These Boys Are Sexy

Matthew McConaughey v. Lance Armstrong at Miami Beach, April 25, 2006.
People magazine. photo Gustavo Caballero-Getty/Storms Media Group.

Fundraising isn't Sexy

As unsexy as it is, we ask for donations 'cause we need them to run GNB.

This isn't a hobby, it's a business. Either we make enough money to keep the doors open and the lights on, or we have to pay for it out of our own pockets, and that is not okay.

In Saturday's Open Thread, you answered what our expenses might include:

• Um, coffee?
  
• Food, unless you're planning on peanut butter and salami the whole time.
  
• Set aside money for emergencies, just in case. (It's never enough, but it's better to have some.)
  
• Parking.
  
• Taxis?
  
• Coffee/tea to keep up, caffeinated and blogging throughout the convention.
  
• Transport to the BIG speech if Obama moves it outside of the convention center to Mile High.
  

YES!... to ALL your answers. *smiles* Expenses I'm thinking of include:

• Business cards
  
• Transportation, ground and air
  
• Hotel rooms
  
• Food
  
• More food
  
• HaloScan support (our annual fee is due)
  
• Domain name renewal
  
• SiteMeter (a monthly bill for tracking GNBs' circulation)
  
• Phone bill
  
• Bank fees
  
• Post Office box
  
• Still more food (say, one good meal out on the town at the convention when we're DONE for the whole staff to CELEBRATE!)
  
• And on and on and on.

None of this is sexy. It isn't trips to Hawaii where the Staff gets massages and facials while sipping drinks with umbrellas and dictating their next post to cuties. (We wish. Especially Hubris... you think he's tough with that Special Forces background, but really he's a softy-bear. *grins*... I'll actually kick in $25 bucks to GNB for a photo of HS dictating a post to a cutie in Hawaii while getting a facial and sipping an umbrella drink. *cracks up* Hell, make it $50.)

Every cost we can legitimately push on to free services we do. There are lots of free services on the web, and you bet we take advantage. However like any business we have expenses.

This 15 day fundraising drive, our first ever and only after a full year of showing you our goodies, is the only one you're going to see for a while. Which is why we need to raise a LOT of money. We won't be coming back to you till... well, if we raise what we're hoping to raise, we won't be back to you till the turn of the year, six month from now.

If you like GNBs' style and writers... Sara Robinson, Hubris Sonic, myself, and Lower Manhattanite, Evan and TLG, plus the gang of commenters which make Group News Blog home, we ask you to pitch in and generously give all you can: $75, $50, $40, $25. We accept credit cards, checks, and PayPal, and you can also mail us a check or money order.

PayPal or credit card:

Group News Blog
PO Box 809
Bellevue WA 98009

Finally, let me be clear...

If you can't donate anything this time around because you're having rough times in the Bush/Cheney depression or if you simply don't want to, no hard feelings. We don't want you to give more than you feel you should, and we're not matching your posting name with your donation. Donate, don't donate, it's entirely up to you.

As I've said many times, this is the Group News Blog, not The News Blog. However that means something different here, perhaps for some a little delicate to speak of. We're a young blog, only one year old earlier this week on July 1st. We don't have anywhere close to the circulation -- in this context that means the donor base -- of The News Blog in its final years and we won't, probably for several years. The News Blog was one of the few blogs in the whole blogosphere that could modestly support a full-time Publisher/blogger and pay its business expenses.

What I'm saying is, when people skipped a fundraiser at The News Blog there were lots and lots of donors to take up the slack. There aren't here. No kidding. Not for a few years, minimum. We don't have the donor base of TNB. We're not even close. And TNB always had another fundraiser coming up just around the corner, three months later. We don't. Assuming we hit our target, we're going to wait six months. We're still new; we don't believe we've earned the right to fundraise once a quarter.

Every blog that wants to grow into something real and self-sustaining... they all go through this. We are no different simply because we inherited what we inherited. If anything, it makes this more difficult, frankly, as some people are always going "You suck, you don't measure up to Steve, you totally blow." And my personal favorite, “Steve Would Have...” Which as I've said before, I am TOTALLY clear, simply means they miss Steve and love him, as do we all. But -- *laughs* -- it most likely doesn't help now at fundraising time.

