after, the most important thing is that you lived.
Still, for thirty days, we’ve missed you and wished that time would just reset, or that we’d go to sleep and wake to learn it was an actual nightmare, not a nightmarish reality. This nightmare started twenty days before you died, when we were told the cancer was in your lungs. Until that moment, we truly believed you were beating it, and had nowhere to go but up. From that day, things just cascaded downward.
I’ve been posting pictures of you, or things related to you, every day since you left us. I want people to know who you are, why you were perfect as a member of our family, and why the world is better off because you spent 25 years and just under six months as one of its inhabitants. I hope you don’t mind. Although you blogged and didn’t flinch at telling a room full of authors it was time to stand up, shut up, and let someone else have the room, you could be shy. I hope you wouldn’t think I’m drawing too much attention your way. It’s just that I think there’s not enough admiration in all the world to give you your due. I’m known as a pretty cynical, pessimistic person (by those who think they know me and really don’t), but, dammit, when I’m proud of someone, when I love someone, I want everyone to know it.
I wish I could tell you everyone here was okay. Truth is none of us really are. But we keep going in the knowledge that you would keep going, if you could. And I imagine you would want us to keep going until it’s well and truly time for us to journey to wherever you are, and see you again.
Ethan firmly believes you’re still with him, watching over him. I’m glad. I believe that too. If you have any power to reach out and help him, I know you will. And you know we’ll do our part too. Thank you for loving our son so well. From the moment the two of you met, I could see in your eyes how you both felt. That’s one of the most precious things a parent can ask, to see that love in someone else’s eyes for the person they love so much. I always saw it in yours for him, and his for you.
Other than that, all I can saw is that this sucks. We miss you. I hope you know that, and can somehow see us. And I hope you’re not hurt or scared anymore.
Love,
—Steve
PS: I’ll follow this up in the coming days with a collection of the photos I’ve been posting. Some of your friends, young and old, just don’t do the social media.
2021 is here, and, so far, I’m not impressed. But, as the year laughs at my meager expectations for it, throws them down in the mud, stomps on them, urinates all over them, and then flips me the bird for good measure, I press on. 2021 is a petulant child, and perhaps a lot of encouragement and a few timeouts will train it up into an acceptable adult.
And let’s not rule out spanking. I will put this year over my knee if it pushes me too far, no matter what Psychology Today says about the damage to Baby New Year’s tender self-esteem.
I believe I’ve mentioned that I haven’t been writing. Or have I? In case I haven’t mentioned it, I haven’t been writing. But then you know that, don’t you? If I had been writing, you’d be reading about it here.
In an effort to get myself back in touch with the writer within, who has taken to living in a shack with no central heat or running water somewhere in the uncharted wilds of my cerebral cortex, living off Squirrel meat and hoarded cases of Key Lime LaCroix, I have been revisiting opuses past. (Opii?)
To wit, I’ve been reading and gently correcting (which involves neither timeouts nor spanking) my fan fiction, written between 1982 and 1996. I’ve also been sharing it on AO3, as I’ve been sharing some of the works of my late mother-in-law, Bev Volker, and her sister, Nancy Kippax.
Writing characters not your own in universes you didn’t create can, if approached with care, but a stimulating mental exercise for the writer. Going back and reading those exercises can be pleasantly nostalgic. It can also be cringe-worthy. If you’re honest, it can give you a glimpse into who you used to be and how you got where you are.
And, at the end of the exercise, maybe—just maybe—you’ll feel up to doing original writing again.
We’ll see.
In the meantime, if such appeals to you, my Fan Fic page has been updated with more links to the works that jump-started what we laughingly call my career. (And if you look closely, you’ll see that one more fan fic slipped out of me recently.)
Peace.
If you’ve found this piece because you want information on The Forsyte Saga, you can skip my personal ramblings by clicking here.
Those of you who have kept up with me recently (that’s enough of you to count on two hands and allow for some digital amputations) know that I’ve pretty much gafiated from science fiction fandom.
For the unenlightened:
GAFIA (“getting away from it all”) + -ate
To drop out of fandom community activities, with the implication of “getting a life”.
I don’t know about the “getting a life” bit, because being part of SF fandom has been quite a life for most of the last 40 years. But my relationship to the community has, as Robert A. Heinlein once noted about dying relationships, begun to stink like rotten fish. I won’t go far into the details. I’ll just say that I feel like a misfit in fandom, the place one used to go to be a misfit and still be accepted. Alas, now it’s just a community of like-minded and judgmental cool kids, like any other clique.
Continue readingThe officer investigating informed me that the Department took calls about cases like yours every day. He wished there was more they could do to help, but there really wasn’t. The number traced back to a Jamaican account with no subscriber information. Via newspaper articles, I learned that the scammers lived in cardboard shacks in Jamaica, bought pay-as-you-go phones by the dozens, and murdered each other to get hold of the lists of phone numbers of seniors in the U.S. that they could call to scam.
And, boy, were you on lists! You received several pounds of mail each day, 95% of it fake sweepstakes offers, letters from alleged attorneys offering you money, and, of course, checks that you were not supposed to deposit until you called Bob or Jason or Melanie.
The Jamaican called you later that evening, after both the police officer and I had left. He was now offering you 2.5 million dollars and a car but wanted to know why you had called the police.
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I announced late Tuesday night, possibly early Wednesday morning, that I had deleted Facebook’s apps from my phone and tablet and closed the perpetually open browser tab for it on my desktops and laptops.
This was not a rash decision. This had been building for some time, and, as I said in that post (call it a “flounce” if you will), it was time.
I can say a lot of good things about Facebook. It brings to my attention news items that I might have missed. It lets me know about the joys and sorrows of family and friends. It’s kept me in touch with my cousins in Carolina, my high school best friend in Omaha, and lots of old friends who live around the corner, but whose paths don’t cross mine often if at all. They’re all good people and I like knowing what’s going on with them.
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