From the Archives - Speech for Dad’s Memorial

Introduction

I’m coming up on the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. It’s rough. The fact of his death is compounded by the flashbacks I have of his terrible, wasting final month. Time does heal all wounds, but first they scab over which means they bleed from time to time. I’m dealing with all of that now.

Here, extracted from my archives but still warm to the touch, is the speech I wrote for my dad’s memorial service. I know it well, because I had to rehearse it, out loud, half a dozen times just to get to where I could read it out without crying. (I’m not above letting people see me tear up, but blubbering to the point of incomprehensibility does nobody any good.)

If I seem a bit less than fawning in this tribute-cum-roast, it’s because I’ve listened to memorial speeches that were so dedicated to burnishing the reputation of the dead, they lost their essential truth. To a large extent this was the case at my grandfather’s memorial, except for my cousin’s loving but honest speech, which I well recall included the statement, “He could be difficult.” That speech inspired me to write something that conveys loving feeling but hasn’t been totally declawed.

Speech for Dad’s Memorial – November 19, 2017

I was driving my dad’s old Toyota Scion the other day, and it was down to half a tank. I’d filled it up when I was out here in early October, figuring I’d do him a favor. He’d be stoked (he would say “tickled”) to climb into his car and see the fuel gauge on full. It never occurred to me, at that time, that he’d never drive this car again. Things like that drive home the point: he’s really gone.

Of course I’m going to miss my dad—but this is not entirely new territory for me. I have, in a sense, yearned for more connection my whole life. When my brothers and I were kids, it was often hard to get our dads’ attention, unless we were in trouble. As adults, we weren’t really focused on him, either. Work, our own families, and geography got in the way.

But even as kids, when we all lived under the same roof, our relationship with our dad was less a matter of mutual rapport than of us boys being kind of in awe of him. Often it seemed his amazing intellect could be a barrier. An old friend of his from Ball Aerospace sent a nice note to our “Remembering Harry” e-mail box recently, saying, “[He was] intelligent beyond all description. He formulated a way to map the non-linearities of an instrument’s measurement plane with a Zernike polynomial making it possible to linearize the pointing accuracy of a line of sight steering mirror. His idea for using the concept of a Seaman’s signaling mirror to bisect the angle between two laser beams was the basis for an entire pointing and tracking program.” Reading this was a bit like hearing my dad talk tech, back in the day: I really couldn’t follow it. Growing up, the dinner table was like some kind of science & technology forum. Much of it was pitched at my older brothers’ level, though I’m pretty sure they were lost, too.

This isn’t to say our dad wouldn’t ever meet us on our turf. One weekend morning when I was 12 or 13, several of my biking pals flaked on me. My dad surprised me by saying, “I’ll ride with you.” So we rode up Flagstaff together. I pushed as high a gear as I could, out of the saddle, rocking the bike, slogging away slowly to be macho, while dad stayed seated and spun a high cadence—an engineer’s cadence, perhaps—next to me. Of course he turned the ride into a picnic, literally. At the summit we parked our bikes and walked out to Artist’s Point, and ate the odd creations he’d packed, like bagels dressed up with sardines, dill relish, and mayonnaise, and a half grapefruit.

[Here is his beloved Trek, which he rode on this ride. I’m pretty sure my dad snapped this photo at the summit of Flagstaff, probably quite near where we had our picnic.]

On the way back down the mountain I let it all hang out—I’d mastered all the curves by bombing this descent several times a week—and halfway down I heard this incredible scream. I looked back, expecting that all was lost, but my dad was still upright, just behind me, looking totally unflustered. “Not to worry,” he said, “that sound is just my brake pads melting.” I don’t know where he found the nerve to fake it on a descent like that, other than being hell-bent on keeping up with his kid.

Another surprise from my dad came during the summer of ’94, when I took my new bride, along with my brother Bryan, on a bike ride up Mount Evans. We weren’t very well equipped for the harsh conditions up there, which would have become a big problem, except that Dad unexpectedly showed up in his car when we were about halfway up. He had a lot of warm clothing and a big thermos of hot cocoa.

[Here we are maybe halfway up, before the temperature dropped.]

I felt this outing had brought my dad and me closer together, and so, remembering that 22 years later, I invited him along as the “sag wagon” when I took my daughter on her first bike trip up Mount Evans in August of last year. He happily obliged, following along in his Toyota Scion, with his good friend J— [not shown since I don’t have her permission].

Dad made a picnic out of this outing, too, giving my exhausted daughter the most challenging sandwich of her young life: homemade bread, like particle board, spread thick with refried beans, ketchup, and—of course—mayonnaise.

