Goodbye, Friend

Sunset came on January 20, 2012 for my dear friend Charles Gentry. His obituary is here. On facebook there are scores of pictures and he's hugging someone in almost every one.

My thoughts on my friend:

Charles came into our lives as an exuberant participant in charity events, but I really got to know him when he needed a little help from his friends. After his brain injury he went through therapy and he lived in Tarrytown where only a few things were within walking distance for him. Somehow we fell into a habit of having lunch every month or so. He would bring along a notebook and write down things we talked about. He said his cognitive therapist recommended it as a way to work on memory and such. I know a lot of people were picking him up and taking him to appointments and exercise classes. My contribution to helping him through that time was small. But one thing that struck me is how he didn’t mind asking for help and he made you glad to give it, but he never felt sorry for himself or doubted that he would be able to return the favors one day.

One day we were going to lunch and he told me that he’d had all this time on his hands so he’d decided to clean out his closet and he had a lot of stuff to take to Top Drawer. (A thrift store supporting Project Transitions, a charity we both supported.) I volunteered to borrow my dad’s van and take his stuff to the store on our excursion and told him I thought I’d just bring my dad along for lunch, too. I remember how appreciative he was and how he made my dad feel his gratitude. (Dad also purloined a couple of things, including a large sack of bird seed.) I’m guessing Charles was planning a downsizing and a move to downtown even then. When we all moved to the 360, Charles and other friends and Forrest and I reveled in our ‘neighborhood’ and he never failed to exalt the glories of the downtown lifestyle when we’d go to lunch or we’d be at a party or even when we just randomly bumped into each other. He was living his dream and he always reminded me that we were, too.

We promised to take care of each other. When I found out what had happened to Charles, I initially felt I hadn't done my job. Then I realized that we really had taken care of each other. It’s sad that Charles’ journey went no further but I believe we all contributed to his life after his recovery -- because he let us in to do it. And he contributed to our community and took care of us, too; not least by making us see some true things about life and death.

I have been struck at how many people felt so close to Charles. We invited Charles to events, he and I had lunch dates and he threw parties and invited us. We weren’t the kind of friends who saw each other almost daily (and he had those). But everyone in his orbit has expressed how much they felt he cared for them. Because when we got together he gushed with enthusiasm that we’d met up and that he got to see us and that we were on this earth at the same time and the same place. Which is really what friendship is all about.

Art Critic

One of my joys in traveling is to visit museums. I enjoy the art, of course, but also the other people enjoying the art (or by turns being puzzled or even repulsed by it). When we were in NYC, FFP and I handed the camera back and forth and shot pictures while at MOMA. One thing I like about that museum is that except for some special exhibits you can take photos there. Here I think this viewer has unintentionally become part of the exhibiting of this Pollock.

Yesterday was my walkie/talkie (and lunch) with a dear friend. Given the searing temps in Austin we didn't go too far for lunch (Chez Nous on Neches) although that ten blocks or so was enough to feel a bit hot and sweaty. Afterward we decided to go to AMOA where an exhibit about memory has been mounted. FFP and I went to the opening but, honestly, it's hard to enjoy a show at the opening. After that we stopped at Arthouse at Jones Center where the New American Talent is up. My friend is a playwright and he is working on a play that involves the art world. We had a rambling discussion of what is and is not art, what is 'good' or 'bad' and so forth. That's a discussion that never ends, of course. One of the best things about museums and galleries and movies and plays and performances and reading and writing is the way we don't just consume it...we are all critics. Sure, we listen to the 'real' critics and, in the visual art world, are very influenced by them. My friends says that putting something in a gallery, putting a seven figure price on it attracts some people.

Personally I love learning what I like, what I love, what merely puzzles me. Given our discussion we pronounced on the art we saw yesterday. It was interesting how our opinions differed and how quickly they were formed.

Here's a photo I edited that FFP took at MOMA of a girl knelling before the art with a tattoo.

It's a Wonderful Life

Did I mention that I saw this radio play of "It's a Wonderful Life" over at the theater at Penn Field (Austin Playhouse King Stage) Saturday night? It is the story of George Bailey but done as if six actors were performing it as a radio play in the 1940's. They took on multiple characters (Mr. Potter is also one of George Bailey's kids, not to mention the head Angel, helping Clarence!) The cast did the sound effects like on old radio. Its run is finished now so this isn't a review. (In fact, it wasn't on my radar until one of the gals I was going out with on Saturday suggested it and found that they did have a few tickets for that performance.)

