We Open on Death

My grandmother died December 29th, 2020 to COVID-19. To call it a punch to the gut would be an understatement.

She’d been better and worse over the course of the month, a month which saw us all get infected with the virus causing a worldwide pandemic. But while I only suffered a fever, and my parents had little in the way of symptoms, my grandmother kept getting worse.

It’s horrible to lose someone so close to you like this. It’s painful and broken and nothing feels like it should. I’ve lost people in my life before and all this is, is another open wound. A sore exposed to the harsh realities of the world.

Patsy Escalante was color in a gray world. She loved drinking and calaveras and traveling. And the poor response of this government killed her.

Riots and Traitors

How can one characterize what happened earlier this week? A bunch of right wing assholes, high on their own gas, took to the capitol building and broke in with intent to take hostages and plant bombs. You can make arguments about their intent, but enough wanted violence that to associate with that puts the same on everyone involved.

I understand the need to do everything you can to make a change when you see something you think is morally wrong. The problem is the absolute lack of self-reflection. Before the dust had the chance to settle, conservative assholes already tried to turn this around, claiming the left and the media didn’t give the protests last summer the same amount of vitriol.

Except they did. The media absolutely tried to paint the civil rights protestors and rioters last year as nothing more than violent maniacs. This is despite the fact they had a very clear motivation for their protest and most of the time the police instigated the violence.

So what happens now? Now that the literal man-child who was running this country with his Twitter account has lost his Twitter account?

I’m not going to lie, I’m not super optimistic. Democrats have a poor record holding themselves against Republicans. I mean, Bush Jr. and Trump both lost their popular votes. The populace has been pretty liberal for a while. And yet we still have so many problems passing progressive policies.

Hopefully, the right-wing politicians that enabled this riot, that enabled Trump and his draconian policies, that have tried to take every dollar they can from this country and give nothing back are held accountable.



Oh, I’m getting married. I mean, I talked a little bit about this to family and friends, but it’s happening. We downsized due to COVID-19, but we’re planning to sign the certificate on April 4th, 2021, and maybe some kind of ceremony or reception at a future date.

We’re sorry we can’t do something bigger to celebrate our day with everyone, but to us, the most important thing is that we can spend our lives together.

If you’re interested in helping us out. We do have a wedding/married life fund you can contribute to at this website.

The fund will help us try and save up to purchase a house so we can start a family. Anything you can give is appreciated.

There isn’t much there for me to talk about today. A lot has happened in the last few months, and I’m still trying to process most of it. Hopefully 2021 can improve over the last four years, but that outlook doesn’t feel reasonable given how the year started.

My love to you all reading this.

– Ben