Review: Fantasy & Science Fiction, September/October 2011

Editor:	Gordon van Gelder
Issue:	Volume 121, No. 3 & 4
ISSN:	1095-8258
Pages:	258

Another review of a magazine that I finished quite some time ago. Apologies for any inaccuracies or lack of depth in the reviews. There wasn't much in Charles de Lint's reviews in this issue that interested me, but Michelle West covers a great selection of books. Two of them (The Wise Man's Fear and The Quantum Thief) are already on my to-read list; the third, The Postmortal, sounded interesting and would go on my list to purchase if I didn't already have so many good books I've not read. Otherwise, this issue is short on non-fiction. The only other essay entry is a film review from Kathi Maio, which is the typical whining about all things film that F&SF publishes. "Rutger and Baby Do Jotenheim" by Esther M. Friesner: Baby is a former pole dancer with a toy poodle named Mister Snickers, which warns you right away that this story is going to involve a few over-the-top caricatures and more use of the word "piddle" than one might ideally want. Rutger is a mythology professor who tolerates her for the standard reasons in this sort of pairing. They're travelling across country to Baby's sister's wedding when their car breaks down in Minnesota, prompting an encounter with frost giants. As you might expect, this is a sort of fractured fairy tale, except based on Norse mythology instead of the more typical Grimm fare. The fun is in watching these two apparent incompetents (but with enough knowledge of mythology to clue in the reader) reproduce the confrontation between Thor and Utgard-Loki. The fight with old age is particularly entertaining. If you've read any of Friesner's other stories, you know what to expect: not much in the way of deeper meaning, but lots of fun playing with stereotypes and an optimistic, funny outcome. Good stuff. (7) "The Man Inside Black Betty" by Sarah Langan: This story comes with a mouthful of a subtitle: "Is Nicholas Wellington the World's Best Hope?" It's also a story that purports to be written by a fictional character, in this case one Saurub Ramesh (with Langan credited as having done "research"). It's told in the style of first-person journalism, relating the thoughts and impressions of Ramesh as he interviews Nicholas Wellington. The topic is Black Betty: a black hole above Long Island Sound. Wellington is a scientific genius and iconoclast with radical theories of black holes that contradict how the government has been attempting to deal with Black Betty, unsuccessfully. The structure here was well-handled, reminding me a lot of a Michael Lewis article during the financial collapse. Langan has a good feel for how journalism of this type mixes personalities, politics, and facts. But it's all setup and no story. We get some world building, and then it's over, with no resolution except pessimism. Meh. (4) "A Borrowed Heart" by Deborah J. Ross: Ross starts with the trappings of urban fantasy transplanted into a Victorian world: supernatural creatures about, a protagonist who is a high-class prostitute, and sex and a sucubus by the second page. It evolves from there into a family drama and an investigation, always giving the reader the impression that a vampire will jump out at any moment. But the ending caught me entirely by surprise and was far more effective due to its departure from the expected path. Well done. (7) "Bright Moment" by Daniel Marcus: The conflict between terraforming and appreciation for the universe as we find it is an old story pattern in science fiction, and Marcus doesn't add much here. I think the story would have been stronger if he'd found a way to write the same plot with a pure appeal to environmental beauty without the typical stakes-raising. But he does sprinkle the story with a few interesting bits, including a pod marriage and a futuristic version of extreme sports as a way of communing with nature. (6) "The Corpse Painter's Masterpiece" by M. Rickert: This is typical of my reaction to a Rickert story: shading a bit too much towards horror for me, a bit too cryptic, well-written but not really my thing. It's about a corpse painter who does the work of an informal mortician, improving the appearance of bodies for their funerals, and the sheriff who brings him all the dead bodies. It takes an odd macabre twist, and I have no idea what to make of the ending. (4) "Aisle 1047" by Jon Armstrong: Armstrong is best known for a couple of novels, Grey and Yarn, which entangle their stories in the future of marketing and commerce. One may be unsurprised, then, that this short story is on similar themes, with the intensity turned up to the parody point. Tiffan3 is a department-store saleswoman, spouting corporate slogans and advertising copy while trying to push customers towards particular products. The story follows the escalation into an all-out brand war, fought with the bubbly short-cut propaganda of a thirty-second commercial. For me, it fell awkwardly between two stools: it's a little too over-the-top and in love with its own bizarre alternate world to be effective satire, but the world is more depressing than funny and the advertising copy is grating. More of a curiosity than a successful story, I think. (5) "Anise" by Chris DeVito: Stories that undermine body integrity and focus on the fascinated horror of violation of physical boundaries aren't generally my thing, so take that into account in this review. Anise's husband died, but that's not as much of a problem as it used to be. Medical science can resurrect people via a sort of permanent, full-body life support system, making them more cyborg than human. "Anise" is about the social consequences of this technology in a world where a growing number of people have a much different relationship with their body than the typical living person today. It's a disturbing story that is deeply concerned with the physical: sex, blood, physical intimacy in various different forms, and a twisted type of psychological abuse. I think fans of horror will like this more than I did, although it's not precisely horror. It looks at the way one's perception of self and others can change by passing through a profound physical transformation. (5) "Spider Hill" by Donald Mead: I liked this story a lot better. It's about witchcraft and farm magic, about family secrets, and a sort of coming-of-age story (for a girl rather than a boy, for once). The main character is resourceful, determined, but also empathetic and aware of the impact of her actions, which made her more fun to read about. I doubt I'll remember this for too long, but when skimming through it again for a review, I had fond memories of it. (6) "Where Have All the Young Men Gone?" by Albert E. Cowdrey: Cowdrey in his paranormal investigation mode, which I like better than his horror mode. For once, the protagonist isn't even a lower-class or backwoods character. Instead, he's a military historian travelling in Austria who runs across a local ghost story. This is a fairly straightforward ghost investigation that follows a familiar path (albeit to an unusual final destination), but Cowdrey is a good story-teller and I liked the protagonist. (7) "Overtaken" by Karl Bunker: This is the sort of story that delivers its moral with the force of a hammer. It's not subtle. But if you're in the right mood for that, it's one of the better stories of its type. It's about a long-journey starship, crew in hibernation, that's overtaken by a far newer and faster mechanized ship from Earth that's attempting to re-establish contact with the old ships. The story is a conversation between the ship AIs. Save this one until you're in the mood for an old-fashioned defense of humanity. (8) "Time and Tide" by Alan Peter Ryan: Another pseudo-horror story, although I think it's better classified as a haunting. A wardrobe recalls a traumatic drowning in the childhood of the protagonist. As these things tend to do in stories like this, reality and memory start blurring and the wardrobe takes on a malevolent role. Not my sort of thing. (3) "What We Found" by Geoff Ryman: Any new Geoff Ryman story is something to celebrate. This is a haunting story on the boundaries between the scientific method and tribal superstition, deeply entangled with the question of how one recovers from national and familial trauma. How can we avoid passing the evils and madness of one generation down to the next? Much of the story is about family trauma, told with Ryman's exceptional grasp of character, but the science is entangled in an ingenious way that I won't spoil. As with Air, this is in no way science fiction. The science here would have fascinating and rather scary implications for our world, but clearly is not how science actually works. But as an insight into politics, and into healing, I found it a startlingly effective metaphor. I loved every bit of this. By far the best story of the issue. (9) Rating: 7 out of 10

