An Incalculable Loss
The New York Times’ deeply moving front page (in print) is accompanied by this interactive page for the same list of names.
Gun Violence Archive keeps track of gun deaths in the US
Holy shit man. Over 13,000 deaths due to gun violence in the United States in this year alone.
Player Two: A wonderful short about a kid remembering his father through video games
Wow, you have to watch this short video directed by John Wikstrom that takes a YouTube comment and turns it into a cinematic heartfelt piece about love and loss...and video games.
This is a screengrab of the actual YouTube comment from "00WARTHERAPY00".
On the death of a friend
***This is a re-post of a post made originally on HermanYung.com***
I’ve been in a very solemn mood in the last 24 hours or so. I found out by odd coincidence and curiosity that a good friend of mine from back in middle school had passed away. Details are scarce at the moment and a part of me is definitely curious as to what happened. But more importantly, I lost a friend who I’ve been meaning to reconnect with for some time.
See, Morgan and I were best buds back in middle school. We lived near each other, went to the same middle school, and learned to skate together here in the city. We shared a bond over music and he was one of the few people who introduced me at the time to alternative rock music.
At some point at the end of middle school however, Morgan and his family moved to Massachusetts and I sort of lost touch with him. As far as I knew (or as far as I could tell), he had no social media accounts which made it incredibly hard for me to get back in touch with him. I knew his sister was a mildly famous musician here in NYC so I’ve tried to reach out to her to get in touch, but those were always dead ends. Long story short, I never did get back in touch with Morgan. Over the next decade or so, I would randomly do a search for him to see if I could get back in touch, but the result was always the same. Dead ends. That is, until last night, when out of curiosity, I searched for him again, this time, bringing up his obituary.
Even though he and I lost touch and grew apart over the years, there was always this tugging inside me to get in touch with him. I’ve always thought, How do two good friends grow apart so quickly? I guess the moving to a different state factored heavily into it. And this was certainly a time before smartphones and social media which meant a real effort was needed to stay in touch. I wasn’t the letter-writing type nor the phone-calling type. I imagine he wasn’t either. I guess we just let it happen and somehow the busyness of high school (and then college) masked the fact that we were drifting.
I wish I had been able to see him one more time before he passed. I wished all these years that we’d be able to reconnect, maybe talk about some more music, introduce each other to some different bands, and maybe, just skate a little bit in the old neighborhood. I wonder now how the last decade or so of his life has been. I hope he was happy.
If you’ve got a friend out there that you’ve been meaning to reconnect with, just do it. Don’t worry about the awkwardness. Don’t worry about the little things. Just do it.
Morgan Leon Silver, I’ll miss you bud.