This Is A Test and Some Great Things

This is mostly a test post to see if my grandmother still gets this blog sent to her.
Hi, NaNe!

Also, my people, I know I haven't been writing a lot lately. Like. At all. Ever. For months. Writing kind of comes and goes for me; sometimes I feel like it's very helpful and sometimes it doesn't seem all that fun. I try not to push it either way.

Since I'm here though, I might as well do some Great Things.

The mystery that is Clara Oswin Oswald

Enjoy Life brand gluten free products

Rohan

Squishables

Random acts of kindness

Cozy blankets on rainy days

Fear and Compassion

This is what I just posted as my status on Facebook, but I think I'd like to go into a little more detail:

"i mean... i understand how fear becomes hate. i really do. i get it. and i'm interested in making sure we as a country remember the principle of "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law." i'm also interested in how we as a people show compassion for others who clearly have some pretty major issues, as one would have to have in order to carry out an act of terror."

I know that, if he is found guilty, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (and his deceased brother) were guilty of some truly heinous crimes. Some unforgivable crimes that have forever changed so many people's lives. It is not ok to act as they did, and I believe that justice should be unflinchingly served.

I understand having emotions about this: being angry, feeling hate, wanting the perpetrator to suffer as their victims have. I so get that.

And I strongly believe it is also important to remember that Dzhokhar is a living, breathing, feeling creature. I believe that he also has felt fear and anger and hate and love. I believe that in order to commit a crime of this nature, something inside of him must have gotten terribly hurt, terribly confused, terribly twisted. I think that, somewhere inside of him, there is enormous pain. And despite his terrible acts, my heart goes out to him on the very basic human level; here is a man, more of a boy, a child of God and of the universe, who so completely lost sight of his connection to that universe that was able to consciously and purposefully be the cause of so much anguish.

I am sorry for the citizens of Boston and its surrounds whose lives have been touched and transformed by pain this week. And I am sorry for Dzhokhar, whose life must have somehow been touched and transformed by pain as well.