Almost every time he got off the bus for the past month and a half, Jacob started his afternoon in the same way. Before toys, before his trains and his toy bus, before anything indoors, he went for our cats. Here he is, cradling his favorite, Tigger: Laura and I both grew up around cats. We had been talking about kittens, and shortly after we got engaged, one of my relatives offered us some free kittens. We went to his place one evening and selected two of them one calico and one tiger-colored. Since what is now my place will soon be our place, they came to live with me. Our cats were one of the first things we did to prepare for our lives together. Oliver wanted to name them some rather impractical sentence-long names ( The Cat Who Always Likes To Run ), so Laura and I suggested some names from one of their favorite books: Tigger and Roo. They both liked the names, but Oliver thought they should be called Tigger the Digger and Roo the Runner . Never mind that they were just 6 weeks old at the time, and not really old enough to either dig or run. Here s Oliver with Roo, the day after the kittens arrived here. I have always had outside cats, both because I m allergic to cats so I need them to be outside, and because they sometimes literally quiver with joy of being outdoors. Tigger and Roo often chased insects, wrestled with each other, ran up (and slowly came back down) trees, and just loved the outside. Sometimes, I have taken my laptop and wireless headset and work from the back porch. The kittens climb up my jeans, inspect the laptop, and once Roo even fell asleep on my lap at one of those times. Jacob has been particularly attached to Tigger, calling him my very best friend. When Jacob picks him up after school, Tigger often purrs while cradled in Jacob s arms, and Jacob comments that Tigger loves me. Oh dad, he knows I am his friend! The kittens have been growing, and becoming more and more comfortable with their home in the country. Whenever I go outside, it isn t long before there are two energetic kittens near my feet, running back and forth, sometimes being very difficult to avoid stepping on. I call and I see little heads looking at me, from up in a tree, or peeking out from the grain elevator door, or from under the grill. They stare for just a second, and then start running, sometimes comically crashing into something in their haste. Yesterday when I went to give them food, I called and no cats came. I was concerned, and walked around the yard, but at some point either they come or they don t. Yesterday afternoon, just after the bus dropped off Jacob, I discovered Tigger on the ground, motionless. Once Jacob was in the house, I went to investigate, and found Tigger was dead. As I was moving his body, I saw Roo was dead, too. Both apparently from some sort of sudden physical injury a bit mysterious, because neither of them were at a place where they had ever gone before. While all this was happening, I had to also think about how I was going to tell the boys about this. I tried to minimize what he could see, Jacob had caught an unavoidable glimpse of Tigger as we were walking back from the bus, but didn t know exactly what had happened. He waited in the house, and when I came back, asked me if Tigger was dead. I said he was. Jacob started crying, saying, Oh Dad, I am so sad , and reached up for a hug. I picked him up and held him, then sat down on the couch and let him curl up on my lap. I could quite honestly let him know he wasn t alone, telling him I am sad, too. Oliver arrived not long after, and he too was sad, though not as much as Jacob. Both boys pretty soon wanted to see them. I decided this was important for them for closure, and to understand, so while they waited in the house, I went back out to arrange the kittens to hide their faces, the part that looks most unnatural after they die. The boys and I walked out to where I put them, then I carried both of them the last few feet. We stood a little ways back close enough to see who was there, far enough to not get too much detail and they were both sniffling. I tried to put voice to the occasion, saying, Goodbye, Tigger and Roo. We love you. Oliver asked if they could hear us. I said No, but I told them what I felt like anyway. Jacob, through tears, said, Dad, maybe they are in heaven now. We went back inside. Jacob said, Oh dad, I am so sad. This is the saddest day of my life. My heart is breaking. Hearing a 7-year-old say that isn t exactly easy for a dad. Pretty soon he was thinking of sort of comfort activities to do, saying I think I would feel better if we did So they decided to watch a favorite TV program. Jacob asked if Laura knew yet, and when I said no, he got his take-charge voice and said, Dad, you will start the TV show for us. While we are watching, you will send Laura an email to tell her about Tigger and Roo. OK? What could I say, it wasn t a bad idea. Pretty soon both boys were talking and laughing. It was Big Truck Night last night, at a town about half an hour away. It s an annual event we were already planning to attend, where all sorts of Big Trucks firetrucks, school bus, combine, bucket truck, cement truck, etc show up and are open for kids to climb in and explore. It s always a highlight for them. They played and sang happily as we drove, excitedly opened and closed the big door on the school bus and yelled All Aboard! from the top of the combine. We ate dinner, and drove back home. When we got home, Jacob mentioned the cats again, in a sort of matter-of-fact way, and also wanted to make sure he knew Laura had got the message. A person never wakes up expecting to have to dump a bowl of un-eaten cat food, or to give an impromptu cat funeral for little boys. As it was happening, I wished they hadn t been around right then. But in retrospect, I am glad they were. They had been part of life for those kittens, and it is only right that they could be included in being part of death. They got visual closure this way, and will never wonder if the cats are coming back someday. They had a chance to say goodbye. Here is how I remember the kittens.

So, does anyone have any clue what's happened, because I'm at a loss. Apparently I didn't blog about the loss of my Dad back in December, he was found in Union Canal on the 13th December 2012, with his dinner in a carrier bag and his bike. The 'official' date of death is the 13th December 2012, but as far as we can work out (and I'm fairly sure on it), he died between 1930 and 2030 on the 12th. I was on the phone to him at 1930, and I was trying to call him back at 2030 on leaving a pub and wandering back in to town, apparently I wasn't the only one trying to call him, but we all put it down to him being out of signal at the time, until I got a call from my brother on the 13th at just gone midday, saying that the police had been round to tell him they'd found Dad in the canal that morning. The funeral was held on the 22nd January 2013, with a large turnout of friends and family, it was a good send off for the old chap, and we made damned sure that it was an even better wake - The Brewery Tap did a fantastic job for us, and all that turned up (ok, with some exceptions, but we can block them out!) were fantastic. The boy knew more people than we could possibly imagine, and most of them turned up to either the funeral, the wake or both. Still miss him, don't expect that to change anytime soon, if only because I used to talk to him most evenings after work between the train station and the pub, and I really miss being able to talk shit with him and being able to relate. Next week we should finally have the Certificate of Representation so that we can actually empty his canal boat ready to sell, at which point it's likely to go back down to Wilton Marina to be sold off. It's not a bad little boat, but it was his sanctuary, and none of us feel comfortable keeping it. In other news, work has been slightly a bit busy since then, and I'm still playing a bit of catchup from missing fair chunks of January (though, I was mostly still working from home when I could!). I'm sure other stuff must have happened... Oh, yeah, I got older, but obviously no wiser. I went and visited The Brewery Tap for Father's Day (that was a good day, 7 hours trains for 5 hours in the pub, but well worth it). Coming up: Cambridge Visitations! The August Bank Holiday Debian Party in Cambridge - now, that I am looking forward to!

