There are some ugly rumors going around about my reasons for leaving Skidmore and taking a new position at Amherst, and enough is enough. I’d like to state for the record that the fact that there’s a Trader Joes in Amherst MA had no impact on my decision to move to the region.

(but I’m pretty damned psyched about it)

😉

In a sad and odd bit of synchronicity, Grannie, my last remaining grandparent, passed away around the same time I was driving out of Saratoga Springs last week. She was in her 80’s and had been increasingly ill over the last several months, so this was not really unexpected, but we were all hoping she might rally. It’s pretty scary to see how quickly things can go south in the elderly – I used to joke about Grannie being built like a tank, and it was only a few months ago that she and I drove down to New York together. She was in great shape at the time, still completely on top of her game mentally and no signs of infirmity physically – in fact she spent a week in august with my mother during that trip working on an elaborate backyard garden they were giving to my sister as a wedding gift. Given how badly things can go towards the end of life (Grannies’ mother, for example, spent somewhere around 10 years institutionalized with alzheimer’s) I think Grannies’ passing came pretty close to the best that one could hope for compared to the horrors one can end up with, and I’m glad for her in that regard.

Grannie was my first child care after my sister and I emerged from the hazy wilds of Canada and my mother’s stewardship, and she had a profound impact on my early upbringing. She was a pretty strict task master and didn’t have much patience for my nonsense, but she was not an unkind woman and she had a great sense of humor and liked to laugh. I can’t recall her ever having to physically correct me, despite her being from a generation where that was common. With Grannie it was the sharp tongue and an assurance that my folks would hear about whatever I’d done (and given that my dad had few compunctions about physical correction back then, this was something to be concerned about ;-).

She loved to garden and each of her houses (3 of which I can remember fairly clearly and 1 I’m a little hazy on) were surrounded by elaborate and carefully tended gardens, including her last house. When I was a kid monkeying in and about those gardens was cause for trouble and so of course it was something I liked to do, little imp that I was.

Grannie was equally interested in interior decorating and she spent tons of time on projects. If I had to characterize her tastes I think (not being a student of design, mind you) that I’d say Quaker was her cup of tea – she favored somewhat austere, uncluttered rooms and simple furniture.

Grannie was an avid reader and I discovered to my pleasant surprise that we shared some common tastes – she read a lot of history and was also fond of some of the historical fiction I also enjoy and we had read quite a bit of the same stuff. She was also pretty interested in politics and spent a lot of her time watching cspan. She was a liberal and had nothing good to say about the Bush regime.

My grandfather died while I was in High School and Grannie spent roughly 20 years as a widow. My uncle John lived with her for a good bit of that time, both while she was still on Long Island and then after she moved upstate to be close to my Aunt Melissa’s family. For a lot of those years she took care of children, both the various progeny of her extended family, and (I’m pretty sure) kids she took care of just because she enjoyed children (and possibly for the income too, I’m not really sure about that). While I lament the fact that my grandfather passed relatively early compared to Grannie, I also think it was one of the cooler aspects of her life – she basically got to be her own gal and pursue her interests for 20 years of her life. Not many of us can say that, and if she missed Arthur in the beginning, certainly by the time I got out of college she seemed to be enjoying herself.

One of the coolest things about moving to Saratoga Springs a couple of years ago was reconnecting with family I hadn’t seen much (if anything) of in years. I’m not much of a socializer so it wasn’t like I spent a ton of time hanging around with Grannie, but I did get to go on a couple of long car rides to NY with her, including one where it was just the two of us and she related a bunch of stories from her early life at my prodding. This was stuff I had never known and I’m glad now that I got to spend that time with her before she passed.

One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life was during the funeral of my Grandfather Fisher shortly after I graduated from college. I was the only young male in that branch of the family (my mother’s family had only girls, and they in turn had only girls aside from me) and so it passed to me to stand with my Grandmother when they closed the casket. To say she was distraught is to do the word a disservice – my Grandmother Fisher had known my Grandfather since she was in elementary school, and they had been married for over 50 years. She did not want them to close the casket and she was close to losing it, and I sat there trying to think how to help her walk away from that. What I ended up saying was that as hard as it was to accept it, he really wasn’t gone, that Dick lived on in our memories and in the stories we’d tell of him and the smile and impish sense of humor that we’d remember. I don’t flatter myself so much to think that what I was saying to her at the time was what helped her turn her back on his remains – if anything it had more to do with a soothing voice and an offer of comfort – but I’m not a religious guy and I really do believe that, and I’ve tried ever since to make sure I try and honor that by telling my favorite stories to people I know of the loved ones and friends I’ve lost over the years. This post is my first pass on doing that now for Grannie. I have a few others socked away that I’ll relate on here as time passes.

