New York

Dave gets a movie rental card

Dave Farquhar Video , , , , , , , , ,

Faced with producing a documentary film, and faced with the increasing prospect of doing it on my own without help from people who know what they’re doing, I went on an excursion last night. Well, first I called up a friend to see if she was doing anything. She wasn’t home, so I decided to do something useful with my Saturday night: research.
I drove to Hollywood Video, filled out a membership form and handed over my driver’s license and a credit card. I came home with two installments of Ken Burns’ acclaimed Baseball series. I wanted to see how Burns did documentaries, particularly how he handled stills and mixed stills with old movies. So I grabbed the 1910s-1920s installment and the 1930s-1940s installment. Then I drove over to Wal-Mart and picked up a couple of frozen pizzas. Then I came home to watch and learn.

Burns usually shoots still pictures the way a cameraman would shoot a scene, either shooting the less-important part of the scene and then panning over to the important part, or shooting a panoramic view of the whole picture, then zooming in on the important subject. When faced with a good, well-composed and well-cropped closeup, he just lets it sit alone. On television, there’s no such thing as a still–the image will jump a little–so you can get away with that more than you might think. He added a little more life with sound effects and voiceovers. For example, when showing a picture of a sportswriter, he added a voiceover and the quiet sound of a manual typewriter. That’s an interesting trick I’ll have to remember–when you can’t engage the eyes with much, engage one of the other senses.

And what about transitions, the whiz-bang stuff that Premiere gives you so much of? If Burns ever used a transition, it was very subtle. Where I looked for transitions, I found only hard scene changes.

But for all his critical acclaim, I was disappointed with the 1910s-1920s installment. Babe Ruth Babe Ruth Babe Ruth Babe Ruth. I had to check the tape to make sure this was Baseball, and not a biography of Babe Ruth. Yes, Babe Ruth was (unfortunately) the most important player of that era. But Babe Ruth wasn’t baseball. He was a fat drunk who hit a lot of home runs mostly because he had a ballpark with a nice short porch in right field for left-handed hitters to hit into. And he mostly played right field, so he didn’t have to run around a lot. Yes, in his early days Ruth was a tremendous athelete. But he didn’t take care of himself, and had he played anywhere else, he would have been far less remarkable.

What did Ken Burns have to say about the 1929 World Series? Author Studs Terkel came on and talked about how his buddy had tickets to Game 1 of the series and wanted him to go. He didn’t go. Lefty Grove was expected to pitch. Instead, Howard Ehmke (who? Exactly.) pitched instead. There’s a story behind that, but heaven forbid Ken Burns spend 30 seconds telling that story when he can use that 30 seconds to show a package of Babe Ruth-brand underwear instead.

Screw it. I’ll tell the story. About mid-season, A’s owner/manager Connie Mack went to Howard Ehmke and told him he was letting him go. Ehmke was a veteran pitcher, but he was well past his prime, and Mack rarely pitched him–six of the other pitchers on his staff went on to win 11 or more games that year. Mack was a notorious cheapskate and was known to sometimes only take two pitchers with him on road trips, so far be it from him to keep Ehmke around and on the payroll when he didn’t need him. At that point, the A’s were World Series bound, with or without Ehmke, and the whole league knew it. (No wonder Burns didn’t talk much about the 1929 season–the only noteworthy thing Babe Ruth did that year was remarry.) But Howard Ehmke had never pitched in a World Series, so he pleaded with Mack to let him stick around just long enough to pitch in a World Series game. Now Connie Mack may have been a cheapskate, but he wasn’t a soulless bastard like so many baseball owners of that day and later days. He had compassion on his veteran pitcher and said OK. Now I don’t remember whose idea it was, but they even talked about him starting one of the games. Mack asked him which game he’d like to start. Figuring he had nothing to lose, Ehmke answered, “The first one, sir.”