I just returned home from Aaron Swartz s funeral in Chicago. Aaron was a good friend. The home I ve returned to is an apartment that was Aaron s before it was mine, that I have lived in with Aaron during several stints, and that I still share with many of his old books and posters. Although, I ve spent what feels like most of the last five days reading things that people have written about Aaron, I m still processing and digesting myself. Right now, I m very sad and at a loss for words. While I reflect, I wanted to share this video recently put online by Finne Boonen. The video was made in 2006 at a Web 1.0 Elevator Pitch Competition held at Wikimania 2006 about a year after that both Aaron and I moved to Cambridge and met. The goal of the contest was to pitch Web 1.0 DotCom business ideas to a team of real Web 1.0 investors like it was still 1999. Aaron and I formed a team along with SJ Klein (who I traveled to the funeral with this week), and Wikimania general counsel and interim executive director Brad Patrick. The video shows how as Danny O Brien has reminded us Aaron was funny. He came up with many our teams best lines in addition to checking our Web 1.0 boxes for tech guru and Stanford dropout. Our pitch for 1-800-INTERNET.COM is in the video below. The transcript was done by Phoebe Ayers in Facebook and the video is also available in WebM. <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NzFjWY6Fd_g" width="420"></iframe>

SJ: You know, Mako and I had some pretty good ideas for improving connectivity to the internet, and we think we can reach 90% of the world s population. So think about this. You re sitting in a Starbucks, and you need to connect to the internet. But you can t, because there s no internet. But what is there, near every Starbucks? There s a payphone! You pick up the payphone, and you call . 1-800-INTERNET. You can connect to our bank of researchers on our fast T1 connections and get any information you need! So, we don t actually have 1-800-INTERNET yet, we have 1-800-225-3224, so the first thing we need to do is buy the number. So here s Mako, who is our web designer from UC Santa Cruz and Bradford, our financial guru, and Aaron, who s handling all of our technical implementation. But Mako, you should explain the earballs. Mako: So, so, so yeah, so most people on the Internet are going for the eyeballs, but they ve just left all of these earballs. So I have some experience in web design, and it s true that this isn t really a website, but we still need good web design. So, so, I ve actually got a really experienced team, we can go into later, and we have some really great earcons not icons, but earcons.. And it s going to be all together, not apart like some of the websites. It s going to be together. Brad: so how does this work technically? Aaron: Well, I mean, so I only spent one year at Stanford but that s Ok, because there are new developmental technologies, we re going to throw away all that old stuff, we re going to use really reliable and efficient well-designed code that everyone can clearly understand, and write the whole thing in Perl. I know this is a risk, but I am confident that Perl is going to destroy those old C websites. No one will write websites in C anymore once we do this, it s going to be so much faster, and so dynamic, everythings going to be like, on top of everything. It s going to be great. Bradford: So here s the business model. It s really really simple, and it s a really really great idea. It s all about the licensing. Because what we re going to have are these underlying audio ads, While you re on the phone you re going to hear this subliminal advertising message. And the way it works is really really cool, because it s really really low volume, it s high impact! And it s even better, because we license it, and the way it works is when a caller calls 1-800-Internet, they re hearing the ad, but so is the representative, so we get to bill em twice! So that s it: All: 1-800-INTERNET.COM

We did not win and I still believe that we were robbed.

I never met my father's father, as he died many years before I was born. He was a soldier in the British Army and was killed in an accident in Burma in the 1950s. I'm told that back then the Army did not repatriate casualties as a matter of course like they do today, so none of the family got to see his funeral or even visit the grave. Like many of the military casualties in the Far East, he was buried in the Colonial Cemetery in Hong Kong. A few photographs were sent to my grandmother of the ceremony and the headstone, but that's all we ever saw.

Fast forward to 2012. I travelled to Hong Kong for a conference (Linaro Connect, more about that later...). I looked up the details of where grandad was laid to rest, and found a major coincidence. He was killed on 27th May 1952, almost exactly 60 years ago! I resolved to go to find him on 27th May 2012 to make the most of this lucky anniversary. Wikipedia told me that in the intervening years the Colonial Cemetery had been renamed to Happy Valley Cemetery, then simply Hong Kong Cemetery, and repurposed from military to civilian use. Jo and I bought some flowers and headed over to Happy Valley on Hong Kong Island on Sunday afternoon. We found a very large cemetery with a helpful map posted to show the different sections, but nothing to tell us where we should be looking. One of the attendants at the office on site looked at the details we had and shrugged to say "sorry, can't help". Ah well, nobody said this was going to be very easy... What we found after a few minutes was that the graves weren't laid out in any obviously logical fashion. In any given small area, you'd find people buried from roughly the same period, but people for any given period could (and would) be scattered across multiple sections at all corners of the site. Great, time for an exhaustive search then. I started combing the site, checking all the markers I could find that looked anything like the tiny grainy black and white photo we had of grandad's headstone.

Almost two hours later, I eventually found him. Two hours of heavy work: the cemetery is built on the side of quite a steep hill, and the prevailing weather was very hot with 100% humidity. But, I forgot all that as we eventually stumbled across the correct grave in (no exaggeration!) the very last part of the last section of the site, 20a.

I was relieved at this point: as things had taken so long, I had started to worry that maybe the grave had been moved or the headstone damaged and lost. But no, I found the man who had gone off to war leaving my dad and aunt as small children. We took some photos and took note of where we had found the final resting place of Sergeant William Alexander McIntyre of the Royal Signals, a man I never met in life but clearly a very important member of our family.