Anyway, I like that story because I'm rather fascinated by the way chance and actions conspire to make life what it is. The premise of "It's a Wonderful Life" is not that George Bailey has a great life. He really doesn't. His dreams were thwarted. (Oh, you might count the wife and kids in the drafty house as a great life, but that's you.) No, to me, the fascinating premise is that George gets to see the world with him erased, as if nothing changed except that one little thing never happened: the accident of his father's particular sperm and his mother's particular egg getting joined. He doesn't see the aftermath if he succeeds in jumping off the bridge and drowning. No. He gets to see the world truly without him.

Just as an aside, before I continue, there was an article in The New York Times this week about the movie and one man's experience with it. There is a funny bit in there theorizing that maybe life would have been more wonderful without George.

So. Have you ever thought about that? What if you hadn't been conceived? You weren't an aborted fetus or a baby or child killed in a tragic accident. You just were not there, never thought of, literally never conceived.

It does change things, doesn't it? Maybe my parents wouldn't have had a second child. If my sister was their only child, things would have been different all along the way. Maybe my mother would have gone back to school four or five years earlier when my sister started school instead of when I did. They could have given my sister more things and avoiding sending a second kid to college, gotten financially solvent sooner.

When my parents grew old, however, and their support system in North Texas was disappearing, they wouldn't have moved to Austin to be near the baby child and get some help from her. They might have moved to be near my sister in Colorado, but I doubt it. My sister had a cerebral aneurysm rupture in 1998. At that point I bet they would still have hoped that my brother-in-law would retire and he and my sister would move to Texas. My sister had a long recovery and many set-backs. She can do many things but she is handicapped by the hemorrhagic stroke and the other strokes that followed. The first time my parents visited her, in March 1999 in rehab in Denver, I took them there, worried about them being in the snow and ice. They might have tried to move there all the same. My sister had children and, starting in 2000, grandchildren there. My mother would still have had Multiple Myeloma, I suppose, and I suppose it would have been eventually diagnosed. Certainly she would probably still have died in 2002. Although one never knows.

So I see my Dad. Alone in that house in the Dallas suburb? Moved to Colorado where the thin air bothered his breathing after a few weeks? But, who knows, maybe better off. Maybe without the burden of another kid, my parents would be strong and vigorous and both still alive. Who's to say?

The other close to home thing is wondering what my husband of thirty-plus years would be doing. He says if he hadn't found me he would have never married. But I wonder. He might not have started his business less than a year after we married if he hadn't had a partner to pay bills. He might not have been there to take a call from a young man at UT selling gray market IBM PCs and do advertising for him as his business morphed into a build-to-order and sell direct PC firm. I'm betting that he wouldn't have bought a bigger house that same year he started the business. He might not have purchased a building to run his agency during the Dell era. The doctor who now owns that building and the house we bought that year would probably have put his practice some other place.

I wonder if the man who never met me because I didn't exist would have ended up in a condo downtown. My bet is that he would have married someone else who was smart and driven but wanted children and ended up in Tarrytown with some way too intelligent smart ass kids that he nevertheless loved unmercifully. Or maybe he would have left the company where we met, but not started an ad agency in Austin and, instead, moved to some other city. As an only child he would be looking back to Austin at his very elderly parents and trying to see that they were all right from a distance.

Then there are the jobs I had. I wouldn't have been there to write certain lines of code, to create certain bugs and avoid or fix others. I wouldn't have been there to think up software ideas or squash others' visions. It would have been different. Better? Worse? Barely noticeable? Hard to say.

I don't really think the world would be that different without me especially once you move out of a pretty tight circle around me. But little things would be different. There would be one less site on Holidailies. (Or more spookily someone else doing a site called Visible Woman! But that would be an entirely different site anyway.)

Well, um, that was an instructive line of thought. But since I do exist I have to clean the condo and go have lunch and dinner with friends who would be doing something else today. In fact, one of them would probably not live in Austin if we hadn't met forty years ago or so. So they'd be doing something someplace else. We are having lunch with Dad who wouldn't live in Austin. Whoa, it's just too weird.

Memory Fault

In the computer biz you can get a memory fault when some bad memory has an incorrect check digit which means some other bits that are on should be off or vice versa. I think anyway. I worked with computers (rather than using one as now) years ago. Well six years. And when I retired I'd gotten too far from things such as memory faults. Except for my own, of course.

