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May. 15th, 2022 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatI didn't want to call this entry shootings...or anything like that.
What continues to haunt me from all the news reports of the grocery store shooting in Buffalo, NY - is the story about the 86 year old mother who stopped there to get a quick bite to eat after visiting her husband in the nursing home. Only to be killed by an 18 year old gunman.
According to the blurb in the New York Times this morning..."Ruth Whitfield, 86, was a mother of four and “a mother to the motherless,” her son told The News. Her husband had moved into a nursing home years ago and she still visited every day. She had just visited him when she stopped at Tops to get something to eat, WGRZ reported."
She apparently visited him every day. And on that day, she decided to stop off at the grocery store to get something to eat, as opposed to going home or to a fast food joint.
This haunts me. I cannot get it out of my head.
For the last two days, my own mother, who is 79 turning 80, has called me from my father's nursing home. I talk to them. And listen. It's no more than five to ten minutes. My father mumbles and can barely be understood. But he appreciates her presence and the ability to talk to us via a phone line. He'd be lost if she couldn't visit him. She's his tether. And she does it every day or every other day. The home health care aids comment on it.
It's hard to do. It is painful. They can no longer be physically intimate or have sexual relations - due to health and physical impairments. And this is painful too. But they can be with each other, and touch each other, and talk with each other.
That's why when I read about the 86 year old woman - I couldn't get it out of my head. We think about kids or children or teens getting shot, but any life being taken is such a horrific loss.
And the young man who took those lives is forever stained by it, as is his family, his parents, anyone related to him. It will never go away. He will have to live with it his entire life. His soul is stained with that blood.
Are guns worth this? The right to shoot a rifle for sport? To own a hand gun and shot cans? To have a BB gun? We live in a culture that worships guns, and rewards sharpshooting, as a skill worth having. At what cost? NRA sponsors boy scouts outings (and possibly girl scouts, who knows) - at shooting ranges. The young man who did this - apparently had a plan in place to kill as many Black People as he could - he didn't see them as human beings, any more than the Nazi's saw the Jews as humans. Just things trying to replace him and he had to take out.
I wonder if he could have done it - if guns didn't exist? If we didn't allow them? If he could have been arrested and thrown in prison just for buying one? If his parents could have been thrown in prison for just owning guns? Would those ten lives still be here today?
Per the NY Times..
The attack appeared to be inspired by earlier mass shootings motivated by racial hatred, including a 2019 mosque shooting in New Zealand and a massacre at a Texas Walmart that same year, according to the manifesto.
In chilling detail, the document outlined a plan to kill as many Black people as possible, including the type of gun to use, a timeline, a specific parking spot and where to eat ahead of time.
Gendron wrote that he chose the area of the supermarket because it was home to the largest percentage of Black residents near his home in New York’s largely white Southern Tier. The police had surrounded his home outside Binghamton, N.Y., overnight.
“It was a straight up racially motivated hate crime,” said John Garcia, the local sheriff.
Federal law enforcement officials said they were investigating the shooting as a hate crime. The next court proceeding was set for Thursday.
How do we stop this? I don't know.
***
Been binge watching "Star Trek Discovery" on Paramount Plus all weekend long. Did take a break today, and took a walk to the two health food stores to pick up supplies. (I don't go often - they are a thirty minute walk, and expensive, and it's a chore to lug the stuff back. But it was a lovely day in the 70s, clear blue sky, after nothing but rain on Saturday.)
"Discovery" - the second and third seasons, I've found to be very comforting. You just have to get past S1, which is a weird season in part - because of two different show runners. Discovery has had issues with its show-runners throughout it's run. Brian Fuller left mid-way through S1, then Kurtzman left mid-way through S3. (I don't know why - nor do I want to.) It has a female show-runner now - a first for the Star Trek franchise.
Of the Star Trek series, it is currently my favorite - with the most interesting cast, and strongest female characters. (I didn't really like the female characters that much in prior Trek's outside of Kira, Rosaria Dawson's character on Voyager, Janeway, and Seven of Nine. Everyone else kind of irritated me. I know mileage varies on this. At any rate that was my issue with Trek in the past. But Discovery has great female characters, and the male characters are oddly supporting in it - which is new.)
Michael Burnam, Georgia Phillipa, Ensign Tilly, all are strong and very different female characters. We also have a huge supporting cast of strong female characters, plus several homosexual and gay characters, trans, and non-binary. And all without exception are fully developed.
