Members MsAnn Posted August 27, 2019 Members Posted August 27, 2019 (edited) https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/face-death-party-lifetime-050340413.html In the face of death, the party of a lifetime SEATTLE (AP) — The day he picked to die, Robert Fuller had the party of a lifetime. In the morning, he dressed in a blue Hawaiian shirt and married his partner while sitting on a couch in their senior housing apartment. He then took the elevator down three floors to the building's common room, decorated with balloons and flowers. With an elaborately carved walking stick, he shuffled around to greet dozens of well-wishers and friends from across the decades, fellow church parishioners and social-work volunteers. The crowd spilled into a sunny courtyard on a beautiful spring day. A gospel choir sang. A violinist and soprano performed "Ave Maria." A Seattle poet recited an original piece imagining Fuller as a tree, with birds perched on his thoughts. And when the time came, "Uncle Bob" banged his walking stick on the ceiling to command attention. "I'll be leaving you in a little over an hour," he announced. A sob burst. Fuller turned his head sympathetically toward its source. "I'm so ready to go," he said. "I'm tired." Later that afternoon, Fuller plunged two syringes filled with a light brown liquid — a fatal drug combination mixed with Kahlua, his favorite alcohol — into a feeding tube in his abdomen. He was one of about 1,200 people who have used Washington's Death with Dignity Act to end their lives in the decade since it became law. As such laws grow more popular — they have taken or will take effect in Hawaii, New Jersey and Maine this year, making it nine states where "aid in dying" is allowed — more people who are suffering and terminally ill have the option of hastening their death. Those who do cite a variety of reasons — fear of losing their autonomy or dignity, becoming a burden to loved ones, becoming unable to enjoy life — but they are united in a desire to take control of their own ends. The Associated Press documented one man's story in the days surrounding his death, spending time with him and those around him. In an interview the day before he died, Fuller said he wanted to demonstrate for people around the country how such laws work. For him, the decision to end his life at 75 was, if not easy, never in doubt. ___ A LONG RELATIONSHIP WITH DEATH Death did not frighten Bob Fuller. It had been with him since he was young. He grew up in Hooksett, New Hampshire, the second of four children. His father was a furniture maker, his mother a homemaker. He described their relationship as loveless and unhappy, but he was close to his ailing grandmothers and would frequently sit with them. When he was 8, he said, his father's mother, severely depressed, drowned herself in the Merrimack River after leaving her glasses and slippers on the shore. He recalled seeing her body in the water, a trauma that began his long, matter-of-fact relationship with death. He called it his "default setting": "If life gets painful, you go to the Merrimack River." Fuller's friends described him as playful, wise, witty and vibrant, a wonderful singer and the type of person who collected friends everywhere. He sponsored people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction after quitting drinking in 1983. In retirement he ran a voucher program — now named for him — through the LGBTQ support organization Peer Seattle that provided music and theater tickets to those who couldn't afford them. As a former nurse, he was like an unofficial assistant manager at his building, helping residents change bandages or picking them up when they fell in their kitchens. But his old default setting persisted through much of his life, a sort of undercurrent to the way he lived "out loud," as he put it. He tried to kill himself in 1975, he said, when he was drinking too much and despondent after his marriage ended; he had revealed to his wife he was gay. Fuller had moved to Seattle for nursing school, and he was working as a psychiatric nurse at Harborview Medical Center when he swiped handfuls of narcotics, went to a nearby park, swallowed them and lay down to die. He called for help when it started raining, he said. He didn't want to die cold and wet. In the mid-1980s, Fuller helped care for friends suffering from AIDS and administered a fatal dose of medication to one at the end of his fight, he said. But his own sexual behavior was so risky it verged on suicidal. He contracted AIDS, then lived long enough to benefit from the AIDS drug mixture when it was developed in the mid-1990s. "I think I wanted to get AIDS," he said. "All my friends were dying." For critics, that sort of fatalism is a key problem with aid-in-dying laws. Some AIDS patients who chose to end their lives might have lived long enough to benefit from the AIDS drug mixture as Fuller did, said Wesley J. Smith, an author and prominent critic of the laws. Beyond that, to allow people to hasten their deaths represents an abandonment, a signal to the terminally ill that their lives are not worth living, he said. "We should be very concerned that we are normalizing suicide in our society, especially at the very time during which, practically out of the other side of our mouth, we are saying suicide is an epidemic," Smith said. Whether such deaths do