Absurdity. The best pitcher in the game that year (and for most years to come) was one Robert Moses “Lefty” Grove. You play the first game to win, so you go find your best pitcher to go win it for you. So the whole world expected Lefty Grove would pitch Game 1. So the Cubs, expecting left-handed fireballer Grove, loaded up their lineup with right-handed power hitters. At the last possible moment, Mack announced his starting pitcher would be soft-throwing right-hander Howard Ehmke. Ehmke pitched the whole game. He won, too, striking out 13–a series record.

The 1929 World Series was one of the most dramatic series ever, with the A’s staging a gutsy come-from-behind victory in Game 4, scoring 10 runs in the 7th inning to overcome an 8-0 deficit. Lefty Grove came in to pitch the 8th and 9th and preserve the victory, notching his second save of the series.

But since Babe Ruth sat at home while all this was going on, I guess nobody wants to know about it. They don’t want to know about any of the colorful guys on either team either. Jimmie Foxx was the greatest right-handed home run hitter in the game before Mark McGwire came along. A converted catcher, Foxx would play seven positions at some point in his career. Whereas Ruth began his career as a pitcher for the Red Sox, Foxx wrapped his up as a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. Like Ruth, he was always smiling. And he was one of the nicest guys to ever play the game.

The rest of the Philadelphia clubhouse wasn’t as nice as Foxx. Left fielder Al Simmons was a vicious hitter–arguably there were two things on that team meaner than Simmons’ bat, and those were Foxx’s bat and Simmons’ temper. It was a good thing the A’s didn’t lose much in those days, because after every loss, Simmons, hotheaded catcher Mickey Cochrane, and hotheaded pitcher Lefty Grove would redecorate the locker room. Connie Mack knew better than to go near the place until after they’d left.

As for Hack Wilson, the Cubs’ star center fielder, well, I’ve heard stories about him. It would have been nice to hear some new ones.

Hopefully we’ll find out a little bit about all these guys in the 1930s-40s installment. After the Yankee Dynasty of the late 1920s ended, the A’s Dynasty replaced it, and Ruth was retired by 1935–his last great season was 1932–so there isn’t much excuse to talk about him.

So while I was able to learn a fair bit about how a movie can come together and look good from discrete elements that are varied and sometimes damaged, I’m less impressed with Burns’ storytelling. To hear Burns tell it, you’d think the only teams that played baseball in that era were the Yankees, Red Sox, Yankees, A’s, Yankees, New York Giants, Yankees, the Chicago Cubs, Yankees, the St. Louis Cardinals, Yankees, and the Negro League teams, who rightly or wrongly got more screen time than the non-Yankees MLB teams.

What I didn’t do Wednesday night…

Dave Farquhar General

Shocking. What I didn’t do Wednesday night was go see U2. It occurred to me recently, as I was talking to one of my closest collaborators, that very few songwriters who could consistently floor me with their lyrics are still alive today. Most of them lived very short lives. Depression and creativity seem to walk hand-in-hand so often; the best songwriters are the most tortured, and the brevity of their lives show it.
U2’s Bono, for whatever reason, has managed to skirt that bullet. Not everything he’s done is absolutely brilliant–they should have lost the track “New York” on the current album, and if you put Zooropa and October together, you can make one good album out of it. But I think it says a lot that U2’s The Joshua Tree is consistently ranked in the Top 10 albums of all time. And, frankly, I think Joshua Tree was only the third-best record they ever recorded. It’s a great album, no doubt, but I prefer Achtung Baby and their 1980 debut, Boy. Achtung captured the uncertainty of the times and the uncertainty of the band’s future (guitarist The Edge was going through a painful divorce) with an intensity people thought the band had lost. I know, the only tracks anyone remembers off that album were the dance hit “Mysterious Ways” and the slow, sorrowful “One,” but listen to the rest of the album in the context of Communism falling and watching your best friend’s life fall apart when there’s nothing you can do about it, and it’s a much deeper album than that.

As for Boy, consider this: Larry Mullen and David Evans were a high school graduates who couldn’t afford to go to college; Adam Clayton was a high school dropout; and Paul Hewson was an orphan who had the ambition to go to college but couldn’t get in because he couldn’t read or write Gaelic. They didn’t understand the world, and here they were, 18, no job, no job prospects, and this record was their only hope for survival. No pressure. They dove in and relished it.