Rain Friday was something of a rare day for February in Kansas. Starting at about 2AM, the wind picked up, blowing so hard that our windows rattled. That part isn t so rare. Then the cold rain started, dropping almost 2.5 throughout the day. As I worked, I had the blinds on the windows open, but they didn t let in very much light. Still, the wind had calmed down, so the intermittent rain outside was peaceful. Jacob went out to play for a little while, so every so often I saw a warmly-dressed and excited-looking 5-year-old run past my window. A little while after he came in, I told Jacob, I saw you playing outside. His response: Oh good! I got wet! Which, despite the fact that it was about 50 degrees, seemed to excite him. After the blustery start, the calm, slow, and peaceful rain was a pleasant thing to see throughout the day. Funeral My great aunt Alice Goerzen passed away last Sunday. So today, for the third time in a little over a year, I was at the funeral of a Goerzen relative and neighbor. Alice s husband, Milt, passed away in late 2010, and it was while I was at his funeral that Jacob got run over by a tractor. That memory certainly came back to me today. But I think I should set the stage and explain what funerals are like in this small, rural Kansas community. At the church, while people file in, family and close friends generally defined as loosely as desired meet in some other room before the funeral. Memories may be shared, or songs sung, or maybe just a brief meditation or prayer. Then the man from the funeral home there s only one in town will step in. Ivan Miller owned the business for decades, and although he s now retired, his replacement seems pretty similar. Kindly, respectful, and pretty much unchanging. This group then files into the church sanctuary to sit up front, while the rest of the congregation is standing and music is played. We typically sing some hymns, hear memories from the family, a message from a pastor, and then do downstairs for faspa: an light meal with coffee, zwieback, funeral cheese , and some relishes and dessert. You can, by the way, go to the local grocery store and find a product labeled funeral cheese . It s a sharp cheddar, sliced thick and cut into pie piece-shaped wedges. After everyone has picked up their food, microphones are passed around, and anybody that wants to can share memories and stories. These are often hilarious, or touching, and can be more random than anyone could expect. Today we heard a lot about how Aunt Alice loved her flowers and garden. We even saw a video of her giving a tour of her garden, with Milt s mower in the background occasionally accidentally causing a distraction (or maybe it wasn t so accidental; he d never miss an opportunity to cause some mischief ) I tend to think of attending funerals around here as a good time. Sadness is inevitable, but there are so many amazing stories that it is hard to leave feeling sad. Excitement This afternoon, Jacob found me in the office and as he often does, said, Dad, I want to do something with you. Usually I ask him what he d like to do, but his first instinct is usually to ask for watching train videos on Youtube. So sometimes I make other suggestions. Today we played hide and seek with radios, in which the person that is counting is supposed to radio to the other person when they are done. Today was the first time that Jacob came up with the trick of talking into the radio while I was hiding so he could hear where I was. I was sort of proud of him, and he failed to completely hide his smile when I told him I had to turn off my radio or else he d find me too fast. Then later, we played with Jacob s computer, a Linux-based command-line-only machine. I have set up a few shell scripts and aliases for him. Since it doesn t play videos, he doesn t use it as much as he does mine, but it is really fun to watch how his interaction with it changes as he gets older. He can now read amazingly well for a 5-year-old, and is starting to learn how to spell. He loves word games, writing, and typing. I thought I would install an ASCII art program for him. I told Jacob I had some ideas for a new game, and he was irresistibly intrigued. I offered him a choice between figlet and toilet. And, as is probably no surprise to anyone with a 5-year-old, he chose toilet based on its name, Jacob and Oliver both loved typing things and seeing them displayed bigger. I showed Jacob how I could make a freight train by typing ,<@-[]-(*)-@> (that s the comma-shaped snowplow, engine, boxcar [], tank car (*), and caboose @>). Then toilet drew them big, and though abstract, caused great excitement. I hooked up one of the speech synthesizers in Debian to a simple shell script named talk , which is a huge hit with the boys. They enjoy typing in nonsense and hearing the funny result, or in typing in real words and hearing how the computer says them right (or doesn t). All told, we had a good hour s worth of excitement up there.

I got a call from Mum today to inform me that my grandmother had passed away last night, Brisbane time, at 94 years of age. If you want to get all genealogically correct, she's technically my step-maternal grandmother, but she's the grandmother I spent the most time with, growing up, so I'm not going to split hairs. It's come as a bit of a shock, because despite having had progressively worse dementia for probably over a decade, she's been in incredibly good physical condition. I think it was in her 70's that she had a heart valve replaced, and I for one had been expecting that to be the thing to wear out and take her down slowly. I last saw her in the flesh in January, when the above photo was taken, and more recently a few weeks ago on Skype. She was recently moved from an aged-care hostel in Toowoomba to a nursing home in Brisbane, as her dementia had progressed beyond the point that she could be cared for in the previous facility. Mum had visited her earlier in the day yesterday, and she was fine, but apparently the staff found her unconscious at around 5pm when they went to get her for dinner. She was taken to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital where it was determined she had suffered from a stroke, and she passed away later that evening at around 11:30pm. So all in all, she had a very good innings, and of all the ways to leave this world, this was one of the quicker and more painless ways to do it. That's the problem with a quick exit - it's usually completely unexpected. It's looking like the funeral will be on Friday, and I've got a flight tentatively booked to leave on Wednesday and get in on Friday morning and return again on Monday. At the time I arranged this, I'd completely forgotten that I was flying to Calgary on Monday night to babysit the son of friends, while they go to the US Consulate for a visa appointment. Fortunately this travel doesn't conflict with that travel, it just means I'll be away from work for longer, and spending a lot of time inside pressurized tubes. I'm fairly confident with all of the short international trips, I'm going to look like a drug mule or something, and someone's going to thoroughly cavity search me.

I happened to have some Arum Lillies on hand this week after taking some shots for use by a local funeral director. This is one of the shots I took once I had finished.

I guess it won't be very many people reading this blog to know the name, even though he was without any doubt one of the biggest entertainers. Lots of movies, his own TV show, and an enormous amount of albums made him well known far outside the borders of Austria, his home country. Last saturday he died in the age of 84, yesterday was his funeral. This is a special dedication to him. Peter, you will be missed.

• Die s esten Fr chte (1952): He was still rather young at that time but it already shows his great talent, both in acting and in singing.
• Mamma di Mandolin (1956): Another great excerpt from a movie in which he starred.
• Dankesch n: Thank you.

Servus.

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My paternal grandmother died a month ago today - I may have been quieter than usual since December. The most vivid memory I have of her is helping to collect runner beans from her garden - apparently this had been going on since the World War II "dig for victory" campaign. Her funeral was in Hastings on 10th January, and she was buried in Fairlight, in the Roman Catholic area of St. Andrew's - it was a very peaceful setting.