We're asking for your donations because we really do need them -- for basic, ordinary, unsexy, business expenses. The soccer jerseys, iPods, and new Air Macs will have to come later. Now, we're just working on keeping things running.

We're not one of those big blogs (which frankly, we think is one of our strengths.) But it means we don't have a large donor base. You matter. Each of you matter.

Won't you help by giving as much as you can? Today?

Thank you.

There's more...

Bring It

We are aware of all Internet Traditions

For example... the fundraiser.

Traditionally on the Internet, you give away product first and build up your customer base. Only once you have a great product and lots of loyal customers, do you ask for money.

We're asking.

We're going to the Democratic Convention in August. We need your help.

The News Blog

Why we come to you

Aren't you tired of the same old song and dance from liberal money people. The GOP shits their pants at blogs, even Karl Rove is wary of them, and this is how our people think of us, treat us.

At some point we're gonna have to challenge them, call them out, because shit has to change. No point in keeping them happy when they don't seem to care about what we're doing. So we do what we have to, look out for ourselves.

Going to the Democratic Convention costs bunches. Please donate what you can.

PayPal or credit card:

Group News Blog
PO Box 809
Bellevue WA 98009

Our fundraising runs through July 15 and then not for a while. Thanks.

There's more...

Steve, One Year Later

Gilly Bear on Steve Gilliard's hospital pillow. photo by Jenonymous Feb 25, 2007.

Steve Gilliard (November 13, 1964 – June 2, 2007)

I can't stop crying.

One year since I got the email that Steve was dead.

An hour later The News Blog went black forever as the news swept out.

We'd lost Gilly.

I've been crying for a year.

Never know when it's going to hit.

• Reading a post.
• Riding my bike.
• Kissing my kids goodnight.
• I make a mental note, “Send this to Gilly.”

And then I remember...

Without warning I burst into tears. Like right now.

I shove my glasses up, rub at my left eye and face. “Fuck”, I say. “God dammit.”

After a moment or two, I force myself to breathe. Once, twice, often a third time. And wipe the sneaky tear from my right eye as well.

“Bastard.”

I close my eyes and breathe.

I hold on...

...and am slammed back a year ago.

That last month, we knew what was likely. We spent it preparing everyone for the inevitable. We prayed for a miracle, even those of us who don't believe. But we knew.

People fall back on cliché when they're unable to be with life as it is. Many people told me, “At least Steve was blogging until he went into the hospital. He died having done what he loved to do.” Gods do I hate that cliché. People die. Steve died because he was in poor health, had long-term medical problems, was over-weight, and he failed to take his medical problems with the seriousness they needed.

He got decent care at the hospital, but yes, institutional racism played a role in his death -- and I'm not talking only about his medical care, but how everyone involved interacted with the system. That conversation isn't one I (or anyone on the inside) is going to talk about the details of now. (Ask me again in a decade.)

Racism is a fact of life, as real as dog-shit on the sidewalk. It just is. Sometimes you step in it. You might not even know you've got dog-shit on your shoe till you smell it. You look back and there's shit tracked all across the carpet. It was like that. The shit was everywhere. You can't blame the dog. Dog's shit; it's what they do. You shouldn't blame the people much; maybe they turned away for a moment and the dog did its business. It happens. And your attention was elsewhere as you walked and, well, it's a mess.

It was a mess for Gilly, and I don't blame anyone. Steve fought as hard as anyone could, but in the end too many systems were too messed up, and he died.

We're left, a year later with the fact of his death. Sometimes I know he'd be proud of all of us, and sometimes it's more than I can bear and I cry. Often both at once.

I am proud of our community. Of our bloggers, Hubris Sonic, Lower Manhattanite, Sara Robinson and myself, and The Littlest Gator and Evan Robinson. Of Jen, Steve's co-publisher and the heart of our community. And our readers, the few who comment frequently (regulars), the many who comment sometimes (lurkers), and the vast majority (in the tens of thousands) who simply read (*hi Mom*.) Among those who read us are the major blogs, political campaigns, national newspapers, networks and magazines, political parties, politicians and staff, and people in over 140 countries around the world.

Steve, my friend... it's one hell of a legacy you've left.

If only I could go a week without bursting into tears.

There's more...

“Steve Would Have...”