I saw U2 on their Zoo TV and Popmart tours. Zoo TV was the best concert I ever saw, by a longshot.

I guess I’m not going because U2 had the unfortunate mishap of becoming associated with a chapter in my life that hasn’t ended just yet, a chapter that I wouldn’t repeat for anything. The chapter began on Sunday, Nov. 9, 1997. I had to look up the date–it’s the day after the date printed on the ticket stub. I knew what was about to happen. I went to the concert with a friend, hoping to escape it, but what happened was both of us brooded through the entire show. The next day, what I feared would happen did indeed happen.

It wasn’t U2’s fault, but when I hear those songs, that weekend comes back. And I don’t want that weekend to come back. It’s ironic, huh? The title of the current album is “All That You Can’t Leave Behind.” Sorry guys, I want to leave 1997 behind.

One line from “Beautiful Day” echoes in my mind: “What you don’t have you don’t need it now.” He’s right. And I don’t want it. But what do I want?

When I finally find what I’m looking for (groan–sorry, I had to go there), I’ll be able to go see U2 live again. Not until.

So instead, I spent some time with some friends. Good friends, all of whom I met after Nov. 1997, none of whom had anything to do with that chapter opening and probably won’t have much to do with it closing either. And I was glad I did. One of those friends–who, ironically, wasn’t born yet when U2 released its first single in Ireland–slipped me the nicest thank-you note anyone’s ever sent me.

Then I came home and listened to Achtung Baby, beginning to end, once again. That was the record that got me into the band in the first place, and you never forget your first love.

An end and a beginning….

Dave Farquhar General

The end. Arizona pulled it off, and little else needs to be said. The MVP going to the duo of Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson was not unprecedented: the 1981 co-MVPs were Ron Cey, Pedro Guerrero, and Steve Yeager. Two strong arms brought down the Yankee dynasty. It took both of ’em to win the Series, and both of ’em to win Game 7.
Interestingly enough, Cey, Guerrero and Yeager were members of the 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers. Their opponents were the New York Yankees.

The beginning. This was actually a fairly long process. Yesterday I proved that I can win an election in which I’m the only candidate. Our congregation elected three new officers yesterday, and I’m now a member of the Board of Directors.

I think the process got off the ground about a year ago. We had a banquet at church one Thursday night, a sort of thank-you for the church leadership. I’d just finished a stint on one committee and I was in the middle of a stint on another. We passed the mic around and shared testimonies. One of the girls sitting at the same table as me was looking kind of nervous about getting up and talking, so I slipped her a note. “This is everything I know about public speaking,” I said.

It read:
Remember why you’re here.
Be yourself.

She knocked ’em dead. She led off by reading the note.

The note made the rounds around the room. Near the end, I took the mic. Someone slipped me the note as I started talking.

I don’t really remember much about what I said. I told them about being told by three different churches, in one way or another, that they didn’t have much use for me, or that I should come back when I’d grown up. I found a church in Columbia that was different, but then I got a job in St. Louis and couldn’t take that church with me. Then I found this one. I said a lot of churches look for powerhouse, not promise. I thanked them for settling for promise.

And that night, I felt something change. I stepped over some line. I was a member of the club, the club my dad never cracked.

Now I’m a member of a slow-moving board that wields power and influence. Boards don’t have as much power as people give them credit for, and they rarely do anything quickly. My job? Look out for the needs of the members between the ages of 14 and 35. And do whatever I can to make that club a lot bigger and a lot easier to enter.

Yep, I guess I’m still young and idealistic. But maybe, just maybe, that’s appropriate now.

And this. I told you all about Emily last week. She was in church yesterday morning. Early service. Remarkable. She was leaving as I came in. She made it to a service I couldn’t motivate myself to get to. She had the right perspective. She said there was no place else she should be that morning, she was so blessed to be alive. I couldn’t disagree.

