(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Celebrating aitchdee [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-17 This has been a very hard diary for me to write. aitchdee passed away on February 18th this year after an extremely sudden illness, with a prognosis for extremely poor quality of life and a lot of pain and suffering. The decision not to subject her to further pain and suffering was not one I made lightly. I remembered all the things that had happened while we were together. She loved talking about her childhood growing up in Oakland in the 60s and 70s. Lots of trees, lots of dogs. How she and her best friend drove to Bruce Springsteen’s parents’ house in her mom’s car and hung around waiting for him to show up, and how he talked to them for a bit. How the AIDS crisis of the 80s and 90s swept San Francisco and the Bay Area. She was with her dear friend Steve as he fought and was with him when he passed. How she loved working in independent bookstores, particularly Bonanza Street Books in Walnut Creek, and others that I cannot remember right now. Her darling Frances Muffin Wigglybottom Poodle — Franny for short. We always talked about when she would be well enough to come back home and how we would buy a house with a pool that would be accessible. She was very much a water person and loved swimming, floating and treading water. We made our relationship ‘official’ Halloween of 2021, a few months after Franny passed, although we’d been living together since January 2019 and had known each other since January 2015. Here’s something that she shared with me last Halloween: I think I've figured out why the Peanuts story of the Great Pumpkin has always deeply appealed to me. I like pumpkins, so that ticks one box, and I love Peanuts, so that's another. When I was a child, every year around this time the Peanuts HalloweenTV special--with its jaunty Vince Garaldi theme music--stirred my little kid's heart with the joy, the color, and the inherent theatricality and drama of fall. Now, the story of the Great Pumpkin is a bit of irreverent, irreligious cheek on Schultz's part that thrills me as an adult. Here, religion for once is playful. Here, the Great Pumpkin doesn't require gruesome sacrifices or recitations of docile fealty from the Peanuts gang; they just hang out in the Pumpkin patch in the moonlight and wait for him or her (or Eir) to appear and edify them with his resplendent pumkininess. They're into it because it's fun, it's silly--a little scary--and if Linus is right this time, potentially amazing. What more could a kid ask for? The gang's yearly Great Pumpkin ritual is funny and sweet and wistful. The wistfulness of Linus's Pumpkin worship is allegorical of the human desire for something magic to show itself and deliver us from the mundane round of squawking teachers and factory bosses of everyday life. Like Springsteen's sublime image in Born to Run of Mary's dress, waving as she stands on the porch waiting for "a hero to rise from these streets"--as a *boy's* hero of the night, the Great Pumpkin is another kind of enchantment, a potent magic that's risen from the imagination of a precocious, melancholic 4th grader. It is a religion gladness, of togetherness and goodwill, with its own kind of in interpid faith, because the Peanuts gang never gives up on the Great Pumpkin. This is the religion of childhood, which, of course, is imagination itself. She interacted with a lot of people on DK in multiple groups such as KosAbility and Black Kos. I don’t think I have permissions to repost to those groups, but if anyone would like to repost or share the link, please don’t hesitate to do so. And if you would like to share your own remembrances of aitchdee, go right ahead in the comments. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/17/2179342/-Celebrating-aitchdee?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/