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May 28, 2005
Happy Birthday Lewis
Brother.
I think about you more often than usual when I make major life changes. You knew adventure, and you respected others who appreciated it. That is why I think you would have been an enthusiastic supporter of my going off to Dunsmuir and establishing Nutglade. And I think you would have really dug the fact that I returned for my BA at the age of 35. But the older I get, the harder it is for me to imagine you at your present age. You would be turning 49 now, and probably making plans for a 50th birthday celebration. France, right?
You were the white sheep of the family. Your ability to create the impression in us that we were the sibling with whom you felt a special affinity was remarkable. And since each of us felt closest to you, your passing left a huge hole. At least it did with me.
I learned a lot from you, and I never got the chance to repay the debt. I know you must have had your demons—something must be responsible for making you vote for Ronald Reagan—but in general you did an awfully good job of keeping them hidden. I wish only that I had known you long enough or well enough to know what they were and see how you would deal (or were dealing) with them. The most apparent demon I suppose was watching your young and athletically fit body being ravaged by an aggressive cancer. That demon superseded all others, as near as I could tell.
I have to say that two decades of practice has not made it any easier for me to answer the innocuous question "How many brothers and sisters do you have?" It doesn't seem right to say "three" and thus deny the existence of the sibling with whom I most identified—the only one whom I thought I was perhaps capable of understanding. On the other hand, answering "four" with the caveat that one died back when I was living in my Rambler brings Death into a conversation which might otherwise include "What is your favorite color?" or "In which city were you born?" It seems rude, especially in the context of a group of people.
From time to time, I feel your spirit. Aside from the life-transition occasions, I feel it most when I do the things I enjoy most: paddling and camping (you are our family's most accomplished and storied voyageur); motorcycling (I shall never forget your giving me rides on your mini-bike in the Valley—you would place me in front of you and put my hands on the handlebars); learning and speaking foreign languages; flirting; appreciating and creating graphic design; dabbling in entrepreneurship; soccer, skiiing, and tennis. For my enjoyment of these things, I thank you. For my inability to share them with you, I miss you.
Love,
Brother
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May 23, 2005
Considering New Minnefornico
Ranger Ted writes
So you have sold your house now. You could go anywhere. Are you sure that ABQ, or even NM is where you should go? Not to bust in on your theory, but you can go anywhere.
RT is right: we can go anywhere. Well, anywhere we can afford. Shermanilla wrote about the advantages and disadvantages of the various places we are presently considering. We want to return to California where both of us have strong family ties and the greatest number of friends, but we are effectively priced out of that market. We miss the West.
We have always liked Albuquerque, even when its downtown was a rather homely place. We liked the barrios and the acres of light industrial buildings adjacent to downtown. And we keep discovering things about the place that seem to call to us: a fifteen-mile bike path along the Rio Grande, a neighborhood of cool old houses next to downtown, the 24 hour place across from the U.
But why not consider some place like Bozeman? Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana all appear to be very cowboy-centric. We have nothing against cowboys, but we are not of them. And a lot of people respond to the cowboy look in ways that, well, kinda gross us out (eg tobacco-chewing). Montana blends its cowboy aesthetic with miner and field-and-stream. We lived the field-and-stream life (albeit vicariously, through our customers) back in Dunsmuir, and so it feels a little been there done that. We have driven through Colorado and we were not impressed. Many pickup trucks and rednecks. I am pretty sure that we saw a "Proud to be White" bumpersticker there. Wyoming is pretty but it lacks a city to speak of. Our response to Wyoming's scenery would have to be much stronger than it is for us to consider moving there.
In sum, there is no perfect place. And I am not sure that place is the most important thing to us. There is a lot to be said for a happy marriage. Strange as it seems to say, New Mexico appears to be the most fertile place for our relationship right now: adventure, a home-like place, plenty of cheap land (should we decide to go the ranchero route), and a good supply of quonset huts.
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May 16, 2005
Moving
It is more or less official: we are on the move again. We have not yet signed any papers or given any notices, but the realtor is bringing paperwork by sometime this week.