constitute suicide is a semantic debate. In Washington and other states with aid-in-dying laws, coroners are forbidden from categorizing the deaths as suicides; instead, they list natural causes. Opponents, including the American Medical Association, maintain that "assisted suicide" is more accurate. ___ 'WHY SHOULD I SUFFER?' Fuller had long thought that if he were ever to become terminally ill, he would want to control his death. That notion was reinforced two years ago, when a woman in his building used Washington's law, he said. She explained the requirements for him, including that two doctors must certify you have less than six months to live, that you must be competent, and that you must request the fatal drugs twice verbally and once in writing, witnessed by two people. Last summer he went to the doctor with a sore throat. It turned out to be an aggressive cancer at the base of his tongue. He began a round of chemo but abandoned it, saying it was killing his soul. Instead, early this year, he picked a date — May 10 — and began planning. "Why should I suffer?" he said. "I'm totally at peace with this." In the ensuing months he put his affairs in order. He went up the Space Needle and took a road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway with his partner and caretaker of the past few years, Reese Baxter. The cancer was closing his throat, making it difficult to eat, but he had the flan from the Mexican restaurant around the corner one last time. On Facebook he described his pain, his falling weight and his final visits with old friends. Fuller began returning more often to the Catholic church he had long attended. His spiritual views were hardly orthodox — he considered himself a shaman, and described his impending death as a state of "perpetual meditation" — but Seattle's St. Therese Parish was known for accommodating a range of beliefs. Fuller was beloved there, and he craved the community. He had sung in the gospel choir and read scriptures from the lectern during services, sometimes delivering insightful or funny remarks off the cuff, said Kent Stevenson, the choir's director. Stevenson credited the "tenacity and clarity" of Fuller's choice. "It was hard to even cry because he was so forthcoming and so sober about it," Stevenson said. "He was just so outrageously unique and such a character, this was completely in keeping with who Bob was." The Roman Catholic Church opposes aid-in-dying laws, citing the sanctity of life. But Fuller's decision was widely known and accepted among the parishioners. At the service where he received his last communion on May 5, the Rev. Quentin Dupont brought over a group of white-clad children who were receiving their first communion. They raised their arms and blessed him. ___ THE END As he hugged friends and sang along at his party, Fuller appeared serene, betraying no sign of reconsideration. He also kept his sense of humor, greeting a reporter by saying: "I'm dying to read your story." "You can find me in God's eyes. You can find me in beautiful music," he told the crowd. "You can find me in terrible, terrible farts." He invited those who wished to be with him for his death to come upstairs. Friends packed into his bedroom. He changed into satin, navy blue pajamas and lay down in his bed. "It's hard to be here, but I wouldn't miss it," said Yvonne Kilcup, of Tacoma, whom Fuller began sponsoring in recovery 24 years ago. "He gave me a good solid kick in the butt. Now I'm going to hold his feet as he passes." In the kitchen, two volunteers with the nonprofit End of Life Washington mixed the drugs and Kahlua in a glass measuring cup. They said they considered themselves to be like midwives, helping usher people out of the world instead of into it. "You know if you do this, if you put this in your system, you'll go to sleep and you won't wake up?" one, Stephanie Murray, told him as she delivered the syringes. "I do," Fuller answered. Fuller plunged the syringes. After a few moments of tense quiet, he led his friends in singing, "I'm so glad we had this time together," the sign-off from the old Carol Burnett television show. His eyes closed for longer and longer periods. "I'm still here," he said. And then, he wasn't. Edited August 27, 2019 by MsAnn AdamSmith 1
AdamSmith Posted August 28, 2019 Posted August 28, 2019 12 hours ago, MsAnn said: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/face-death-party-lifetime-050340413.html In the face of death, the party of a lifetime SEATTLE (AP) — The day he picked to die, Robert Fuller had the party of a lifetime. In the morning, he dressed in a blue Hawaiian shirt and married his partner while sitting on a couch in their senior housing apartment. He then took the elevator down three floors to the building's common room, decorated with balloons and flowers. With an elaborately carved walking stick, he shuffled around to greet dozens of well-wishers and friends from across the decades, fellow church parishioners and social-work volunteers. The crowd spilled into a sunny courtyard on a beautiful spring day. A gospel choir sang. A violinist and soprano performed "Ave Maria." A Seattle poet recited an original piece imagining Fuller as a tree, with birds perched on his thoughts. And when the time came, "Uncle Bob" banged his walking stick on the ceiling to command attention. "I'll be leaving you in a little over an