huronsuperior

Trying to figure out why an acquaintance of mine felt the need to denote that an area family currently in need of serious help are huge Christ followers and very generous, loving people.

I'm just... frustrated that she felt the need to stick that detail in there, as if this is a qualifier for giving this family the help they need. Or that this information might be the catalyst that garners them assistance.

Patrick Radden Keefe has a talent for covering several lenses in one book, while not dropping the ball as he cleanly weaves it all together.

I need to come back in and record a handful of quotes I pulled from the book, but in the meantime I can say that the cadence holds up from one end to the other.

Keefe successfully conveys The Troubles in such a palpable way, that the reader feels as though they're sitting in a small group gathered around, and it's very much as if Keefe has leaned in to say, "C'mere. I think you're going to want to hear this..."

There are endless things I could say. The nuance is stunning. The consequences of blind-faith reactionism is abhorrent and tragic.

It's not for me to say who does or doesn't have redeeming qualities, or if they do, if contrition would ever be on their heart.

But in taking someone's life, we rob that individual of the opportunity to begin the process of making amends, or ever learning to acknowledge the severity of their misdeeds, and they are no longer able to speak first-hand of how their actions should be considered a cautionary tale.

I recently visited the Livejournal account of my youth, which now sits on some cobwebbed shelf of the internet, waiting for me to occasionally stop by and say hello.

It's been years, but the sentiment for that space entirely remains. And bless it all if I wasn't just a little bit cringey, but I think Bebe Me was mostly just sweet, arbitrary and strange.

I was one of the lucky kids that got to use Livejournal when it first came out, and I was in the middle of high school. My friends and I would check into a library computer and sneak in a little update, would occasionally be delighted to find each other's posts or replies to our own later that evening when everyone had finished with their outside lives and retreated back home.

I thoroughly miss all of that, and though life most certainly isn't anything to complain about these days, those internet spaces just aren't the same.

In other words--there are spaces where I now visit but are no longer my niche.

I have no online niche these days, am in no way sad about it, as I have my family and friends to sustain me.

More than that, I am so, so grateful to have had the various internet niche, as some of the most precious people in my life have come to me in that way.

Ultimately, I need to reconcile with myself that there will never again be a Livejournal experience for me. Nor is there a Myspace, though I can't claim to be missing any of that.

But maybe there will be something else. And it won't be better, but it won't be worse, either.

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland has been informative and harrowing.

Keefe introduces individuals and places in a way that asks you to be patient, but he keeps the story moving all the same, and immerses you in the lives and circumstances of various people.

I told her to move because it's too early to turn the heat on, but we're hunkering down for the weather.