When bad things happen to good people…

Dave Farquhar Christianity , ,

When bad things happen to good people. A couple of weeks ago, I got e-mail from a friend I’ll just call by her nickname, Hammer. Hammer moved to upstate New York this summer, after having lived in a small Illinois town outside of St. Louis her whole life. Hammer e-mails her friends a lot, and she’s probably the wordiest and most vocal person I know, myself included. Hammer told me (and others) about a longime friend who’d been going to our church for the past six months, who wanted to join our small group, but didn’t know any of us.
Her story was that of a fairly typical twentysomething Lutheran growing up in the 90s: Didn’t catch every break, made some good decisions and some bad decisions. She was successful, especially considering her age, but maybe a bit lonely. She didn’t have very many Christian friends.

I took it hard. Hammer described this girl, and I was about 99.8% certain I knew who she was talking about. Six months and no one close to her age had talked to her? That’s just wrong. So that night, after Wednesday service, I walked up to her. I didn’t care how uncomfortable it felt. I held out my hand and hoped I wouldn’t sound like a bumbling idiot.

“I’ve seen you around but I’ve never met you,” I said. “I’m Dave.”

She smiled. “I’m Emily,” she said.

My hunch had been right.

I had no idea how to invite her to Bible study, but that was fine. Hammer’s mom was right there. “Emily’s interested in your Bible study,” she said. I waved over to some of my cohorts, who came over. We made some quick introductions. My friend Brenna offered to meet Emily at church and drive with her to our next session, since it was in a part of town she wasn’t familiar with.

The next Friday, she was there. She fit right in. Like I said, her story–at least what I know of it–is virtually interchangeable with mine and with most Christians my age.

I flagged her down the following Sunday. She thanked me for inviting her, and said she’d been a bit nervous at first. She didn’t know what to expect–would she find a Lutheran monestary, or would she find people like her?

“You found people like you, right?” I asked.

She smiled. “I think so.”

“Good,” I said.

I saw her again Wednesday. She mentioned her back had been bothering her that day, and she asked if we were meeting Friday. I said yes. I asked for her e-mail address so I could e-mail her directions.

“Good,” she said. “What’s your phone number?”

I know I gave her a shocked look. She chuckled. “In case I have any questions about the directions,” she said.

I smiled and gave up the digits.

On Friday, my phone rang. No, it wasn’t the Charter cable guy I talked about yesterday. That was later. It was Emily. She told me she’d spent the day on the couch, her back had been acting up, and she wouldn’t be able to make it.

I told her we’d make sure we said a prayer for her.

“I was just about to ask if you would do that for me,” she said. I didn’t get the impression she was used to people volunteering to pray for her. Then I asked if she’d gone to see her doctor. No, she said, because a doctor would just give her pain pills, but she’d been to see a chiropractor. Good answer. She said he took x-rays, and he didn’t do anything else but shock her. She said that helped for a little while but she didn’t know what that was for.

“That’s to stimulate the nerves,” I said. “Once he gets the x-rays, he’ll probably pop you with this springy thing to move some bones back in place.” Those are technical terms, by the way. Well, the only technical terms my simple mind can understand.

“So you’ve been to a chiropractor before?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” I said. I described the procedures a little more. It’s uncomfortable sometimes but helps. Hopefully I put her mind at ease a little.

“Would you do me another favor?” she asked timidly at the end of the conversation. I thought she was going to ask me to build an addition to her house or something.

“Sure,” I said. (What can I say? I’m a sucker.)

“Would you say a prayer for my brother too? He’s moving, and left today, and I just want him to be safe.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “We’ll do that for you.”

I’ve heard thank-yous that sincere before, but they’re rare.

I prayed for both of them that night. I prayed for her and for her brother right when I hung up the phone, then later during the Bible study. That night, before I went to bed, I prayed again. I asked for her to be up and around on Saturday.

Sunday morning, I heard the answer to that prayer. We got to the point in the service when we pray, and one of our Seminary students led the prayers. He included Emily. “That’s nice,” I thought. Then I heard the rest–“Emily, who was in a car accident early this morning.”