hour," he announced. A sob burst. Fuller turned his head sympathetically toward its source. "I'm so ready to go," he said. "I'm tired." Later that afternoon, Fuller plunged two syringes filled with a light brown liquid — a fatal drug combination mixed with Kahlua, his favorite alcohol — into a feeding tube in his abdomen. He was one of about 1,200 people who have used Washington's Death with Dignity Act to end their lives in the decade since it became law. As such laws grow more popular — they have taken or will take effect in Hawaii, New Jersey and Maine this year, making it nine states where "aid in dying" is allowed — more people who are suffering and terminally ill have the option of hastening their death. Those who do cite a variety of reasons — fear of losing their autonomy or dignity, becoming a burden to loved ones, becoming unable to enjoy life — but they are united in a desire to take control of their own ends. The Associated Press documented one man's story in the days surrounding his death, spending time with him and those around him. In an interview the day before he died, Fuller said he wanted to demonstrate for people around the country how such laws work. For him, the decision to end his life at 75 was, if not easy, never in doubt. ___ A LONG RELATIONSHIP WITH DEATH Death did not frighten Bob Fuller. It had been with him since he was young. He grew up in Hooksett, New Hampshire, the second of four children. His father was a furniture maker, his mother a homemaker. He described their relationship as loveless and unhappy, but he was close to his ailing grandmothers and would frequently sit with them. When he was 8, he said, his father's mother, severely depressed, drowned herself in the Merrimack River after leaving her glasses and slippers on the shore. He recalled seeing her body in the water, a trauma that began his long, matter-of-fact relationship with death. He called it his "default setting": "If life gets painful, you go to the Merrimack River." Fuller's friends described him as playful, wise, witty and vibrant, a wonderful singer and the type of person who collected friends everywhere. He sponsored people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction after quitting drinking in 1983. In retirement he ran a voucher program — now named for him — through the LGBTQ support organization Peer Seattle that provided music and theater tickets to those who couldn't afford them. As a former nurse, he was like an unofficial assistant manager at his building, helping residents change bandages or picking them up when they fell in their kitchens. But his old default setting persisted through much of his life, a sort of undercurrent to the way he lived "out loud," as he put it. He tried to kill himself in 1975, he said, when he was drinking too much and despondent after his marriage ended; he had revealed to his wife he was gay. Fuller had moved to Seattle for nursing school, and he was working as a psychiatric nurse at Harborview Medical Center when he swiped handfuls of narcotics, went to a nearby park, swallowed them and lay down to die. He called for help when it started raining, he said. He didn't want to die cold and wet. In the mid-1980s, Fuller helped care for friends suffering from AIDS and administered a fatal dose of medication to one at the end of his fight, he said. But his own sexual behavior was so risky it verged on suicidal. He contracted AIDS, then lived long enough to benefit from the AIDS drug mixture when it was developed in the mid-1990s. "I think I wanted to get AIDS," he said. "All my friends were dying." For critics, that sort of fatalism is a key problem with aid-in-dying laws. Some AIDS patients who chose to end their lives might have lived long enough to benefit from the AIDS drug mixture as Fuller did, said Wesley J. Smith, an author and prominent critic of the laws. Beyond that, to allow people to hasten their deaths represents an abandonment, a signal to the terminally ill that their lives are not worth living, he said. "We should be very concerned that we are normalizing suicide in our society, especially at the very time during which, practically out of the other side of our mouth, we are saying suicide is an epidemic," Smith said. Whether such deaths do constitute suicide is a semantic debate. In Washington and other states with aid-in-dying laws, coroners are forbidden from categorizing the deaths as suicides; instead, they list natural causes. Opponents, including the American Medical Association, maintain that "assisted suicide" is more accurate. ___ 'WHY SHOULD I SUFFER?' Fuller had long thought that if he were ever to become terminally ill, he would want to control his death. That notion was reinforced two years ago, when a woman in his building used Washington's law, he said. She explained the requirements for him, including that two doctors must certify you have less than six months to live, that you must be competent, and that you must request the fatal drugs twice verbally and once in writing, witnessed by two people. Last summer he went to the doctor with a sore throat. It turned out to be an aggressive cancer at the base of his tongue. He began a round of chemo but abandoned it, saying it was killing his soul. Instead, early this year, he picked a date — May 10 — and began planning. "Why should I suffer?" he said. "I'm totally at peace with