I’m ashamed to observe that I have no pictures of Grannie in my gallery – I actually did have quite a few, but they were all from a visit Lisa, Samantha and I made to Long Island some years ago when Grannie happened to be there visiting my mom, and I ditched the Lisa galleries some time after we split up. The Grannie pictures went with them. I’ll dig through my archives and get some posted over the next few days.

Just a brief post here to announce I’m back, settled somewhat comfortably in my turn of the century farmhouse in western MA, with internet access and having started the new job. So far all is well, mostly fantastic in fact. Almost all my stuff is still packed up, and I have no furniture to speak of yet beyond my computer desks and a futon mattress I bought when I got here, but I’m really happy to have elbow room again and Soolin loves the endless acres of farmland back behind our house. I’ll begin posting again regularly over the next several days. In the meantime, there’s the first photo of the new place.

As of about noon today, I’ll be offline for roughly a week – no internet access from (either) home, no computer access, no nothing. The move is in its last phase and I’m headed off to MA tomorrow morning to get myself moved into my new place in Hadley. I got a ramshackle old 3 bedroom farmhouse less than 5 miles from work, thank god for a little elbow room after a year and a half in my cottage. Anyway, I think I’ve responded to all outstanding emails – if I missed yours, apologies, I promise to reply as soon as I’m back on the net.

The server will not be going down as Andrew has graciously agreed to let it live on his network until I can get things up and running in MA. Please be kind to the machine until it’s back on my own network, especially in the evening hours when Andrew is likely to be playing Battlefield 2 and not too happy to have his latency increase – stay out of the image gallery unless you absolutely must, and if you must, do so during the day.

If you need to get ahold of me, use the cell phone number found from the contact links above.

So I’m in the midst of moving. I went with a pod this time. So far so good, I’ll post more as soon as the process is finished. But the reason I’m posting is this site may come and go over the next several days and at some point between now and March 1 it may go away for several days or possibly even a week or more. Much depends on Charter internet service in MA – we’ll see how quickly they turn around my order for service, and whether they block port 80.

The webcams will be down as well, yes, even the working one, as of tomorrow morning when I bring down my media server.

The one downside to using pods is I will lose access to my stuff for about a week. Good thing I got some practice keeping myself entertained with the recent power outage – soon enough I’ll have no access to any of my toys and be stuck sitting around a barren cottage. I’d go hiking but the weather’s looking to be pretty cold so I doubt that’s on the agenda. We’ll see how it goes. For now you can expect infrequent to nonexistent updates here until after the first, barring some alternative arrangements (like parking my server in Andrew’s basement for a couple of weeks).

So we had a minor natural disaster – 70+mph winds came blowing through and knocked out power in the region. Figures Saratoga Springs and Greenfield Center suffered the worst damage in the entire region. Parts of Saratoga had no power for three days and I lost it from Friday morning through late Saturday night. So what’s an internet geek to do in such a case? Well…

• Read a novel. Actually, 1.5 novels. I started Kim Robinson’s ‘Red Mars,’ then decided it was not to my taste 1/3 of the way through, and switched to Octavia Butler’s The Fledgling. Given that the only candles I had in the house were tea lights, and they were scattered everywhere around my living room, I figured a vampire story was appropriate. It was a decent book too.
• Lacking any news at all for more than 24 hours, start to imagine that you’re having a repeat of the widespread power outage from several years ago.
• Curse the lack of gasoline in your car and your inability to acquire more.
• Realize you should have withdrawn some cash from the bank since you have no way of getting any more. Vow to always keep $200 in cash hidden in the house from now on.
• Curse well water, pumps, and the lack of flushing toilets or water of any kind. But especially the toilets.
• Daydream about the hot shower you so badly want.
• Muse in wonder at just how quickly the fabric of modern society crumbles with the lack of power.
• Lay around on your couch thankful that you have a gas heater that’s still working.

Now here’s something pretty unique – Prospero is a sort of peer to peer banking system. You create an account and then can either choose to lend others money by bidding on their requests for loans, or you can borrow money. To help spread the risk of users defaulting on loans you can also band together in consortia to help spread the financial risk across your membership. Consortias also help build a credit history for your members which increases your chances of succesfully getting other users business. This is pretty cool stuff. I’m immediately sure that this will be ripe for abuse in the same way that paypal and ebay have been, but despite this I’m sufficiently interested in trying it that I’ll risk some money on the concept. Anyone interested in joining together in a consortium to spread the risk? We could each put up $100 and see how it goes. Who knows, we could be the next Bank of America. Post in the comments if you want in.

[via Futurismic]

As a brief aside, whoever’s in charge of Prospero’s website has done a fantastic job – clear, helpful infographics and a nice clean style.