Ok, my Friday was way too busy to write, but at least I'm working on a Friday Writing Challenge on a Saturday.

I have a number of things on my mind, but let's start with some of the basic ones first. Toys-R-Us closed this week. At least in America. I hear it is still running fine in Canada, probably because they haven't put the most fiscally irresponsible people to be found in charge of everything. The lead one of which bankrupted five businesses, including casinos (how the fuck do you fail at taking people's money?), and has been sued for fraud over other business ventures. So, there's that. People are social-media distraught over Toys-R-Us closing, as if the store actually means something more to them than a happy shopping trip when they were kids, and a catchy jingle that people enjoyed singing. 

Geoffrey The Giraffe, like real giraffes, has been hunted to near extinction by conservatives that ironically don't believe in conservation, in any form, aside from conserving their own wealth buckets.

For me, however, the end of Toys-R-Us isn't some mystical lost piece of my childhood. Aside from when I had kids of my own, I can't recall a single shopping trip in my youth that involved a Toys-R-Us. When I was a kid, I had Twin Fair. Twin Fair was my toy store. Twin Fair was a Buffalo staple, until they went out of business in 1982, consolidated by the Gold Circle Corporation, who promptly dissolved operations in 1988. I had Two Guys department stores, which also went out of business in 1982. I had Hills Department stores, which actually were doing well through the '80s, and purchased a number of Gold Circle locations, before they too began to hit hard times, and were consolidated by Ames Department Stores. 

My point is, catchy jingle, and cute giraffe mascot aside, you'll be OK without Toys-R-Us. In our capitalism driven economy there will always be some other low-cost-junk pirate retailer to come along, and over-charge you for things your kids will cry for.

My other point is, take pictures of silly things like the front of your local supermarket, or discount store. You never know when they'll be needed for a posterity article.

Celebration Showcase

It is a week away! Get your tickets! And see my article about the show in Buffalo Rising.

I'm not sure what else I can say at this point. The show will be amazing. Her previous two shows were amazing. Not getting a ticket would just be sad. This isn't something you should miss, especially if you feel you are a supporter of the arts, and entertainment in Buffalo.

Fixing My Website. WordPress Woes.

Ok, I love the WordPress platform. Not thrilled with the community support at times on the plug-ins that are used to make websites something other than a boring WordPress standard template. I'm using Elementor for page building. A few months ago, Elementor started getting flaky, and not allowing me to create new pages, or modify existing builds. But when you reach out to support, their only suggestion is, and always is, "Switch to a WordPress default theme, and disable every other plug-in to see if the ONE thing that isn't working starts to work again."

The WordPress equivalent of "Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?"

Which, this is a pain in the ass. Not only is futzing around with templates annoying, but I am running about 20 plug-ins right now for security, site tracking, galleries, etc. This process basically means I have to take my website down to a scratch site, just to see if the one malfunctioning plug-in decides to work in a base mode.

Time consuming, and not very effective regardless of the result. There has to be a better way.

My car's radio preset buttons 2-5 no longer illuminate. If I was WordPress troubleshooting this, they'd have me remove every other light bulb from the car, and replace every fuse, just to see if those buttons start working again.

Something About Dignity

I had a dream the other night that I had cancer. I immediately started chemotherapy but had a very bad response to it. I told Cortney about the dream. I won't rehash it all here. Needless to say, my health was in decline, and my quality of life was suffering. I told Cortney in real life, given that diagnosis, I might decline treatment. She didn't like that idea. I get it; no one wants their loved ones passing before their time. But my fear is more along the lines of suffering through years of treatment in worse health than what the disease would cause. I reasoned with her, I would rather have five years of good health than ten years of bad health. Inevitably, we all die. That still didn't sit well with her, for her own personal reasons, which I am understanding of, and empathetic to. 

Her new Netflix binge addiction is the show, The Crown. It is a biographical show about Queen Elizabeth, and the house of Windsor. It is a fascinating show. The most recent episode dealt with her interactions with the Kennedy family, and the assassination of JFK. Seeing this storied, historical event from a different perspective, in combination with the subject above, got me thinking more about dignity; the concept of dignity, and what it means in today's world.