But so much of the time during my childhood, my dad was immersed in his own thoughts. The childish ideas I tried to share just didn’t tend to grab him. He was a bit like the archetypal “absentminded professor,” often pondering a mathematical or scientific abstraction, or the workings of the natural world. I think everywhere he looked, he saw these intricate mechanisms that just begged to be studied and fathomed. I suspect his profound intellect could be isolating for him, too. A character in a Vladimir Nabokov novel wrote to his wife, “A genius needs to keep so much in store, and thus cannot offer you the whole of himself as I do.” Was my dad keeping something in store? Hard to say, but I did find it hard to compete with whatever good solid engineering problem had taken root in his brain. Where mechanisms, science, and engineering were concerned, my dad always knew where to start, and how to proceed ... humans were always a bit trickier, and relationships could end up being the problems left unsolved.

And so, with all this in mind, I’ve been gratified to see, over the last ten or twenty years, my dad expand his comfort zone and delve deeper into messy human stuff. I’m impressed by how social he became, how wide a circle of close, loving friends he had around him in his retirement. He developed a spiritual side completely at odds with the purely scientific approach he’d had as a younger man. He also described to me his (apparently willing) participation in activities I never dreamed he’d undertake: meditation, Buddhism, singing, even dancing. Dancing—man, I’d have loved to see that.

As I grieve, I have to remind myself that memory is fickle. When I look back on that high-speed bicycle descent of Flagstaff, and my dad glued to my wheel despite his brake pads melting, I recognize this alternate side of him. Even if he didn’t always nurture it, his capacity for reaching out and expanding that comfort zone seems to have been there all along.

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More Beer Pix - the H.B. Albert Memorial Beck’sts

Introduction

It was a little sad for me that, when researching my recent aquaculture post, I couldn’t consult my dad. It would have been a great conversation topic, and those weren’t always easy to come by. I say “weren’t” because my dad died last year. I’m now bumping into various anniversaries: of our last non-medical visit; of the unsuccessful surgery that was the beginning of the end; of the end itself; and, of the aftermath.

Now, I don’t cope with these anniversaries, nor did I cope with these events, by drinking beer. But, looking back, I can see the role that Beck’sting played in being supported through the gradual dénouement. Read on for some bittersweet memories, bitter beers, and fetching photos.

A note on the captions and other comments: throughout this post, I’ve included the initials of the Beck’ster and anybody who commented on his Beck’st. Where you see one letter only (e.g., “E—”) that’s somebody’s spouse, etc. And if you don’t know about Beck’sting, click here. For a follow-up gallery of Beck’sts click here.

Last time we hung out with Dad in a non-convalescent capacity– June 18, 2017

[All four brothers took the old man out for a Father’s Day dinner. We were together in Washington state for my nephew’s wedding. My dad, already in the throes of a losing battle with cancer, had made a heroic solo road trip—which we all knew would be his last—so he could attend.]

DA: This is a Boundary Bay Scotch Ale. You can tell H— is very impressed with my exquisite taste.

PCS: H— is looking dapper! Did you get him to drink a few brewskis?

DA: Very funny. I think he’s consumed a grand total of half a beer during his lifetime. He does look pretty baked in this photo, though. (Of course he’s not.)

BA: Well... it is a good picture of your Scotch Ale, Dana, but I’ve seen better of Dad! He was actually pretty chill for the time together, which was great.

Helping out post-surgery – September 6, 2017

PCS: Funkwerks Saison! Chillin’ with Dana....Gondo! [Gondo = Café Gondolier, a Boulder favorite.]

DA: Funkwerks Saison! Very good, out of Fort Collins. Chillin’ with Pete at the Gondo!

DW: I bet that Funkwerks is a hella lot better than the Mirror Pond that’s sitting in my fridge, which I have on good authority is meh.

JL: Gondo Bext! Double Gondo Bext! That’s got to be worth 50 points! Maybe more! How many plates of spag will Dana eat tonight? And why aren’t you there are on all you can eat night???? Or is Wednesday all you can eat night…? I thought it was Tuesday. What are you doing out there Dana????

DA: We missed spag spesh night by one night! So we had garlic twists, one plate of spag, and shared a pizza. Good times! I am in town helping my dad out after a major surgery. At least that’s my excuse. I am really here for the spag!

DA [later than evening]: This is one of my very favorite beers: the Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA. Isn’t it amazing that the Gondo, an iconic restaurant from our childhoods, is now serving us brilliant adult beverages?

JL: Yes, you are correct.