It takes a lot of effort to prep a house for sale. "Decluttering" is a minor word for major sorting: what gets tossed, what gets stashed, and what goes to the garage sale pile. Saturday was spent straightening up the attic and basement. Unfortunately, the basement does not look a whole lot better with the mounds of dirty laundry we managed to generate. We are supposed to be able to take promotional photographs of the house by now. We'll see how that goes.
Sunday I moved my oversized IKEA desk down to the basement. It was really too large for my small office upstairs, but I am not sure the overall effect of moving it is positive. Yet. Also, I have not yet figured out how to arrange the remaining furnitures so that they look OK without it. And sitting at my lovely computer at my lovely desk in the distinctly unlovely basement is taking a little getting used to. On the other hand, my relocation to negative first story makes it easier to keep an eye on the laundry pile. And I might even get a little more done.
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May 15, 2005
Short Posts
I'm all for them.
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May 11, 2005
Addendum
I meant in no way to indicate in my previous post that I feel that my relationship to my friend resembles that of a father to his thirteen year old daughter. I just thought if a father can exercise that much restraint on his snooping, then so should I be able.
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May 10, 2005
Privacy in the Blogosphere, Part 3
The Ethicist recently answered a question that I posed to myself a while back. I was interested in the content of a friend's blog, which she has opted to keep secret for the meantime. She posted a comment here that I am free to look for it. In light of The Ethicist's response I think now that I won't go looking for it—but I may ask for the url from time to time.
Another friend of mine discovered his daughter's blog, and later the blog she created specifically to be not-for-parental consumption. The following letter to the Ethicist and its response made me think of that situation and how I might have handled it. It also reflects why I read The Ethicist each week.
I stumbled upon my college-age daughter's online journal. I have always regarded diaries as off limits to outsiders and have scrupulously avoided even casual glimpses of my children's personal writings. Now, however, my daughter is offering her daily postings to the world. I imagine that the idea of her father's reading her innermost thoughts would lead to self-censorship, and I don't want to spoil a writing venue she enjoys. Is it ethical for me to read her journal without telling her? —Anonymous, New Jersey
Don't ask me; ask her. And respect her wishes.
Were this a stranger's online diary, you could read voraciously. When someone publishes, on paper or on-screen, it's fair to assume that she consents to everybody's reading her work -- fair but not entirely reliable. Sometimes an online journal is accessible because its writer neglected to set up password protection, an act not of literary openness but of technical naivete. And sometimes what a writer is willing to reveal to a casual reader, she is reluctant to reveal to her father. The key is that your daughter not think herself unobserved if you are, in fact, observing her.
Age is also a factor. We grant a 3-year-old little right to privacy. Her parents may watch her around the clock -- what she eats, when she sleeps, how she brushes her teeth -- even when she thinks herself unseen. Few women your daughter's age would willingly submit to such scrutiny.
As the father of a daughter about the age of yours, I sympathize with your wanting to know what she's up to. But it would be no more ethical for you to read her journal surreptitiously than to skulk around her campus hoping to pick up snatches of her conversation.
Posted by Underblog at 2:14 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 2, 2005
Privacy in the Blogosphere
In an earlier post, I spoke about how blogs force us to create a public persona that is both true to ourselves and yet suitable for someone else's consumption. I mentioned that it is difficult to straddle concern for the feelings of others with the need to express one's self fully. Full expression is not really an option. Everyone needs to have secrets: The keeping of secrets is one thing gives us an identity apart from others. On the other hand, I have found that keeping secrets—like the fact that I am really unhappy in graduate school—forms a constraint on my identity.
I have just learned that a friend of mine has been keeping a blog, but that she refuses to let on where it is or what it is about. She may have good reason: She may have suffered abuse or injury, or is otherwise dealing with a trauma she would like to keep private. Still, I admit to great curiosity: Perhaps she is keeping the blog private because she is gossiping about people we know in common. This kind of blogging is irresistably tempting.
What rights to privacy can people expect in the blogosphere?
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