Anyway, Jette gave us a Holidailies writing prompt for today and it is "Your most vivid memory from last year's holiday season." I remembered next to nothing about Christmas last year. So...I resorted to my blog to reset some check bits. I was being daily with the Holidailies last year so there were some of my memories there, forgotten by me. Actually it is more like getting an archive that was pushed off to tape than correcting memory, but that is old school. Disk space is SO cheap now. Whatever.

Last year I wasn't in a festive mood, I don't guess. I'm not one to decorate for Christmas anyway, and I hadn't done a thing. A friend of mine who has been going through an extreme health crisis since early spring 2006 wanted to come over and have a short visit and drink coffee and 'put together a jigsaw puzzle.' (Something my mom used to like to do and she'd join in on when she came over.) So...I cleaned out a storage area under the (one) staircase in our old house and pulled out Christmas stuff. Mostly I have bendable posable Christmas theme figures. (See above for my favorites, Jack Skellington from "Nightmare Before Christmas.") I scrambled around, decorating the big meda room in our old house. For the last time as it turns out. I found a pretty simple 500-piece jigsaw with a Christmas theme and made a place to work on it. My friend came over and we put together a lot of it, sipped coffee and talked about old times until she was tired.

If I could remember things, this would be my most vivid holiday memory from last season. My friend is doing some better these days. She had a checkup over the week of Thanksgiving and I have to find out about that. This year, the condo is devoid of decoration, save a small pile of holiday cards we've already received. But there is still time. Also, if I could remember things, I would have finished this post and got it recorded on Holidailies yesterday when I started it. Visiting with three elderly relatives and my dad made me forgetful. So I guess my perfect holiday attendance is already spoiled although I know there are some rules rattling around the venerable Holidailies allowing 'catch ups' as long as they are some hours apart.

Rules

Yesterday on the tennis court one of my companions was wearing a T-Shirt that said 'Bahrain.' My other companion (there were only three of us at that moment although someone came along later to play true doubles with us) asked "Have you been to Bahrain?" I answered for her: "She has rules. In bed every night by 8:30 and she'd never wear a T-Shirt if she hadn't been there." She agreed that those were indeed rules of hers. As we continued playing I was thinking that I had that rule about T-Shirts, too. But I was puzzling over something, some rule I had, that someone had found very amusing. Ah, yes, the postcard thing.

I always tried to only send postcards that showed things I actually saw, preferably from an angle at which I observed them and in the right weather and season. I know. Silly rule. And not always possible if you want to actually buy and send a postcard. Nevertheless. My friend Maggie of Cape Town took me in 1997 to Addo Elephant Park. We stayed in the park in a fenced area with a little shop, a restaurant, a bird hide and a swimming pool. We went on day and night trail rides and saw elephants, antelopes and eland, took a swim in the pool, saw beautiful little red birds (Cape Bishops) in the hide. In the gift shop, my friend Maggie picked up a postcard that was one of those collages of the sights of the place. She checked them off with her index finger...the Cape Bishop, the elephant, the swimming pool, etc. "You can buy this," she said. "You've seen them all!" I did. My friend Maggie, rest her soul, had a good sense of humor and of my rules.

The postcard here breaks my rule in many ways. It's just an image stolen from ebay long ago however. It's Houston, a long time ago with a blimp flying over. Weird, huh? But I wasn't going to send the image to someone with a 'wish you were here' greeting. If I'd wanted to do that (for Houston?) I would have wanted the picture to look like, you know, where I was! I can't remember the last time I was in Houston although I've been to Katy a couple of times in the last year or so. I used to go on a pretty regular basis when I worked and FFP and I have enjoyed some fun times there doing museums and restaurants and some performances.

Shapes

I'm sure I have something to say today. Or yesterday. As I type this it is exactly midnight. I was so weary earlier in the day. I just wanted to sleep and I had all these things that I should have been doing. I haven't slept a lot the last couple of nights. The picture is a reflection portrait of a very good friend who doesn't like to have her picture taken.

A cup of coffee and a party for someone who reached the age of 90 revived me and now I'll stay up too late once again. Life is funny, huh? I should go to sleep now.

The Perils of Blogging

There are two levels of reality normally. What is happening. And the retelling of what has happened. This photo shows my friend Pete telling my friend Rachel some tale. Meanwhile Rachel's husband, my buddy Louis, studies the menu for the dinner last night at the Long Center Opening Gala.