People somehow still think they can get at me by saying:

• “That's not how Steve would do it,”
• “You'll never write as good as Steve does,”
• “Steve would never/Steve would always,”

and instead of reacting with “go fuck yourself,” I thought...

I'd tell everyone -- yes, you can get at me that way.

Not because I buy into negative views of myself.

Because I miss him too.

You're right... That probably isn't how Steve would do it.

You're right... I won't ever write like he did. And I love that you still read him, and that he lives for you in his words.

Steve would never/would always? Unless it's caring for Jen, his Mother, and hating the Yankees, I learned not to put limits on what Gilly would and wouldn't. He surprised me all the time. Especially with his love for Jen, for his friends, and especially how much he cared about you; not the News Blog, but the future of journalism.

So here it is:

You may throw Steve would/wouldn't around if you kinda lose it. It's really okay. I won't get angry with you, and hopefully, no one else will either.

What we will listen -- by declaration -- you saying is, "I really miss Steve." Of course, you can just say "I miss Gilly." That would be okay also. *smiles*

I'm Jesse, not Steve. My colleagues are Hubris, LM, and Sara (plus tlg and Evan.) Jen is not on the Masthead; she lives in our hearts.

We are the GROUP News Blog, not the News Blog.

You know how I'm sure you still miss him? We miss him too.

There's more...

Steve Gilliard: "How To Read a 10Q” series

Gilly's Famous Financial Series is Now Available

After the Colonial Warfare series, the biggest request people have had is, "where can we get a copy of the 'How To Read a 10Q' series?"

I am thrilled to report that Steve Baldwin, formerly of Netslaves, now of Ghost Sites of the Web, has done an enormous amount of work, and restored Steve Gilliard's 10Q series, making them available for everyone:

"How to Read a 10Q" Financial Reporting Series.

All of Gilly's writings that we know of (including the 10Q series) are easily accessible through our web page The Writings of Steve Gilliard -- 101.

To make it easy to find, we have linked the Writings page over to the right, directly under the MEMORIAM header. The Writings page is also linked from Gilly's Wikipedia page.

We will continue to update the Writings page. Just drop an email and we'll make the change.

Everyone else -- want to read Gilly? Hit the link on the sidebar.

And right now, don't miss out on the 10Q series. It will teach you which of your stocks are great, and which are junk. In this economy, that's something you need to know.

There's more...

The Writings of Steve Gilliard -- 101

“Where can we read more of his work?”

We're fortunate to still have access to primary sources.

I recommend people start with his Wikipedia entry .

Wikepedia mentions three of his most well-know essays:

• I'm a fighting liberal
• We told you so
• TWU wins major victory

In addition, read his master-work, the Colonial Warfare series.

His other most famous work is the "How to Read a 10Q" Financial Reporting Series.

I am an enormous fan of his old Netslaves articles. Here are a few of those pieces:

• Class Is More Important Than Race (And Almost Everything Else)
• You've Just Slept With the Boss (Steve Gilliard's Timeless Tips for Surviving Office Romance)
• We Are Not at War (Steve Gilliard Wonders Why Dotcom Workers Take Themsleves So Seriously)
• SEX (On and Off the Job: Steve Gilliard's Timely Love Urge Tips)

The rest are amazingly good as well. Oh hell, here are a couple more:

• Lesson Ten: Surviving Silicon Alley (How You Too Can Rise to the Top of the Bottom in New York's Attitude-Ridden Net Scene)
• Netslaves: Combat Manual
• Steve Gilliard: Web Writer and Damn' Proud of It

Netslaves keeps adding to their archives ongoingly. There's also stuff in the Web Archives if you're truly dedicated.

Steve was one of the original front pagers at at Daily Kos. For example, this was his introduction to the front page on April 3, 2003 -- Good morning from your substitute blogger -- worth reading just for what he says about his sources.

I can't quite figure out how to search Daily Kos -- we're so far back in the archives the standard search tools don't seem to work -- but if you just keep hitting the "Next Entry" arrow up on top of the page, from Steve's introductory post, linked above, you can read his entries for the roughly six months. He stopped posting on Daily Kos in September, even though he'd started The News Blog back in August.

