For the ages. I often joke about being the oldest one at the fill-in-the-blank (company, conference, office, panel, dinner, party, whatever). There are older technologists, and older technology writers; but not many in the places where I tend to hang. At 55, I'm at one pointy end of the bell curve, while Aaron holds down the other. It's his advantage to be moving toward the belly of the demographic beast, while I ride the Asymptote to Oblivion. I'm often amazed at how many people my age don't (or barely) use a computer, and have exactly zero involvement with the Internet. When I look up high school classmates, most don't appear on the Web. There are a few exceptions, all involving exceptional guys. My friend Paul Terhune I suspect is the pastor of this church in Glendora, CA. Paul was almost impossibly bright. He got 1600 on his SATs, and an 800 on his Chemistry SAT, too. And that was in 1964, the fall of his junior year. He was sixteen. Back in those days the SATs were harder, and scores were not rounded to the nearest zero. In other words, he got every answer right on all the tests. My roommate Paul Marshall was into computers before I was (he was big in the Osborne Users Group in New York City at one point), but has lately been fully absorbed in his work as Bishop of the Bethlehem Diocese of the Episcopal Church. (He was "wittiest" in our yearbook.) Another pal, Allan Ontko, has been crafting pipe organs since high school, and is one of the leading figures in his field (also a pilot, I see). My friend Steve Weber ("most likely to succeed") is a successful attorney in San Francisco (I've known Steve since we were babies). Those guys had top grades and high SATs, too. (Mine sucked. Don't ask.) Bill Rojas, two years ahead of Paul M, Alan and I, made a big splash for awhile as the Superintendent of the San Francisco pupblic school system. Mostly I remember him as a tough hall proctor and an extremely fit athlete. Beyond those dudes, the rest of my classmates are pretty much invisible. This may be the Bill Jouppi I knew. Bill was generally regarded as the smartest kid in our class (Paul T was one class back). And this is probably David Wackenhuth, whose nickname was "Nutley," because he came from Nutley, New Jersey. Searches on Google for the rest of the crowd bring up a few clues but not many square hits. I've jokingly called Concordia Prep a "Lutheran academic correctional isntitution," which for me it was; but mostly it was meant for boys who committed early to the ministry. By the 60s that population was dwindling, and the school was closed not long after I graduated in '65. Since then it has maintained near-invisibility. The dorm is still there, as part of Concordia College, but beyond that... pfft. Anyway, I've been touring the Web with my mother, now almost 90, looking for lost relatives and friends. One find: Her cousin Ray Sponberg, who died two years ago. Mom has outlived all her sibs and nearly all her cousins, though she retains quite a few friends. I helped her write a long letter to just the seven who sent long Christmas letters to an old address. We picked those up today, and the response goes out tomorrow. The alumni magazine of Mom's first alma mater, North Dakota State University, came today. She had me check the obituaries for deceased alumni from the mid-1930s (she was Class of '36). There were two . She knew them both. I may be a relative geezer in my crowd, but most in my generation are still alive, as far as I know. Deaths are still exceptional. The obituary pages don't interest me much... yet. That's going to change over the next few years. Oddlly, hanging with Mom doesn't lead much to talk about death. Talk about the dead and the living is equally concerned with their lives. I spent about an hour yesterday evening reading to Mom from the unpublished autobiography of one of her best friends, whom she met in Alaska in the late 1930s. Afterwards, Mom dictated a letter to her friend's daughter, expressing appreciation for the manuscript, and regrets at not being able to write back to her friend, who died several years ago. Mom's regret, however, was uncolored by grief or even by nostalgia. There was just appreciation. And love. Even for the dead, Mom still has love to give. Which is why I'm sure we'll still be getting plenty from her after she's gone. Around Mom I get the feeling that love is a force that goes both ways. [The Doc Searls Weblog]
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