Weaving in the Ends

[I'm just moving posts (to archive) here from my newer blog, where I post regularly:
noodletoon.blogspot.com]
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Weaving in the Ends

Longtime bloggers sometimes disappear without a trace, their blogs left hanging in the air like a torn spiderweb. Where did their creators go?

I am grateful that Pat, the blogger of Weaver of Grass, has written a farewell post, "Final".
Pat has been living with end-of-life care for cancer, and now as her "faculties begin to fail", she is bowing out with an exhortation to "be of good cheer" to readers in her position healthwise, and a thank you, and good-bye.
Graceful and gracious, as ever.

As of this morning, 130 people have left comments on Pat's post, most saying thank-you, that she has been and remains an inspiration. Several people said they'd never commented before. I thought it was nice they came out to say good-bye. (I'd only found Weaver in the past year and had only commented a couple times myself.)

Pat has the strengths of her generation, like my Auntie Vi, that I'd just written about.
"Look for the silver lining; don't grumble;  always find something interesting, even if you are housebound". She didn't tolerate unkindness towards others but was patient with inane opinions.

She wrote about the view from her window--her garden, dogs and their walkers--her enjoyment of a "two-finger Kit Kat", and as she writes in her final post, she "often got ideas for a post from reading my daily paper".
This reminds me of advice I got when I started my first blog in 2003, inspired by a pal, Tim, of the long-gone Primate Brow Flash.
Tim said, "If you can't think of something to write, write about something in the New York Times."

Marz showed some of this grace yesterday, in response to the news:
She looked up from the Internet last night and told me someone had shot at Trump.
I admit my first thought was regret that they'd missed, but her reaction humbled and recalled me.

"I don't want us to live like this," Marz said. "I want to be part of the calm in the craziness."

Part of the calm in the craziness.
Yes.

I am of the generation who grew up during the Vietnam War and Watergate and Civil Rights, spurred to cultivate the strengths of questioning authority, experimentation, righteous outrage, and rebellion.
Yay, us!
Let us rage on!

As I age, I also want to fold in some qualities that I had disdained in the older generation when I was young.
What I condemned as passivity may be grace under fire; what I'd considered repression, wisdom in choosing your words and thoughtfulness toward others...

Learning goes both ways.
Auntie Vi could, in fact, be a little too passive for me--and, maybe for her too.
At the age of 92,  for the first time in her life she made a public political statement. She asked me to order a "March for Our Lives" shirt for her (after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting).
On the day when students across the United States demonstrated for gun control, she wore the shirt around her village center--at the coffee shop, in the library, stopping in all the places where everyone knew her.
"I had to say something for the kids."

Outrage, expressed with care.
Calm in the craziness.
Thank you, that generation.