dewline | Entries tagged with deaths

I get out of the movie theatre after seeing Deepwater Horizon, and I find out that Leonard Cohen is dead?

Sure, we knew it was coming with Cohen, but the timing still stinks like sulphur.

Current Mood: sad

1. Mel Hurtig is dead. We owe him a debt of joyous gratitude that the Canadian Encyclopedia exists in any format today.

2. Randall Denley used his column in today's hardcopy edition of the Ottawa Citizen to call for the dismantling of medicare in Canada.

These are not things anyone sane should have to process on the way to work.

Current Mood: melancholy

Between this and the second singer from The Voice to be felled by gunfire in a week, and the mass murder in Orlando...among many other things...it's not been a good week, has it?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/anton-yelchin-dead-accident-1.3642660

Current Mood: pissed off

The Sunday Edition's Michael Enright holds forth on the passing of Muhammad Ali and Gordie Howe.

Current Mood: sad

So I'm not alone in noticing the obvious.

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/how-many-people-has-captain-america-killed-in-the-marve-1772944715

I don't count the Ultron bodies, though. Single artificial intelligence directing them all, right?

Current Mood: nerdy

A friend of mine reminded me of an anniversary this month. A sad one.

Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the deaths of the "Challenger Seven".

I remember the circumstance by which I learned the news. I'd just gotten home from marketing classes at Algonquin College for the day, I was tired, and I wanted to go to my room to decompress or whatever it was we called recovering from classes back then. When I got there, I turned on the TV, and that was it.

I remember sadness, having to plough onward with my studies because those weren't going to wait on anything. Mostly, I just kept going. Kept an eye on the news as best I could in those days before the internet was a thing the general public could really use for news-tracking. My "internet" back then was the public library and the library at Woodroffe Campus. Not much else, really. Not like it was with Columbia in 2003, barely a month after my own father had died.

In January 2003, I was angrier. In large part because of the timing of it. These were still strangers to me for the most part, but I valued - still value - the work they did, and because of that and the timing, I was angrier about those deaths. Maybe being able to learn more, faster, about the whole thing added to it. I can't say for certain.

But it's been thirty years since Challenger as of tomorrow. And those of us still here after the passage of those thirty years have done a lot of living, and learning. Hopefully, a lot of the latter in particular.

But the exploration hasn't stopped either, and I am grateful for that above all. To those who've kept going, wherever you are on or off this planet, I thank you all for that.

Please. Keep going.

Current Mood: reflective, hopeful

I've seen the chatter about his impending death here and on Facebook. Rob Sawyer's been saying on Facebook - in the hours leading to my writing this - that it's a matter of hours or days, not weeks or months.

I don't have the history of close contact with Mr. Hartwell that some of you have had. I met him in passing perhaps two hands' full of times over the decades at assorted conventions here in Ottawa-Gatineau and maybe in Montréal. Never got to work with him on anything. I've certainly bought and read works that he had a hand in helping some of you get into publishable condition, and for that work I am grateful.

For those of you losing a friend or colleague or relative?

I'm sorry for your pain. I'm here with you.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Music: Q on CBC Radio One

I've been putting this off for hours. Seven or eight hours, probably. It's difficult to be certain of the specifics right now. As it happens,

robertjsawyer put me back on track over on Facebook when he linked to this Vancouver Sun article on heart attack survival rates in high-altitude places.

I went to my dentist's office-clinic this afternoon for a session with one of the dental hygenists on duty. They'd fallen behind the way they sometimes do when they're dealing with a heavy workload. I was already irritated by having to walk it from the local Transitway hub to their building in mid-minus-10 to 20 temperatures that wind chill had aggravated, and in addition to that, I found myself having to fill out and sign new legal paperwork on an iPad. You'd think someone used to working with Apple gear at home wouldn't have that much trouble with those, but actually signing an e-document with a stylus or your own fingertip isn't easy without lots of practice.

The wait time didn't help my mood after that, but again: heavy workload despite the ongoing competition for patients. This is a partnership that lots of people in Orléans rightly trust, and have done for decades. Despite the refitting of the facility and the changes in partner dentists and their affiliated hygenists, that's not going to change any time in the near future.

The refit also threw me off.

Then as I was settling into the chair for the checkup and cleaning, the hygenist - also new to me - gave me the news that is still sinking in.

My dentist had died on the weekend.

Not my current dentist. He'd taken over the slot in my health care team a few years ago, and it's my hope that I'll be able to keep him for a few decades yet. Assuming neither of us meets with either accident, foul play or bad self-maintenance consequences.

Rather, the first dentist to work with me as their patient after I'd moved to Ottawa was dead. He'd died at a local ski resort, of a heart attack during the weekend. If memory serves, it was my father who'd introduced me to this dentist back in the late 1980's. I can't remember the exact year right now, and I suppose it would be a bit much to ask the clinic staff to start rummaging through whatever files they still have from those days, even if conversion into e-docs is an ongoing process meeting with some level of success right now.

He once actually accepted one of my inked sketches as partial payment for work he'd done. It was a decade or more ago, so I'm hoping it stayed with him until his end. My ego would be glad of it.

But not too glad. This was someone who managed to keep me at ease, even during the most involved work on the inside of my mouth, refitting old fillings or building new ones. I'd gotten comfortable with him doing that work, and it's taken a while for the new guy and I to get to that same degree of comfort. Not through any fault of his, but rather that I'm still out of sorts for my own set of reasons.

After I left, I found myself muttering curses not so quietly while walking back along St. Joseph Boulevard to Place d'Orléans. I was sad, I was angry. I'd fallen out of touch since he'd left the partnership. I'd wanted to find a way to get caught up on all manner of things.

Not going to happen now, not in any direct way.

One more thing to deal with along the road...and one less trusted soul to share with.

Current Mood: discontent

One: David Bowie dead of cancer at 69.

Two: Ottawa's had its first homicide of 2016.

Current Mood: discontent

So...starting another week of job-hunting, chores, research, and so on.

Christmas week? Just another week full of all of the above. Also, remembering Dad anew, because 2002.

More on other stuff later...

Current Music: The Current, on CBC Radio One

You've made martyrs of your prey.

Believe it or not. Like it or not.

That's what you've done.

And yes, the irony of that is recognized.

This will not be forgotten.

Current Mood: angry

Originally posted by

james_nicoll at Marilee Layman (1955 - 2013)

The PWC Central Library Science Fiction Book Discussion Group is sad to relay the news of the passing of Marilee J Layman on Friday evening, 2/22/2013.

Making Light regulars remember Marilee.

Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are

comment(s); comment here or there.

I'm sorry.

I'll have more to say beyond that later...but

hawkward has already said some of it for me.

Current Mood: sad

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/12/08/virginia-tech-shooting.html

Current Mood: angry

But for CBC, I'd almost forgotten...

http://archives.cbc.ca/on_this_day/06/28/

Requiescat in pacem, Terrence. Your Marathon continues.

Current Mood: Remembering

To those who killed Sitara Achakzai in Kandahar today, I tell you this:

You've made a martyr of her. Surely you must understand this by now?

Current Mood: angry

I've met you all of one time, I believe, Mr. Kubert, during a student-candidate screening interview well over a decade ago. I've not been able to follow through on it in the years since for reasons that don't bear going into right now. Whether we've passed each other in the hall or dealers' rooms at any conventions, I don't know or remember.

None of which matters right now.

I just now saw the notice on ComicMix about Mrs. Kubert.

I just wanted to say: I'm sorry.

For your loss, your family's loss, the pain you're going through and are going to go through in the months and years ahead.