this." In the ensuing months he put his affairs in order. He went up the Space Needle and took a road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway with his partner and caretaker of the past few years, Reese Baxter. The cancer was closing his throat, making it difficult to eat, but he had the flan from the Mexican restaurant around the corner one last time. On Facebook he described his pain, his falling weight and his final visits with old friends. Fuller began returning more often to the Catholic church he had long attended. His spiritual views were hardly orthodox — he considered himself a shaman, and described his impending death as a state of "perpetual meditation" — but Seattle's St. Therese Parish was known for accommodating a range of beliefs. Fuller was beloved there, and he craved the community. He had sung in the gospel choir and read scriptures from the lectern during services, sometimes delivering insightful or funny remarks off the cuff, said Kent Stevenson, the choir's director. Stevenson credited the "tenacity and clarity" of Fuller's choice. "It was hard to even cry because he was so forthcoming and so sober about it," Stevenson said. "He was just so outrageously unique and such a character, this was completely in keeping with who Bob was." The Roman Catholic Church opposes aid-in-dying laws, citing the sanctity of life. But Fuller's decision was widely known and accepted among the parishioners. At the service where he received his last communion on May 5, the Rev. Quentin Dupont brought over a group of white-clad children who were receiving their first communion. They raised their arms and blessed him. ___ THE END As he hugged friends and sang along at his party, Fuller appeared serene, betraying no sign of reconsideration. He also kept his sense of humor, greeting a reporter by saying: "I'm dying to read your story." "You can find me in God's eyes. You can find me in beautiful music," he told the crowd. "You can find me in terrible, terrible farts." He invited those who wished to be with him for his death to come upstairs. Friends packed into his bedroom. He changed into satin, navy blue pajamas and lay down in his bed. "It's hard to be here, but I wouldn't miss it," said Yvonne Kilcup, of Tacoma, whom Fuller began sponsoring in recovery 24 years ago. "He gave me a good solid kick in the butt. Now I'm going to hold his feet as he passes." In the kitchen, two volunteers with the nonprofit End of Life Washington mixed the drugs and Kahlua in a glass measuring cup. They said they considered themselves to be like midwives, helping usher people out of the world instead of into it. "You know if you do this, if you put this in your system, you'll go to sleep and you won't wake up?" one, Stephanie Murray, told him as she delivered the syringes. "I do," Fuller answered. Fuller plunged the syringes. After a few moments of tense quiet, he led his friends in singing, "I'm so glad we had this time together," the sign-off from the old Carol Burnett television show. His eyes closed for longer and longer periods. "I'm still here," he said. And then, he wasn't. Beyond expression. MsAnn 1
AdamSmith Posted August 30, 2019 Posted August 30, 2019 My former cynicism is abandoned. I more and more think this guy is a genius, in many many ways.
AdamSmith Posted September 2, 2019 Posted September 2, 2019 25 Photos of the Royal Family at Balmoral Castle, Queen Elizabeth's Favorite Home https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/25-photos-royal-family-balmoral-130000088.html MsAnn 1
Members MsAnn Posted September 5, 2019 Members Posted September 5, 2019 On 8/28/2019 at 10:06 AM, AdamSmith said: Brilliant... AdamSmith 1
Members MsAnn Posted September 5, 2019 Members Posted September 5, 2019 (edited) For A.S. An interesting read... https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/its-time-to-create-a-conservative-ecosystem-that-doesnt-welcome-racists It's time to create a conservative ecosystem that doesn't welcome racists Liberal commentators will always say conservatives are just a bunch of racists. This is a lie. But conservatives need to do a better job convincing the racists that it's a lie. A handful of conservatives, including quietly influential figures in important conservative institutions, were outed last week by leaked emails as participating in a pro-Hitler, nakedly anti-Semitic, and plainly racist email list. While liberal journalists are prone to inventing racism everywhere, this was no invention. The article in Splinter by Hannah Geis was no smear. It was serious and fair reporting that ought to cause conservatives to ask what we are doing wrong. John Elliott, formerly of the Institute for Humane Studies and Intercollegiate Studies Institute, was a central figure in the story. IHS and ISI are respected and mainstream conservative institutions. Thousands of conservative and libertarian journalists and activists have passed through them. Hundreds of them received mentorship from Elliott. I’ve been friendly with Elliot for a decade. He’s brought me in (and gotten me paid) to speak to students at both organizations. My first reaction upon reading the Splinter story was horror that otherwise sane-seeming people in the United States hold Hitlerian views. (For what it's worth, Elliott apologized for the emails and said he no longer believes those things. I pray that’s