Details were sketchy. My phone rang later yesterday afternoon with more details. She’d seen her chiropractor Saturday and had been feeling much better, so she went out. “Early” meant much closer to midnight than 8. She rolled her car and spent some time in ICU.

But she was alive. That was the important thing.

The answers did nothing but raise more questions. Why this? Why now? What did I accomplish by praying for her?

I don’t have any answers. At least not any good ones.

Obviously, the evil one sees her as a threat. Seeing as he’s seen 12 billion different people and has a long memory, something in her rang a little too familiar, he saw an opportunity to take her out, and he tried.

God could have prevented it by keeping her on the couch one more day. I don’t know why He didn’t. He didn’t have to say yes to our requests as quickly as He did.

I could spend all day second-guessing Him like I second-guess Joe Torre and Bob Brenly. It wouldn’t accomplish anything productive. It’s better to look to Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 8, verse 28 instead. It reads: “In all things God works for the good of those who love Him.”

Including car crashes.

What good can come from this? She’s about to find out what she’s made of. She’s likely to reach deep down and find something she never knew she had.

Why do bad things happen to good people? For the same reason bad things happen to bad people–bad things happen to everyone. They usually seem to make bad people worse, and good people better.

Telephones and World Series

Dave Farquhar Baseball , , , , , ,

Cable guy. My phone rang Friday night.
“Hi, this is [I didn’t catch the name] from Charter, the cable company. How are you doing tonight?”

I knew I should have forked over the extra bucks for privacy guard. “I’d be a whole lot better if you’d take me off your calling list,” I said.

“You don’t even want to hear about our special offers?” he asked.

“Nope. I don’t watch TV,” I said.

He sounded disbelieving. “You don’t watch TV?”

“Nope.”

“You mean to tell me you haven’t watched one second of TV today?”

“Right.” I hadn’t. Actually I hadn’t watched one second of TV since I fell asleep during the playoffs and was rudely awakened by Frank Sinatra singing “New York” at high volume after the Yankees steamrolled the Mariners. Disgusted, I turned off the boob tube (that’s all it shows during the commercials) and went to bed.

“What are you doing now?” he asked.

“Getting ready to go out.”

“Oh, you’re going to a party or something?”

Close enough. “Yep.”

“Oh. Sorry to bother you, sir.” And he hung up.

This is the one time of year I do watch TV. That’s World Series time. Unless it’s Yankees-Braves, in which case I have more important things to do, like clean my toenails. My phone rang last night right after Curt Schilling plunked Derek Jeter. “That’s my phone,” I muttered to no one. “Don’t they know better than to bother me during the World Series?” No one answered. I picked up the phone. “Hello?”

Whoever it was must have wised up. There was no one there. Good thing. If it’d been the cable guy again, I’d have had to tell him it’s not worth $35 a month just to be able to watch seven baseball games with a clearer picture.

A few random World Series observations:

Yeah, I know Curt Schilling beat the Cards, and I wanted a Cardinals-Mariners series. Even still, he’s one cool guy. He doesn’t care who sees him praying just before each start, and he bought a ticket for his dad, who died in 1988 and never saw him pitch in the big leagues, for this game. Having lost my dad at a similar age, I empathize. And he’s just a class act. At the end of the game, as his teammates were coming off the field, he ran out to give them handshakes and hugs. Starting pitchers almost never do that. I have to root for him. Baseball needs more good men like Curt Schilling.

Baseball also desperately needs another commissioner like Bart Giamati. Is it just me, or is baseball commissioner Bud Selig the worst public speaker in the history of public speaking? It really bothered me that he had to refer to a script to present Barry Bonds with his worthless Commissioner’s Historic Achievement Award or whatever it’s called. Selig’s speech could be summed up as, “Barry, you had a fantastic season, taking a record that once belonged to Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, and Mark McGwire, joining the ranks of three of the greatest sluggers of all time, while also having one of the greatest all-around offensive seasons of all time. It’s my pleasure to present you with this award, previously awarded to McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn. Congratulations.” But it took him what seemed like several torturous hours to say that. What I just wrote isn’t particularly eloquent, but compared to Selig’s speech, it’s practically Shakespearean.