I'm finding the series comforting, inspiring, and hopeful. I kind of need that right now.
****
Also been watching New Amsterdam - which has one season left. It's been renewed for a final shortened fifth season. I've found it to be one of the more realistic medical series on television, with extremely interesting and multi-faceted characters. Reminds me a little of St. Elsewhere.
**
On the reading front - in a bit of a reading slump. Am still making my way through book one of the Throne of Glass series. I bought on Kindle an 8 books in One for $5.95. We'll see if it holds up, though. I read reviews that some of the later books didn't transfer well to the Kindle.
Also it's very juvenile - both in writing style and plot. I have a feeling the writer wrote this for a young adult audience, and geared her writing to the less well-read portion of that audience. Makes for easy reading - I can skim - so there's that. I think it's also why these books sell so well? People don't have to work that hard at reading them. Tolkien or Marlon James or Octavia Butler or Ursula LeGuinn they aren't. I'm not even sure they make it to Andrea Norton or Anne McCaffrey, or Joan D. Vinge. A lot of modern fantasy writers in the YA field are kind of boilerplate - they seem to copy each other, and their writing styles are rather simplistic.
It's disappointing if you've studied writing technique most of your life and worked hard on mastering it. It's not if you haven't. Also, I expect more from the fantasy genre than the romance genre - I have no clue why, considering the publishers are more or less the same. Fantasy writers appear to fall into one of two extremes - juvenile YA writers interested in lackluster love triangle romances or academic writers interested mainly in the world building and little else. I want something in between the two with a focus on character development. And I can't find it.
Recs are welcome, if you have any and you aren't terrified I'll rip apart a favorite. (I probably won't, I hate conflict. It's exhausting). Note: I'm not interested in children's fantasy novels or middle grade. (I don't have any kids and am in my 50s. So it's the wrong demographic for me.)
***
In other news...
Niece is improving. She appears to have gotten the same variant strain that I did. Which is fairly mild. It knocks you out for about two days. You turn a corner on the third day. Feel winded on days four and five and six. Better on day seven. Almost normal on day eight, and just tired after that.
Each day, I'm less tired. And the fatigue pretty much lifted on day six.
So she might be able to do her exam on Friday. It's apparently on Friday not Monday, but she needs time to study.
What continues to haunt me from all the news reports of the grocery store shooting in Buffalo, NY - is the story about the 86 year old mother who stopped there to get a quick bite to eat after visiting her husband in the nursing home. Only to be killed by an 18 year old gunman.
According to the blurb in the New York Times this morning..."Ruth Whitfield, 86, was a mother of four and “a mother to the motherless,” her son told The News. Her husband had moved into a nursing home years ago and she still visited every day. She had just visited him when she stopped at Tops to get something to eat, WGRZ reported."
She apparently visited him every day. And on that day, she decided to stop off at the grocery store to get something to eat, as opposed to going home or to a fast food joint.
This haunts me. I cannot get it out of my head.
For the last two days, my own mother, who is 79 turning 80, has called me from my father's nursing home. I talk to them. And listen. It's no more than five to ten minutes. My father mumbles and can barely be understood. But he appreciates her presence and the ability to talk to us via a phone line. He'd be lost if she couldn't visit him. She's his tether. And she does it every day or every other day. The home health care aids comment on it.
It's hard to do. It is painful. They can no longer be physically intimate or have sexual relations - due to health and physical impairments. And this is painful too. But they can be with each other, and touch each other, and talk with each other.
That's why when I read about the 86 year old woman - I couldn't get it out of my head. We think about kids or children or teens getting shot, but any life being taken is such a horrific loss.
And the young man who took those lives is forever stained by it, as is his family, his parents, anyone related to him. It will never go away. He will have to live with it his entire life. His soul is stained with that blood.
Are guns worth this? The right to shoot a rifle for sport? To own a hand gun and shot cans? To have a BB gun? We live in a culture that worships guns, and rewards sharpshooting, as a skill worth having. At what cost? NRA sponsors boy scouts outings (and possibly girl scouts, who knows) - at shooting ranges. The young man who did this - apparently had a plan in place to kill as many Black People as he could - he didn't see them as human beings, any more than the Nazi's saw the Jews as humans. Just things trying to replace him and he had to take out.
