Tag Archives: deaths

Dallas Revenge

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I had said earlier that there was going to be a Timothy McVeigh-Terry Nichols type of reaction when LEOs shoot the “wrong type of people”.

I did not expect a retaliation of this magnitude, not over LEO murders of African-Americans, not in #Dallas. The shooter in the video, who is now dead, looks like he had training to shoot at remote targets from around corners. Snipers.

With his accomplices, he was able to kill 5 officers and wound 5 others. They could have killed many, untold numbers of civilian protesters after they were frightened by the shooting, but they didn’t. Just picking off the LEOs.

This wasn’t an ordinary clapback against police brutality. This was planned, the channeling of emotion from abject despondency to stone-cold revenge. The shooters wanted to make a seething nick in the skin of that institution.

“The end is coming”, he said in the garage. Apocalyptic. No one expected this. I thought there wasn’t going to be this sort of channeling. Just more protests, more arrests, more burning of buildings.

But this. THIS. Stone-cold, planned revenge. A selective propaganda of the deed.

Interestingly enough, I read that McVeigh and Nichols were trained and stationed here at Fort Benning in the late 80s. Maybe military training? I’m as mesmerized by what happened in Dallas as I am disgusted and despondent over ALL of the unjustified deaths of the last 96 hours.

NOTE 12/28/2017: This is NOT a justification for revenge killings of police, nor of anyone at all. Stop the killings.

Death and Credit Cards

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After paying a student debt to Oglethorpe University, I had an emotional moment w/ Mom over money issues. We talked over how certain family members influenced my current feelings regarding one’s monetary worth. At some point, we talked about how Connie spent her last week of life sorting through her many credit cards in her deathbed.

And I cried.

I remember that period, the week before 11/12/13. It was grim to watch her go through her credit cards, her password book, her financials in a headlong, feeble rush to fulfill her last obligations. Her RN on one side of the bed, some CPA/paralegal-type on the other side, piles of paper and cards on her stomach, and her (now RJ’s) iPad on the siderail. I don’t want to sort through credit cards. I’ve never had or used credit cards, and I still don’t. I don’t see the point. I don’t want to end up like Connie, with credit cards trailing me for the rest of my life.

But are credit cards and credit scores the bane of the millennial experience? Are they as much the currency for our relative material fortune as they were for Connie from the 90s to 2013? Was it the military service which helped pay the credit cards, or did she get the credit cards because the military service didn’t pay enough for the make-up-for-lost-time gifts she bought the nephews after coming back from Iraq in 2005? I don’t really understand it. I don’t know why she had so many credit cards. But I don’t want them.

Chris Rohrs

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OK, I think I’m better now. I found out that a colleague and member of Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Columbus, GA, Chris Rohrs, just died this morning at home. He’s responsible for letting me create their website in the first place.

He last sent me a message last night, for me to post John Nix’s writeup of the history of UUFC on the site, and I spent much of last night doing that plus other things on the site. From what I was told, he didn’t go to service yesterday (I didn’t go due to base access issues). I’ve called his spouse, Nikki, to offer my condolences.

I’m amazed by this incident, its timing and how much of a blow it was to me emotionally upon reading the email sent out tonight. I am glad that we met, that he frequently and publicly congratulated me on my #WebDesign work, and that he offered a bit of his own life experience to me when he felt like it.

He was also familiar with old-school science fiction works, like those of Terry Pratchett and #LarryNiven; he explained #Ringworld to me, which was a first for me. He was brutally honest to a T, an aspect which I noticed he applied to everyone, no exceptions. He didn’t hold back. And he looked forward to our youth and young adult group – which I found out will be renamed to “Torch” – changing the atmosphere in the UUFC. So we will. And we won’t hold back. Especially not me.

RIP, Irving Martinez

My friend, Irving Martinez, died yesterday at age 51 in Macon.

He was very passionate about politics, and last time I saw him, he was very talkative about perceived corruption in Macon city politics. I first met him at a downtown bar after a Bibb County Democratic Party conference at Macon City Hall. Openly identifying as bisexual, he claimed to have been a participant in the landmark Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969. We talked about the work that I did with PFLAG Macon, and about the political status of LGBT people in Macon and Middle Georgia. We friended each other on Facebook that night.

The last time we met, or even spoke, was during my 16 April 2013 guest spot on The Morning Roast, a live-streaming Internet show hosted by Irving, Derrick Barrett and Anthony B. Harris. On a 2 April episode, they had hosted then-incumbent State Senator Miriam Paris.

I’ll never forget what he kept saying to me during my guest spot: “Look at the camera!”

Unfortunately, the video of the episode is blocked on YouTube for music copyright reasons. Video is here:

Last I read, he pursued his political dream and gained 6 percent in the Democratic party primary, forcing Paris and former State Representative David Lucas into a runoff which Lucas won. Perhaps his message got through to that district.

The last time he posted to his Facebook account was on 6 February. Nothing in his post indicated what would happen this past Sunday morning, 16 February 2013.

Solidarity for his friends and family. I hope that The Morning Roast will press on in his stead.

I was on his co-hosted Internet radio show, The Morning Roast, last year. He invited me to talk about LGBT and political issues, and the other hosts kept reminding me to face the camera because a viewer was hearing-impaired.

I’ve moved to Columbus/Ft. Benning since last year, but I was still friends with him on Facebook.

I cannot believe Irving Martinez is gone, just like that. An ambitious and outspoken activist with a colorful vision of what life can become in Macon and a voice against political corruption. I wish we had talked more, and I’ve notified other friends in Middle Georgia regarding his passing. Solidarity to his relatives and his friends, especially The Morning Roast co-hosts.

We got home on Monday night. On Tuesday, Me, Mom and Wanda talked about how I tend to repeat the events of 11/12/13 both mentally and vocally to those who may want to know about our state of affairs. I don’t know if I’ve become addicted to the reliving of this event. Is #catharsis so potent?

Apparently, we forgot that this was Thanksgiving week, so no school for the youngest in the house. And apparently, a battery that we had gotten for my car only months ago is now broken and can barely hold a charge. It came from WalMart.

My sister Connie was buried yesterday. I didn’t go.

At the repass, I did get to meet my niece/sister, Jaden Paddock, for the first time in over 20 years. We hugged, we ate, we took pics, I met her baby.

Drury Hotels near Lambert International was nice. My youngest nephew, at 11, is writing his own “will” on line paper. He wants to be buried with his toys in a plot in Ft. Benning. All of this gets a big fat “Ugh” from me.

Now commences the post-Connie period in my life, and a weird Thanksgiving.

I’m tired of this memorial/funeral/burial crap. My replay of 11/12/13 is grief enough for me.

Everyone else needs this process, but I have nothing to offer but recountings of that largely-eventless, normal day that ended at 5:30 pm.

It’s like a personal 9/11, in which a defining structure in our lives was compromised and, slowly, painfully, fell away. As a nation, we grieved, we relived through annual TV documentaries, but we stopped mourning and started rebuilding.

So I started. I’m still applying for jobs, just as I was doing on 11/12/13, just as she demanded for me to do for all these months. #catharsis #honesty #letsmoveon #frustration

All for which I can wish, right now, is stability for my mother and my two nephews. The nephews have lived in a wide variety of houses their whole lives, including two just this year. Brandon is leaving for basic in January and needs us to help him prepare, but RJ needs his teachers. He needs the daycare. He needs his friends. He needs this house. He needs my sister’s coworkers and bosses from Martin Army Hospital. He needs us, one and all, now more than ever. He’s only 11. #family