Here's a quote from the front page:

Daily Kos (April, 2003)

The US could easily win the war and lose the peace. It does no good to beat Saddam only to have to fight Shia guerrillas weeks or months later.

Next, dear students, we turn to the original The News Blog. Note that there were two sites: original and the new site.

The original site -- http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/ -- is where almost all of Gilly's work lives once he set out on his own.

The first post by Gilly was on the evening of Wednesday, August 6, 2003 and his last post on the original site was the evening of Monday, January 22, 2007. That's the post with the photo of the Queen ("No Drama Queen Bullshit" was the second headline.) There's another post on Tuesday, made by Jen, his co-publisher.

We then had less than a month's worth of Gilly's posting at the new The News Blog site. The new site -- http://www.thenewsblog.net/ -- as of this writing, has a photo of Steve, the announcement of his death, and the Gilliard family's obituary for him.

To look through the new site, you have to use the search tool on the top left corner, or Google, limiting the search specifically to the new site, for example from a Google search bar: steve site:www.thenewsblog.net and then make sure to tell Google you want ALL results.

Oh, wait.. better answer. *yes!* (I so rule!)

You can read the new site at the Internet Archive. It's all there. Don't even bother going to the site directly as a number of posts were taken down near the end. My strong recommendation is to grab the new site from the Internet Archive, also known as the Wayback Machine. This is a much, much better solution than Google or even searching directly, as the Archive has every post.

Now, what the Archive does NOT have... what you can only get by going to the new site itself, are the comments. You can use the Archives to find the post you want, then use the site search function to search for the specific post using keywords, which makes the comments available to you.

Comments are available primarily only on the new site. The original site only has comments going back to about November 2006 (I think) due to the commenting system being upgraded from HaloScan. The old comments still exist. Jim in LA who ran the technical end of The News Blog, has the old comments archived off. It remains possible to restore all of the old comments back onto the original site, and to freeze commenting (to stop comment spam), but it would take a serious time commitment from someone to do what needs to be done, namely...

Upgrading Blogger to the latest version on both sites, freezing comments, making the new site easily readable again, and getting rid of any comment spam which has accumulated. And perhaps archiving all of the various sources from Daily Kos to NetSlaves to the new and old site, to one single location with a common, highly searchable interface. To me, this sounds like a good Senior or Master's Thesis project for someone in J-School, funded by a grant from someone who understands blogging. *smiles*

As for working your way through the material, after reading the above specifically recommended stuff, I suggest people start in the original site (not the new site) and using the archive links, read their way through, month by month by month.

Consider it an education in real journalism.

When you're done, you'll have the equivalent of years of study in how to write, how to think, and what it is to authentically be a progressive, not to mention a damn fine human being.

Yeah, he really was that good.

PS. There's scattered writings of Gilly's all over the place. If you find some, please... put a link and what it's to in this comment thread.

For example, here are two two reviews written less than two weeks before he went into the hospital.

Yes, we miss him. Always.


Update: July 5, 2008

Over at DailyKos, sardonyx has tracked down Gilly's DailyKos writings:

• Top Comments: Steve Gilliard on Daily Kos, part 1
• Top Comments: Steve Gilliard on Daily Kos, part 2
• Top Comments: Steve Gilliard on Daily Kos, part 3
• Top Comments: Steve Gilliard on Daily Kos, part 4
• Top Comments: Steve Gilliard on Daily Kos, part 5
• Steve Gilliard on Daily Kos, part 6

dKosopedia maintains the master reference source for DailyKos and Steve.
You may also read some (but not all) of Gilliard's DailyKos comments here.
Here are links to DailyKos pages tagged about Steve.

If you want early Steve, there's Netslaves and there's this.

Again, be certain to read Steve's masterwork, the Colonial Warfare series.

Sardonyx's terrific research at DailyKos is right up there with Steve Baldwin's ongoing research on Steve at Ghost Sites of the Web where Netslaves lives on.

Our thanks to both on a job done well, and their love and appreciation of Gilly.

There's more...

NY Times Magazine: Steven Gilliard Jr.

Steve Gilliard.
NY Times Magazine photo courtesy of the Gilliard family.

Our Friend & Mentor, Steve Gilliard

God, I miss Gilly.

Every day, every week.

There's a tendency to put the dead up on pedestals. It isn't like that.