At any rate, I was happy to see Arizona win. I can’t root for the Yankees. Used to be the only team I disliked more than the Yankees was the Mets. But if the Mets were playing the Yankees, I’d have to root for the Mets just because they aren’t the Yankees. Yeah, I know, that sounds un-American this year. But two people I respect–one of whom I respect so much, his picture hangs in a frame in my living room, across from a picture of Abraham Lincoln–feel exactly the same way.

So here’s to Arizona. And to the American League, who next season will hopefully put the Yankees in their proper place.

Fifth.

Day Three after everything changed

Dave Farquhar Society , , ,

On Day One, I reverted into news junkie mode. What I read, of course, sickened me. I undoubtedly have a few former classmates in New York, but no one I’ve seen or talked to in the last five years. Still, it wasn’t much consolation. They’re still my people.
When my dad died, I lost myself in whatever I could find around me. These days, when I miss my dad, I lose myself in work. I took a look around me, realized there was a lot of work that needed to be done, and did my best to lose myself in it. I didn’t get much done, and it wasn’t all my best work, but it was something.

I got home and realized it was the last place I wanted to be. I went to church.

When I got home, my mom had called. It was late, but I called her.

On Day Two, I got more information and more work done. It wasn’t a normal day, but I don’t feel the least bit guilty about the day’s productivity. Yeah, the world’s reaction to the previous day’s events made me weepy, and I talked to a friend from church who said he was ready to find out where to go sign up to kick some butt and I agreed with him.

I got home and realized it was the last place I wanted to be. I went to church.

Day Three was similar. People were smiling more–the previous couple of days made me wonder if I actually worked at a funeral home–and there was a lot to do. At the end of the day, there was more. So I stayed late and got stuff done.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home. I was thinking about going to church, and I knew my chances of making it on time were slim if I stopped. I stopped anyway, and I didn’t just grab a few things. I stocked up.

The checker asked how I was. I told her I was good and asked how she was. She said she was good. She called her son yesterday. He lives in New York. He had no reason to be anywhere near the disaster, but she had to be sure. She asked if I’d heard about the five firefighters rescued in an SUV. I told her I had. She said she just had to hear some good news from New York. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the latest on that, that the report had been mistaken. So I asked her if she’d heard about the guy who was on the 82nd floor when one of the buildings collapsed and survived. Her eyes widened. I said that guy must have been surrounded by a whole legion of angels. No doubt, she said. I swiped my debit card and started bagging my groceries. I told her his only injuries were two broken legs. She smiled and started checking out the lady behind me.

As I loaded my groceries into my cart, the cashier turned back my direction.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

And at that moment, I felt a whole lot better about being a human being.

Applying Ezekiel to 9/11

Dave Farquhar Christianity , , , ,

I was reading Generations, a book that tries to predict the future by looking at history’s cycles, just last week, reading about how certain generations have reacted in the past to crises–because, like it or not, every generation faces one, if not several–and wondering.
Yesterday morning, I was minding my own business, driving to work, noticing that traffic was annoyingly heavy on I-270 and mad at myself for not being in the far right lane where I can make the snap decision to exit onto Tesson Ferry and wind myself back to work over back roads. It seemed like a typical, ordinary day in St. Louis. The only thing unusual about it was that the sky was actually blue, rather than Missouri Gray. Then the DJs on the radio station started acting really weird after traffic. Something was going on in New York. I gathered that much. None of them seemed very eager to talk about it.

The details were sketchy. A plane hit the World Trade Center. They were trying to evacuate the building. The only detail was that it was a twin-engined plane. That could be anything–it could be a relatively small civilian plane, a cargo plane like a Beech 18, or an airliner. They didn’t seem to know. Then they started talking about baseball. I flipped the station. More details came in.

As I pulled into the parking lot at work, they started talking about another plane.

You already know the rest. My day at work was probably just like yours. We didn’t get anything done, we got our news accounts however we could; the big boss got on the intercom and briefed us on the situation (I already knew those details and a few more–I had better sources than he had) and he said a prayer (maybe your boss didn’t) and he told us he knew we were distracted because he was distracted, just get done what absolutely has to get done, and pray a lot. Actually I think he said we could pray constantly if we wanted. My big boss is cool like that.