Friday, I wrote about the train trip Jacob and I were planning to take. Here s the story about it. Friday night, Jacob was super excited. He was running around the house, talking about trains. I had him pack his own backpack with toys this time, which were you guessed it trains. Plus train track. His usual bedtime is around 7. He was still awake in his room at about 11, too excited to sleep. The train was an hour late into Newton, so got up, got ready, and then went into Jacob s room at 3:15AM. I put my arm around him and said his name softly. No response. I said, just a little louder, Jacob, it s time to wake up to go to the train station. There was about a 2-second pause and then he sat bolt upright rubbing his eyes. A couple seconds later, in a very tired but clear voice, OK dad, let s go! That is, I believe, a record for waking up speed for Jacob. We went downstairs, got coats, mittens, hats, etc. on, made sure we had the stuffed butterfly he always sleeps with, and went out the door. As usual, Jacob chattered happily during the entire 15-minute drive to the Amtrak station. One of these days I need to remember to record it because it s unique. He described things to me ranging from the difference between freight and passenger trains, to what the dining car is all about, to tractors and how to ride them safely. Newton has some winter lights , and a few places still had Christmas lights, which were of course big hits. We had to wait a few minutes at the Amtrak station, and Jacob hadn t shown any signs of slowing down yet. He wanted to look at every Amtrak poster, picture, logo, or sign in the building. This generally meant me holding him up high while he leaned over to touch it and make out a few words. Then, of course, he would pick out minute details about the trains, such as how many coach cars he thought they had, and we d visit about that for awhile. We got on at about 4:20. We found our seats, and Jacob showed no signs of calming down, despite having had only 4 hours of sleep (instead of his usual 11) so far. We checked out the buttons for lights. And, of course, he excitedly yelled out, Dad, the train is moving! He spent the next while mostly watching out his window, but also still exploring his space. Finally at about 5, I said, Jacob, I am really tired. I am going to sleep now. Will you sleep too? His response: Oh sure dad, I will sleep with my eyes open! As a result, no sleep was had for Jacob, and only a little for me. The dining car opens for breakfast at 6:30, which is normally a rather foreign time for breakfast on the train for us. But we were both awake so I figured might as well go. So Jacob and I went to the dining car. We sat with a woman going from New Mexico to Lawrence for her grandpa s funeral, though it was expected and she was having a good time on the train. Jacob turned completely shy, and refused to say a word, except maybe a few whispered into my ear. He got his favorite railroad French toast, and had me drizzle some syrup on it. I used the word drizzle for syrup the first time he had French toast on the train, and if I fail to use that word in the dining car, I will hear about it in no uncertain terms from Jacob. He loved his dining car breakfast, but we spent about an hour and a half there. He was really slow at eating because his face was pressed up against the window so much. But that was just fine; we had nowhere else to be, the person eating breakfast with us enjoyed visiting (and, apparently, scaring the dining car staff with tales of bears in the New Mexico mountains). This was what the train trip was all about, after all. We played in the lounge car for awhile. The almost floor-to-ceiling wrap-around windows provided a great view for him, and more opportunities to press his face against a window. We talked about freight trains that he saw, noticed the snow on some of them. Then we found the back of the train and he got to look out the back window. Back at our seat, he played with his toys for about 10 minutes, which was all he used them on the entire trip. There was just too much else to enjoy. When we used the restroom on the train, he d comment on how much he liked the Amtrak soap. It smells SO very very good! He wanted to wash his hands on the train. By late morning, he had decided: Dad, I LOVE this Amtrak soap. It smells like peaches! Shall your hands smell like peaches too? And, when we d get back up to our seats, he d put his hands in my face, saying, Dad, smell that! My hands smell like peaches! It was from the AMTRAK SOAP! At some point, he discovered the airline-style safety brochures in the seat back pockets. These were filled with diagrams of the train car, a few photos, and lots of icons with descriptions. I don t know how many times I read the thing to him, or really how many times he then recited it to me from memory. It was a lot. He spent hours with those brochures. Jacob had already told me that he wanted pizza for lunch, so I got him the kid-sized pizza. It wasn t all that big, and he could have devoured at least half of it when hungry. But he was getting really tired and ate only a few bites of pizza and a few chips. Pretty soon he was leaning up against me, the window, and eventually had his head on the table in some tomato sauce. But he didn t quite fall asleep by the time we went back to our seats, and of course was wide awake by that point. Jacob loves spotting the word Amtrak on things. It was very exciting when he noticed his orange juice at breakfast, and milk at lunch, were Amtrak juice and Amtrak milk due to the logo on the cups. At dinner he noticed we had Amtrak plates, and when I pointed out that his metal fork had the Amtrak logo on it, he got very excited and had to check every piece of silverware within reach. Dad, I have an Amtrak fork too! . And dad, YOU also have an Amtrak fork! We ALL have Amtrak forks! *cackling laughter* I finally insisted that Jacob lay down for some quiet time. I closed the curtains, and he finally did fall asleep less than an hour before our arrival into Galesburg. So by 2:15 he was up to 4.75 hours of sleep, I guess. We stopped in the train station briefly, then started our walk to the Discovery Depot Children s Museum, which was right nearby. Although I made no comment about it, Jacob said, Dad, there is a train museum RIGHT HERE! Yes, you re right Jacob. I can see a steam engine and some cars here. Let s go in! I don t think it s open today. It IS open shall we go check? It wasn t, and that was mighty sad though when he spotted another old caboose sitting outside the children s museum, the day suddenly seemed brighter. He complained of how cold he was, although my suggestion that he stop walking through the big piles of snowdrifts was met with a whiny, But dad, I WANT to do that! We went inside the museum (having to walk right buy the locked caboose thankfully the people at the desk promised to unlock it for us when we were ready) and Jacob started to explore. There was some wooden play trains big enough for children to climb in which he enjoyed, but in general he went from one thing to the next every minute or two as he does when he s really tired or overstimulated. Until, that is, he discovered the giant toy train table. It had a multi-level wooden track setup, and many toy trains with magnetic hitches. It was like what we have at home, only much bigger and fancier. He spent a LONG time with that. We then briefly explored the rest of the museum and went out into the caboose. It wasn t the hit it might have been, possibly because there are several at the Great Plains Transportation Museum that he gets to go in on a somewhat regular basis. After that, he was ready to go back into the museum, but I was feeling rather over-stimulated. On a day when the highs were still well below freezing, it seemed just about every family in Galesburg was crowded into the children s museum, making it loud and crowded which I don t enjoy at all. So I suggested maybe it was snack time instead. A moment s thought, then he started to pull me out of the caboose before I could get my gloves back on Yes dad, I think it IS snack time. Let s go. Let s go NOW! We walked over to Uncle Billy s Bakery (Google link or minimal website). Jacob spotted some sugar cookies shaped like mittens. Despite my reluctance to get him more sugar, he was so excited plus I had barely prevented a meltdown at lunch by promising him that he would get dessert later in the day so he picked two red mitten cookies. I got myself a wonderful peach muffin and a croissant and we sat down at one of the tables by the window. I taught Jacob how to hang his coat on his chair and he lit into those cookies. I spotted a guy at the next table over wearing a BNSF jacket, and asked him if he worked for the railroad. He had retired as an engineer a couple of years ago, and had worked various jobs before that. He grew up in Manhattan, KS and so was interested in our trip and very friendly. While we visited, Jacob devoured his cookies and increasing portions of my snack as well. He told us about a new shop The Stray Cat just two stores down that was having a grand opening event today. They make decorations and art out of basically discarded items, and had some really nifty things that I may have bought had I not been wanting for space in our backpack. Then I spotted Sweets Old-Fashioned Ice Cream, Candy, and Soda Shop across the road. I figured he d love it and I was already in for the sugar so might as well. He picked out some birthday cake flavor ice cream for himself. I got huckleberry ice cream, which he insisted on calling purpleberry and managed to get some tastes of as well. After that, we went to the train station. It was about an hour until our train would be there. I wasn t sure if we d find enough to do, but I shouldn t have worried. Earlier, we had made the happy discovery that the station s restroom featured the Amtrak soap, so there was that. Then there was the model Amtrak train in the ticket window, which Jacob kept wanting to look at while I d hold him. And also, the California Zephyr came in. We watched it arrive from the station window, saw people get off and on, and saw it leave maybe the first time Jacob has witnessed all that in person. And, of course, we looked at the pictures in that train station. The ticketmaster gave Jacob a paper conductor s hat with puzzles and mazes on the back side. And then it was time to get onto our train back home. We ate dinner Jacob again ate little and almost fell asleep and got back to our seats. I let Jacob stay awake until about 8, when he was starting to get a bit fragile. It took him awhile to fall asleep, but he finally did at about 8:30. Today he s still been all excited. He will randomly tell us about bits of the trip, that the man at supper called his grilled cheese sandwich piece little when it was really big, what we did at the ice cream store, etc. And I do think that he is now a train safety expert. All in all, I think that is probably the most excitement he s ever had in 24 hours and it was a lot of fun to be with him for it!