I'll be writing an article, reading a comment, talking to Hubris, Sara, LM or Jen... and suddenly Gilly is there, so real, so present, so alive.

He always knew what to say, what to post, and his writing came from his heart.

Jen told me earlier this month I'd written something which was the most Gilly-like thing I'd ever done, that she could hear his voice... and I burst into tears. Couldn't stop crying for almost ten minutes.

He guides us every day. We write, because he gave us space on The News Blog to grow and develop. In our talking with him, what of ours he posted or didn't, he taught us all editorial judgment.

Now The New York Times has recognized the worth of this good man, with an article in the Sunday Times Magazine in "The Lives They Lived" series. I encourage you to go read the entire article.

The New York Times

Steven Gilliard Jr. | b. 1964
Invisible Blogger

By MATT BAI

Published: December 30, 2007

The sidewalks of Harlem’s main thoroughfares are wide and inviting, and in the 1960s the kids playing “boxball” shared the asphalt squares with some of the greatest orators in creation. The most famous spot for speechifying was the “Speakers’ Corner” outside Lewis Michaux’s bookstore on 125th Street, where Malcolm X delivered his lectures on race and politics. On weekends or after work, fathers took their boys down to the corners in Harlem to watch any number of would-be firebrands engaged in emotional debate over Vietnam or the state of race relations or Bobby Kennedy’s political future.

Steve Gilliard was born into this Harlem and took it all in, but he wouldn’t find his voice on the corners. He was quiet, bookish, overweight. He won entrance to an elite high school, where he passed his time reading obscure military histories, then studied history and journalism at New York University. He found his true calling, though, on the Internet.

*** *** ***

Eventually he created his own site — “Steve was a big personality, and it was clear he needed his own stage,” Daily Kos’s creator, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, later wrote — and became one of a small group of early political bloggers with his own devoted following (and a self-sustaining, if modest, income from ads). On Gilliard’s “News Blog,” along with the partisan attacks on Republicans that made him a hated figure on the conservative blogs, he specialized in applying history to the present day, which made him an unusual and distinctive voice. In 2004, he banged out a remarkable 37-part series, the equivalent of about 200 typed pages, chronicling the foibles of European colonialism.

Though Gilliard, unlike many bloggers, always used his real name, few readers knew much about him. They didn’t know, for instance, that at age 39 he had open-heart surgery to repair an infected valve. They didn’t know he lived alone in a small apartment in East Harlem. And, although Gilliard often wrote about race and alluded to his own perspective, a lot of readers never realized he was black.

*** *** ***

It was a life both short and loud. What began with a bad cough just after Valentine’s Day became a spiraling infection that ravaged Gilliard’s vulnerable heart and kidneys, and he spent most of his last four months hospitalized. The identities he kept separate for most of his 42 years collided in the days after he died; the few dozen mostly white bloggers who came to Harlem for the funeral saw for the first time the stark urban setting of Gilliard’s childhood, while his parents and relatives groped to understand what kind of work he had been doing at that computer and why scores of people had come so far to see him off.

There's more...

It's a nice article. I'm especially thankful for the article as it will mean so much to the Gilliard family.

I'm also appreciative that the Times recognizes the impact Steve had on the early political blogosphere, and the hole his passing left in progressive politics.

Gently, I think it important to correct a few mistakes in Matt Bai's article.

Many of the bloggers and other friends of Steve who came to Gilly's funeral were non-white. Many of them had in fact, been above 96th Street into Harlem before.

There was (and is) a semi-regular (when the mood and weather is fine) group of fairly prominent and up-and-coming New York bloggers who meet for barbecue and beer -- The Liberal Barbecue Conspiracy. Gilly named them. He saw who they were, and they saw him. Who he was, how he lived, what he was about. Some of the photographs in Gilly's funeral program came from a rainy afternoon the Barbecue Conspiracy all spent at the Bohemian Beer Hall hanging out, chilling. These people were pals.

For Matt Bai to hang the article's hook on how Gilly was a lonely black man who only could make it with white bloggers on-line who didn't know the real Gilly at all is, quite simply, bullshit. Markos isn't white. And neither were a number of other folks who came to the funeral. Matt Bai has that part of the story wrong.

