Fingerprints

I woke up thinking of Dougri this morning.

I think of Dougri every Sunday morning, because I remember the day many, many years ago when he suggested that I check out CBS' Sunday morning magazine show, Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood as host.  I did and found I liked it an I have been watching it every week ever since.

His name was Doug Blanchard, I believe, and he lived in Rhode Island.  I think I must have met him on CompuServe, because I'm sure he pre-dated Facebook.  We used to have regular on-line chats and, in fact, he was the first person with whom I had a face to face chat when I got a camera for my computer.

We talked about all sorts of things. I think he was an artist of some sort and he loved riding around Providence with the video camera he bought from Mattel for about $10.  Didn't take very good pictures, but he had great fun with it. He loved telling me about the "treasures" he found at garage sales and thrift stores.

There were many problems in his life and he suffered from depression.  I think he was also diagnosed with cancer but it was still a shock when I had an email from a mutual friend saying that he had taken his own life.

Whenever I think of Doug, I think of the people who became a big part of my on-line life that most people don't know anything about because my whole "relationship," as it were, is on this screen and their screen. People whom I only know because of their fingerprints on their own computers translating into words on my screen. But they were a big part of my life for awhile and suddenly they disappear.

I'll never know what happen to Bob Mitchell from Compuserve, whose wife called his internet friends "imaginary friends."  I did meet him once, when he was in Los Angeles (we visited Marilyn Monroe's grave together, with a friend who drove us to the cemetery), but mostly he was an internet friend who just disappeared *poof* one day.  I don't know if he's alive or dead.

But certainly under the "fingerprints" in my life would be Jim Lawrence, of JimsJournal, one of the oldest journals on the internet (he and Steve are both in the internet history for how early they started keeping a journal).

Jim was a great guy who often commented on Funny the World entries and held my feet to the fire when I didn't quite get it right.

In fact, I think he started reading Funny the World when I was attending Weight Watchers and told me I had inspired him to get in shape.   He and I were the same age and it always shakes me up when someone my age, especially someone as physically fit as Jim was, dies suddenly.

He wrote of his family (his son was a chef and I often drooled over stories of family pizza parties).  I enjoyed hearing stories of his grandchildren and imagine that he was a great grandpa.  He took wonderful photos around Rhode Island (yes, he lived in Rhode Island too)

He also was very athletic.  He and his daughter, Gillian (with whom I am now Facebook friends, though it's not the same) often ran marathons together.  Their last race was a Triathlon, and during the swimming portion of the race, he had what turned out to be a fatal heart attack. 

There were a lot of people around the internet who mourned Jim's loss, so much so that Gillian kept his journal page up and I go to it occasionally, knowing there is nothing new, but just...you know...remembering.

Harriet called herself "l'empress" and seemed to follow me around the internet.  She didn't read Funny the World, but read the mirror blog, Airy Persiflage on Blogger.  She frequently made pointed, often acerbic comments.

But she seemed to be everywhere.  Shortly after I joined Facebook, she was there.  I used to visit the now defunct question site, That's My Answer, to answer to questions that were posed that day.  Suddenly Harriet was there too, and one of the most faithful question answerers.

There was great sadness in Harriet's life, about which she left hints, but was always circumspect.  In fact in the last days of her life, before she was hospitalized, she knew she was dying and still didn't mention it.  It was left to her daughters to let us know first, that she was in the hospital, then that she was getting worse, and finally that she had died.

It wasn't until after her death, while following the Facebook pages of both of her daughters that I could sort of piece together many things and make sense of some of the things she always wrote about.

"Sil in Corea," as she always signed her messages, was the person I probably knew the least, but someone who was a frequent poster to my guest book and a woman who seemed like a very interesting person.

I mentioned her death in Funny the World, when I learned of it, and my friend Ron commented, "Like you, I'd never met her. But that didn't diminish the love and affection I had for her. I was so drawn to her gentleness and compassion. I, too, will miss her greatly."

We read each other's posts and interacted on Facebook for many years.  I think she was a Quaker. She was in her 80s, and had lived in South Korea for many years, working at a welfare center.  I just remember that she seemed a gentle soul who shared all of my passions for social justice.  I miss her pointed comments.  I wonder what she would have to say about this crazy election cycle.

For that matter, I'd like to hear what Harriet had to say about it too!

It's amazing that these people--and the ones who, like Bob Mitchell and Olivia Partridge, just disappeared and I don't have a clue what became of them--had, in their time a big impact on my life and I miss them all.

But I will be forever grateful to Dougri for getting me started with Sunday Morning, which is how I start every Sunday these days.  And I always think of him.

What do YOU do?

I am very bad person.