I had been planning to write today about my great uncle Milt Goerzen. Milt passed away last Thursday after a long struggle with dementia, and his funeral was this morning. I was there, and was inspired by a few things I heard. But that will have to wait, because today brought one of those few moments in life that s a sense of an impending possible great loss. I can remember two others: one was when Terah passed out, and the other was when we heard that our place was on fire and our house had burned down (it turned out the house hadn t, but much of the rest had). I got a call during Milt s funeral. I didn t answer because I was, well, at a funeral, and the phone was on vibrate. When I had the chance to check the voicemail, it went something like this: I think we have an emergency with Jacob. He got run over by a tractor. He says he s OK, but I m taking him to the doctor right now. I tried to return the call, but cell phone reception wasn t cooperating. The most I got was he s OK . It s hard to describe how a moment like that feels. My mind jumped to telling Jacob I love you , and how lately when he hears that, he will snuggle in for a big hug, and say, Dad, I love you toooooooooo! On the one hand, I heard the he s OK part, and on the other hand I couldn t forget the tractor running over him part, and my mind leapt at the worst. It turns out that, while I was at the funeral, Jacob had been standing on his usual spot on the tractor, sort of to the side of the driver. He was enjoying himself like usual. The tractor hit a large hole that wasn t really visible. The combination of the jolt and the dip the tractor took towards Jacob s side knocked him off and he went directly under the big rear wheel before the tractor could be brought to a stop. I caught up with him and his grandpa after he had seen the doctor and just as he was being admitted to the hospital. He saw me and crawled over, making his sort of sad and scared sound he sometimes doesn t want to verbalize things when he s in that mood. I held him close and he seemed to appreciate it. He had to have blood drawn, and he was scared of that. I remembered his inquisitive mind, and reminded him how much he liked watching the tube fill up with blood last time he had a blood test (which he calls a blood shot ). That wasn t helping, until the actual blood test started. He cried when the needle went in, but then calmed down as the nurse, getting into the act, pointed out that there was blood filling up the tube. Hmmm! said Jacob. Then she gave him a band-aid. It has an airplane, said the nurse. Um-hmm! said Jacob. I pointed out that it looked like the airplane we were on when we flew home from New York. Jacob got a big smile and said, Yes, it IS that one! He got a sticker there too. Then it was off for an x-ray to check for broken bones and a CT scan to check for internal injuries the tractor had gone right over his abdomen. He had to get an IV at the CT scan, which he certainly didn t like. After it happened, however, he found it very interesting especially when the nurses explained that they would give him a drink through the hose attached to his hand. After that, we went to his room, with orders for him not to eat or drink anything until it was clear he didn t have digestive problems. While we waited at various steps along the way, Jacob wanted to sit on my lap and watch train videos on YouTube on my phone. He loves train videos, and brought my phone s battery nearly to depletion through the course of the afternoon. Jacob eventually seemed to get back to a bit of his usual self. At one point, while Terah had made a run home to pack an overnight bag and grandpa ran some errands of his own, Jacob wanted to leave the room. He had gone exploring in the hospital with me before: when Oliver was born, and when Terah had her thyroid surgery. So this was something he just associated with the hospital. That and lemonade, which is free any time of the day or night in the cafeteria. So we went exploring, even ventured outside into a courtyard for a bit. He was walking fast and seemed good. We had several visitors: grandparents and his aunt and uncle. Jacob got a stuffed rabbit and a colorful bug box with windows (for putting bugs inside for observation). Eventually the doctor came by and gave us the results: the x-rays showed no problems. The labs showed some elevated liver enzymes, which he expected, but no serious trouble. The CT showed contusions on his lung and bruising on his heart which would heal completely in time. He allowed Jacob to have a liquid supper (so I quickly got him the lemonade he had been wanting while the nurses got him some Jello). The doctor examined Jacob, pushing at various places, asking Does it hurt here? No. Does it hurt here? No. Here? No. Are you hungry? Yes. Does it hurt here? No. He gave me a look that said: really? It doesn t hurt ANYWHERE? What could I do but shrug my shoulders? Jacob has some abrasions on his face, arms, and back, which will probably eventually hurt (and sure enough, about 10 minutes later he started getting a little pain when he tried to move, which the doctor checked out) Then the doctor said, I hope you know you have a walking miracle today. This is just amazing. You have some thanking to whatever guardian angels you like tonight all I can say about this is that the Lord must have had some other plan for him. There s no way he could have survived that. Jacob s doctor is one that we really respect: he s scientific in his analysis, cites studies as a matter of routine, doesn t prescribe antibiotics for things that he knows they have a small chance of helping, is common-sense about not over-treating things and yet always engaged in an emergency. That little speech from him was something I d never expected to hear from him. He went on to add that I always visit my sickest patients first. You were my last visit this evening, so that should tell you something. Any other kid as healthy as he is, I might discharge already but I m just not justified doing that with a boy that s, well, been driven over by a tractor this morning. He also wanted to monitor Jacob s progress throughout the coming day, especially his digestive system. They wanted to measure his urine output, which he, predictably, found to be very interesting. Terah said I think it is about 150 ml. Jacob said, No mom, it is closer to the two hundred line. Me: Since when does Jacob know about the number 200? Terah: I don t know . he s 4, where would he have gotten it? Between that, and using every opportunity to tell people that there were not one but TWO red light switches in the x-ray room, Jacob s definitely himself in some ways already. So, that feeling of some impeding great loss is gone, replaced by being more than a bit overwhelmed by how fortunate we were today. We also appreciate all the help we ve had with Jacob and Oliver today.

My good friend Frans Pop died on the 20th of August, just over a week ago. We had worked together for several years within Debian (especially within the Debian CD team), and we had become firm friends during that time. He was great to work with, always ready to help design new features or pick holes and find the bugs in the stuff I was developing myself, happy for others to dig into his own projects. On the more personal side, we met up many times at different Free Software events like DebConf and FOSDEM, and also for pure social things like BBQs and parties. We shared a lot of good times. Last week, along with some other Debian people who had worked with Frans, I headed over to the Netherlands for his funeral. His family also asked me to talk about him, and I was honoured to do so. I spoke briefly about Frans' work in Debian, highlighting the areas where he worked and the number of people he had worked with in various teams. I also told the group about the massive number of messages of sympathy and condolence which I had been asked to pass on from all over the world. His family knew that Debian was important to Frans, but were not aware of just how wide his influence and effect had been. They were especially surprised and grateful that people had travelled so far for the funeral; I told them that I would not have missed it for anything. Rest In Peace, my friend. You will be missed.

