Today is a grim 33rd anniversary of my father dying at age fifty from a painful, elongated death from his tobacco/nicotine addiction. I’m planning to write extensively about the gory details at some juncture. Like so many in countless families, my dad was gone too soon. Handed loose cigarettes while growing up in Hawaii at age 12, little did he know that he would grow up to die at the same young age that his mother would.
My dad and me:
At 55 I can safely say that my siblings and I have ensured that the “family tradition” of being addicted to nicotine and dying at 50 does not continue with us, since we remember how he suffered firsthand. Thankfully none of our kids smoke, but that doesn’t mean they were not targeted. They are definitely surrounded by their peers who have now normalized vaping in front of others. I am proud to be working harder than ever with my activism, one which was triggered when Dad died. I could think of no more noble cause at the time I entered law school than to save as many lives as I could, but Big Tobacco is still trying to addict new generations with vapes, even having the audacity to suggest they are smoking cessation devices! If that’s the case, why do some e-cigarettes have the equivalent of 400 cigarettes?
The biggest drug dealers in the world are making profits off of 22% of the WORLD population. Does this CARTEL deserve that? How many needless, preventable early deaths will they be responsible for throughout history? There is no depth to which this one industry will go, and yet it continues to prosper off the blood money of our families and now our youth. Big Tobacco is the enemy. Ask me how you can help.
Can you even tell which of these are vape pens? Neither can parents or teachers when they are consumed IN CLASS.
It’s a sad day in our home. We lost our most senior dog, Timber, who was well over 18. Several days ago she must have had a stroke. Suddenly, she was no longer able to use her hind legs, so we said goodbye to her this morning after making her as comfortable as we could in her remaining hours.
Some of you may recall that she survived cancer over six years ago, at which point we thought we’d just have a matter of weeks or months of palliative care, but the surgery to remove the huge tumor from her leg was a success. Indeed, she thrived right up until very recently.
We’re happy we were able to give her a much longer life than she would have had when my sister’s in-laws were stricken with their own immense health issues about seven years ago. There had been talk among those extended family members of “taking her to the pound,” to which I said, “Hell no…not on my watch.” I had known her from various holiday gatherings since she was just a puppy. We are so grateful to have so many pictures and videos of her from many vacations and trips to beaches and parks these past seven years.
In hindsight, this video of her tongue acting like this at the beginning of September might have been a sign of her having a stroke, cute as it is:
Here are pictures of some of Timber’s last days. We put bells on her collar so we could hear and find her when she wandered off to strange parts of the house and yard.
More commonly known as “Monte,” the Capulet (Cappy) to his Montague is now without her counterpart.
Born in Friant, California (near Fresno), I had this amazingly athletic dog pretty much his entire life, which was more than 15 years, except for the first few weeks. He was extraordinary in many ways.
He went on countless vacations and beaches with me from Seattle to San Diego. He also traveled to Phoenix and many other places inland over the years. For the first three years of his life, he was the only dog I had, and he loved it that way.
I have footage of him pulling blackberries into his mouth with his paw.
He would dive into any body of water to chase a tennis ball, a feat he learned watching my friends’ big dogs in Oakland. Many people asked me what kind of dog he was emerging with a ball in his mouth he had retrieved from the bay, the pool, the lake, the river, etc.
Upon returning from vacation yesterday, Monte did not respond to our entering the home as he normally would have, with elation and energy. Upon re-investigating his difficulty eating and inviting our mobile veterinarian over, we found a huge splenic tumor in our 15-year-old Yorkie. An emergency 24-hour trip later resulted in a confirmation that there was nothing operable and even if it was benign, it was pressing on his major organs. He had lost 50% of his body mass in just the last few months, despite medications to stimulate his appetite and quite a variety of changes in the food we prepared to appeal to him.
In 2008 I implored my daughter to go to a shelter to find a dog, not even knowing what I now know about the transactional problems with going to a breeder. She was hellbent that she wanted a male Yorkshire Terrier. I was basically bribing her with the dog of her choice to move to California where I’m from after raising her in New York, where she was born. I desperately missed her the year she went to high school in New Jersey near her mom. Before that, I had always had primary custody of my daughter, so I was willing to bend my principles to get her back. She did a lot of research and seemed very sure of what she wanted, probably because she saw some celebrity with a Yorkie.