DW: Great Bex’ts. What’s on tap for tomorrow...some 180 mile mega ride with 22,000’ of climbing? After a few of those awesome looking beers and the twisted, elated, conspiring expressions you both have, I’m sure that’s what you were planning. On the other hand, did you guys put your phones down and talk to each other, or just kept checking your social media accounts with a nod, grunt or response that had nothing to do with the question asked from the other? Both are totally acceptable, BTW.

DA [the next day]: LOL. I meant to ignore Pete and Max by immersing myself in online dialogues but I don’t have enough virtual friends to make that work! We’re going to do some kind of mega-ride. I might go for some bonus miles by riding to Golden to meet Peter. Kind of depends on how comfortable the saddle is on my rental bike. I am kind of hurting this morning ... can’t tell if it’s the beer, the overeating, or the stress of being a ... CAREGIVER. (Say that reverently, with a pregnant pause for effect beforehand.)

Helping with skilled nursing facility, then hospice – October 17-26, 2018

DA: Maxin’ out with Bryan and Max at the Gondolier in Boulder. This is a Modus Hoperandi IPA from Ska Brewing in Durango. It’s 6.8 IBU and 88 IBUs but surprisingly smooth and darn good!

JL: Bryan looks angry for a guy with a nice looking full pint of beer in front of him — what did you say to him?? Or maybe he’s just hangry because they haven’t delivered the spag yet. And what brought you guys to Boulder? Weren’t you just there?

BA: Here’s the view from the other side of the table. The spag spesh is a nice reprieve from all the action here in Boulder.

DW: Dana looks equally angry. I hope you guys had more than one IPA.

DA: We are here visiting my dad who is very sick. As in very, very sick ... we are on the way back from the airport having just fetched Geoff [who flew in from Holland]. Sorry to be a downer.

JL: Oh man, I’m really sorry to hear this. There was a part of me that was wondering if something bad was up with your first email, but then I “perished the thought.” You and the brothers are there, and that’s good. My thoughts are with you guys.

DA: Thanks John. I thought about saying something earlier but I didn’t want to taint a perfectly good Beck’st. Things are headed pretty swiftly in the inevitable direction....

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DA: At Uncle Max’s pimpin’ new bachelor pad. Dan, note that even though the New Belgium Trippel specifically recommends stemware, I served these in a proper (and non-carcinogenic) pint glass.

DA (continued): Here’s another. New Belgium Trippel, Crystal Brewing Blood Orange Kolsch, Great Divide Colette.

JL: The perspective appears to be from someone who has already had a few too many… For me, I’m having this odd “IPL” [India Pale Lager] from Jack’s Abby. It’s “cleaner” than an IPA I would say. Slightly more refreshing, but still very flavorful. It might become my new favorite beer. Oh, and it’s in a can, which is my preferred container for beer in the summer/warmer months. Many breweries around here are putting more of their beers in cans. It’s “cool.”

October 27, 2017

[I sent this Beck’st just a few hours after my dad’s death, which is described here. I snapped this photo at the Dushanbe Teahouse, a restaurant my dad raved about but which we somehow never managed to visit together. It was weird to be dining in such a swanky place while our dad was laid out stiff somewhere, but I guess life goes on. As if to underscore this point, at the Teahouse we happened to run into the hospice nurse who’d been at our childhood home with us, and even in the room with us, when our father died. I didn’t feel like addressing these surreal feelings in my Beck’st—much less typing a lot with two thumbs during dinner—so I kept my Beck’st short and sweet.]

DA: A local beer from Avery Brewing Company, the White Rascal Belgian style white, at the Dushanbe Teahouse in Boulder. Delicious! I hired a model to pose in the background. Huh huh, no. That’s my niece R—.

PCS: That’s good times! Cheers to the memories.

BA: Good times indeed. As much as I’m relieved that the late night amateur nursing care, the [heinous] ostomy odors and the gut-wrenching pain of it all are (more or less) behind me, I’m really going to miss the rich, wonderful times with these brothers. I can’t imagine what it would be like going through something like this alone. We had some good Beck’sts, that’s for sure. The food at this tea house was really good, as was the tea I had. Who could have known?

Memorial trip – November 16-18, 2017

DA: This is a Mojo IPA from Boulder Brewing. Pretty yum! Note the reflection of my checkered napkin, and of course Evil Uncle Bryan in the background. We are in Boulder for my dad’s upcoming memorial.

BA: Too bad your phone has such a tiny lens with such a small aperture, otherwise you’d be able to blur out the background a bit better! Still, good times, all things considered.

DA: Actually, I was thinking the main flaw with this photo is that you’re so bald.