Louis sat on my right last night. FFP on my left. FFP wandered the room ("working it" he calls it) or engaged the dinner companions to his left. Louis and I had several conversations. In one he was explaining the research he was doing on a book he is writing and how quickly he'd found an expert and relevant materials through the Internet. (The topic was soldiers returning from World War I, I believe.) I started to tell a story to segue off that and I started having the feeling I'd told it to Louis before. Which may be true. But this much I realized for sure: I wrote about it here. And Louis reads the blog. (Yes, he's one of the four or five of you. Say 'hi' to Louis.) Anyway, I suddenly realized I blogged about it (a third reality) and that I was boring myself and Louis, too. And it was taking a lot of effort to tell my now boring tale because the room (giant tent actually) was so loud.

Yeah. When you blog it gives you more opportunities to repeat your boring self.

Creating Buzz for Buddies

I'm in New York and I thought I would do what my buddy Rob did and take pictures of his book in bookstores. FFP and I went to our favorite store (Crawford Doyle). The clerk (who I think was the owner) fumbled around when I ask for "Schuyler's Monster" without spelling it. After mentioning Robert Rummel-Hudson he found it in the computer and was apologetic about it not being in stock.

We happened to be at the Borders in Time Warner center and I used their customer info booth to look for the book. Imagine my disappointment when the computer said it was 'on the way.' They said it was, however, available at the Park Avenue store.

Hmm. I was sure I'd see the book and maybe at a store that wasn't one Rob visited. Too bad.

Don't Encourage Her

My friend the playwright treated me to lunch yesterday (we take turns) and while we discussed his upcoming reading and Frontera Fest entry he somehow managed to encourage my shop window reflections. He went so far as to say I should have a show. Ha. Well, I have the artist's statement after all. So you have my friend the playwright to blame for this 2005 example. I tried to remember where I was when I took this and I finally did but only by consulting old journals I have online where I used a similar but even tighter crop and showed the picture before.

I don't think I'll be inviting you readers to a show of my photos any time soon. But you may be subjected to more of them in this space.

Meanwhile I am still blowing my nose and such but somehow I feel I've turned a corner in fighting this allergy or whatever it is. I hope so because I'm going to try to exercise, make a meeting and accomplish some things in the great downsizing of 2007 and 2008. Or maybe I will just enjoy feeling better and sit here and drink coffee until time for the meeting. There is a danger in feeling better. You might just revel in it unproductively.

Which of Me?

Which one do you want?

The so-so daughter making an not-so-early welfare call to her dad because she slept late? (I offered to do for him as he wasn't feeling great but he had gotten his paper in, was skipping church and 'has everything he needs' according to him.) ??

The friend who agreed to skip going to the gym and go to brunch and give advice on maneuvering toward sanity in the workplace and realizing your creative goals even though she has almost forgotten how to do the former and is not so good at the latter?

The spouse who makes the bed; folds the laundry you so kindly sorted, washed and dried; picks up on your sudden burst of cleaning and discarding and helps get some few cubic feet discarded including going through the dreaded coffee/tea/spice/flour/sugar cabinet?

Yeah, I'm all those people today.

Took this picture of myself using the shop window at Uncommon Objects as a lens last Thursday. I call this 'Many Mes.' Ha.

Today was one of those days when I was probably going to have a little trouble motivating myself. So it was a day when it helps to be pulled into someone else's needs, or intellectual discussion or coffee cup sorting.

Choosing

Here I am yesterday at a friend's house for an old school party where people sang, accompanied by a piano. My young friend Kevin Ahart is posing with me. He does tunes like Frank Sinatra would do if he were in his twenties and not gone from this mortal coil for almost a decade. I thought I should choose this picture today because it took FFP three times to keep me from closing my eyes! Kevin is ready for the paparazzi and looked perfect in every shot.

This is the thirtieth day of Holidailies and I have only two more posts to go for a perfect record, posting every day. Which is no great feat for me because I am after all retired and often displacing from other things that I should be doing.

The writing prompt for the day is to write about your favorite Holidailies post (yours or someone else's). That's pretty daunting because of course I would choose someone else's but I barely scratched the surface reading other people's posts. I did read the ones chosen by the panel as 'best of' the portal. And I looked at the portal and wandered by random places. I found one contributor, Melanie, who was especially funny and made good use of the medium by showing a bunch of funny reject Christmas card designs. I like her sentiment when showing the world her real card, though: "Merry Christmas, Internet. I love you like a sister, or maybe a really pervy uncle."

