quester, I hope you had a restful night.
ita, I hope you're still breathing, and that the swelling and itching has abated. I doubt it was something in the pee smelling Blockbuster. It sounds like you had a reaction to food. If this was a case of exposure to allergens, rather than ingestion thereof, removing yourself from the presence of the allergen should have helped. It seems less likely to me (no expert) that you'd have an exposure reaction--after the fact, back at home. Allergies are weird though, so I could be very wrong. Whatever the cause, if it continues, please don't let this go as long as you did the other time your eyes swelled up. t /nag
Really? I can think of two in my town off the top on my head, and a third only disappeared when they bulldozed the intersection as part of road reconstruction.
Of course, we also have the former site of the Station, which has dozens of memorials on it.The Station site still has them? Wow. I was using "around here" in a very local sense--just my town, and the surrounding towns. I used to see them all the time on my way to work, when I worked in Charlestown. Now, I mostly see them on highways, and even then, that's usually a ways out from here.
Now that you mention it, I can think of a couple of exceptions, though. When there was that big office shooting a few years back, one of those on-site memorials sprung up for a bit, but thankfully it was not too long before it was cleaned up. I just recently caught sight of another. I don't drive right past it, but see it off to the left, when I'm crossing a certain intersection, on my way to Christopher's school. It's on a telephone pole and it seems to stay fresh, but I haven't gone up the street to take a direct route. I expected it to be gone after the snow storms, but the last time I remember noticing the spot at all, it was still there.
I have a whole rant on memorializing the terror-and-pain-filled physical spot where someone died. There's usually a gravesite, where it's accepted custom to leave flowers and other memorial tokens. Tending those roadside and sidewalk shrines is ghoulish to me, attention-seeking more for the tender(s) than the deceased. And it seems to me that devotion and whatever money is spent shrine-tending would be a better memorial spent on something the deceased loved doing, or was active in--a scholarship in the deceased's name to a cheerleading camp, or an art school, or funds for team uniforms for kids who might not be able to afford them, and otherwise couldn't play.
Flowers, photographs and candles on a public thoroughfare do nothing meaningful to memorialize the deceased. I think it's better to celebrate their life than the instant of their death.Beverly, I think this is what I wanted to say, but didn't know how. I understand the urge. But it's just too morbid for me. I'm with you--celebrate the life.
Some of this is probably cultural though, which I didn't consider before, so I'm going to try to stop thinking of them as tacky and maudlin and try to see them as different (but it's going to be hard to do that t /old dog ).