Hi Doc,
Sorry I haven't been in touch for about a week. You've been
so distracted with your mother's illness and then your return for her memorial
last weekend. I appreciate the updates on voicemail and, before it went down,
email. I've been moved by your comments. I envy you your wonderful history
with your
mother,
something
I
never had.
I especially
appreciated
the picture of you
and her at the beach, and the one with the whole
family, you at six, holding
the beer bottle. You had a wry look then and still do. Some people "get"
irony at an early age
and
some
never
do.
You're
my
favorite "man of iron"-y.
Though you haven't been able to update, I'm sure the interment
and memorial went well, and that your eulogy was as eloquent as you always
are. I'll bet you even leavened it with humor from your deep reservoir
of benevolent irony. I never asked if you agree with me (but I bet you
do) that the most important element in grief is high mirth and the vital
antidote to arrogance is an appreciation of our essential absurdity.
Things have been a little quiet here in NYC, but the weather
has been magnificent, early fall, really. I'm spending every morning
in Bryant
Park, soaking
up the WiFi, the good vibes and some sun, since the air's cool enough
to encourage a few rays. What a great place. As I write this tonight,
they're concluding the free film series with 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Here are some pix from this morning. The first one's
looking west from the terrace next to the New York Public Library.
I chatted with
a fellow there this morning about free WiFi in the Park, a very well-dressed
midtown type.
I shared your advice that, should one wish to gain access to the
whole of the
world's
knowledge from the Library's west reading room, you need to sit by the
windows and log on to the Bryant Park WiFi. It's uncertain if you're
better off in the Library's impressive reading room without WiFi,
or online at the Park's charming little reading room, with its staff
of maroon-shirted volunteers:
My new friend's a big-time Madison
Avenue attorney, who spontaneously said, "I love anything
that
weakens Microsoft's
stranglehold on us all!" Whew! You don't expect that kind
of spontaneous emission in middle-aged guys like us. With just
a bit of encouragement,
he also expressed
his dismay with the current administration. He can't make the Dean
rally tomorrow night, but seemed heartened to detect a way out
of the wilderness.
This next picture is of an actor in some kind of commercial,
gesticulating meaningfully behind a laptop with a green screen into which
some video jock will paste some important-appearing computer information,
without which no enterprise could hope to compete against the awesome
forces arrayed
against it.
You will appreciate the irony reeking from the
image. Nothing meaningful said. No information on the screen. No comprehension
of the message by the actor. In fact, at the moment I snapped this,
the crew had just quit shooting but hadn't yet told the actor, who continued
buzzwording
on, full
of sound and flurry, signifying nothing.
Xpertweb is moving along, albeit more slowly than I'd like.
Roland's waiting for me to
rough out the datatypes for the three preference sets present in each
task, the Seller, Buyer and the Product/Task. I hate
it when I'm the one in the middle of the critical path. It forces me
to stop pontificating and to get on with real work.
Well, I'd better get on with Roland's datatyping. Travel
well. Tell your relatives that there are now people all over the world
who care
about them–people whom they will
never meet. Now that's news.
Hugs,
Britt