The royal monarchy of Britain is probably considered one of the most dignified political stations in the world. But in watching the show, and how Queen Elizabeth in her younger years, and more especially her husband Phillip, had to fight against much of the pomp, the tradition, the restrictive constraints of their duties as monarchs of England, it seems as though a lot of that imagined dignity is really just an illusion us poor people have looking through knitted curtains at what we think we can see. Sure, time has progressed, and many of those age-old traditions have perhaps faded away. The family of Windsor has been the subject of many undignified, and downright salacious scandals over the past 75-80 years, as there has been an evolution to those stations, but much of that is the rapid growt the world is maturing through, leaving so much of our old institutions behind. As many try to cling to those institutions, instead of evolving beyond them, those scandals are magnified in ways that are perhaps more than unnecessary. 

But what struck me the most is how dehumanizing so much of their lives became when she stepped into the role of Queen. It is said that the one thing that Queen Elizabeth, and Phillip, have done in their reign more than any other royal family is allowing themselves to be human in front of the people they presided over. In this episode, Jackie Onassis Kennedy asked for a meeting with Elizabeth, which was granted. The meeting was so Jackie could apologize to Elizabeth about things she had said in a vulnerable, inebriated moment about the Queen, which had gotten back to her. The Queen didn't ask for an apology, and in fact, didn't even think it was deserved when it came down to it, but she accepted it. 

That's not the part of the story I wanted to focus on.

In their meeting, both the Queen and the First Lady were waited on by individual butlers, for everything. Dressed in formal British Red Coats, the butlers poured their tea, helped them into their seats, set their food, you name it - until the Queen dismissed them so the two women could speak in private. 

Many of you (the all of the none of you who read this) might be asking, "So what? They're royalty. They have staff."

Ok, right, they have staff. But staff to help maintain their large palace, or help them sort through political dealings I can see as necessary. The traditions that completely remove the basic independence of the individual from each of them, to me, is dehumanizing, and undignified. 

I believe a lot of people confuse the concepts of wealth, and power, as automatically providing dignity. So many people would look at a wealthy shyster, and place an unwarranted level of dignity upon that person, whereas they might look at a homeless person, or a farmer, or an immigrant working on a farm, and believe them to be lacking dignity because of their own station in our society.

To me the concepts of independence, and dignity are inseparable.  Once you take away someone's independence, whether it is by the tradition of ritualistic, nightly undressing of them, or making them slaves to that person being undressed, you have begun to strip away their dignity. Once you dehumanize someone, you are removing their dignity.

The Queen, and her husband slept in separate beds, across a long hallway from each other. When news came of JFK's eventual death, she was grief stricken, and curled up alongside her husband for comfort, and support. This man, who she committed her life to being with, and who committed his to her was who she turned to for support, as almost any of us would. But in their roles, in their sworn duties, this was a rare moment of intimacy, and tenderness; something that most of us desire, and want from our closest relationship, yet they rarely were allowed to have.

Dignity has more to do with being able to live as you wish, rather than having everything done for you. Dignity has more to do with self-sufficiency, and sustainability than having servants, customs, and traditional processes that only mock dignity. That servant supporting their family by providing that role may be more dignified in life than the master they serve. When we say we want to allow people to die with dignity, it's about allowing them to live before they die. Not strapping them to a bed, and feeding them "life saving" chemicals until they atrophy to the point of dehumanization. The bed, the machines, the chemicals - those are the servants replacing independent processes of the individual.

Breathing isn't living. Merely existing isn't living. And neither of those concepts are dignified in themselves.

Living on your terms: to be able to separate yourself from the expectations of society, from tradition, from unnecessary routine as you see fit, and be happy for it - THAT is dignified. 

So when I say I want to die with dignity, I mean just that. The one thing that pains me the most in this life is the way my maternal grandmother passed. She just wanted to be home. But it wasn't allowed, and I felt powerless to make that happen. I did, and my ex did, everything we could at the time to keep her happy, comfortable, and living a quality life up to the point that she was ready to go, but she was bounced from hospital, to nursing home, to therapy, to hospital because our medical system somehow thinks we should throw every life-saving option at an 85-year old person who is probably in her own soul ready to move on.

When I'm ready, I'll know it. And unless I get hit by a bus, I want to be able to go when I'm ready. Anything less is undignified, and my heart will always feel heavy for not being able to give my grandmother what she wanted at the end of her life.

I should have fought harder for her dignity.