I wonder if he could have done it - if guns didn't exist? If we didn't allow them? If he could have been arrested and thrown in prison just for buying one? If his parents could have been thrown in prison for just owning guns? Would those ten lives still be here today?
Per the NY Times..
The attack appeared to be inspired by earlier mass shootings motivated by racial hatred, including a 2019 mosque shooting in New Zealand and a massacre at a Texas Walmart that same year, according to the manifesto.
In chilling detail, the document outlined a plan to kill as many Black people as possible, including the type of gun to use, a timeline, a specific parking spot and where to eat ahead of time.
Gendron wrote that he chose the area of the supermarket because it was home to the largest percentage of Black residents near his home in New York’s largely white Southern Tier. The police had surrounded his home outside Binghamton, N.Y., overnight.
“It was a straight up racially motivated hate crime,” said John Garcia, the local sheriff.
Federal law enforcement officials said they were investigating the shooting as a hate crime. The next court proceeding was set for Thursday.
How do we stop this? I don't know.
***
Been binge watching "Star Trek Discovery" on Paramount Plus all weekend long. Did take a break today, and took a walk to the two health food stores to pick up supplies. (I don't go often - they are a thirty minute walk, and expensive, and it's a chore to lug the stuff back. But it was a lovely day in the 70s, clear blue sky, after nothing but rain on Saturday.)
"Discovery" - the second and third seasons, I've found to be very comforting. You just have to get past S1, which is a weird season in part - because of two different show runners. Discovery has had issues with its show-runners throughout it's run. Brian Fuller left mid-way through S1, then Kurtzman left mid-way through S3. (I don't know why - nor do I want to.) It has a female show-runner now - a first for the Star Trek franchise.
Of the Star Trek series, it is currently my favorite - with the most interesting cast, and strongest female characters. (I didn't really like the female characters that much in prior Trek's outside of Kira, Rosaria Dawson's character on Voyager, Janeway, and Seven of Nine. Everyone else kind of irritated me. I know mileage varies on this. At any rate that was my issue with Trek in the past. But Discovery has great female characters, and the male characters are oddly supporting in it - which is new.)
Michael Burnam, Georgia Phillipa, Ensign Tilly, all are strong and very different female characters. We also have a huge supporting cast of strong female characters, plus several homosexual and gay characters, trans, and non-binary. And all without exception are fully developed.
I'm finding the series comforting, inspiring, and hopeful. I kind of need that right now.
****
Also been watching New Amsterdam - which has one season left. It's been renewed for a final shortened fifth season. I've found it to be one of the more realistic medical series on television, with extremely interesting and multi-faceted characters. Reminds me a little of St. Elsewhere.
**
On the reading front - in a bit of a reading slump. Am still making my way through book one of the Throne of Glass series. I bought on Kindle an 8 books in One for $5.95. We'll see if it holds up, though. I read reviews that some of the later books didn't transfer well to the Kindle.
Also it's very juvenile - both in writing style and plot. I have a feeling the writer wrote this for a young adult audience, and geared her writing to the less well-read portion of that audience. Makes for easy reading - I can skim - so there's that. I think it's also why these books sell so well? People don't have to work that hard at reading them. Tolkien or Marlon James or Octavia Butler or Ursula LeGuinn they aren't. I'm not even sure they make it to Andrea Norton or Anne McCaffrey, or Joan D. Vinge. A lot of modern fantasy writers in the YA field are kind of boilerplate - they seem to copy each other, and their writing styles are rather simplistic.
It's disappointing if you've studied writing technique most of your life and worked hard on mastering it. It's not if you haven't. Also, I expect more from the fantasy genre than the romance genre - I have no clue why, considering the publishers are more or less the same. Fantasy writers appear to fall into one of two extremes - juvenile YA writers interested in lackluster love triangle romances or academic writers interested mainly in the world building and little else. I want something in between the two with a focus on character development. And I can't find it.
Recs are welcome, if you have any and you aren't terrified I'll rip apart a favorite. (I probably won't, I hate conflict. It's exhausting). Note: I'm not interested in children's fantasy novels or middle grade. (I don't have any kids and am in my 50s. So it's the wrong demographic for me.)
***
In other news...
Niece is improving. She appears to have gotten the same variant strain that I did. Which is fairly mild. It knocks you out for about two days. You turn a corner on the third day. Feel winded on days four and five and six. Better on day seven. Almost normal on day eight, and just tired after that.