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DA: Liquid Mechanic Belgian IPA, post-memorial. [Pete gave me a lift to the memorial “after-party,” held at a friend’s house in a suburb outside Boulder, and when we drove by the Liquid Mechanic brewery Pete made an executive decision and swung into the parking lot. He’d wanted to try this place, and this seemed the perfect opportunity. The memorial had gone just fine, but so many complete strangers approached me afterward and talked my ear off—all on the subject of a dead man who’d been my father—I was feeling pretty damn overwhelmed. This glorious beer and a little peace and quiet were exactly what I needed.]

DW: You guys look quite dapper in your sports coats. That beer looks pretty darn tasty too. Sorry about your dad, Dana. I hope this bex’t will make you laugh a bit. This is my GWAR bex’t.

DW (continued): This is a Tropical and Juicy from The Hop Concepts in San Diego. This IPA blew me away. It was delicious and a total surprise. We stopped in Sacramento on our way down to Ventura for Thanksgiving. No shortage of breweries in Downtown Sac. We tried Fieldwork, but there was no room and not an ideal arrangement for two 15-year-olds. My kids were very hangry and not amused with my need to get to a brewery. “What’s wrong with Denny’s?” I think I heard. We walked over to something called “Burgers and Brew.” The name is a bit hokey, but it had good ratings and a great selection of craft beer. There was a huge line next to the restaurant with a lot of metal heads, hanging on from the 90’s. The reason? Next to Burgers and Brew was the night club “Ace of Spades” and that’s where GWAR was playing. One unfortunate thing about Bend (and most of Oregon, except PDX) is a lack of ethnic diversity. Hanging out in Sac for awhile was nice for that, and the cultural experience of metal heads was a whole new level of diversity that my kids were pretty blown away with. I played them a YT video of GWAR in all their glory.

DA: Wow, cool Beck’sts! I confess that a) I didn’t know Fieldwork had expanded from Berkeley to other locales like Sac, and b) I had to look up “GWAR.” I asked E— if she’d heard of GWAR and she replied, “I’ve heard of guar gum.” Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the crowd as much as the Tropical and Juicy IPA. I love the idea of ageing metal-heads (or “metallists” as we used to call them in high school). I have managed to turn [my daughter] A— on to Metallica. That’s not so hard though, since they’re tot’ly wicked. BTW, my brother Max made a new year’s resolution a few years back (one of many) which was “no more classic rock people.”

Follow-up Boulder trip, cleaning out Dad’s house – March 5-6, 2018

DA: Here’s another Boulder Beck’st with Uncle Peter, Uncle Bryan, and Evil Uncle Max. The beers in the glasses are a Belgian style from Upslope Brewing, a local place. Gorgeous beer. Note the pasta dough—fresh pasta is imminent and nothing goes better with beer except maybe friends and brothers. Fortunately we’ve hit the trifecta! Note also the also local (Denver) Great Divide Titan IPA, a solid choice. Good times!

JL: You guys are all looking good. Real good. However, that “pasta dough” as you call it looks more like an alien tumor. Yikes.

Road trip Beck’st – March 7, 2018

DA: Bryan and I are at the Nevada Hotel in Ely. Our room came with free breakfast at Denny’s and free Budweisers at the bar. I reckon these are about 8-oz. beers and maybe 3.2% ABV. They were slightly better than nothing and the company was top-notch.

JL: I must have missed something. Why are you in the middle of nowhere Nevada????

BA: ROAD TRIP! We were driving Dana’s new car to Cali. He inherited Dad’s Toyota Scion XB, in case you hadn’t heard… So we were havin’ a Bud. It was nothing special but I must confess, it was better than I thought it would be. (That was my first Bud ever.)

Real estate closure – March 10, 2018

DA: Here are Bryan and I celebrating the closing of a major real estate transaction: selling our father’s house. (I finished the paperwork during the Boulder trip but of course it wasn’t really done until the wire transfer came through.) This is at Fieldwork, which is not only the best brewery in NorCal but happens to be walking distance from my house. Bryan has a Belgian “table beer” of some kind and I have got a Radlands IPA. Both very tasty!

DA (continued): I’m not sure this is technically a selfie. We used the self-timer, which predates the selfie by many decades, innit? 