I also found this gal funny, especially this entry which was admittedly, one of only a few I actually read.

Yeah, because it's hard to write and read on the Internet when you have new Christmas books, a pile of newspapers and, you know, other duties. Like holiday drinking and taking your dad on banking excursions and visiting with people who are only here this time of year and all. Also I had to put all the Christmas cards I received in a data base so I would know that I got 110 cards and 39 had family photos. Because I know what is important, right?

Hmmm...I never had trouble making an entry every day because I apparently don't need writing prompts or anything. I will just type and say nothing. I'm signing off and going to the gym and then I'm eating a huge brunch with friends without apology. Well...I know I'll eat the brunch. We'll see about the gym.

Where Is My Head?

The reflection is a cow girl shop on Second Street. My head? Well, the cycling tooth pain and mouth problems continue. Right this second, barely there. From Tuesday night until I went to sleep last night? Yeah, that hurt. But. I talked to friends and a couple are so much worse off than I am that it made me feel like a wimp. So I buzzed around doing a few things yesterday, but not enough . A good workout, catching up with friends, organizing financial stuff and I tossed a cubic foot of old boxes with software manuals and disks inside. One said 'for Windows 3.1 and 98.' Yep. Much downsizing to go, I'd say.

Where Will You Lie in State?

For most of us the answer is a funeral home somewhere with people filing into one or two stuffy rooms. Recent icons who passed away in Austin such as former Governor Ann Richards and former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson were in state in public buildings (the Capitol Rotunda and the LBJ Presidential Library respectively). When our friend (and seemingly everyone else's in Austin) Karen Kuykendall died last week, I could not imagine how any funeral home could accommodate a visitation before the funeral mass . I needn't have worried. The historic Paramount Theatre opened its doors to welcome hundreds of people to scatter rose petals around her coffin and view many large photos of her family and her theatrical exploits. FFP and I stayed a while, greeting family and friends. We bought ourselves a drink. ("Of course there was a bar. Karen wouldn't have had it any other way.") People exchanged stories of Mrs. K. There were laughs and tears. As we left, more people streamed in to pay their respects. Some people were clear on when they met her and why. FFP and I couldn't remember not knowing her. As I said here a couple of days ago, she will be missed by much of Austin.

Goodbye, Friend

Karen Koock Kuykendall, 1937-2007. This is a picture I shot of a picture that hangs in her home, a souvenir of her young self in an Austin theater production. You can see a picture of her here on Austin Daily Photo, taken in September as she greeted hundreds of well wishers at Green Pastures even as she battled the cancer that would take her life last night.

I loved seeing Karen perform. (She even gave us a song at that event in September.) But, even more, I loved having a drink with her or getting a coveted invitation to a salon-style brunch or dinner or cocktail party at her house. Last summer, she graciously helped us host an intimate dinner at her big, gracious dining table to help raise money for the new Ballet Austin home. She was a longtime, hard-working board member for Ballet Austin in addition to being a stalwart supporter of Zach Scott Theatre, which is planning to name a new stage for her in their new building.

There is a hole in the heart of Austin today.

Goodbye, Friend

There weren't as many social opportunities online in 1995. But there were some. Like-minded people had been getting together in Usenet Groups for over a decade, bonding over similar technical and non-technical interests. I would scan a group called rec.travel.europe. The name meant it was a 'fun' or 'recreational' topic and not a technical one about the Internet itself or Usenet and such and about travel and, more specifically, in Europe. In July of 1995 I was giving advice on Berlin, where I'd just been, on the thread. Thanks to Google collecting archives I can still find the message I read in the summer of '95. The message was from a woman who'd traveled alone in Europe, something I'd done a bit of and something I might do again. FFP didn't travel too far then, because more than four or five days away from his one-man business didn't work well. I went places without him, for business and pleasure, or maybe had female traveling companions. So I thought it would be interesting to talk to someone else who traveled alone and was close to my age.