So Monte started out technically as her dog. I wasn’t naive, so I knew it was quite likely I’d be taking more responsibility, and that was fine, as she bounced around the country after getting out of high school. I joked all this time that she just wanted him for a Myspace photo op. A week after she got him, I took over the potty training and everything else, and my daughter assisted for a while.
He was probably in a lot of pain these past few weeks, although he hid it. We’re so glad he survived our being gone that week. One of our amazing dog-sitters said he waited for us. The tumor could have burst at any point with a blunt hit or fall in hindsight, and that would be disastrously painful. Ironically, I was invited to my first online pet loss support group today, but I decided it would not be healthy for me to join minutes after he was put to rest, which turned out to be the timing that was convenient for the mobile veterinarian.
Ironically our 18-year-old Pomeranian-Chihuahua mix has really bounced back and we were worried about leaving for vacation with her being ill about a month ago. Her fur is now once again lustrous, and she’s gained some weight, eating heartily daily and still quite ambulatory. One never knows with these things. She herself survived cancer at least six years ago when a huge tumor was removed from her leg.
Below are the last video and pictures I took of this tough little guy. You cannot tell how skeletal he is because he has fur, but he was indeed emaciated and his eyes were glossed over. He moves slowly and it was hard to keep him hydrated and fed. He could not even go up a single step and mostly had to lay around in his last days. I’m sure it was uncomfortable for such a normally frenetic animal. He had hardly ever even been ill in all of his days. In these he is on my desk while I work so I could be as close to him as possible and keep an eye on him.
Today makes seven years since I lost my mom to fucking cancer (ovarian). She was only 73, so she would have been 80 this December. I was named after my mother, Giuseppina, and she was named after my Nonno, Giuseppe. I was a huge momma’s boy. We spoke all day in chat when I was at work for YEARS, not to mention at least a few calls a day even when she was visiting Italy or I was living on the East Coast.
The guy with the beer in the picture below is my dad, of course. We lost him way too early from his smoking. He was only 50, so my mom was widowed at age 47. Both my parents died before one of their own parents, so I had the most unfortunate duty of consoling my Nonna (in my mom’s case) and my grandfather (in my dad’s case) over the loss of their offspring. Continents and decades apart, I heard them both scream about how it should have been them instead.
I met Jonathan somewhere online when he first moved to New York City around 2001. He was immediately engaging on several levels, including intellectually. We both really liked each other and became friends, reasoning that our age difference was probably too big to seriously consider dating, although we would both end up dating people with a broader age range as the years went on. The important thing is that we always remained friends.
This is the hunk I first chatted with in the early 2000’s.
When I first met him I was living in Park Slope, Brooklyn and he was on Roosevelt Island, of all places. He was originally from Iowa but moved to Chicago for a while. He worked in accounting/bookkeeping and always seemed to be advancing and making pretty good money doing payroll in the entertainment industry. At least that was the best that I could surmise. Years later he would do the bookkeeping for my own business, Ursinet. He really knew his stuff!
This was one of the first pictures I ever saw of him, which reminds me of his intellectual side.
He later informed me that he had found a roommate situation about three blocks from me in Brooklyn, which was thrilling. I don’t know if I was part of his incentive to move to that hip area, but it certainly facilitated our hanging out more and seeing each other all the time. He actually moved into the apartment immediately above the restaurant my daughter and I loved most on a quiet street, so we often met to eat there.
In NYC Jonathan center and me on the right in March 2005.
He seemed very comfortable with travel, having gone to visit his friend Chris in Ireland a number of times, and with his German language. We spent time as friends going to New Hope, Pennsylvania, hanging out in New York City and he always had interesting stories to tell, including the time when he was on a reality TV show where he dated a guy. I never got to see it, but I found his description of that date and some of the other ones he went on, very entertaining. One time in particular he told me about this guy who blogged about his excitement in anticipation of dating Jonathan and then, despite what Jonathan described as an objectively interesting and stimulating date, continued blogging almost immediately after his disappointment, seemingly for sympathy and click bait (long before that term was coined). Jonathan immediately left comments on the blog to the surprise of the blogger and then the drama ensued.