Life goes on – April 12, 2018

DA: I’m up to 174 pounds but the wife says I’m still too scrawny to cuddle, so here I am Beck’sting again. Solo-Beck’sting, no less, in clear violation of my only-drink-with-friends rule. E— put her foot down about that, on the grounds that the only way for me to fill back out after the all-too-effective South Beach Diet is thru regular consumption of beer. Hence the flurry of Beck’sts lately. Don’t worry, though: I can quit anytime I want. In the background there is my new car. Dad called it the Toaster (or “Towster” to be precise) but it’s my car now and I am calling it Boxtro. Bryan can provide the etymology. The beer is an East Brothers Pilsner. It’s okay—paying my rent at this coffee shop is all. They don’t serve Lagunitas IPA here anymore which is a bummer.

PCS: Beck’staholic!

BA: Boxtro was some kind of stuffed animal, though I’m not remembering too well just what kind of animal it was, a bear, I guess, but it seems it had smooth skin rather than hair or fur. I have a memory of someone squirting toothpaste on Boxtro’s head, which proved very difficult to remove. I’m not sure how the name came about. It was Max’s pet, was it not? The car’s looking good!

DA: Boxtro was a teddy bear, and you’re right, he had oddly smooth fur, like a bed sheet. You, Geoff, and Max were huddled around the bear, and I watched with fascination as one of you meticulously drew a figure-8 in Crest on the bear’s head. Max seemed oddly cool with this, perhaps because it was so gratifying to be participating in a group activity with his cool older brothers.

The car is just fine, but E— is begging me to get some hubcaps. Where the hell did Dad put them, after he had the rims spray-painted? I should have asked him when I had the chance…

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My Father’s Things ... Looking For a Home

Introduction

This post is about getting rid of my late father’s stuff. Not the valuable stuff, like his house and his car (which have new owners), but all the rest of the stuff that meant something to him, and possibly even to somebody else (given that there are over 7 billion people in this world).

You’ll get to see some of this stuff showcased below, in case you want any of it. But I’m also going to proselytize a bit about not accumulating stuff. You might find that amusing and/or a needed wake-up call.

A soldier’s things

There aren’t many activities sadder, I think, than going through a dead person’s stuff. The poor guy … his stuff outlasted him, and now he can’t use it anymore! In case the sorting activity itself isn’t enough to make you cry, it helps to get the Tom Waits song “A Soldier’s Things” in your head. Although I have just discovered there is some debate about the meaning of this song, I take it to be about a yard sale for all the stuff a soldier left behind when he didn’t make it home.

Some time ago I went through a similar process with the bike gear left behind by a friend of mine who drowned. That was almost unfathomably tragic but at least I had the satisfaction of finding good homes for the vast majority of the stuff. Many friends bought his old bike components (with the proceeds going to Mark’s widow) simply because they wanted something to remember him by. I myself am enjoying Mark’s old rollers, and I suspect I’m using them more than he even did.

But with my dad’s belongings … well, it’s all just such weird, arcane stuff. My dad realized well ahead of his death that he ought to do something with all of it, since it’s not really anything you could offer up at an estate sale. But by that time he was so old and sick, I found myself suggesting that he not spend his last months or years on this Earth getting rid of it all. I suppose it was reasonable advice but now I’m dealing with the aftermath.

A bit of advice

If you’re the hoarding sort, as I’ll confess to (somewhat) being, it sure doesn’t hurt to pair up with somebody with the opposite approach. My wife has a strong aversion to almost all physical objects. A running joke in my household is that I have to keep moving, or she’ll drag me out to the curb. As her most recent birthday was approaching, I suggested that I find some object in the house, gift-wrap it, and announce—as she opens it—that I’ll get rid of it before the end of the day.  She was delighted by the idea—and not just as a joke. She’d have actually been thrilled (though I couldn’t bring myself to actually do it).

But even if you aren’t lucky enough to be mated to an anti-hoarder, here’s a suggestion: as you approach retirement age (but while you’re still energetic and have your wits about you), go through all of your belongings and ask the following questions about each object:

• Is this making me happy?
• Is this making me money?
• Would my kid(s) want to inherit this?

If the answer to all three questions is any version of “no,” get rid of the object. If the answer to the third question is “yes,” ask yourself a follow-on question: would my kid(s) want this now? If so, offer it up. If your offer is declined, maybe you answered the question wrong (i.e., you should jettison the object).

My dad’s stuff … you want it?

Okay, let’s get into the stuff itself. Some of it my brothers and I are keeping, like an assortment of beautiful, expensive-looking prisms. (There are dozens of them, weirdly enough, so if you have a thing for prisms, let me know.) Obviously some stuff has sentimental value, like the homemade coat rack with our initials carved in the base, and thousands of photo slides, most of which nobody has ever laid eyes on before (since slide projectors take so long to load up). But the vast majority of the stuff had value only to him (and perhaps not even much value, as most of it spent the last few decades out in the garage or moldering away in boxes).

