Is Boston Strong enough for what’s next?

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It was a little over a month ago that I wrote about the verdict in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial. Yesterday, the jury came back from deliberations and pronounced that the twelve men and women decided he should be put to death for the horrific crimes he committed. He bombed innocent people. He helped kill an MIT police officer.

And now, the twelve ruled: LET HIS GLOBAL BUS PASS BE REVOKED.

I don’t necessarily disagree with the jury. After all, if the death penalty shouldn’t be applied in the case of the Boston Marathon bomber, when should it be applied?

There are those who say that it should never be applied, whether they believe in the concept of turning the other cheek, or whether they believe in some manner of redemption…or perhaps they believe that if even one wrongly accused person is put to death then we as a society are no better than those that we would hold in contempt.

I also don’t necessarily agree with the jury, either.

From the moment he was caught, I wanted him gone. Toss him in the deepest, darkest hole in our Federal penitentiary system, I said. Let him disappear forever where he can’t harm anyone else and he will never again experience the joys of freedom. He was guilty, so much so that even his defense team acknowledged his guilt from the outset and only worked to mitigate its impact by trying to deflect blame onto anyone and everything except for their client.

In that sense, barring some kind of overturning of his conviction on appeal, at least he will be in prison for the rest of his life. He will be off the streets. He won’t get to hang out with his friends in his dorm room or at a restaurant. He committed horrible, senseless, violent acts that are utterly inexcusable, and he should be punished.

I see so much blood lust on my personal Facebook and Twitter feeds; some friends and family seem gleeful at the idea of him being taken out back and put out of our misery. And rarely is it ever that simple. In practical reality, because the verdict of death triggers an automatic appeal, his story will be in the headlines for months and years to come. Of course, there are also the candle-wavers holding virtual vigil for the idea that the death penalty is so wrong that he must be spared from a rather immediate termination and instead have a lengthy life in prison…followed by termination–voluntary or otherwise.

It’s all enough to make you wish people were still posting copious videos of cats playing pianos.

I was chatting with a co-worker yesterday and I mentioned that I knew people who were there on the day of the bombing: people inside The Forum, people at the medical tent, people hovering near the finish line as they cheered on friends and complete strangers. Anyone with a connection to prior Boston Marathons was there in some way, shape, or form that day–even if we weren’t there physically. Yesterday only dredged up some of those feelings, giving neither comfort nor solace. It was only a mile marker in a much longer marathon.

We have such a small time on this Earth, in this universe. We have but years in which to build and enjoy lives of exploration, education, and emotion. We are a blink of an eye in a natural system that tells times in eons and epochs. We are transient. We should never hurry on death and destruction. We should never rejoice in it.

I wish the verdict brought peace, but it doesn’t. It allows twelve people to go back to their lives as they were before, knowing they will never be the same. It allows the rest of us to wait impatiently and uncomfortably for whatever size and manner of shoe is next to drop. This story won’t go away anytime soon. There is no fading into obscurity.

The trauma continues.

The marathon keeps going.

Are we Strong enough for this race?

I sure as hell hope so.

If I never hear the word “asbestos” again…

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I’ve been MIA on this blog for the last few weeks, mostly because things have been in complete uproar. Actually, they’ve been in uproar for months, but I’ve been keeping it mostly quiet online until it was settled down.

Long story short: we planned to add more insulation to our attic (thanks to the Mass Save program), and before we could have electrical cleanup work done in the attic we had an ice dam that caused minor water damage to our son’s room’s ceiling, which led to a hole cut in the ceiling, which EVENTUALLY (on the day the insulators came to the house) led to the discovery that we had vermiculite in our attic. (*pants* takes a breath)

Still following?

Vermiculite is a mineral that–for many years prior to 1990–was primarily mined from a site in Montana that was contaminated with a highly toxic form of asbestos. Thus, the EPA says that once you discover vermiculite of unknown age, you have to get rid of it in the same manner as if it contains asbestos. Apparently, testing of vermiculite is inaccurate and produces too many false negatives, so you can’t just test it for asbestos and rule out the need for full-on remediation.

Thankfully, we’re insured by Amica (aka “THE BEST INSURER EVAR”) and they not only paid for the ice dam removal and water damage repair–they also paid for the asbestos remediation AND the hotel stay during the same. Since the asbestos remediation clocked in at $12,000, that’s no small investment in us and our house.

We’ve had new insulation put in, so we’re now all set–and actually insulated far more than we were to begin with, since the new stuff was done under the Mass Save program (to get us to the right level of insulation). But still…

Since the start of the year, we’ve been buried under nine feet of snow, had ice dams EVERYWHERE, had water damage, had a 2’x2′ hole cut in our ceiling, had electricians stomping all through the house and attic, had insulators come and go, had to leave our house while asbestos remediators carefully removed bag after bag of potentially hazardous material from our house, had insulators come in and re-insulate the attic…and, well, it’s all more than a little overwhelming.