What a smile!
Jonathan visited me a few times after I moved back to California because he was good at staying in touch. He would stay with me when he visited. When he told me of his intention to move out to San Francisco himself, I was thrilled. It was great to spend time with him about once a month or so these past ten years or so. I know he really appreciated a lot about living on the West Coast and that he was professionally thriving in a city where it can be a challenge just to stay afloat. In a way, it was very flattering that he kind of moved to my area TWICE, but that’s how good a friend he was.
Looking closer at this picture today I see that he appears to be sitting on garbage bags somewhere in Europe
Unfortunately, some of his interactions with others were less than optimal. I’m sure Jonathan had plenty of drama in his life over the years. I saw him in what I considered healthy, productive relationships and some that left him emotionally drained. I know Jonathan always tried to send me information about some of the physical and mental health challenges he had. I could go back and look those articles up, but the sad point is that he ended up dying at the age of 45. I do not know the details, but the most objective description from his mother that I saw a copy of in her own writing was that he was “found dead in San Francisco” despite my last working communication with him is a claim that he was on a train back to Iowa via Chicago. I have no idea if that trip actually manifested, but his memorial services did take place in Iowa.
To make his passing so young even sadder, his older brother apparently died within ten days of him. I’m also not sure of those circumstances.
Some of the speculations about Jonathan have run amuck, with at least one person attempting to rewrite history. Fortunately, that person has very little credibility and has been blocked from communicating with me further after callously informing me of the death, which I had to research to prove to myself subsequently. Jonathan was only a few weeks past his 45th birthday when he died on October 27, 2022. There is no evidence that he intentionally committed suicide even though some may claim that.
Riding the NYC subway circa 2007.
I lost far too many good friends at a young age without much explanation, and I sometimes feel helpless. I have tried to help to a great extent (as I did with Tony Perri) as some of you (including Jonathan) witnessed, but while I don’t know exactly what went wrong here, I do know that some people genuinely cared for Jonathan and others took a hand in any level of self-destructive behavior that he may have had. My solace is that at least my home was a sanctuary and a refuge for Jonathan over the years, and I remember him telling me how safe he felt when he was in my presence. I wish he realized that he deserved that sense of safety and security all the time.
It could happen! Once in a while, I can proudly land a perfect one. I row with the Solano Rowing Club on a whaleboat most weekends. Maybe you had to be there, but while we were putting the boat away for storage today our coxswain Alison said, “next time we’ll work on ab holds”
I retorted, “What did you call me!?”
Coxswain Alison with Becky & Karen as strokes. We often see sea lions swimming by!
An original quote from yours truly is that “laughter is the best revenge against death,” by which I mean we can laugh and that alone makes life worth living. On another macabre note, I always wished I could sleep less when one thinks that a 75-year-old person has slept away 25 years of his or her life. I’ll never forget the chill I get when I heard the antagonist in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea claim “sleep is just a slice of death.”
Now for a segue.
We recently lost the goddess of candy pants, Judy Tenuta, to fucking ovarian cancer at the age of 73 (the same age my mother was when she died of fucking ovarian cancer in 2016). I saw Judy live in New York City years ago to my glee. Riding the subway home I had to hold on to my companion because I thought I’d fall on the subway tracks I was such jelly from recalling her jokes. I’ve always gravitated toward funny women, which partly explains my Streisand fandom, but Judy’s wit will be so uniquely missed. I went out and ordered her books and whatever else I could find on her but I always searched for her online to see what she was up to. I recently read her first book on the plane to Hawaii and quickly started using her quips with my husband on vacation. I still believe Judy was very underrated.
Fortunately, Judy was sometimes on the Stephanie Miller Showto talk about not just politics in her special way, but also her attempt to KICK CANCER’S ASS. I do listen to Stephanie Miller every morning on FreeSpeechTV and encourage everyone to join in. Stephanie spoke at Judy’s celebration of life recently. Through the last several years of SCOTUS packing and general mayhem in American federal politics, comedy like Stephanie’s and Judy’s has kept me sane.
