Pray for the Dead and Fight Like Hell for Living
Happy Birthday to Me
A very personal essay, with probably too much information for most folks...
I repeated my annual thirtieth birthday party for about 10 years back in the days when I lived in Washington DC. Often as not they were raucous affairs. I did one in a Spanish restaurant where a guy with a wine bag came around and squirted vino in your mouth and we ate roast pig.
At age 40 it started to feel old. Or maybe it was me that was feeling old.
Fast forward thirty years, and what a changed world we live in. Our vast network of friends shrinks more each year, as people in general become less in-person social, and age takes its toll on the mind and body.
I have more than one thousand friends on Facebook, many of whom I’ve never met in person. There are twenty nine hundred and forty two people watching my every move on Twitter, and there are plenty of them I wouldn't know if they knocked on my door. Wordpress says I crossed the thirty five hundred threshold of subscribers to this blog yesterday.
So, I "know" a lot of people. Or they know me. But it isn't the same as having a younger person's coterie. It's a network, which ultimately means there's only so you can get in terms of knowing somebody. Luckily for me I do have enough real connections with family and friends to supplement the impersonal feedback one gets from a network.
Still, I couldn’t have a party -which would be more of an eating event than boisterous- even if I wanted to, thanks to the coronavirus lockdown. I’ll spend the evening with my mom and we’ll both try not to speak too much of my recently deceased father.
I wrote an obituary about my Dad for a future edition of the UT this week and it made me realize again how time just slips away from us; how much we don’t know about the people closest to us; and just how vast the interconnecting networks of humans around us are.
My ‘connection’ for the day, for my first annual seventieth birthday gala, will come via group internet chat populated with some family and friends. I’ll get to see my wife of 35 years, away in New Mexico, locked down with her convalescent mother; my daughter, all grown up and living in Austin, Texas, and whoever else pops in.
I’m sure it will be fun. Part of me wishes it could be wild and crazy; that ain’t happening in my life anymore. But it will have a purpose.
I could be mourning the loss of a social life, but I’m not. I could be feeling old and sad, but I’m not. The timeless importance of the last words of labor activist/songwriter Joe Hill informs my purpose, “Don’t mourn, organize!”
So, since we can’t all meet up and still be socially distant, I’m asking folks to take a look at their finances. Put that $10 or $20 dollars you might have spent for a bottle of wine to good use. These are critical times we’re living in, and everybody needs to help out however they can.
Here are my suggestions for people and organizations that could use the money:
San Diegans for Justice https://www.sandiegansforjustice.com/
We need an independent, trusted process for holding police accountable. At https://secure.actblue.com/donate/sdforjustice
A Local Democratic Candidate of your choice
Down ballot races are the future. Pick one: https://sdcdp.ngpvanhost.com/democrats-running-2020-general-election (My choice would be Terra Lawson-Remer)
Joe Biden for President
That’s what’s on the menu https://joebiden.com/donate-embed/
Black Lives Matter
Because they do https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019
By all means, feel free to make other choices… Just make a choice to support change.
Thank you.
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Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com
Today’s headline is a quote from Mother Jones.