that my oldest friend was one of those killed at the Cafe Racer in Seattle last Friday. Hadn't seen him for a few months, but that was where we usually went when I was in town: less than a block from his house, and the sort of peculiar place we might have gone when we were at the UW, most of 40 years ago. He spent a good bit of time there: those decades had dragged me all over the world and up into corporate purgatory, but had left Don, well, just Don, a delightful blend of practicality and dreams, with a razor wit and a good word for nearly everyone, the kind of guy who could have been a high-end lawyer or a masterly politician, but chose to be, well, Just Don.
This kind of thing shouldn't happen, right? But it does: the shooter sounds like another loony like the one who shot Gabby Giffords, and I suspect pretty much everybody knows at least one sideways character who might be expected to go off under the right (or wrong) circumstances.
I'm actually not sure what I'm here to say. Hell, I own guns, and so did Don; I'm even registered for concealed carry, albeit in large part simply because it's one of the few ways, in this state, to really get the government to recognize that, HEY, Y'ALL, I HAVE GUNS, MIGHT WANT TO PAY SOME ATTENTION HERE. Not that it makes any difference: given the number of unnecessary firearms rattling around in this country.
What it's about, really, or at least I think maybe, is the level of anger and frustration out there, pretty much throughout society, coupled with the combination of effective glorification of violence and tribalism. I'm not talking, particularly, about Hollywood --- hell, Marshall Dillon and the Cartwrights smoked any number people when I was a kid --- although I suspect it wouldn't hurt to tone down the gratuitous mayhem a tad. And society was, is, and always will be, factionalized, just ask a Red Sox fan. But the idea that such a thing as a "Second Amendment solution" can garner a patina of respectability seems to me to be a newish development in this country.
But back to Don. He was a gentle soul, a land use specialist and hearing examiner when he wasn't able to avoid it (like when the mortgage was due), a lover of jazz, a sax player whom I never got to hear, the single anchor of his mother and a passle of wayward relatives, and, to my knowledge, liked and enjoyed by practically everyone, because his was an equal-opportunity sort of sardonicism, leavened with a caring nature that could not be ignored. He tended to un-nerve really, really "straight" folks (like my wife), because he was right on the ragged edge of brilliant, but "couldn't get his priorities straight", i.e. was perfectly happy with his ancient truck and tiny old house, collected an entourage of decidedly un"respectable" friends, and didn't see a lot of need to impress (although he generally did).
I doubt that I'll miss him, really: I sort of don't miss much of anybody, as a rule, and we only saw each other on occasion, more out of respect for a long history than for any other reason. The affection remained (he once proposed to me...), but our lives had diverged. That said, I'm saddened for his partner, for his family, and for the world: it has lost one of its few remaining honest people, brave enough to be Just Don.
What I will remember as his parting words: "Do you realize that 60% of the American population believes that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife?"