Each day, I'm less tired. And the fatigue pretty much lifted on day six.
So she might be able to do her exam on Friday. It's apparently on Friday not Monday, but she needs time to study.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-16 02:20 am (UTC)I don't know what to do about the gun situation - I'm from Canada, I don't *understand* the American obsession with firearms.
I am always happy to recommend books :) And authors! I always assume that anyone who reads fantasy will have already read everyone on my list, but I'm always willing to share it, in case there is someone new :D
In no particular order -
Patricia Briggs
Ilona Andrews
Wen Spencer
Katherine Addison
Lynn Flewelling
Faith Hunter
Anne Bishop
Amanda Bouchet
Gail Carriger
Becky Chambers (I have to add a caveat - she is AMAZING at character and worldbuilding - at the expense of *plot* - nothing happens in her books!)
Julie Czerneda
Rachel Aaron - particularly her "DFZ" trilogy
Michelle Sagara/Michelle West - particularly the "Books of the Sundered"
Laura Anne Gilman
Rachel Caine
T Kingfisher
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Jesse Mihalik
Devon Monk
Nalini Singh -I like her Archangel series, the Psy-Changeling series started out good, but is getting repetitive
Authors I'm invested in at this point, and read, but have their flaws :)
Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant
Kim Harrison
Chloe Neill
Shelley Laurenston
Dianne Sylvan's "Shadow World" series - the first 3-4 books were great and then it went off the rails, LOL
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 12:37 am (UTC)I've read some, tried some, and really enjoyed others. There's also a few I've never heard of, and may have to check out.
T Kingfisher is being rec'd a lot right now. And I've started following on Twitter.
I've read Kim Harrison (Rachel Morgan series), Seanan McGuire (tried, writing style annoys me for some reason), Patricia Briggs (loved Mercy werecoyote storyline), Illona Andrews (loved the Kate Daniels series), Shelley Laurenston (although mainly romance), Nalini Singh (contemporary romance - didn't work for me, she might be better with something else), Katherine Addison (Goblin Emperor - right? If so, I loved that. I know I've read her), Anne Bishop (I keep trying but not getting anywhere...not sure why), Laura Anne Gilman (I've tried but didn't get far, may try again - book buddy at work has rec'd her).
Anyhow thanks, some of those are new to me.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 03:27 am (UTC)I started with the Mercy books and I love them - but I actually now find that I *really* love the Anna/Charles books even more :D
Yes - Katherine Addison is the Goblin Emperor books!
Anne Bishop - I read all the Black Jewels books and really like them, but love the Others series even more now :D
Laura Anne Gilman - I never really got into the Retrievers series - but I really liked the Vineart Trilogy and The Devil's West - I found them really different from other fantasy novels.
Hopefully you will find something you really like!
no subject
Date: 2022-05-19 02:54 pm (UTC)McGuire has the same problematic writing style for me that Cat Valente and Susannah York (?) do. Which is a touch too academic in style, with a kind of "dry" formality. I feel like I'm reading an academic journal - and after reading technical specifications and contracts all day long - it is wearing, I think? Formal academic or classical style doesn't work at all for me in pleasure reading - I get irritated. Similar issues with Henry James and pretty much all of the 19th Century and early 20th Century writers. Also her characters sound alike - which is true of that style. I think they work better for academics than non-academics?
Addison wrote more books? I may need to look those up - I liked her writing style. I prefer a more casual style, though, with a lot of dialogue.
I can't rememer the title of the Anne Bishop - I tried to read. I think it was this one: "Daughter of the Blood, March 1998". Although I may have her confused with someone else - because there's another book I tried about a slave who has pain with pleasure, that I can't remember the name of.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-16 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 12:30 am (UTC)Niece is feeling better, just really spacey and brain foggy, apparently. (Which was me, last week.)
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-16 10:43 pm (UTC)Your discussion of Star Trek reminded me that I just watched a documentary on the fandom and making of Galaxy Quest. One thing no one brings up is the lack of women in it. I always find it interesting to see the barriers that projects hit though, especially those that manage to become successful in the end.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-17 12:28 am (UTC)We didn't really get strong female characters until the STNG and its spin-offs. And STNG kind of took a while, since it killed off a lot of them - it really didn't have anyone until Seven of 9, who ended up on Voyager. So, it really wasn't until DS9 with Major Kira, and Voyager with Janeway (a spin-off from DS9).
Discovery by far is the best.