sincere.) “According to one former mentee,” Geis wrote, “Elliott opened up to those he deemed ‘red-pilled’ — a term used by white nationalists and so-called ‘men’s rights activists’ to refer to someone who has been awakened to their cause.” So my second reaction was: At least Elliott never suspected I was red-pilled. My third reaction was: Great, now liberals are going to paint everyone who’s gone through IHS, ISI, or the Daily Caller as racists. But my fourth reaction was the unsettling one: Why the hell did racists seek homes in conservative and liberal institutions, and why the hell were young conservatives easily won over to racist views? Snide liberals will chuckle and say something like, “Because conservatism is racism.” But the snideness and falseness of that answer shouldn’t deter us from mulling over the question and doing something to make clear that conservatism and racism don’t mix — that if your red pill looks anything like Elliott's, you're really not welcome here. Again, none of this will stop the bad-faith or hate-filled folks on the Left from calling us all bigots in the pages of Bloomberg News or the Washington Post. But it will serve at least two good ends: First, it will make it clear to diehard racists that they’re not welcome over here. Second, it will protect impressionable young conservatives from being wooed by them. What’s needed is not mere “outreach” to black, Hispanic, or Jewish voters. Conservatives ought to make elevation of African Americans, immigrants, and religious minorities so central to conservatism that all dedicated racists will be thoroughly repelled. If we can't make them stop calling themselves the “alt-right,” because they won’t want to be associated with us, we can at least disgust them with such a focus. Why? Mostly because it’s the right thing to do. Conservatives don’t give it enough attention, but one of the greatest evils in the U.S. today is rank racial inequality. The median income of African Americans is below $31,000, which is less than half the median income of white Americans. More blacks are imprisoned in America than are whites, even though there are nearly five white people here for every black person. There are a thousand points of data like this, all confirming that being an African American means living with the odds stacked against you. Do you remember playing video games that allowed you to set the difficulty level? Imagine if you could set the difficulty level for your life. The data all suggest that being an immigrant or an African American means setting a much higher difficulty level than being a white guy. To accept this reality doesn’t require one to declare that whites are all vile racists or oppressors. It doesn’t require agreeing that the U.S. is fundamentally a white supremacist nation. It just requires the sincere acceptance of two premises: First, that all humans are created equal (the official teaching of the U.S. founders and all Abrahamic religions), and second, that blacks and Hispanics have far worse outcomes in the U.S. If both of these premises are true — and they are — then things in the U.S. still aren’t fair and can be improved. And if the game is rigged so badly in the U.S. that thousands of young men are shot on the streets of Chicago, that tens of thousands of black babies are aborted every year, that hundreds of thousands are born out of wedlock, then isn’t that a crisis that deserves attention? Conservatives ought to make it a priority to fight for the fundamental dignity and equality of racial minorities who have been denied that dignity and equality. It will require overcoming decades of injustice, and so won't happen quickly. We won't disabuse the Left of their self-satisfied smears and conceits, but that's not the point. Conservatives will be able to take solace in the fact that we're fighting the good fight and pissing off the racists. Edited September 5, 2019 by MsAnn lookin and AdamSmith 1 1
Members MsAnn Posted September 5, 2019 Members Posted September 5, 2019 (edited) 11 hours ago, AdamSmith said: Powerful...Thank you for posting. "It's not the days in your life, it's the life in your days" Edited September 5, 2019 by MsAnn AdamSmith 1
AdamSmith Posted September 5, 2019 Posted September 5, 2019 4 hours ago, MsAnn said: Powerful...Thank you for posting. "It's not the days in your life, it's the life in your days" The older I get, the more sense that man makes. MsAnn and RA1 2
AdamSmith Posted September 8, 2019 Posted September 8, 2019 TFascinating! How the Apollo 13 movie came about.
AdamSmith Posted September 14, 2019 Posted September 14, 2019 On 8/4/2019 at 10:46 PM, AdamSmith said: This is pretty amazing. I spent a semester plowing through all of Milton under his guidance. Fucking astounding mind. First person (besides my parents) who really started to show me how to think. https://www.pbs.org/video/nc-bookwatch-reynolds-price-serious-way-wondering/ Much worth a repost:
Members RA1 Posted September 14, 2019 Members Posted September 14, 2019 12 hours ago, AdamSmith said: Much worth a repost: When will we see any results? Best regards, RA1 AdamSmith 1
AdamSmith Posted September 14, 2019 Posted September 14, 2019 9 minutes ago, RA1 said: When will we see any results? Best regards, RA1 In showing me how to read Paradise Lost, he also showed me by analogy how to do market research on engineering-design software. Capisce?
