wrog

A friend of mine died last week. He was, all in all, much more a friend of friends of mine, plus he was one of Calluna's sort-of-exes, but he *was* also one of my local friends, though I hadn't seen him in eons. Quiet, political, slid funny into everything like a very friendly dagger. African American, aware of it, aware of the political implications. Fannish.

He was telepresence over on LJ, though I don't think he ever came over here.

Calluna (who is White) tells the story of how they were walking along somewhere or other in Boston, in the early 2000s, (or possibly late 90s) and she suddenly noticed them getting odd looks and she stopped in the middle of a crosswalk and said, "...Wait..." and then loudly burst out, "Are you telling me I'm dating a man and I'm *still* not socially acceptable?"

I don't know if COVID-19 had anything to do with this -- he was having heart failure for a few years, apparently -- but I will take the opportunity to link to werpiper's memorial talk at Ny's Online Thing anyway, because it *might* have. As she notes, there is a lot of Not Talking About It.

On Sunday, we had Ny's Online Thing. (Wake. Memorial.)

It was very good; full of singing and poetry and science facts and art and memories and sadnesses. and made me sort of/almost cry at various time periods, but because I was the Official Zoom Host I felt like I couldn't, like, take breaks, which is of course Never True. Once it finished, I ended up with a dyspeptic-and-congestion-related headache that took a bit to clear out, but it did eventually.

There were a thousand small details that I didn't quite think of, which makes sense because generally I'm not the one hosting large Zooms, or, for that matter, organizing memorials. And also, the sad.

The general inchoate "we" of the Discord have been hashing out ethical stuff about posting and/or linking to the video of the memorial. Because, it was a semi-public event, but also private, and the simultaneous chat in particular had a lot of linking up wallet names and online handles that is perfectly fine in a semi-private space, but less so in the wider world. And yet, one of the things I appreciated about Ny was that she created a life where she could, to the extent possible, be as much herself as she could, out loud, and I don't want her life's celebration muffled.

But, we didn't quite make it clear that it might be posted later, or ask people if they were OK with it being posted (see above re: small details), and in the general sense, we're fans of opt-in rather than opt-out. So we've come to a (current) compromise. I am quite positive there will be further movement later. (For all I know, someone'll make it a Project to ask everyone who was there if they're OK with it being public, or if they'd like their identities ambiguated. I'm sure not doing it, though, because I have overdue client notes to write.) But anyway, for now, we're not sending out the chat, but will send out the video. So!

If you're interested, either

a) email vicka about it, and she can send you the video. (vicka's the one with the Ny Page, which was where I originally found out about the dying-of-COVID part. Her email is findable on the wider andor pages.)

or b) PM me/comment here/email me/send me a carrier pigeon, and I can send you a link to the video, which is on Mega, which is how I got it to vicka because I decided I wasn't up to figuring out SCP. I'm not including the chat there because of the aforementioned linkages.

Or c) gingicat is, soon, going to post the link to the announce-list, if you're on that.