Debbie N.

11:16 pm: Emma
Okay, I'm no good at posting here.

But I know a lot of you are thinking about Emma along with me, so you'll want to know this:

"Emma's CT and PET scans on Tuesday show incredibly good progress against the stinking tumor. The doctor said, 'This was the best news I had all day!' (And then she said, 'It's probably even better news for you!')"

This is after round 2 of chemo (5 rounds are scheduled in all). After the first round, the tumor had shrunk by measurement, but not especially by eye. So this is excellent news indeed!

I spent the weekend in Seattle with the family. Emma is feeling very well and is in very good spirits. Her family is getting into the rhythm of having someone on chemo, and everyone is doing reasonably well. They are all loved, cared for, and taken care of (and they are all loving and caring, too). Being there was marvelous for me.

The metaphor I've been using (even truer with today's news) is that it feels like being on a very beautiful bridge over a nasty and treacherous river. The bridge feels sound, but we all know it can collapse at any moment.

It's a long haul to a certificate of health--in some senses, a lifelong haul. But it might just keep getting better from here. The odds favor that outcome, and we're all pulling for it.

09:40 am: Want to help a writer out?
A good friend of mine in Berkeley (CA) who is not part of these social circles, needs someone to help her navigate MySpace and Facebook to promote her new novel. She's willing to pay for a couple of hours of coaching.

If interested, let me know at kith at spicejar dot org.

(Real content coming soon. I promise.)

04:13 pm: Politics, for once
I promised myself I would post this if it wasn't anywhere on my f-list after I reloaded.

According to People for the American Way, John McCain just said, with his mouth, about the habeas corpus decision:

"The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."

Constitution, anyone?

12:38 pm: Emma's family has put up a CaringBridge site for her (I've seen these before, and they work very well). Yesterday, the site's journal had an entry about the parakeets, Nippy and Tzippy.

I find the birds to be the best way to give someone an idea of Cathy (my sister-in-law and Emma's mom).

When I was growing up, we had a parakeet, Blueboy. He lived in a cage. He was fed and his cage was cleaned, but most of the time he was ignored, except in the brief periods when I tried to teach him to talk, until my attention span wandered elsewhere and I followed it. Eventually, he died.

Until Cathy got parakeets, I had no idea that they could fly free around the house. Nippy and Tzippy's cage is opened in the morning and they spend their days on the supports for the window blinds, chirping cheerfully. They stay together most of the time, but every few hours, one of them will, for no discernible reason, fly rapidly to another blind support. The other almost invariably follows virtually instantly, leading to a wild rustle of wings and much more intense chirping.

abostick59 hates this; it startles and upsets him every time. I, on the other hand, adore it. The birds, like the grapevines which twine around the windows so that in season you can reach out and pick grapes fresh for eating from the couch or your chair, bring the outdoors into the house. They remind me that the house is part of the bigger world, all of a piece with Cathy's love for natural-style gardening, composting in place, and letting things grow where they want to.

It always amazes me that the birds don't leave droppings all over the house, and that they return voluntarily to their cage at night, where they are shut in until the next morning.

Nippy and Tzippy will be living with friends while Emma goes through treatment; wild parakeets are not part of the immune-safe environment that a Hodgkins chemo patient needs. I'll miss them when I go visit, and at the same time, they're part of that house for me and that won't change

(I need an "Emma" icon. I'll remedy that soon.)

Meanwhile, thanks to everyone who sent great stories and ideas! I'm putting some in place and archiving the thread for future uses.

12:36 am: Coping with Family News (Which Could Be Much Worse); Looking for Advice
So WisCon was wonderful, and difficult, and I was one of the first people to get sick. I never checked my email after Saturday night until I got home Tuesday night.

Scanning my inbox I saw something from my brother that said "Emma health." Emma is my 15-year-old niece, and she's been somewhat unwell since January, originally diagnosed as anemia and mono. She's also been living in Sweden (her family is in Seattle).

With a sinking feeling, I clicked the message. "We brought Emma home from Sweden yesterday. She had surgery today for lymphoma." My heart sank; it sinks again, writing this down.

There is good news. The lymphoma is almost certainly Hodgkins, and Hodgkins is 90-95% curable (yes, curable, not put into remission). Cure rates invariably go up when you factor in good medical care and aware patients and families. She will almost certainly be fine, after a miserable several months to a year.

The medical team needs a full pathology and some more tests before they can map out the precise treatment strategy.