“Is anybody hearing this? I feel like I’m taking CRAZY pills!” — Will Farrell
A woman in Catalonia wrote me to ask for permission to do a story on my parents, who I mention on my blog lived in the northern part of Catalonia near Girona and the French border. Our entire family lived there but my siblings were so young that they do not have as clear memories as I do. I know the picture of my parents featured in the article was one cherished by my mom. On this same cement slab is where I learned how to ride a bike. We lived there from 1975-1977, when we moved to live on base in New York City on Governor’s Island. I remember celebrating the American Bicentennial on base in Spain. It was quite a culture shock to move to NYC. The article is written in Catalan, a Latin-based language of the region of Spain where we lived.
This is hard to talk about because it ended so tragically. Shando and I fostered this gorgeous puppy (not the guest dog named Cookie, who is having a moment), for about a week.
When we got Poopsie, I thought it was really cute because that’s the pet name that my grandfather had for my grandmother, although if we would have kept him, he would have been called Iggy.
We almost immediately found a home nearby where we knew he would be treated well, but unfortunately, while they were out walking Poopsie, a vicious dog in the neighborhood, who was being dog-sat, got off leash and attacked and killed Poopsie (who had been renamed). It was traumatic for our neighborhood and many of us rushed to the scene with the screams, which also threw Poopsie’s new mom to the ground and injured her. I could not believe my eyes and openly sobbed when our vet, who had rushed over, could not resuscitate him. Life is so short and can be so unfair. This is probably the only footage we have of him, which I was glad to find.
We only had Peanut for about five months. He came to us as a foster in January at age 13 as his previous family moved away and said they could not take him. We determined there was something wrong with his health, which perhaps the family who had abandoned him was aware of. We took him for X-rays, but what it ultimately turned out to be was advanced kidney failure. After several months of his only being slightly unbalanced with his equilibrium, he deteriorated and could not gain weight. We tried to get encourage his appetite in so many ways, but his poor little body just wasn’t cooperating.
Peanut was super affectionate and bonded with me very quickly. As a chihuahua-dachshund mix, he did remind me of my Tucker. We knew almost immediately that he would not just be a foster once I saw that handsome face and his attentive eyes. I know he felt loved. He very rarely barked, but he had a very deep voice when he did. He loved car rides and being near me. He loved meeting new dogs and would shadow them until the novelty wore off. I’m so glad we had him in our family, even if it was for just a short period.
Bella was approaching her 16th birthday. We lost her father Tuckerlast year as he was approaching his own 16th. Shando had the father and daughter team of Isabella Dachshunds with his ex since they were puppies, so her death brought the end of an era. They probably never dreamed they would join a household with two Yorkies and then eventually a PomChi.
Bella and Tucker had been living with Shando’s ex in the Sacramento area for three years when Shando and I got together in 2014. Shortly thereafter they joined our household permanently. We’re happy they lived long canine lives and got to travel a lot with us.
Bella was quite frail as a senior with her continued weight loss because she had been overweight much of her adult life. At first we hoped the weight loss she had foretold of more longevity than her father, who was really overweight until he died. The last few days we just could not get her to eat or drink, even though we could tell she wanted to.
She was particularly protective and close with Shando, while Tucker was my “side-arm” and flank for years. Often when people would reach to hug Shando if Bella was in her arms, she’d go into fight mode, so she definitely had cranky moments and a few fights with our female Yorkie Capulet over the years. Bella was also an incredible mouser and general hunter of rodents, as makes sense with the breeding of doxies.
Make sure to check out some of the videos and pictures of her, especially her passion for chasing waves at the beach. She was always in the “zone” and would not focus on anything else when she was there.
I was named after my mother, Giuseppina, and she was named after my Nonno, Giuseppe. I was a huge momma’s boy. We spoke all day in chat when I was at work for YEARS, not to mention at least a few calls a day even when she was visiting Italy or I was living on the East Coast. 