While I enjoy getting e-mailed things that let me know that someone I care about is thinking about me and sharing something funny or something sweet they have come across, I just hate it when I hear from someone from whom I have not heard in 30 years, who found my e-mail address somewhere and sends me some special prayer to say or quotation to read, or wish to make and then pass it along to 12 of my best friends within the next 5 minutes so that my life can be enriched.

If I did that and passed things along to 12 of my best friends, I wouldn't have any friends any more.

The worst are the ones that tell you that you'll "laugh your head off" at what happens when you forward the message, entice you into forwarding the damn thing. (Do you laugh your head off when nothing happens when you forward the message? Because nothing ever does.)

One I received recently said that every time the message was forwarded a flag or something was added. Well, I was 99% sure that didn't happen, but just to see if maybe someone had developed some sort of embedded program that would let that happen, I forwarded it to myself. And, as I knew it wouldn't, no new flag was added to the message.

These damn things aren't as dangerous as the Nigerian potentates (or whatever is the country du jour) who want to share great wealth with us because we are persons of such high moral character, or obscure lotteries that we don't remember entering which we have apparently won (I can't believe people are still falling for that stuff), but my god are they annoying.

The most annoying is that they usually come from people who are relatively new to the internet and are just discovering these things and don't realize that they have been around since God created the internet.

But the problem is -- what do you do with them? They always ask you to share the messages with X number of your friends, including them so that they can know that you feel the same way about them.

What I usually do is just send it back to the sender. I never include a note because, well, the person I last saw 30+ years ago never sent ME a note either except this special message I was asked to forward.

But I always feel bad about it because (a) I actually wouldn't mind reconnecting with this old friend, but I know I won't hear a single personal message from her (it's usually a woman, of course) and (b) I know this was sent in good faith and I don't want to make the sender feel uncomfortable. So...how do YOU handle the situation? And do you feel guilty about it?

And finally....if you are thinking about sharing your secret for eternal life, great fortune, other good luck or anything else with me, please don't. Please, please don't. I love you--but I just hate getting these chain letters. Send me something to "make my day," but don't ask me to share it with anybody else. Let's just let it be our own special little thing between you and me, OK? Oh--and if you haven't seen me in 30 years, send a personal note along with it too.

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There was another shocker that Steve Schalchlin let drop without realizing it: Adele Liotta has died.

I didn't really know Adele, but she was one of my Facebook friends. I didn't even know how she got to be a FB friend until Steve wrote about her death and another of our mutual internet friends commented on it. We were all part of the large Schalchlin circle.

But mostly I knew Adele as my Facebook Scrabble buddy (Joan is my Pixie Pit Scrabble buddy). Adele and I played Scrabble back and forth ever since Facebook brought it back a few months ago. I don't even remember if I won more games or if she won more games, but I enjoyed playing with her.

I went to her Facebook page and read her last status entry, which was chilling. It was written on April 20 and said simply, "sick .. food poisoning, I think." The next post on her wall was written the following day by someone who wrote "Oh Mammadele. There are no words" and there follow a long stream of messages of love for Adele and condolences. She was just 60 years old.

This makes 3 of my internet friends (that I know of) who have died -- Denver Doug, Dougri and now Adele. People I felt I knew on some level, but never met face to face. People who were part of my circle of internet life.

Steve wrote an excellent entry about the death of Adele and the death of Dougri and how the internet is changing our idea of friendship and relationships. And what happens when someone dies?

Most people who hopped on the information superhighway when the pavement was barely dry weren't old farts. Even I was only a mere child of not yet 50 when I got my first modem and joined a local Bulletinboard.

So we don't have a lot of old timers (by which I mean old in age, not only in internet years) and this whole business of losing people who have been in our lives daily, but whom we have never met, is something completely new. We haven't quite figured out how to deal with it.

Sadly, I suspect that this is going to be something that is going to evolve over time as, inevitably, we all start dying off. Already my group of Women from CompuServe has made sure that we all have each other's contact information so that if we disappear, we know how to check on each other. Walt knows what to do if something happens to me, and I'm sure people will, like Adele's friends, post messages on my wall to inform others on Facebook.

But this is where the internet is going to break new grounds in the area of grief. We don't have any societal examples for how to grieve together for someone we've never met...but feel strongly about.

The closest was when Steve & Jimmy's good friend Dickie was dying. We all loved Dickie but we were literally scattered around the world. He had helped so many people and some had actually met him (I was fortunate to be one of those people). While he was dying, we had what amounted to an on-line death watch followed by an on-line wake as we all shared Dickie stories and sat at our respective computers crying.

We as human beings have a need to come together in grief. It's why we hold funerals. The Internet is going to have to figure out how to do that because as us old farts start dying off, the need is going to be there more and more often.