The friend who lent me his Kottan ermittelt DVDs gave me the 1981 movie (cinema, not TV) Den T chtigen geh rt die Welt. I guess a warning is in order: if you liked the TV series, it's possible that you'll share my disappointment with this film. There are reports of a new movie to be made this year, and I also haven't seen the first 9 episodes of the TV series yet, so I'll probably report on Kottan again some time in the future. I was surprised but liked the film: There's a coherent plot and even a happy end. And it's till a film by David Lynch: Wild at Heart. Also by Lynch: the very early Eraserhead. Now this is Lynch (at least for me, since I started with Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive ), and I really like the hairstyle of Henry Spencer. Something completely different: Harold and Maude, or what happens when a bored high society youth falls in love with an 80 years old eccentric who shares his hobby of going to funerals of some random people.

I'm leaving UDS early due to a loss in my family - I have to travel now to get to the funeral. Folk that I had specific meetings/planned discussiongs lined up with I have tried to contact in person, and this post is intended to act as a catchall for anyone I didn't find.

Flowers I ve written a lot lately about my Grandma Klassen, who passed away this week. But I m going to start this post about my Grandma Goerzen. She died when I was just an infant. I never knew her, but as the years pass, it seems that I remember her better and better. After we moved out to the farm where she and Grandpa Goerzen lived for decades, we noticed some flowers she had planted 30 years ago were still coming up, having withstood hail, hot summers, frost, construction equipment, and neglect all that time. Terah said, It s like your grandma left us a housewarming gift. Some of these flowers had never bloomed. Until this week. One bloomed for the first time the day Grandma Klassen died. A second bloom appeared the day of her funeral. Music #1 My jr. high and high school band teacher loves music (and old engines, but that s another story). You couldn t sign up for band at my high school; you d sign up for the class called LIFE. To him, music and life are indistinguishable. He says that anybody can speak to somebody, but music is the best way to speak to the heart. My Grandpa Klassen died when I was 11. Grandma Klassen, before her health declined, loved to tell me the story of the music at his funeral. At his funeral, my mom and I played a piano duet of Nearer, My God to Thee which we had already learned for a different event. When we were done, Rev. Epp went to the pulpit and said something along the lines of, If the music in heaven is as good as that, it ll be a great place indeed. I was just 11, and though music did speak to me at that age already, I don t think I understood how it moved people, such as my grandma, until many years later. Music #2 Grandma Klassen loved music, too, and that s reflected in each of her children all of them play trumpet, for instance. So it s no surprise that there was a lot of music this week. She died as two of her children were singing hymns to her at her room in the nursing home. Two of her grandchildren played trumpet for her at her burial. And my brother and his wife played trumpet and piano at her funeral. It was all beautiful, and like my band teacher said, it spoke to my heart. Music #3 I knew about gradma s love of music for quite awhile. When she was in better health, I took her to concerts sometimes. One of her favorite hymns was Joyful, Joyful, but she hadn t known it was based on Beethoven s 9th Symphony. I learned that the Wichita Symphony Orchestra was performing the 9th, and took her to the performance. She loved it, and I seem to recall that she kept talking about it for a few years afterwards. It certainly didn t hurt that the singing on the 4th movement was in German. I burned her a new-fangled CD of it, which I frequently saw in or near her CD player. The Kansas Mennonite Men s Chorus is an all-volunteer choir with about 300 members. They give a couple of concerts a year, and occasionally tour throughout North America and Europe. Their motto is we sing that others may live because 100% of money collected at their concerts goes directly to charity. Attending one of their concerts is a powerful experience not easily forgotten. I think the only time I ve heard a choir come close to being as amazing as that was when I had the opportunity to attend a Robert Shaw concert a few years ago. I went with grandma to one of the Kansas Mennonite Men s Chorus performances a few years ago. As you might expect, she loved it I think she called it powerfully good. This year, I finally joined the choir. I still remember that first practice. We warmed up by singing Holy God, We Praise Thy Name a song that has opened every KMMC concert for years. These people hadn t sung together for almost a year, and there were plenty of new people like me there too. But it only took a few bars of singing before I realized just what it was I had joined. The choir started out with the quietest, but most powerful singing you can imagine: Holy God, we praise thy name. By the time we got to the end of the page, the building was ringing from 300 men singing Infinite thy vast domain, everlasting is thy reign! at the top of their voices, in perfect harmony. We got to the end. The director said. . . Wow. I don t think a first practice ever spoke to my heart before that day. Music #4 Nearly 20 years ago, Grandma Klassen bought me a new bible. After she gave it to me, I asked her what some of her favorite passages were. She took me straight to the blessing in Numbers 6, and made sure I underlined it and bookmarked it. It goes like this:

The Lord bless you,
The Lord keep you,
Make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you,
The Lord life up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

My uncle had read this blessing to her the last time he talked to her. And the KMMC for years has ended their concerts with a beautiful benediction based on this passage. Grandma heard it at the concert I attended with her. It has been a favorite of my mom for years, too. So I had the thought: we really ought to sing it as a benediction at her funeral. It was hard to find the right mix of people on short notice, but we wound up with me singing baritone, my brother singing 2nd tenor (we both normally sing bass), and his wife both playing piano and singing 1st tenor, and relying on the piano to fill in the bass part. We had a little chance to practice before the funeral, but not a lot. The two of them have done a lot musically, but I haven t nearly as much, so I got in some extra practice at home, too. When it came time to sing, it was an emotional moment for sure more than a bit hard to focus, knowing the history and meaning of these words. When we got to and give you peace , and moved into the chorus of amen that finishes the song, I almost broke down right there, but didn t quite. We didn t give a perfect performance, for sure, on such short notice. (And they had me singing with them, so we wouldn t have been perfect even with plenty of notice!) But it didn t have to be perfect. After we ended the last, quiet amen , I think I heard about a half-dozen noses blowing all at once. My band teacher was right about music speaking to the heart. Later, during lunch, my aunt said to me, Wow, John, I ve never heard you sing before! That s right, and this may be the last time you hear me sing, too! I don t normally sing in a small group like this. A few minutes later, my uncle that gave the message came over and talked to the three of us. John, today you three brainwashed me. Oh? Yes. For years, I thought that there was no music as beautiful as the trumpet. After hearing you three sing, I have to reconsider. And so my band teacher was also right: music is life. My grandma was a person that could hardly speak without touching the heart. That beautiful melody of her life didn t stop when she died Tuesday afternoon. I ve been hearing it all week.

