Well, it is Christmas eve and very happy holidays of your choosing again to all of you. I don’t really choose to celebrate any of them being a lapsed xtian who took his business noelsewhere but I enjoy dabbling with others who do.
:menorah: :santacool:
This was the day a year ago that Roxie S. Grant, better known here as roxieseattle, left this life. She had already disappeared from ours a few months earlier after revealing that she had something suddenly going wrong in her head. We did not find out about her passing until a few months later. I think everyone already expected the worst.
There is little I know of her final months but I hope they were not miserable but rather a grand exit. I am sad that she did not want to share any of them with us but I understand. I was able to learn a bit more about her when I was trying to figure out what happened including her 60s involvement in Seattle activism and alternative press. One of her ‘pals’ wrote a book about those days that sbluheron tracked down and generously procured copies of for a number of us.
I found the following notice in her pharm school alumni letter I think may have posted earlier this year.
Roxie Grant, ’95, passed away on
Dec. 24, 2007 at the age of 60 from brain
cancer. Roxie was born in Missoula, Mont.
She graduated from high school in Spokane
and moved to Seattle in the late 1960s. In
the 1970s Roxie worked as an office manager
and bookkeeper at the Seattle King County
Council on Alcoholism and at a social
services agency that served homeless youth
in the university district. She was very active
in the social justice and antiwar movements
and together with her sister, Sharma Oliver,
helped friend Walter Crowley found the
Helics, a publication that gave voice to
these movements. She worked hard and
overcame many obstacles to attain her
goal of attending college. She graduated
from pharmacy school at the age of 48.
Roxie worked as a night pharmacist for the
twenty-four hour Rite Aid at the Factoria
Square Mall in Bellevue. Her patients and
colleagues greatly appreciated her tremendous
dedication as a pharmacist as well as
her friendliness, kindness and great sense
of humor. Roxie was also very active in
animal rescue and nursed many animals
back to health. Roxie is survived by her
sister Sharon Kilburg and nieces, Angela
Oliver and Katherine Stearns.
I still miss her and regret that I never really met her. I am sorry I never got the Richard and Mimi Farina disc together that I wanted to send her.
:jesus: 🙁 :gate:
Peace Roxie. :gate: I miss you too.
I continue to be surprised at how much I miss someone I never really met. Roxieseattle, you are definitely missed. 🙁
Great post, Vernon.
Have you guys seen MvS from yesterday yet? Sam having his own party is AWESOME! :40:
Happy holidays to all. Even though my in-laws are all agnostic (and one ardent athiest rocket scientist), Xmas eve is a good, old-fashioned Saturnalia. It’s more my “excuse for a big dinner” day. …Oh yeah, and presents.
Our best present this year: a sweet, affectionate, 18 month old, female english pointer. Pictures TK.
Apparently my Christmas is being postponed. My nephew celebrated the start of his second Christmas week by projectile-vomiting all over my sister-in-law Sunday morning. They took him to the hospital and found that he had some sort of virus. (I blame Karl Rove.)
He’s better now, and no longer doing Linda Blair impersonations, but in the seasonal spirit of giving he was nice enough to pass the virus on to my sister-in-law and then to my brother, who has quarantined his house for the holidays so that the rest of us don’t get it too.
We’re going to get together on a future date to be determined. The rest of us (those not infected by the typhoid tot) are probably going to go out to dinner or something. On the bright side, I don’t have to finish my shopping today.
There must be something to this rumor about the economy being in the shitter. I was at the mall this morning around 10:15, and there was still lots of parking available! Not that I need it 😀 , and I know it was early in the day and the 24th falls midweek this year, but still. Usually I’m walking around in the parking lot laughing at the schmucks who think I’m going to get into one of the cars and vacate a space for them.
what a morning!
over a foot of new snow here.
just barely made it up the hill the second time.
took 3 hours to run errands including shoveling out the truck.
deff a second gear show here.
wishing you all a cool yule!
Vernon…thanks for the intro.. :gate: :menorah:
I will drink a toast to the Roxie tonight. :knit:
:alc: Here’s to you Roxie! For all you did, all you were and all you will be again. If you believe in that sort of thing.
So, I mostly ignore xmas but I did have one xmas wish. To have people around me that I trust and care about. Friday, I will get to see my good good friends from Portland and Sat my sweetie pie will be back from Costa Rica. And, the room mate cleared out. All her stuff is gone! :yippee: There’s an echo in this house right now that is just lovely! :pup: :pup: Plus my 2 dogs. I can trust them. Except for leaving the trash untethered. :no:
Re: 4
I really wish advocates of gay rights would stop hanging on the “born gay” thing, the biological argument. Because I think you should be able to CHOOSE to be gay if you want to be, especially in a “free” country. There are plenty of people who choose to cavort with the same sex for their own reasons that don’t necessarily have to do with being born gay. Maybe they are disenchanted with the opposite sex, maybe they want to experiment, maybe they make bad choices with the opposite sex and feel safer with the same sex, hell, maybe they’re just promiscuous and love everyone! People have many different reasons for doing what they do. I think it’s rare that people do things for one reason and one reason alone.
For an xmas denier like me, I have always loved this story.
John Henry Faulk’s Christmas Story
The gifted storyteller and former radio broadcaster John Henry Faulk recorded his Christmas story in 1974 for the program Voices in the Wind.
There are links to listen and and download.
KP, I think you’re right. It is no one’s business to decide what or whether someone chooses or is bornto be gay.
merry Xmas Roxie!
put a word in with the spirits while you’re there.
Say hi to Odie for me will ya? give em an ear scritch for me!
love ya dear, miss ya.