I am heartbroken that I missed the news for three days, although there isn't much I could have done. I reached my brother today (and spoke to Emma herself for a minute too). He said, "Don't come now." I will go see her, but at her and her family's convenience, not mine. If it were for my convenience, I would be there now.

I want three things from all of you.

First, please don't comment with sympathy, empathy, or condolence. I know you feel that way and I appreciate it, but (and this is just me), I find those kinds of comments difficult to read. If you're someone I see, we'll likely be talking about this at some point, at which point sympathy is fine.

Second, if you know good lymphoma outcome stories, please share them with me. kshandra, I think I might be looking at you and gridlore on this one, but my memory isn't specific enough.

Third, if you have strategies that have worked (or strategies that might work) to provide support to a sick teenager and a sick teenager's family on a regular basis, please suggest. Emma is an astonishingly well-balanced young woman: school smart and athletic and good people skills and conventionally pretty and witty and artistic/crafty and none of those to a virtuoso degree. She's very low-energy now, and I imagine she will be for a lot of the near future. Her parents are doers more than readers, though they both read. Her 10-year-old brother is into baseball, soccer, chess, and sports computer games. They all bicycle.

I want to find something that will be regular, predictable, and increase the smile quotient.

07:16 am: Rory Root, 1958-2008


Rory died Monday and the flood of obituaries is stunning. Everyone in the comics biz has something nice to say about him. Sweet mentions of him are turning up in unexpected (and expected) places on my friends list. (kimberly_a is missing him badly; sabyl turns out to have met him through alanbostick and me, and remembers him fondly; alibi_shop was a customer). Why should I write a remembrance in the midst of this flood? Heck, Neil Gaiman was among the first.

But I knew Rory differently from most folks who are writing about him. Most people knew him as a bookseller. They were his customers, his signing guests, his staff. I knew him more as a book buyer. He was our customer at Other Change of Hobbit, and over the years he bought a lot more from us than I bought from him (though he always knew which graphic novels suited my fussy taste, and he delighted in finding them for me). He had a broad and deep knowledge of science fiction and fantasy, and read almost as widely in our field as in his own. Other Change (with which I'm no longer formally associated) had the latest deLint novel on hold for him when he died.

I also knew him as a friend. He was open in a way that made most people into friends; I expect he shared his love life issues, bookstore woes, and health concerns with a great many people, and I'm glad to have been one of them. (For a while he was dating--seriously--a woman named Tree, which led to some great jokes.) He was not resigned to being single, but he usually took it in good part. I'm glad he shared with me some of the times when he wasn't cheerful about it.

He was also a social friend. We played many evenings of nickel-dime-quarter poker, at my kitchen table or his, playing games like night baseball, and anaconda--but we also taught him Texas holdem and Omaha-8. Even though Comic Relief is always open on New Year's Day, Rory would come--late--to our annual open house. This year on New Year's Day, we discovered a mutual passion for The Wire; the last correspondence I had with him was him making sure that I saw some extra material from that show, and pointing at the best articles he knew on the topic.

The great booksellers all have one driving force in common: sharing their enthusiasm. Googling Rory's name and reading anything anyone has written will confirm that he was a great bookseller. His enthusiasm was completely genuine--childlike. He loved this stuff, he wanted to share his love with you, he wanted you to see what he cared about. When he was buying books, he wanted my enthusiasm--he wanted to read anything that made my face light up, just because it did. He was a terrific networker with the Berkeley businesses, because he wasn't only enthusiastic about his stock, he was enthusiastic about his store, and he wanted it to do well exactly the same way he wanted Bone to do well. It was never about the money (except when it was about the lack of money), it was about getting the work into the hands of people who would love it.

I haven't seen him but three or four times a year since I stopped hanging out regularly at Other Change. I miss him more than it seems like I should for that much contact. And I keep wondering: why didn't I say these things to his face when he was alive? He knew I liked him ... but I could have shared my enthusiasm for him with him a lot more.

05:20 pm: Emergency Email Diversion!
If you are trying to reach me, and kith@spicejar.org is bouncing, please send email to debbie.notkin@gmail.com . I hope to have this fixed in a few hours, but the three days before WisCon are the last time I would have liked this.

11:08 am: Two Random Things Make a Post
It's a long time since I've had to make a real sacrifice to the travel gods, but I'm still grumpy about this one. I packed all of my favorite jewelry for alanbostick's and my trip to London: a favorite Laurie Edison, two named elisem necklaces, an heirloom piece from Alan's grandmother with genuine North African trade beads, and a gift from wordweaverlynn. When they weren't in the suitcase in England, I assumed that my memory of packing them was wrong, and they would be in a pile in my house, but no. I assume someone in the airport or the hotel lifted them, and I sure hope it was someone who enjoys them. I miss them.