Exhibit A is his recumbent tricycle. Five of the six members of our family find the original, classic bicycle design to be a rare example of perfect functional elegance. The recumbent makes about as much sense as microwave popcorn (i.e., none at all). When I see a person riding a recumbent I feel terribly sorry for him. He looks like a tortoise flipped over on its back. Oh, these recumbent riders try to look like they’re enjoying themselves, but they’re not. There is actually no logical way to explain this recumbent-riding behavior except a nerdy person held prisoner by his own iconoclastic yearnings. When my dad purchased this tricycle, to replace the recumbent bicycle he never quite managed to learn to ride, I was dead set against the idea (but I kept my mouth shut … there’s simply no point arguing with an iconoclast). He never ended up riding it much because it hurt his neck.

But anyway, perhaps you’re a weirdo yourself and think a recumbent trike is a fine idea (the product does, after all exist), so here’s a movie showcasing it. I will confess that my narration of this video flies in the face of everything I’ve just typed.

And now, on to the telescopes. Why don’t I want these for myself, you ask? Well, the Bay Area isn’t exactly a great place for astronomy. If you want to see anything cool, you have to take a trip to the middle of nowhere. I’m a true family man, so I don’t fancy the idea of a solo astronomy expedition. And I can’t bring my family on such a trip, because I’m married to The Woman Who Ruined Astronomy.

Here’s what happened. Like twenty years ago, before we had kids, my wife and I did a mountain biking vacation in Moab, Utah. My dad drove down and met us. We were camping in Arches or Canyonlands, and the astronomy was superb. Thus, my dad—a fanatic stargazer—gave us a free (if unsolicited) astronomy lesson that lasted, it seemed, for at least a couple of hours. I have to confess, when I peer through the eyepiece of a telescope I seldom see anything interesting. Often I think I’m only seeing the reflection of my own eye. Sometimes there are little pinpricks of light. It all just seems so pointless and arbitrary. The constellations? I have no use for them. I can recognize Orion’s Belt, and the Big Dipper, but all the rest? Forget it. Anyway, at some point my wife heard a noise. We were at a totally deserted campsite pretty much in the middle nowhere, and that sound could have been anything. A wolf, a puma, maybe even a Sleestak! So my wife turned on a flashlight and shone it around. This, of course, spoiled everybody’s hard-won night vision. My dad snapped, “Thanks a lot. You just ruined astronomy.” I guess it didn’t occur to him that she valued her own safety more than the wonders of the celestial heavens. My dad’s utterance instantly became a classic quote, trotted out regularly to this day, pretty much whenever somebody notices the night sky.

I wish I could have seen my dad in his element, holding forth at a star party to people who actually cared about astronomy. Surely he was everybody’s hero in that exalted realm. His telescopes are amazing. One of them in particular seems to be a crazy hybrid of state-of-the-art commercial technology and his own carpentry. My dad actually worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, fixing this giant flaw that originally plagued it. He was the real deal when it came to aerospace and optical engineering. It’s really a crying shame that although my dad had four sons, not one of us appreciate astronomy enough to want this stuff, but that there’s what it is. Anyway, here are a couple of videos showcasing the amazing telescopes themselves along with the crazy menagerie of tripods that supported them. If you are serious about astronomy, give me a shout and claim one or more of these for yourself. (Note: if you’re thinking of using one of these to spy on your sexy neighbor, consider that you would probably end up getting a very good look at his or her pores.)

Now, scopes ain’t all that he had … all kinda crazy shit was in this baller’s pad. (I’m paraphrasing Ice-T because that’s what my dad would’ve wanted. No he wouldn’t.) He also had all manner of useful, high-tech instrument. Unfortunately I can’t identify much of anything. I know that he built a number of interferometers, unmatched perhaps by anything ever produced by anyone, but he apparently didn’t save any of those. Suffice to say, the instruments in his collection were all top-of-the-line, made in America because nobody else knew how to build this stuff. Check it out:

Hey, wait! The video did not capture everything. Here are yet more instruments:

Here is a close-up of the two grooviest instruments:

Wow, what a lot of cool stuff. Probably the Smithsonian museum would love this stuff. Or maybe the Antiques Roadshow would pay a mint. Or some mad scientist would give anything to get his or her hands on it (either to put it to good use, or to store it in his or her house for a decade or two). Anyway, it’s free to a good home.

