The All Star Activist
Well, I just finished the story about attending the Subcommittee meeting and I must say, it wasn’t easy. It was difficult for several reasons but most of them had to do with me being new to blogging, especially this particular template that you see here. Even though both of my blogs are on WordPress (which has been excellent) and the conventions are pretty consistent between them both, there are some differences between the designs due to the use of server side cascading style sheets.
I chose this free template because it seemed to be the most appropriate. I am very leery of posting anything on here that might be considered disrespectful to anyone who may view it. To me, this blog is as much a memorial as it is an activist’s platform for justice, for something that I consider to be a great evil. The colors are pastel and muted, the layout is designed to convey formality without being off-putting. I do sometimes get frustrated in that all aspects of the layout (most actually) are not available to be altered since I believe that I could make some improvements. Overall though, it is flexible enough to make it do what I want it to do plus, it conveys enough reverence through it’s design aesthetic.
Were it not for my training in Web Design, I’m sure this blog would not have been possible. I have had to hand edit and code much of what you see just to get it to read correctly. It just so happens that I received training in Web Development during the dotcom days just prior to the bottom falling out. I never had a chance to use my skills back then but can’t see how they couldn’t have been put to a better use now. So, between the uploading of pictures and vids, the hand coding and composition, the linking and the creation of graphic images, it has taken about three solid days to bring you the Subcommittee post below. By far and away however, that was the least difficult part of finishing the story. The hardest part was that I had to keep looking at those smiling faces which I know are no longer here.
Death is something profound to me. I know that sounds like a kind of stupid thing to say but it’s true. I revere life so much that the end of it effects me deeply. I don’t just mean people either, I see meaning in every kind of death and in everything that ceases to live. This is because God created life and the ending of it is intrinsically un-natural. When a person departs for the last time and forever, those of us left behind lose not only them but their contribution to the world. You can feel it if you pay attention, we all are diminished somehow. So, I try to salvage purpose from every loss forfeited to “The Reaper”, to reflect upon the meaning (and there always is one if you believe we all have a purpose) so that the lessons that can be learned won’t be lost as well. Everyone has meaning, everyone has purpose and so does every death because, God created everything. We were not meant to die.
So every time I had to refresh the page due to another edit, there they were, smiling out at me. I found myself wondering who they must have been in person (since I never met them) and wondering how their families were coping now. I would then have to shake that off because I had a job to do and sinking into that line of thought was not helpful. I now understand why doctors and nurses are admonished not to become too familiar with their patients but, how can you help it? It can become emotionally crippling and then you can’t assist them at all.
Well, when I finished the post, I kind of fooled myself into thinking that I was tougher than that and that it was somehow my journalistic duty to at least learn a little something about Mrs. Greig and her daughter, as people. Big mistake. As I was finishing my last upload to Youtube, on impulse I entered their names into the search field and the result came back with three videos. I felt uneasy at this point. What could I possibly do with this information that would help obtain some criminal acountability, I asked myself. All of what I had been dealing with (and would in the future with this effort) had to do with papers, beaurocrats and research. The only thing that looking at this video might do would be to make me feel bad. Stupid me, I didn’t follow my first mind and with a half baked notion that perhaps there might be a little something useful there, I clicked on the video. Like I said before, big mistake. It was a video of Janessa with her cat. The rest of my night was ruined.
I don’t want to see any more videos and will quickly move past the pictures when I encounter them. For what needs to be done, viewing those images isn’t necessary and after the experience of looking at that one video, I don’t want to either. This is not a disrespect but rather a focus on the task at hand. It hurt to watch.
Forgive me for asking Father but, why do we have to put up with such evil in the world?
The All Star Activist
Justice for Jacqueline and Janessa Greig 