Matt Bai was also wrong about Steve's life. Gilly didn't lead a lonely life. It was rich and filled day to day with his work, family, friends and sports. From his niece and nephew, his mother and father, to his co-publisher Jen, and the bloggers and friends he hung out with on a regular basis in person and on-line, this was a man who had a full, rich life. I've got an email from a national blogger who just read the Times story and wrote me saying, "Honestly, the man knew where in my kitchen I kept my knives." (She'd also been to Harlem before the funeral.) She was Gilly's friend, and he was a friend to her and to many others.

Gilly was a good friend, an amazing writer, and a mentor to more people than he knew.

We love him, we miss him, and we will always cherish him.

Rest in peace, Gilly. We love you.

There's more...

and a glass was raised...

You should have seen all the people who came. you should have seen.

There's more...

Another Loss...

Mrs. Gilliard Loses Her Brother

Mrs. Gilliard's brother (Steve's uncle) passed away this morning. The death and preceding illness according to Family posting in comments.

The Group News Blog -- Hubris Sonic, Jesse Wendel, LowerManhattanite, and Sara Robinson -- extend our deepest condolences to the Gilliard family.


Here are a few of the conversations from Jen's thread in the last 24 hours. I am promoting them from comments as they pertain to Steve, Jen, and the Gilliard family. Mostly however I'm front-paging them because they contain points you should know, for example why you're not ever going to read details about Gilly's funeral/burial if we can help it. Read on...

Jen,

I am truly sorry that you and other bloggers feel Steve's family have somehow taken him from you. We did our very best to include you in his final arrangements and are working to consolidate his writing for all of you to see as well. We certainly never intended to take him from you. I think Steve would have agreed that we had to share him and we tried our best to do a good job of that for his funeral.

I apologize for anything we have done to make you feel that Steve was not yours to mourn as well as ours to mourn.

Since Steve's illness, Steve's father has been hospitalized and may be put in a nursing home, Steve's uncle (his mother's brother) has had a heart attack and the same surgery that Steve had and is now suffering some of the same results.

His mother is still struggling with Steve's death and is now facing the same situation with her only remaining brother. And just yesterday, my Dad had a stroke and is hospitalized. We have a lot going on.

Can we get a minute please? I'm not sure what we have done to make you feel like you are a unwelcomed reminder but right now everyone's feelings are still very raw and our thoughts are on all of these issues.

I ask that those of you who are offended by Steve's family's actions to note that we had Steve a lot longer that you did. His mother lost a son, her first born child and daily companion. He is no longer there to watch the news with or go shopping with, she is alone; what is the right way to grieve losing a child??? What prepares us for that???

His sisters lost a brother who is no longer there for those phone calls to catch up on and share what was going on in their lives;

To his neice and nephew Steve was an unbelievable uncle who is no longer there to help with those tough homework questions or school projects or to share with them on their wonderful visits to the museums in NY.

He was our family. We were his family. Steve loved his family and we loved him and lost him way too soon.

While some of you may think it's "pissy", that we claimed him, he was ours to mourn too and we willingly shared him with you during his funeral. How we have left you out post-funeral is a mistery to me.

Jen, I'm sure contact with us is a reminder to you as well. Never feel that you can't call, email or write or whatever you need to do to make contact with us. Steve loved you as his best friend. That means a lot. We respect your relationship with him and don't want you to feel ignored or not included.

We all need time to grieve.

Feel free to give any of us, especially Steve's mother a call and check on her if you feel it. She is heartbroken, lonely and still very angry. All the normal stages of grief. Knowing that anyone who cared for Steve thought enough to check on her would make her day.
Feel free to call his sisters, or me, even if you just want to talk and share or vent. None of us would ever refuse to talk with you or show you anything less than compassion.

Finally, I would ask you to get yourself better. The last thing we want is for you to get sick. Our health is truly one of the most important gifts God has given us. De-stress, Lose weight (i'm working on it too) and get well.

Fran
Family

Fran,

Will also email you offline, but wanted to clarify in public also--please don't feel that I am anything but grateful for being allowed to be involved in Gilly's life, and the mourning process.

I just truly did NOT want to be Yet Another Thing for all of you to deal with. You have all been wonderful to me, and I just wanted to make sure to give everyone--including myself--time to work through everything.