And now for one more thing: the Hewlett Packard 85 computer. As described here, this bad boy cost $3,250 back in January of 1980, which equates to over $10,000 in today’s dollars.  It sported 8K of RAM. (To put that in perspective, a decent modern laptop has 1.5 million times as much memory.) The HP-85 was a good investment: my brother Bryan and I both learned how to program on that machine, and one of us makes his living writing code. (Hint: it’s not me.) Here’s a print ad for the HP-85, followed by a video:

Some years ago, my dad offered me the computer. I politely declined, because I just couldn’t imagine myself actually making the time to mess about with it, and my kids would be even less interested. So it would just sit around taking up space. Well, I should have accepted, because that would have made my dad happy, and now here I am storing the damn thing anyway. (In a storage locker, no less, because I couldn’t bring myself to take it to the Goodwill or a disposal center.)

So, if you want any of this stuff, let me know—and if you don’t, forward this post (via this link) to everybody you know, and hell, even a lot of people you don’t know, and have them all do the same. Threaten them with bad luck if they break the chain—whatever it takes to find the right home for all these things! You’d be doing me and my father’s memory a huge solid.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Mourning and the Digital Age

Introduction

This will necessarily be the soberest thing I’ve ever posted.

A good friend of mine died last Saturday, trying to rescue his six-year-old daughter after she’d been swept off the beach by a rogue wave.  Both father and daughter drowned.  This indescribably sad accident is not an appropriate topic for this blog, and yet I cannot fathom writing about anything else.  Nothing else seems to matter right now, and to write on a lighter topic would be to ignore my sadness.  It’s the elephant in the room I feel I should confront, so that maybe, eventually, I can go back to more quotidian topics.

So, I’ve decided to come at this thing sideways and examine the more general notion of how the digital age affects the grieving process.  I find I have a lot to say about that.

Getting the news

There’s no good way to receive such horrible news, but some ways are more awful than others.  I learned over the phone from a friend on my bike club, who’d been contacted by a journalist looking for background on our late friend.  At least when a friend breaks it to you, there’s a moment to brace yourself as he gasps or sobs, and he’s bound to treat the news with the delicacy it demands.  Contrast that to finding out via the Internet.  I ended up googling the story because I simply could not understand what I was hearing.  The words were probably strung together adequately, but what they communicated didn’t seem possible.

It’s really jarring, and tacky, to see clickbait alongside such a tragic news story.  “Suri Cruise Looks So Grown Up on Set of Katie Holmes’ TV Show,” and “[Shocking] Remove Your Eye Bags & Wrinkles In 1 Minute!” accompanied the online news of this drowning.  As a friend of the bereaved family, I’m struggling to hang on to my belief that life is still good and meaningful, and yet there’s all this added evidence to the contrary.  These news websites are complete strangers to tact and decorum.

Then there are the typical Internet trolls, like the self-righteous shit-for-brains who commented (inaccurately), “there had been warnings of adverse surf conditions ... these were no ‘rogue’ waves.”  There was no advisory that day, and this jerk wasn’t there, and why does he do this?  What kind of sad sack makes sport of casting judgment on victims of a terrible accident?  And right below this, another comment:  “my neighbor’s step-sister makes $75 an hour on the computer.  Visit the website [...].”

Social media

I went to a website designed to collect tributes to the victims, which is fine, but everywhere I looked were rows or columns of buttons to share these tributes (and photos, etc.) via Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, etc.  As somebody who avoids social media, I don’t like the idea that if I died, I might suddenly have representations of myself scattered across all of these platforms and I wouldn’t be around to protest.  This site also featured a “Donate” button to give money (presumably to the family).  Not all sorrow can be assuaged by money and I doubt this family did anything to set that up.  In the absence of a closely managed strategy—which I doubt any grieving family has the time or energy for—I could see a platform like this taking on a life of its own.

I did get some comfort from the tributes and shows of support on the website, but then I came to a post from someone who, by her own admission, didn’t even know the family but was nevertheless offering emotional support to my friend’s widow.  I found this jarring and a little chilling.  Perhaps I’m not the only one who did.  For whatever reason, the page has now been reconfigured to block anonymous readers, by requiring users to create a login.  I’m not quite ready to do that; after all, sites like this tend to overwhelm me pretty quickly.  The last thing I need is perpetual spam stemming from a glancing engagement with a web portal.

My point is, digital technology like clickbait, social media, likes, and links can creep up on us—or seem to fall suddenly out of the sky—without waiting for us to decide whether it’s good for us.  How many parents had the luxury of contemplating the influence of Facebook and Instagram on their teenagers, before those teens immersed themselves in this virtual world?  Who foretold this worldwide phenomenon?  (Answer:  nobody.  It wasn’t a phenomenon at first; it was just a technology.)  When it comes to grieving, how does the digital world fit in?  Would the healthiest thing be to close the laptop, power off the phone, and mourn in peace?

