Gone Too Soon, Zandar

Interrupting my NaNoWriMo writing project to note that a fellow political blogger passed away this weekend.

Zandar over at his own blog Zandar Vs. The Stupid had been a serious and dedicated Left-leaning blogger who shredded on the idiots - often Far Right Republicans - who deserved it. He was a regular at Crooks & Liars' daily roundups. Balloon Juice and other major blogsites quoted him. I have him on my Links page, but to my shame I never quoted or linked to him (I should have, his snark was far superior to mine).

And then John Cole tweeted yesterday that he hadn't seen anything recent from Zandar - who publishes at least once a day - and then word got out through the blog's Comments section from Zandar's dad that he had passed away.

Eventually, ZandarDad found the login to the official site and posted this notice:

Good morning. This is Zandar's Dad. I am sorry to tell you that he passed away over the weekend, peacefully in his sleep. Fortunately, his computer was on and open to this page but I don't know if I will be able to post again. This blog was Jon's passion. He was an ardent advocate for justice and for our Democracy. He was brilliant. He was funny. He never stopped believing in our country but he never stopped fighting the "stupid" and there was plenty of it for him to fight. He was thrilled with KY reelecting a Democratic governor, and he posted up until Friday, but he was feeling sick over the weekend and when he went to bed Saturday night, he thought that he would feel better when he woke up, but he never did. 

I posted a few replies to his recent posts, hoping to get the word out, before I located this page. As I said, this blog is his pride and joy. In many ways, it is his legacy. He greatly appreciated all of you who read the blog, who posted, and who supported ZandarVTS financially. If you are inclined to make a financial donation in his memory, the chosen organization is the American Heart Association, but the BEST thing you can do to honor Jon's memory is to VOTE like your life and your Democracy depend on it, because they do. 

It is horrifying how fragile and brief a human life - any life - can be on this world. Going to bed and not waking up... it's just... shocking.

And this just happens everywhere: Across war zones like Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan and Syria and dozens of other places; Across places of natural disasters like the earthquakes in Turkey and the hurricanes in Mexico; Across homes throughout the world where somewhere, sometime, some little tragedy will take place.

It makes you wonder if anything we do on a daily basis - not just the blogging but our work, our play, our quiet moments - really has an impact on life as a whole.

Will we remember Zandar, his wit and his exasperation aimed at the folly of the twisted and the cruel? Will we look back at him, his works?

I've wondered once or twice before if the blogs we create stay up after we die. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Jon Swift (the one who inspired Batocchio's annual memorial), so many others have had their blogs shut down apparently by choice by the surviving families. I'm not sure what the blogsite providers' - this one is Blogger - policies are regarding inactive blogs, if they time out after a few months or years.

It'd be nice if there was an archive of sorts, something to convert all the pages of postings and shuffle them into a recovery backup folder on a server, to ensure the words we bloggers put out there - our rants, our reviews, our attempts at humor and poetry - don't disappear into the ether. 

Zandar's legacy would be for the rest of us to Vote, and vote against the stupid which is the current Far Right Republican efforts. But his memory now resides in the words on a blog that may well fade into time...