To the rest of the blog community who was wondering why no public info was posted RE Gilly's funeral/viewing: We really did have REAL, CREDIBLE threats all along--from the day he went into the hospital--against his safety and that of his family. If we had made a big announcement, the possibility that truly hateful people would have shown up to be disruptive was very, very real.

Back in the day--before the whole Netslaves thing--Gilly did some work on the Sally Hemmings project (the project to prove that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with at least one of his slaves) and was also an advocate of a lot of the "hidden history" of Blacks during the Civil War. This got him on more wingnut's "wanted" list than you can ever imagine; these are violent people with their entire identities vested in their revisionist history. A few of the very persistent ones sent him private "I know where you live" letters years ago, which he shrugged off, but we sure as hell didn't want them showing up when he was ill and vunerable.

Thanks all for your continued support and understanding, and thank you Francine for bridging the gap and coming to the online family out here.

--Jen

I hoped to find an obituary with his gravesite so I could make him an entry on Find a Grave.

Everyone -

I don't believe it is a good idea to give out ANY further information on Steve's burial site, including not giving out any details about the funeral, the burial or the Gilliard family, anything at all which people of bad intent could use to trace back to the Gilliard family or find Gilly's grave.

I'll explain...

If you read the racially-explicit threads over Gilly's death written by the those on the (way too many) different right-wing sites their talk was filled with vile hatred, joy, and racial & violent imagery over Steve's death. I won't go into detail.

While he was alive, Steve routinely protected all of us from these obscenities including a few credible threats. There was enough specificity in (again, a few) post-death comments from the bigots and haters that I am certain we -- Steve's TNB and larger blogosphere family -- need to act very responsibly to prevent Steve's actual family from further pain even if only emotional.

I don't want the Gilliard family, Jen, or the families where Gilly is buried to have to deal with any of the hatred still directed at Steve now that he has died. Let his body rest in peace; it's only proper.

I believe it would be a major mistake and seriously ill-considered to post details touching on the Gilliard family or their privacy (they are private, not public people), the location of Steve's grave, the town/region where he is buried, or any details having to do with Gilly's funeral or burial. I strongly request no one do so.

Thank you.
Jesse Wendel

I regret to inform you that Steve's mom has lost her brother this morning. We will not post any details on where to mail cards but emailed condolences can be sent to Steve's email and I will see that she receives them.

This is a very sad sad time.

Jen, Thank you for clearing things up. Please stay well.

Jesse - Thank you for saying what I did not know how to say.
Family

Condolences may be sent to Mrs. Gilliard & the Gilliard family at The News Blog.

I'm leaving comments turned on (for now) however trolls will receive short thrift. Talk about why or what should have been done, re: the family, Jen, or anyone, is strictly off limits.

The Gilliards (except Steve) are private individuals within the limits of media law. You are personally responsible for everything you say or imply. Defame them and we will cheerfully cooperate in their defamation lawsuit against you. I suspect a number of excellent firms would happily represent Steve's family pro-bono against any hate groups or trolls attacking his family.

What happened, happened. Breathe... everything else will follow. Eventually. But you must keep breathing even when it's too much trouble and you don't want to.

Take care of Mrs. Gilliard please. It's easy to slip because we're online. No pass. I remind everyone to treat Mrs. Gilliard, Mr. Gilliard, the Gilliard family, Jen and each other with enormous respect in your speaking and listening. Also your own family and the person at 7-11 who speaks in a strange language. All of them.

Mrs. Gilliard lost a son after months in the hospital and now her brother is gone. The depth of her ongoing journey through Self is profound. Respect her or I'll box your ears. Were she not who she is, none of us would be here today. In a very real sense Mrs. Gilliard is the root cause of both The News Blog and the Group News Blog.

I am thankful for my mother every day. Today I am grateful for Mrs. Gilliard, Mr. Gilliard, Steve's family, and sorrowful that yet again they suffer loss. My heart goes out to them. I mourn and I cry.

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Where I Have Been

Hello NewsBlogAlums,

Jen here. I'm sorry I've been away for so long, and will probably disappear for a while again also. However, I wanted to stop in and say hello and give folks an update as to where I've been.

