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Yesterday was a good social day. What does that mean, in my context?

Well, I had an extra cord of wood delivered to make it through till spring. My normal wood guy is pretty great, and last time he brought his Filipina wife who bought duck eggs to try and make balut. This time he brought some dude about my age, who in the course of conversation while unloading wood turned out to be really into original star trek. He was also into the reboot and we chatted about that a bit. It was actually great to be in conversation with someone where I could express a different opinion (oh, I didn't like it/not into the new Captain Kirk/everyone seems to like Benedict Cumberbatch these days but I'm not really for or against) and not have it feel dangerous: the conversation just kept flowing. I hadn't realized how closed-in I feel in both at work (I'm always trying to find things to agree or empathize with when people express stuff about themselves since otherwise there's pretty much nothing to talk about because no one gets what I like) and with Tucker who in many cases views it as criticism of his liking the thing or of his being unless it's a TV show.

I stacked half the wood, left the rest till I could split it, then went inside and prepared some seed trades. Well, there's one super enthusiastic person I'd been chatting with on fb back in fall and we shared seed lists but never did sort out what we were trading from each other. I let her know I'd got into peppers since we chatted last, since she had some neat peppers on her list, and she mentioned her kid who wanted to graft plants and cross peppers and be a botanist when he grew up. She was super astonished to learn that I was the exact same way at that age and asked a bunch of questions. I immediately put together some of my breeders mix tomatoes (promiscuous Lofthouse ones) and I fully intend on sending over a copy of the lofthouse landrace breeding book. My heart is full, basically because that kid I used to be is no longer alone. There is someone in time and space who has existed in a similar way to me.

So, good day. Definitely things are moving in part because of that conversation with the D&I guy at work and in part because of the sunshine and enough warmth to go out with bare arms again. That's how it works: everything is a feedback loop, and if it gets kicked into an upward spiral instead of a downward one I just need to hold it there. Finding good interactions becomes easier the more it happens.

Interacting in seed trades seems to be a good thing for me, I'll keep doing that. I need to go into my feelings on money and seeds in a different post, they're- well, not complex, but they're big.

Now, do I reach out to wood dude and see if he wants to watch Star Trek together, or do I leave it alone?

What I want to say

Hey, brother. COVID is a sensitive subject for me, as it is for many people. I have the assumption that you know it's sensitive, so when you don't treat things around it with sensitivity I further assume you're not taking care around folks' emotions about it, and you won't take care around my emotions.

It's sensitive for me because it's harmed a bunch of people I know in various ways. One of my friends lost the use of his arm, permanently, because his rotator cuff surgery had to be postponed with the hospitals too full to take him. When we had the height of our outbreak here and lost so many of our First Nations elders, the helicopters and ambulances taking people to Vancouver or Prince George hospitals because our hospital was full went past my house. I have a friend who's only now able to walk across the room, a year after their positive covid test. I have several friends in various kinds of healthcare who have been working nonstop and who have some pretty intense experiences to share. These are strong personal and emotional experiences. They have all had a big impact on me, and they're all raised when folks talk about covid.

Furthermore, I work with plants and animals that are prone to get contagious issues. I've seen what happens when those issues go uncontrolled: it's a lot of death and destruction. I've also seen what kind of strong control measures are required to actually control these contagious issues. Vaccines are part of these control measures.

Sometimes mass killing is part of the measures. If a vaccine mandate can prevent significant death, I am wholly in favour of it, much as I am in favour of vaccinating animals to prevent the spread of their diseases. I am not in favour of a "herd immunity" response since that involves enough people dying or being prevented from passing on their genes that the frequency of genes in the population shifts. That is a lot of people dying. I don't believe a lot of people being left to die is an ok policy response; not if they're poor, not if they have illnesses or are disabled, not if they're rich, not if they have a particular skin colour, not if they have a particular political belief. That is not an ok way to solve any problem. This is an intrinsic moral belief of mine and you will not change it. I really hope it's also a belief of yours.

You don't seem to be careful about the links you share. I haven't read this more recent one; an earlier one that I did take time to read was not only poorly thought out, but used my gender as an example of something ridiculous that shouldn't be taken seriously. Since when you post in family chat you don't use language that expresses curiosity or empathy and you have used links that didn't display curiosity or empathy on the part of the authors, curiosity and empathy is not my first response to you in turn. You certainly do not appear to be trying to invite them.

I know I said this subject was closed for me, and I really do want it to be. I don't have the energy to talk about this stuff much with people who are actively supportive of me, let alone with someone in our family with all the baggage our family has. I was surprised by how snarky your answer to my statement was. I don't want to have hurt you, if I did, and I don't want you to have hurt me, which you did. I still don't have the energy to engage in a confrontational back-and-forth on this with you.

I love you. You've always been the brother I felt closest to, and I'm surprised we're out of alignment now since for so long I felt like we were more in alignment. In another world I'd like to be able to talk to you comfortably about all this. I'd like to be able to believe, unquestioningly, that our morals are in alignment. I'm not in that world right now, and I am sorry for that. I do hope we will be again someday.

Absolutely I want you to know that I wish you personally well. I want you to be happy and thriving, loving your job and being involved in it, loving your marriage and your home and your dog. I want you to have a fulfilling moral and political life; I think those things are important.

I'd like to talk about how your life is going, and how mine is going. I can't do that if you keep bringing up covid-related stuff as your main conversational topic. Can we work together to talk about other things? Can we build some sort of rapport that way, and maybe eventually we can find our way back to this discussion that's obviously important to you, but at a time and in a way that we can both be kind and generous towards each other?