What a week.
I can’t capture the totality of the current moment. In times like this I appreciate being able to read the thoughts of Mark Evanier. He’s a reliable attendee of San Diego Comic-Con. I remember seeing him host panels back when SDCC was held at the San Diego Civic Center at First and C Street. I remember even in the early 1980s him egging on Sergio Aragones, drawing on a big pad of paper during a panel called “QuickDraw.” Now they do it with overhead cameras and large screens and a huge hall with hundreds of seats. Then, it was a room with 50 people packed in like sardines. Evanier is a friendly and smart and kind fellow. I’ve had a lot of heroes over the years. And while it’s true all heroes have feet of clay, his voice is one I find comforting in its practicality and kindness. This week he posted The Morning After.
In times of despair — and for some of us, this morning is just such a time — I think the most important thing is this: Don’t be self-destructive. I know people, and it’s a mistake I have made myself, who deal with bad news by compounding it; by wallowing in it and letting it impede all the positive things they could otherwise be doing.
And that’s how I’m trying to do it. Yesterday I got my second shot of the shingles vaccine. Today I feel as though I fell out a moving car. I’ve never fallen out of a moving car, but as a respiratory therapist who worked in intensive care I took care of people ejected from moving cars. I feel like they looked. From what I understand it should last. Ibuprofen is my buddy and I’m taking it easy.
This week had me thinking about my pledge as a software developer 8 years ago not to do harm. I still think everything is actually healthcare.
It’s been a slow week for swimming. But I did go. Here’s a panorama from Election Day.
I’m hoping to get back to the ocean tomorrow.
In 2010 I wrote:
I respond to water–The Mighty Pacific–that way. I can get the same relief from swimming though, even with the big city about. I wonder if the past two decades has short circuited my sense of patriotism, and my psyche is compensating by becoming patriotic for the idea of California. It’s often said, usually by Californians, that if California were an independent nation, we’d be the the seventh largest economy in the world. I wonder if California is a suitable patriotism substitute.
I’m really appreciating using FreshRSS to keep up with the news. It was great to be able to move onto this better software. and I’m using ReadKit on my iPad. Sorting out information in our chaotic information landscape is hard. Good tools I control are good. In that light I found the determination to keep the “Gaza Genocide” wikipedia article oddly hopeful. That deliberative process for vetting what we can agree to be true based on evidence is ultimately one of our finest achievements.
I am so sick of people pronouncing why things happened this week the way they did. Certainties in life are few. In science we collect data carefully and dispassionately. We try to sort through it and create understanding. But data is seldom final. Perfect understanding too.
I hope to keep at it and live my life and comport myself as a human being, as a partner, as a citizen of California and of the United States with some decency. I also presume that there will be work to do to avert harms intended by the next administration. I wrote this week:
To anyone reading this today, I tell you: do not give up. Do not let the bastards grind you down. Be indigestible. We must speak the truth. We must do right by our fellow citizens. We must do right by the whole world.
We must honor all those who have worked to make the world better and continue that work.
I don’t believe that work will end.