Yesterday was my grandma Klassen s funeral at Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church, where she had been a member for decades. My uncle, a pastor, gave the meditation. He had been a missionary in Vietnam during the war, and he remained there after the United States withdrawal. During that time, things were very dangerous for him, and all means of communicating with the family back home were completely cut off. My grandparents had no way of knowing if he was OK. He later heard of a conversation my grandma had with a neighbor one day during this time: Neighbor: You must be so worried about your son in Vietnam! Grandma: Not really. I gave him back to the Lord the day he graduated high school. Neighbor: If you re not worried, then I m REALLY worried! Grandma: Why worry? Heaven is just as close to Vietnam as it is to Kansas. That exchange sums her up pretty well, I think. She was so deeply religious that it gave her a great sense of peace about life. We heard so many stories about her this week. We heard how, when she was already in her upper 80s, she helped a farmer get his equipment out of the mud and ran some heavy farm machinery. She was in charge of my cousin s schoolwork for a little while (she lived with them back then, and his parents were taking a trip). She apparently made sure he did every little assignment left for him in exacting detail, even the ones that his mother had said were extra , just in case he needed something else to do. Apparently when his parents got back, he said he loved his time with grandma, but begged them to never put her in charge of his schoolwork again! I told the story of learning to play chess when I was a child. My grandpa was teaching me the game. I was having some trouble learning some of the rules, and was frustrated because he was also beating me (like usual). After a little while of me getting more and more frustrated, grandma said something to him in German and all of a sudden I started winning. Yesterday evening was the community Good Friday church, with the combined choirs of our church and Alexanderwohl singing. That wasn t the easiest thing to do after the funeral in the morning, but I m glad I did. Tomorrow I ll be singing again for Easter.

Jacob has lately been telling us gate gamma kassen so sick (Great Grandma Klassen is so sick), after his visit to the hospital, and it s true. Today started normal enough, but by 2:45 I got an email from my mom, saying that grandma had taken yet another turn for the worse; her pulse was racing, her temperature feverish, and her breathing shallow and difficult. The last grandchild that was going to be there made it, and got the last flicker of recognition from grandma. I wrapped some things up at work. Then I made the short drive from work to the nursing home, and got there just after 4. I went in to her room there, and it was full of family. Two of her children were singing her favorite hymns. I can never forget my uncle s deep bass voice as he stood at her bedside, holding her arm, while my aunt patted her head, both of them singing. Grandma s only remaining sibling, her younger brother Melvin, sat on the other side of the bed, looking on. Grandma s white table and chairs, which were in grandma and grandpa s house as long as I can remember, and followed grandma through all of the four other places she lived in the last years of her life, were in her room at the nursing home too. It always felt like home to be with grandma and those familiar things that she always took with her. Despite what was happening, I was glad she was back at home. My uncle motioned me over to her bedside, and I took her hand for a few minutes. It felt cold and weak; for the first time, she didn t grab my hand at all. A nurse came in to check oxygen saturation, but the machine wasn t able to get a reading due to poor circulation to her hand. She wasn t able to get a heart rate either because the heart was racing so fast. She discussed briefly whether the family wanted them to continue giving her oxygen, and they decided that they would, for her comfort. My uncle and aunt kept singing. I blew my nose and dabbed at my eyes, and there were hugs all around. And just a few minutes later, grandma peacefully stopped breathing, maybe 20 minutes after I had arrived. They went to get the nurse, who came back to listen to grandma s heart again, though we knew what she would find. She took the stethoscope off, and she almost lost her composure, but managed to say you can turn the oxygen off now. Several people gave grandma a last hug. After a few minutes with just the family, they told the nurses to go ahead and call the funeral home. That set off a lot of activity making arrangements for the next few days, funeral plans, and the like. I stepped back into grandma s room a few times, while the family was in the sitting area right outside it discussing. I looked around at the family photos on the wall, the old table and chairs, the recliner. Now, these are the things that were grandma s. It didn t feel like home anymore. Terah and Jacob were stuck at home Terah s car was at the mechanic for repair today. I called to give her the news. She wanted to come to be with the family, but I didn t really want to leave. She tried calling some friends to see if they could give her a lift to the mechanic, but not one of them was available. I talked to her again and suggested she just call the mechanic. She wasn t even halfway through describing the situation when he interrupted with, We ll have it at your place right away! Well, I don t expect you to have to do that, or you could certainly wait until you close. Nope, this isn t your average community, we ll bring it right over. You should be there. Grandma has enjoyed a simple life and had requested a simple death: no extraordinary measures at the end of life, no embalming either. So, by law, the burial must happen within 24 hours of death, and will be tomorrow. After all the arrangements, people realized nobody had supper yet. We went to the quickest available option pizza and ate there. It was paid for out of grandma s remaining money the last meal of so many that she provided for her family over the years. It was a happy meal. As I drove home, NPR news was on the radio. There were the same stories we hear all the time: the economy, the mideast, the president. Normally I m interested, but today I shut it off. Today is different. Tomorrow, for the second time in four years, I will help carry a grandparent s casket a few days before Easter. I ll end tonight with this photo. It was taken soon after Jacob was born. Grandma came to the hospital and held him. That smile sums her up perfectly.

There are times when I hate xkcd. Mostly these are:

1. When reading a discussion on /. and you just know a particular image will be posted. 2. When you spend hours searching for a specific comic that you're certain exists.

The latter is what bit me tonight - I'm certain there exists a cartoon which has a plot of:

Woman says hi. Guy says hi. Woman looks confused. Guy realises she was talking to her phone, not him.

Cannot find the image for the life of me - only phone-related image I could find was tones. I thought I might get lucky if I knocked up a quick hack to search the alt-text on all the images, but sadly not. Still it was a fun project. To be uber-useful we'd need to persuade people to imput the text in each cartoon, along with the number. Given that there are only 550ish cartoons published thus far creating a database would take a person a day, or a group of people a couple of hours. Tempting .. very tempting ..

• http://www.steve.org.uk/xkcd

ObFilm: The Lost Boys. Yay!

I try to practice Inbox Zero, and this past year has been brutal far staying on top of my Inbox. When I started pruning the home email a week or so ago (having just gotten my work email box down to zero). It's giving me a pretty good review of 2008. And, umm.. wow:

Spinal tumor, surgery, hating Mountain View (the place, not the job there. My coworkers are pretty uniformly awesome), having a toddler, not being able to lift my toddler, crazy mood altering drugs, visa renewal, a funeral, unexpected pregnancy, weddings, buying a house, mid-term miscarriage, Angie's hospitalisation from that, pneumonia, a move home, having to withdraw from my Master's courses 3 times over the course of the year for medical reasons - eventually causing me to withdraw from the program. Extend it by another 3 months into 2007 (because while I'd love to believe that stress reset at the start of a calendar year...), and we have another wedding, a move to the US and a new job.

I've just gotten to an email where I took notes on what the risks were for the angiogram before I'd told many friends. There's a small pile of emails and such from people wishing me well that I never managed to reply to. I also find myself thinking back to the people I didn't hear from, and the reevaluation of my communities and friendships that came along with that.

The lyrics from Counting Crows come to mind: "It's been a long December and there's reason to believe that maybe this year will be better than the last."

Here's to 2009. =)