So I wrote a reply. Not to the thread but to the author: magie@iafrica.com. I didn't realize when I did that she wasn't living in the states. Just didn't notice the e-mail address, I guess. But she wrote back and said she lived in the Cape Province of South Africa and was a Scot who had emigrated to Canada in her teens, met a South African, moved there, raised two boys and divorced after over thirty years of marriage. And we began to exchange long e-mails about our travels. I had just made a trip to Berlin where Christo and Jeanne-Claude had wrapped the Reichstag. I probably sent her a journal from the trip. She managed to send me a journal from her '92 trip that inspired her Usenet posting. In November '95 she was off to Kuala Lumpar and gave me a detailed account of the trip. We began exchanging mundane details of our lives: friends, neighbors, outings, charities, work, family. She told me all about the Fish Hoek Surf Lifesaving Club where she volunteered training kids to become beach lifeguards and about her work with a handicapped workshop.

Margaret began to mail me postcards of the Cape with brief notes designed to entice me to come for a visit. At some point we decided that I would visit, in January/February 1997.

I went to Toronto on business in June '96. At some point Margaret had mentioned that her twin sister lived there. She insisted I contact her and meet her. And I did. After a meal and sharing some wine and a tour around where she worked, she said, "Margaret and I are nothing alike; but you two will get along well, too." Indeed, the non-identical twin sisters were very different, in appearance and personality, but both lovely, fun, warm women.

So, I traveled thousands of miles in January 1997 to arrive at the Cape Town airport and meet a woman I'd never met face-to-face. Three weeks later I had met so many of her friends that it just seemed right to have a 'going away' party to say goodbye. The above picture was taken at that party. (This trip deserves being blogged some day.)

In the spring/summer of 1997, Mags was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery and treatment. But she mustered her strength and came to the U.S. in 1998, visiting Austin and other places with us and with other friends. (This elaborate travel itinerary deserves a blog of its own as well and maybe, one day, will get it.)

In 1999, a couple of my girlfriends and I went to London and Scotland. We met up with Mags and a friend of hers from the Cape in Edinburgh (they were attending the rugby world cup and visiting with Mags' relatives and friends in her hometown) and we met her younger brother and many friends of hers.

Mags would suffer a relapse of the cancer again in 2001, but would still manage a visit to her sister (now living in New York State) for the holidays. A friend and I flew to New York City on New Year's Day, 2002, to meet up with her and visit a few days with her on her way home.

In 2004, Mags' son was living in Dublin and she was planning a trip to Edinburgh with a side trip to visit him. She suggested I meet her there so we could be tourists while he was at work. Then he decided to move to Namibia. Undaunted, she rented an apartment at Trinity College and we still met there for a visit. One morning she woke with a swollen eye. We wouldn't know it for over a year but this was another tumor announcing itself.

In 2005, I once again flew to the Cape and visited Mags and other folks who felt like old and dear friends after meeting them in '97 and hearing about them for years in e-mail. Mags didn't feel well and when her eye became swollen again she asked me to take a picture of it and print it on her computer so she could take it to the doctor in case it had gone down when she visited him for an appointment that was scheduled after I would leave.

Finally the doctors decided a tumor was causing the eye swelling and gradually Mags became unsteady and had trouble seeing. She moved to a retirement home from her apartment but had her computer there and through March of this year was writing me with some of her usual wit and vigor. Then I had to rely on her son typing for her or reports from others. In one of the last messages she typed from the retirement home, in March, she said:

Yesterday afternoon I went with the singing group to Frail Care and then to the Alzheimer’s unit. They sing all the old songs like Hokey-Pokey. Some actually know the words while others clap their hands to the music, while others manage to sleep right through it. Fun though and I am sure they all enjoy it. I met up with an old friend, Joey Swanson, in the Alzheimer’s unit and she said “oh are you down here now?” Sometimes feel maybe I should be. Occasionally, I don’t know whether I am Arthur or Martha

You were neither Arthur nor Martha, my friend. You were a special one. Margaret, Maggie, Mags, whatever we called you, you were one of a kind. And you brought so many people together all over the world. Margaret's son, in reporting her death through her e-mail account said it best: "I miss her so much already." I will also miss all the friends I made through her because she stitched us together, communicating with us all and telling my tales to them and vice versa. I fear that I'll lose track of Babs, Gary, Jim, David, Rusty, Don, Dorothy, Dawn, Colleen, Sue, Brian, Buntu, two Andrews, Beatrice, Bryan, Patricia, Francois, Nick, Penny, Vaughn, Ralph, June, Ann, Paul, another Ann, Tom and many others. It was fun meeting all those folks and more. But Mags brought them to life with her e-mailed stories, too. And no one could do it like she did it.