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Rest In Peace, Cawfeemug [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-28
I’m late to the table, so to speak, in knowing Cawfeemug, either through KOS or on an individual basis outside of KOS. Even so we never actually met. Some of you here likely knew him for many years. I had seen the name occasionally on these pages, though mostly he was “just” another Kossak.
We connected, of course, on climate change issues, and started emailing each other regularly. He’d share his latest fascination with what’s happening, and shortly we were sharing personal history. When he sent me a link to his blog, gilbertweaversatchell.medium.com/… which included his unique style of art, I’d send him photos and usually got one or more back with his own style of alterations, a combination of color changes — not subtle, always strikingly beautiful — with the whole of it pixelated as if textured. In return I sent him a link to my blog, and have no idea if he ever read a word, especially as very little in it concerns climate. But he was the first and so far only one here who got that information. Separate worlds, doncha know.
I quickly got to know he’d recently had a stroke, had trouble moving even to get his own mail or groceries, and relied on a neighbor/friend for that assistance. Soon he was officially in hospice status, while staying in his own apartment. We still exchanged info on climate change, including some of his pictures of global weather which he also gave his own treatment to. Almost always he found faces in the clouds, many of them looking (in his terms) angry at how we were destroying this planet. It may well be why he selected those particular ones.
For a good while we were emailing almost daily, and a second topic was added to our chats: his general anger at what was happening to him, people around him failing him even after committing to assist, medical personnel lying to him about his future. In return I came back with questions, comments on observations based on what I read, even suggestions on occasion of what else might be going on that his perspective didn’t let him see. He indicated he valued my viewpoint so I continued, offering support, my own personal news — just about anything to keep him aware that there were people out in the world who cared about him and his input even when he didn’t seem to know it. He’d give up on KOS occasionally, then suddenly pop back in with something to say before disappearing again for a while.
His climate perspective settled down to narrowing in on the AMOC, and I suddenly was part of an email group with him and several others. I “heard” his amazement when somebody he really respected gave him feedback on how much they valued what he found and sent them, because that meant so much to him when he often was feeling forgotten, helpless, hopeless for change, and sometimes betrayed by persons long absent in his life. The latter he “owned” as at least partly the result of who he’d been, though he never explained.
He was very proud of his ancestors and how much they contributed to the history of this country. He’d wanted to do the same but was born with significant birth defects. He’d never make it into the military, for example. He could still use his brain, his sense of art with help from a computer, and those who have read him here know he was well researched in his facts and opinions and articulate in expressing them.
Somewhat suddenly his communication faltered. Minor spelling, grammar errors. What most people would think of as typos. He’d had a fall while sleeping at his desk, hurt himself, dealt with it by tying himself into his chair for the next time he fell asleep. His final email was to say — I’m “correcting it” for him — he had cognitive issues, it was very difficult to type and send emails, and he was stopping.
After a few days with no communication, some of us in his small emailing group asked each other if they had any news. None of us did.
Today I got an email that was sent to the group, somebody who had known him for 50 years, trying to get hold of him. She’d gotten a similar last email from him. I gave her what little information I had. She located his hospice people and replied to me with what she’d found.
Gilbert Weaver Satchell, aka Cawfeemug to us at KOS, passed away last February 26th.
* * * * *
Rest in the peace that was so hard to find on this earth, Cawfeemug. You are missed, and even after all this time, the tissue box is emptying.
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