A Whole Lot of Running Archives - Page 5 of 5

June 10, 2017

RIP Adam West

So let me tell you a story.

I was an awkward kid whose imagination and personality and inner self was so much bigger than her actual skeleton was. I was smarter than was comfortable for my parents, but with (what we now know was Sensory Processing Dysfunction + being a military brat + very severe outdoor allergies) some weird issues that made socializing with other kids in my neighborhood all kinds of convoluted.

So there were days where I just couldn’t deal with everything outside my front door and where (this will be shocking for those of you who know me in person) I was tired of reading and re-reading. I hid in books a lot because they were safer than real people, but sometimes the words would just swim on the pages and that’s when I knew my brain was too tired to make the words come alive for me.

But we had Nick at Night and they had all of these amazing television shows and we had several other stations that had cool stuff on. Hands down, my top three favorites were Mission Impossible (which I watched with Dad cause it was so cool and I loved the characters and Dad always got super enthused and it was awesome to do that with him), Babylon 5 (which the number of times I literally did anything possible to stay up to watch live is kind of hilarious now), and Batman.

Batman in the Batmobile (credit: DC Comics)

When Adam West on the screen, everything else stopped. I would be there spellbound for as long as there were re-runs on my screen. My Batman is his Batman and always will be. I loved that show then and I love it now. There would be marathons on certain holidays and I would just sit there forever watching and rewatching the episodes. I could have seen the episode a hundred million times and yet if I came across it on tv, I’d sit down and watch it again.

Adam West’s Batman/Bruce Wayne was someone I looked up to a lot, because there was nothing that he couldn’t handle. There was nothing he couldn’t do and whatever decision he came to was always the right one. I wanted that kind of confidence and poise, I wanted to be as smart as he was. I wanted to be as hopeful as he was that eventually with enough time and education and helping others, world peace could be a real thing. I wanted his amazing dance moves.

And don’t even lie, ya’ll know what I’m talking about, the Batusi is a fantastic dance.

No matter what the world threw at him, Batman prevailed. He stood up to fight injustice and the bad guys and he always explained why it mattered that they were doing it that way to Dick. Which helped a lot to someone who actually needs to know the why before doing a thing. Because doing things just to do them is not a thing my brain is ever comfortable with. There’s got to be a reason behind it for me and some people are okay with explaining it and some people aren’t. Some people get really frustated always having to explain the whys. Bruce and Batman never got frustrated with explaining the whys and that meant a lot to see that.

And there’s so much more I could say about how much exactly this show did and does and forever will mean so much to me. Especially in this uncertain climate of fear and instability. The hope that permeates that Batman series is something that I can go back to when I get down and it always helps me find the hope and happy in the world again.

My roomie is the best and woke me up to tell me the news before I saw it on the news and while it wasn’t unexpected, it still hurts so much to know that from today on, we have to go on without him. It’s up to us to be that kind of example for the world now.

RIP Adam West.

Adam West as Bruce Wayne ( credit: ABC News)

June 6, 0020June 7, 2021

The First Pride was a Riot

It has been hard to know what to write, or even to sit down and actually word instead of starting out into space for the whole of the writing hour. For someone who’s brain never stops churning and who can always release a torrent of words, letters, phrases with pen in hand or fingers on keyboard…this is a first.

It’s not even an inability to write fiction because I also journal as a kind of outlet in paper journals, of which some does manage to get edited and then slung onto either my alter ego blog or the personal blog I’ve had for 16 years now. I’ve sat with pen in hand and open book and just haven’t been able to put the maelstrom in my head into words, into a context that I myself can more easily understand instead of the shrieking furious howling. The hurricane of sheer emotion sweeps me away every time and I come back to myself, no words written, just tear marks and ink splashes. I don’t know what to do with this. I’ve always managed to wrangle my feelings back under some kind of control, but I am unable to this time.

There is no balm in Gilead.

I use my actual voice when I must (because speaking out loud exhausts me and there are less dangers with written words than there are with spoken ones) to encourage and amplify because while this is a month celebrating people like me – there are other things that are more important right now at this very moment.

The first Pride was a riot.

It is not a coincidence that this year we are closer to our roots than ever before. It is not a coincidence that there are so many people out in the streets and in the parks and on the roads than we’ve seen in a long time.

This has been coming for a very long time, some longer than others. There have been sparks here and there before, fires that maybe might have caught on like this has, but didn’t. Got snuffed out before they grew too large. Got shelved under the heading of “that’s too bad, but it’s nowhere near me/not my issue/not my problem.”

That line of thinking has always been wrong.

This is everywhere. It crosses borders, oceans, barriers of all kinds. You can’t escape it. There is nowhere on the planet where you can go to escape this. The virus has forced your/our/the world’s hands.

It’s not for nothing that generations of people are in the streets, protesting. Leaving the safety of their homes (if indeed they are privileged enough to have the sanctity of their homes respected) to protest against the senseless murder of Black people. Risking their lives in order to try and show the governments, small and large, that we’re not shutting up this time. We’re not going to allow you to pacify us, we will have justice for every single person wrongfully killed.

If the only way to move forward is to demolish the structures that led us to this place, this system that is so very flawed and so very biased – then that’s what we’ll do. This nation was founded on ideals, so the mythology goes, and it’s past time to start actually living up to that.

A nation of freedom for ALL people. Not just the white ones. Not just the straight ones.

Donate where you can, whether it’s time or money or space. Amplify voices when and where you can. Keep pushing forwards. Keep calling senators and congresspeople and representatives, local, state, and federal. Don’t give up.

https://bailfunds.github.io/ A Comprehensive List of Bail Funds throughout the US

https://nymag.com/strategist/article/where-to-donate-for-black-lives-matter.html#victim-memorial 137 links for various organizations to help support Black Lives Matter and communities of color.