First, let me explain that in the months leading up to Gilly's death, I can't believe (and I truly mean it) that I managed to keep my job -- which was and still is going through major changes -- and most of my health, and my sanity -- as well as run the blog. The first month following the funeral was rough also. Let me apologize now to everyone who send condolences that I didn't reply to directly -- I got over 2,000 emails which was very, very touching but also made it impossible to reply to individually.

Right now, I am trying to give Gilly's family some room, and have not been in touch -- I feel like a raw reminder of his death to them, and really don't want to bother them. I'm here if they reach out to me, but right now, I don't want to make what must be an awful situation (post-death legalities, etc) worse.

Along the way between that awful February 21 (the day Gilly went into the hospital for the last time) and today, lots has happened with me. Among other things, I gained stress-related weight and now seriously have to just start watching what I eat again -- main things are portion control and not binging on cheese and other tasty but fatty stuff when I get home from a (very) long work day. Yes, I have a plan in place and I seem to be sticking to it. My goal is to get into That Pair of Pants by this time next year, which is well within normal weight loss guidelines.

I also developed -- and continue to have -- sympathetic illnesses which I'm trying to manage. Among other things, some outstanding Female Plumbing Problems that I've always had have gotten notably worse -- to the point where I went and got a full ultrasound and blood workup. Thankfully, nothing seems out of sorts more than usual, but it's still always scary when symptoms suddenly ratchet up. Actually, it was my trip to the ob-gyn that got me back on a scale, and made me realize the weight situation.

Also, for the first time in my life, I am developing and getting stomach problems and other digestive issues. So, I am trying to control by just eating more slowly and less at a time. Scarily enough, I am in the process of recovering from what feels like a total case of irritable bowel syndrome -- basically if I eat ANYTHING, I have bad cramps/aches for hours. It feels like someone beat my chest and stomach wiith a broom handle. I took a sick day recently and it's kind of scary. I hope this one passes.

All of this is being exasperated by my job situation -- I love my job, and things are going OK, but we've had staff reductions that mean more work for me and more people to deal with. I'm trying to make sure that I get out after work -- and I do -- but it's a matter of me trying to cram too many hours into each day. I am also taking a mini-writing course after work.

On the apartment front: Believe it or not, I wound up not moving. My summer was too fucked up by Gilly's illness and passing, and I could NOT get ANYTHING comparably good space-wise anywhere near a subway for what I am paying now (I have a junior 2BR on a top floor for $1281 a month). Yes, my landlord is a harassing asshole who still can't get his shit regarding the hot water together. However, I looked in Manhattan and found NOTHING worth living in for even as high as $2100/month that wasn't an even longer commute and less convenient than what I have now. I saw one nice place in Astoria that was a PALACE -- truly gorgeous brand new everything, huge, tons of closet space, utilities included, elevator building, laundry on each floor -- for $2050/month. But at the end of the day, I would still be in Queens, and out more than $800 a month extra. Also, I figured out that it would be at very least $6K to move, which would mean eating into the money that I'm saving for a down payment on my own place. That would be $800 a month more, before I take a single taxi, or eat a single meal out.

I had to sit myself down and see what I really wanted to be doing with my money, and spending it on more rent for a tiny little studio (or "junior one-BR -- a studio with a wall down it -- most that I saw had a "bedroom" that was literally 7'x7' -- as in room for a mattress, nothing more) and ADDING the expense of living in Manhattan wasn't it.

Yes, my landlord is still a confrontational dick who is a lazy fuck. But the apartment is large, cheap, and QUIET, and I don't think I can deal with the disruption of a move right now.

The bottom line is, I need to slow down. That's why I need to step away from the blogsphere for a while, if not permanently.

I never went onto Gilly's blog with the intention of even being a headlined writer -- it was an honor that he bestowed upon me because he wanted to encourage my writing. Then I wound up running it, and wonderful folks like Jim and Jesse and LM and Hubris stepped in.

Now, I need to step out a while. I know I have to do LESS for a while before I can start doing MORE of the right things (like going to the gym and slowly setting some boundaries RE my time in the office). It's like cleaning out a room and rearranging the furniture -- you have to take ALL the crap out before you can put it back in.

I hope this all makes sense. I may comment on the blog once in a while, but as far as being a regular contributor, I just don't see it happening.

Thank you all for your support and understanding, and thank you to everyone running this new blog.

--Jen

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