Yesterday I was out and about in San Francisco and I happened to see two different city cleaning crews. One was stopping at bus stops, emptying the garbage cans and washing the plexiglass windows on the bus shelters. The other was cleaning one of the historic street cars. I don't often think about the people who clean the city, so it was great to see how they worked and to get to thank at least one member of each crew.

07:28 am: Tiptree Award and Honor List Announced
Sarah Hall has won this year's Tiptree Award for The Carhullan Army (American title: Daughters of the North) The British edition was published in 2007 by Faber & Faber; the American edition in 2008 by HarperCollins.

The Tiptree Award will be celebrated on May 25, 2008 at WisCon 32 in Madison, Wisconsin. The winner of the Tiptree Award receives $1000 in prize money, an original artwork created specifically for the winning novel or story, and (as always) chocolate.

Each year, a panel of five jurors selects the Tiptree Award winners and compiles an Honor List of other works that they find interesting, relevant to the award, and worthy of note. The 2007 jurors were Charlie Anders (aka charliegrrrl), Gwenda Bond (chair), Meghan McCarron, Geoff Ryman, and Sheree Renee Thomas.

About The Carhullan Army, Gwenda Bond said, “Hall does so many things well in this book – writing female aggression in a believable way, dealing with real bodies in a way that makes sense, and getting right to the heart of the contradictions that violence brings out in people, but particularly in women in ways we still don't see explored that often. I found the writing entrancing and exactly what it needed to be for the story; lean, but well-turned.” Geoff Ryman said, “It faces up to our current grim future (something too few SF novels have done) and seems to go harder and darker into war, violence, and revolution.” Meghan McCarron said, “I found the book to be subtle and ambiguous in terms of its portrayal of the Army, and its utopia….The book became, ultimately, an examination of what it means to attain physical, violent power as defined by a male-dominated world. And it asserted that it could be claimed by anyone, regardless of physical sex, provided they were willing to pay the price.”

The book, which is Hall’s third novel, also won the 2007 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for the best work of literature (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama) from Britain or the Commonwealth written by an author of 35 or under.

The Tiptree Award Honor List is a strong part of the award’s identity and is used by many readers as a recommended reading list for the rest of the year. The 2007 Honor List is:

"Dangerous Space" by Kelley Eskridge, in the author’s collection Dangerous Space (Aqueduct Press, 2007)
Water Logic by Laurie J. Marks (Small Beer Press, 2007)
Empress of Mijak and The Riven Kingdom by Karen Miller (HarperCollins, Australia, 2007)
The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu (Hyperion, 2007)
Interfictions, edited by Delia Sherman (cordsher) and Theodora Goss (Interstitial Arts Foundation/Small Beer Press, 2007)
Glasshouse by Charles Stross (lj user=autopope) (Ace, 2006)
The Margarets by Sheri S. Tepper (Harper Collins 2007)
Y: The Last Man, written by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Pia Guerra (available in 60 issues or 10 volumes from DC/Vertigo Comics, 2002-2008)
Flora Segunda by Ysabeau Wilce (Harcourt, 2007)

The James Tiptree Jr. Award is presented annually to a work or works that explore and expand gender roles in science fiction and fantasy. The award seeks out work that is thought-provoking, imaginative, and perhaps even infuriating. The Tiptree Award is intended to reward those women and men who are bold enough to contemplate shifts and changes in gender roles, a fundamental aspect of any society.

The James Tiptree Jr. Award was created in 1991 to honor Alice Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. By her choice of a masculine pen name, Sheldon helped break down the imaginary barrier between “women’s writing” and “men’s writing.” Her insightful short stories were notable for their thoughtful examination of the roles of men and women in our society.

Since its inception, the Tiptree Award has been an award with an attitude. As a political statement, as a means of involving people at the grassroots level, as an excuse to eat cookies, and as an attempt to strike the proper ironic note, the award has been financed through bake sales held at science fiction conventions across the United States, as well as in England and Australia. Fundraising efforts have included auctions conducted by stand-up comic and award-winning writer Ellen Klages (klages), the sale of t-shirts and aprons created by collage artist and silk screener Freddie Baer, and the publication of four anthologies of award winners and honor-listed stories. Three of the anthologies are in print and available from Tachyon Publications (www.tachyonpublications.com). The award has also published two cookbooks featuring recipes and anecdotes by science fiction writers and fans, available through www.tiptree.org.