Who knows.  I do consider whether my personal inclination to opt out of social media is appropriate in this case.  After all, there are instances when it becomes antisocial to extend one’s neo-Luddite principles too far.  For example, for an adult in the corporate world not to have a cell phone is no longer tenable; we’re expected to be reachable.  And to not have e-mail in any industrialized society is nowadays absurd.  And so, when my bike club decided a tribute to our late teammate would be appropriate for our club’s Facebook page, and asked me to write it, I immediately stepped up.  It would be callous not to acknowledge the tragic death of our friend/teammate and his daughter, and I welcomed the chance to give this statement the thoughtfulness and delicacy it deserves.

Digital storage

Where the conveniences of digital life can become really wrenching is in the realm of digital caches and other storage.   On my smartphone right now, when I open Contacts, my dead friend’s name is right at the top on the “Frequently contacted” tab.  He’s also on the first page of my chat history (not deep correspondence, but just the most perfunctory logistical stuff like “Yo, I’m at Fieldwork”).  In the main phone app, there he is on the Recents tab.  In the Voicemail app, I still have a years-old message from him, when he called to see if I’d really been hauled away from Grizzly Peak Boulevard in an ambulance.  I originally kept the message as a handy way to remember exactly when that happened, but now I don’t want to delete the voicemail because it’s the only one from him that I have.  He’s all over my phone, like a ghost.

Of course most of these relics will be gradually pushed down the stack until they slip out of Recents altogether ... but that’s actually kind of disturbing too, like a bad omen.  Will my friend will be similarly pushed out of my memory by all the new stuff coming in?  (Of course not, but grieving isn’t a rational process.)  And what of my friend’s programmed entries in my contact list and phone book?  What about his presence in my archived message history, and that saved voice-mail?  I cannot bring myself to delete these.  How could I?   Sometimes humanity trumps efficiency—and perhaps it ought to.

My e-mail archive is another quandary.  I’ve got almost 700 messages from him I could sift through, looking for ways to jog my memory ... but is that healthy?  And that’s not even the entire trove; it’s only what’s stored in my current e-mail software.  I have some other virtual file cabinet I could probably delve into if I bothered to try.  At what point does this kind of sentimental, digitally assisted reminiscing shade toward the obsessive?  Obviously it would be weird and nutty to build a shrine for a departed friend, but that’s kind of what a digital archive is.  The difference is, the artifacts are enshrined automatically so we have access to them whether we’re pack rats or not.  Is it healthy to take advantage of this, or is it the emotional equivalent of picking a scab?

Browsing through old photos is even more captivating.  I hunted through my archive as part of the bike club tribute project, and was plunged ever deeper into memory, which naturally intensified the sense of loss.  How young we both look in that early photo!  (Subtext:  we go back so far, and now—nothing!)  Perhaps most bittersweet of all, for reasons I can’t quite grasp, is the last photo I have of my late friend, which is on my phone as well as my PC.  I distinctly remember him chiding me for my recklessness in riding past this bull to get the shot.

Maybe this photo makes me sad because it’s so recent, I didn’t even get the chance to e-mail it to him.

One of the hallmarks of our digital age is how we keep hopscotching from one brief thought to the next, based on this or that alert, picture, or other stimulus.  Such digital saturation is notorious for precluding careful contemplation.  Perhaps this is why I keep catching myself being self-indulgent—too wrapped up in my own grief to look at the bigger picture.  This family lost a father, a husband, a daughter, a sister, a brother, and a son.  I only lost a friend.  My grief is entwined with a more complicated feeling, something like guilt.

This feeling hit me like a hammer when, sitting at my desk and staring into space, I noticed my slide-show screen-saver start up.  It picks photos at random from my hard drive and displays them for 5 seconds apiece. At first the photos of my wife and kids, going back so many years, started to cheer me up—oh, remember when the girls were small, and wore dresses, and held hands?—and then I had this horrifying thought:  what if I had lost a daughter and a spouse?  Suddenly this slide show would be a torment.  Instead of showcasing family—the best part of life—it would highlight what has been taken away.  The entire photo archive, along with the e-mail archive and all those artifacts littering the smartphone, and so many posts and photos scattered across all those social media platforms ... all of these would intensify the grief.  What a torment.

I suppose I should try to coalesce these thoughts into some kind of pithy conclusion, but nothing is coming to me but the sense that it’s time to save this file and power down. 

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.