When I say this was the Winter from Hell, I’m just not even exaggerating. There are few things that strike more fear in the heart of a homeowner than knowing they may have had asbestos floating around in their house. It also doesn’t help much that we lost a friend to mesothelioma not quite two years ago. Asbestos is the enemy.

So there you have it. And that’s what’s been going on. So if I’ve been too quiet, I apologize. Things have been…well, just a little busy, and sometimes I feel it’s better to share when the chaos has died down. This wasn’t a fast process, nor was it an inexpensive one, but thanks to Amica, at least we didn’t get ourselves dug into horrific debt on top of all the other stress it caused. And now, back to the normal level of chaos and stress…

How my iPad Mini 2 turned me into even more of a reading fiend

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It wasn’t so long ago that I was full of angst over whether I should get an e-reader. Having set a challenge for myself of reading at least 20 books in a year, and finding it awfully hard at times, I wasn’t sure if an e-reader would make life easier or just take me farther away from the printed page. My first job–ever–was as a page in a library, shelving books, and I truly enjoy the tactile experience of holding a book, turning the pages, and reading the book as the author intended. Still, it’s hard when you run into storage issues, as we have. We have seven 7-foot-tall Ikea bookcases filled to the gills with books, stacked up and shelved so thickly that there’s barely any space for new additions (and that doesn’t even include the bookcases in our living room or the kids’ rooms, all of which are also full).

Last Fall, I bought an iPad Mini 2 after much internal deliberation of iPad Mini versus Kindle Fire HDX. Ultimately, I didn’t want something as large as a traditional iPad, but I wasn’t impressed with the Kindle native app–and the iPad Mini seemed to be the most compatible with my environment (where I already have an iPhone and a MacBook Pro). Staying with an Apple product also meant little to no learning curve.

I took my iPad Mini 2 with me on a trip to California, and it seduced me immediately. I wasn’t excited by the movie options on the plane but–lo and behold!–I had downloaded “Captain America: Winter Soldier” onto my iPad Mini 2 before I left the house, so I was able to watch that on my way westward. Reading became simply a matter of flipping open the case, jumping into the Kindle app, and going for as long as my eyes would stay open. Even before I could finish my current book, Amazon was RIGHT THERE with an email offering a free book (their “Kindle First” program) or deeply discounted Kindle books (often $1.99-3.99 per book). Unsure of what I wanted for Hanukkah or Christmas, I asked for Amazon gift cards to feed my addiction.

Using Goodreads to track everything, as I aimed to get to 23 books this year, I’ve found myself flying through my reading list. Not having to wait to go to the bookstore (or stare endlessly at our shelves of books to see what I’m up for reading from dh’s collection), I’ve been consuming books at a nearly alarming pace. We’re just barely three months into the new year and already I’ve finished 12 books. That’s incredible.

There’s a part of me that pines for the days when I read paper books. I still have some, and occasionally I’ll get handed a new one to read (or there will be a book coming out that I insist on acquiring in print), but our storage problems and the far too few barriers to acquiring more e-books have sucked me into the e-reader lifestyle all too easily. There’s a part of me that rationalizes this as, “Well, at least I’m still reading and at least I’m still supporting the writers that I like and discovering new writers more easily”, although it’s hard for me to imagine how much of the $1.99-$4.99 that I typically spend per e-book actually makes its way back to the author. Then again, I don’t know how much of a $9.99-$29.99 printed book gets back to the author, either, so it’s possible that it’s all just publisher and bookseller margin with roughly the same pennies thrown at the writer.

I also have a terrible time justifying spending much more than this on e-books. After all, it’s an electronic file that’s distributed to thousands of people without the additional cost of printing presses, binding machines, and shipping/freight. So, really, perhaps $1.99 is closer to what the publisher actually spends per item (based on a projected number of units sold), before you factor in the costs of the book’s physical presence?

I don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t get about all of this, but what I do know is that I’m reading almost incessantly. I’ll probably be posting some more book reviews than I previously had–and anyone who wants to see what I wrote about any of the books I’ve read thus far is welcome to check out my Goodreads feed. Some of the ones I’ve read have been really good. Some have been meh. I’m discovering more about my personal tastes and how they have or haven’t changed in the last few years, like how I will occasionally read what could be classified as “chick lit”, but I still shun traditional romance as derivative pandering. Sci-Fi/Fantasy will always be a sweet spot with me, but I also love biographies, and historical fiction is an area I’m interested in exploring more.

At $1.99 per book, the barrier to entry is low. And now I’m sucked in, exactly as I’d feared. It’s almost as if I should set a goal to read a certain number of paper books per year, just to make sure I don’t completely and literally lose touch with that medium.

I don’t know why I feel so guilty for using an e-reader, but there is definitely a part of me that feels like I’m cheating on the printed page. It’s a first-world problem, to be sure, and one I’m not likely to resolve anytime soon. I adore my iPad Mini 2 (and not just for its e-reading capabilities), so this is likely the path I’ll tread for years to come, if not the rest of my life.