In addition to presenting the Tiptree Award annually, the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council occasionally presents the Fairy Godmother Award, a special award in honor of Angela Carter. Described as a “mini, mini, mini, mini MacArthur award,” the Fairy Godmother Award strikes without warning, providing a financial boost to a deserving writer in need of assistance to continue creating material that matches the goals of the Tiptree Award.

Reading for the 2008 Tiptree Award will soon begin, with jurors K. Tempest Bradford, Gavin Grant (chair), Leslie Howle, Roz Kaveney, and Catherynne M. Valente. As always, the Tiptree Award invites all to recommend works for the award. Please submit recommendations via the Tiptree Award website.

FFor more information on the Tiptree Award or this press release, contact Pat Murphy at jaxxx@well.com or write to the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council at 680 66th St., Oakland, CA 94609.

04:00 pm: Doing Things Together
A couple of weeks ago, alanbostick and I undertook a major--turned out to take all Saturday and a good chunk of Sunday--cooking project (demiglace, for those of you who care). It was a fair amount of work, a good deal of fun, and very successful. Success, in this case, means converting ten pounds of chicken backs and necks, two bottles of wine, and assorted other ingredients into six small containers of concentrated goodness.

And it got me to thinking how much I value the various kinds of doing things together: hanging out together and doing separate things, like I do regularly with light_of_summer; getting together to chip in and get one person's project done, like helping someone pack or move; group efforts like WisCon or the Tiptree Award; and joint projects the way alanbostick and I tend to do them, with a designated "lead" who orchestrates, or the way Body Impolitic works, with roughly equal input and one person has final say. I can (and do) enjoy all of these variations, and probably others I haven't thought of.

At the same time, the Platonic ideal of doing things together, for me, is something I haven't had for a long time: the unorchestrated collaboration, where we both (or however many) know what has to be done next, can see who's free to pick that next step up, and the whole project just moves smoothly to completion. We can be talking about completely irrelevant things and break in mid-word to ask a quick project-related question or make a next-step point, then slide just as comfortably back into the conversation at hand. Companionable silence is a big factor in doing things together, and is especially delightful when I'm in rhythm with the other person. I've mostly experienced this in the kitchen, though it can also happen when cleaning ... or doing just about anything else.

Anybody know what I'm talking about?

10:31 am: Publishing Craziness, Next Installment
I have a real post in mind, honest. But meanwhile I had to share this.

"The author doesn't want to get permission for this long quote. She says she's gotten permission before to use it in her classroom, but she thinks they would charge to use it in a book."

So she should just use it without permission? Fortunately, I get to be the one who says, "You can't do that."

07:23 am: On 50 Years
I'm not much for the LJ birthday wishes thing; I don't post them, and I don't make my birthday public either. When I see someone's name come up, if I feel really close to them, I send a birthday email.

But today is stonebender's 50th, and that seems like a day to mark.

Guy and I have been friends for over 20 years now and chosen family for over 15 of those years; he was a regular customer when I was running a science fiction bookstore, and we would get to talking. After a while, we got to meeting outside the store to talk, and after I left the bookstore, when I was freelancing and had flexible time, we would hang out once a week or so. Now I work 9-5, we hang out a lot less frequently, and I miss it.

Guy is a truly remarkable person. Not content with being smart, interesting, well-versed in politics, pop culture, and science fiction (to name three), he is also compassionate, insightful, respectful, considerate, observant, and unbelievably patient. (I keep adding adjectives.) Even more remarkable, he's all of those things when life is being particularly hard on him, not just in the day to day.

He's good company when you're in a good mood or a rotten one. He's opinionated without being judgmental, and he knows the difference between an informed opinion and an impulsive reaction. He treats the people in his life well (and how many of us can say that?). He's also at least as stubborn as a mule, and unreasonably prejudiced against certain yummy foods. And he's a spicy food wimp.

Guy, you enrich my life. You've taught me a lot, and we've had a lot of good times. I look forward to more time with you. Happy birthday!

09:27 pm: Book Unchallenge
I don't set myself goals or quotas on books read. At the same time, I enjoy the entries people post on what they've recently read, and I can use some encouragement to read more and write more about books. I hope to do an entry like this one roughly once a month.

I picked up two very different books in a free box, when I was getting rid of lots more than two books.

Maggie-Now by Betty Smith is a book I read in honor of my deep affection for the same author's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I did read it all the way through, and it has some of the same qualities, but it's nowhere near as good, partly because most of the characters are impossible to like or care about and the others are too saintly for my taste. I'd have been better off reading Tree for the 95th time.

After the Stroke is one of May Sarton's many books of memoirs. An odd place to start, since it is (especially at the beginning) such an unhappy book. Nonetheless, her poetic voice makes even her most hopeless moments sing, and I found myself fascinated both by her life and by how she looks at her life. I'll be picking up more of her memoirs.

Then there are the books I bought:

The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice is Catherynne M. Valente (yuki_onna)'s sequel to The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden, perhaps the two richest and most amazing fantasy novels I have ever encountered. Valente throws away ideas by the dozen that other writers would mine singly for entire novels. badgerbag is (literally) deconstructing these books in detail on the Feminist SF Wiki. I love them and will reread them.

I didn't buy Homicide: Life on the Streets; I mooched it. This is David Simon's recounting of the year he spent as a reporter shadowing members of the Baltimore City Homicide Unit. It spawned the TV show of the same name, and Simon's writing for that is what made my current obsession, The Wire possible. This is not a book for the faint of heart, as Simon does not pull punches about what homicide detectives see and contend with. At the same time, it's beautifully written, compassionate, wry, funny, and just detached enough. It added significantly to my creator-crush on Simon, which was already pretty strong.

Wild Girls is Pat Murphy's first foray into young adult fiction. I liked it but didn't love it: I've been finding most YA a little too predictable and scripted for my taste. Pat can write, however, and I never wanted to put the book down. Perhaps the best thing about it is the tips for becoming a writer, which seem almost to be the "purpose" of the book.

Dark Reflections is the first Samuel R. Delany novel in a long time, and it's an odd one. It's the story of Arnold Hawley, a fictional black gay poet, roughly Delany's age, and it's told backwards: the book consists of three novellas, starting with the one that happens last in the character's life. It's Delany, ergo, it's brilliant. The first section didn't feel like Delany prose to me: more like somebody who had read Delany and was trying to put a little of that flavor into his/her own prose; the other two have the more familiar rhythm. If you've read his memoir, The Motion of Light in Water, you might (as I did), be reminded of the recurring "A black man/A gay man/A writer." This book explores those three themes as they might be played out in a character with a very different history than Delany's own. Superb, as expected.

Finally, I picked up Rachel Manija Brown (rachelmanija)'s All the Fishes Came Home to Roost after I read her completely brilliant LJ series on PTSD. (The link is to Part III, with links to the two previous sections at the top of the post.) I was knocked out by her writing, and after reading this extremely singular memoir, I'm still knocked out by her writing. Brown (as she was named as a child) was the only white child in the Meher Baba ashram in Ahmednegar, India, surrounded by varyingly crazy, mostly Western, adult followers of Baba, and going to school in an intensely abusive all-Indian Catholic school (called "Holy Wounds"). Not unlike David Simon, Brown manages to be wry, funny, and devastatingly honest, mostly in turn but sometimes all at once. And also like Simon, she maintains just enough detachment to make the book both readable and illuminating, instead of an intolerable tour through her own private hell.

09:11 am: Just One (U.S.) Election Comment
Reading my friends' list this morning, I see multiple repetitions of the "white men won't vote for Clinton or Obama" trope. Because it's my friends list, the people who are commenting on it are repeating it with the purpose of Viewing It with Alarm.

I'm beginning to wonder if the nefarious plan (seriously) is to repeat this often and loudly enough in enough venues to make it true--to make white men feel like they're being some kind of traitor to their kind if they vote for someone "who doesn't look like them." From here in, my plan is to disagree clearly with it every time I see it or hear it, saying basically, "White men are smarter and more diverse than this oversimplification makes them out to be."

Is it true? I hope so. Is it more useful than its opposite? I sure think so.

08:14 am: A Visit from a Dead Friend
Last night's dream is for elisem, but the rest of you can read it if you feel so inclined.

( Mike comes for a visit )

10:17 am: The Kindness of Strangers
Last night, alanbostick and I were on a crowded Muni bus out into the Haight, to a book group meeting. We were standing in the aisle, and I noticed that a man standing near us was being protective of a woman I couldn't see, who was standing somewhat behind him.

He got her a seat and eventually Alan and I sat down at an angle from her. She started to talk, and it turned out that she and her husband are from Tracy, which is probably something like 100 miles away from San Francisco, a small town that has become a bedroom town. They were trying to get to the hospital where their 19-year-old, two-month-pregnant daughter had been rushed from Tracy the previous night, because of a mass in her brain. It was 6:15 in the evening and they had been traveling since 7 a.m.; Amtrak had turned them away because the husband forgot his ID (and might be a terrorist) and they'd had to go back to Tracy from Stockton to get the ID, and take a later train.

Once in San Francisco, they'd found unhelpful policemen who didn't know the bus system (and didn't care to find someone who did) and a rude bus driver. I should have been more careful looking at the paperwork she had with her, because it transpires that the daughter was in UCSF Medical Center (at the top of Parnassus Hill) and they were headed for Mt. Zion, just past Japantown. They had no money, just a brown bag of sandwiches she had made before they headed out that morning. Their plan was to sleep the night in the hospital.

My heart completely went out to them. I wanted to get off the bus with them and shepherd them where they needed to go (and in retrospect, I should have). Instead, I just gave them my phone number and said "Call if you need anything. Really."

The man asked Alan if their having my phone number was okay with him, which first astonished me and then made me realize that we were coming from very different sets of assumptions.

I thought I would never hear any more of the story, but she has called me twice this morning. They're going back to Tracy with their daughter today, and coming back here for surgery in ten days or so. When they're released from the hospital today, I'm going to go buy them all some lunch and meet them at the Amtrak bus with food and sustenance (and maybe some extra money wrapped up with the food).

They have a long row ahead of them; they'll hoe it, you can tell. They'll take the buses they need to take and make the sandwiches they need to make. They'll see their daughter through whatever is ahead of her.

And I'll bring them a few sandwiches to help them on their way.

I find it ironic that if they'd been treated well by cops and bus drivers, in my city which I like to think of as a friendly city, I probably would never have made the offer.

09:54 am: Things No One Needs
I'm on the email list of an internet kitchen products store; I've bought some good things for them over the years at reasonable prices. Today, they are having a thirty products sale that lasts three hours.

Some of the choices:

A smoothie maker which is apparently a separate countertop item from a blender. If that doesn't appeal, they also have a 1-gallon "margarita/smoothie processor"
An egg and muffin toaster which poaches or boils an egg for you while it makes your toast;
A stovetop popcorn popper, which apparently has advantages over the pan-with-a-lid method that alanbostick and I use all the time;
A paper towel holder with a "spring-loaded knob that allows you to stop the roll and easily tear off just one sheet at a time" (on sale for only $30)
And my favorite: a single serving cereal dispenser.

Now, really, folks!

10:16 am: It's Always More Complicated
An early morning thought, sparked by a couple of conversations unrelated in time, space, and context:

You can never "keep things simple," because "things" (for the definition of "things" that means relationships or daily life) are not simple. The most you can do is try to simplify enough to get a handle on whatever is going on, without simplifying so much that you lose crucial pieces.

09:05 am: My Kind of Meme
I've done memes like this before, and this is a good time for me to do one again. I got this one from prock. Like him, I modified it a little.

Leave a comment here and I will:

1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc. {this one will be hard for me, but I'll try)
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask either something I've always wanted to know about you or a random question.

Of course, you can post this in your own LJ if you feel like it.

07:59 am: Sid Coleman
Waking up to the news that Sid Coleman died is very sad for me. I haven't seen Sid in years; we had the kind of friendship that was based in mutual friendships, and I almost never see his circle of friends any more, just because of time and circumstance. But I always liked him. Sidney was a man of whom stories are told, and there are many at the link, plus links to many more.

I read this on supergee's journal, and I said in the comments that I would post my favorite story here.

Fairly late in life, Sid, who was a physics professor at Harvard, married Diana, who had been (I believe) his secretary or assistant. Diana, still his wife at the time of his death, was then a perfectly lovely woman who was not at at all conventionally pretty. Sid, who regularly joked about looking like Albert Einstein, was by no means conventionally handsome either. I was at a small gathering one day when Sid and Diana walked in. Sid was wearing a purple velvet smoking jacket (I kid you not!)

Bob Silverberg, a man who has always been biased toward female pulchritude, took one look at the outfit and said, "Sidney! How elegant!" Without missing a beat, and with intense love in his voice, Sid put his arm around Diana and said, "Diana? Yes, she's one of a kind!"

(I know you can take this story apart; please don't. I was there and I'm telling you, it was something special.)

If there is a great party in the sky, it's better today than it was yesterday.