He didn’t mention this, but as all of this was unfurling, I thought of Ezekiel 22. The story of Ezekiel 22 basically goes like this. God’s chosen nation had gone astray. (Sound familiar?) God went looking for a few men who would turn from their wicked ways and stand in the gap, providing leadership and praying for their nation. (Sound familiar?) If someone would stand in the gap, the nation wouldn’t be destroyed. (Sound familiar?)

No one stood in the gap.

I hope that part doesn’t sound familiar.

Then I recalled that when Abraham was having a little chat with God about a couple of towns that were situated where the Dead Sea is now, Abraham asked God if he would spare Sodom and Gommorrah if he could find a small number of righteous people there. God said yes. Then Abraham started nickeling and dimeing God down, until Abraham talked him down to 10. “What about 10? Will you spare those cities if I can find 10 righteous people there?” And God said yes, He would spare those cities for the sake of 10 righteous people.

Now, I’m pretty sure that Abraham could have talked God down to three–his brother-in-law Lot and his two daughters. But Abraham wasn’t that bold.

Late in the afternoon, one of the elders from my church called and asked if I knew about our prayer service that night. I’d heard. He asked if I’d be there. I said of course. I told him about those two passages. Then I pointed out that there would be more than 10 people there. We needed to stand in the gap.

Incidentally, there were closer to 800 people there. And a large percentage of them were under 30. So I have an idea now how my generation reacts to a crisis, and I’m glad to say I’m impressed.

And that’s why I don’t really know what to say now. Not because I’m impressed, but because I was too busy standing in the gap. And no, I’m not sorry. And no, I don’t really give a rip how many people I’ve just offended. Some of you won’t be back. Others of you will try to sabotage this site, because some of you have tried in the past when I’ve used the G-word for something other than swearing. But I can live with that.

Oh yeah. Jesus loves you.

Yes, I know there are many who will say that praying doesn’t do any good, it won’t make our problems go away, God is dead and no one cares and if there is a hell I’ll see you there and more garbage like that.

But I’m gonna go back to that stand in the gap thing for a minute, just in case I haven’t annoyed you enough with it yet. There’s no sin in the United States of America? I can’t stand to turn on the blasted tube because that’s all that it fills my living room with. The only useful purpose my TV serves is to give me something to set my stereo on. And since I know God will forgive me for saying something blasphemous just to make a point, I will. Let’s say it doesn’t matter that it hurts God. Fine. It hurts us and it hurts those we love. Or should love. I argue that if we truly loved our spouses we wouldn’t do half the things we do to them. A big part of me is really glad I don’t have a spouse because I know living with the awful things I’ve done the last few years would have hurt her more than any human being should be hurt.

But what’s that have to do with foreign terrorism on U.S. soil? Everything. With friends like us, who needs enemies? We treat each other like the stuff we scrape off our shoes, and we treat foreigners even worse. Dmitry Sklyarov is a political prisoner, under house arrest in California by special interests, being persecuted (yes, persecuted) under an unconstitutional law. Folks, we are no better than Red China, who held our servicemen for no reason. I’ll say that again. The sin of the United States of America is just as bad as that of Red, Pinko Commie China.

Now, if this is how we treat Russia and Russian citizens, then it’s likely that we’ve offended other people. Well, we know Europe hates us. We bailed the Allies out of World War I and then we came in and won World War II, and we even paid for a lot of the rebuilding effort, and they still hate us. We must have done something really wrong somewhere. And the Middle East, well, they don’t like us because we acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. But they’ve probably got some other grudges against us too.

Regardless, somehow, at some point, knowingly or unknowingly, whether we’re in the right or in the wrong this time, we offended someone to the point that he decided it’d be a really good idea to hijack some airliners and crash them into some high-profile buildings.

That ought to give us some pause and make us examine ourselves a little bit. Chances are we’re right and this guy’s wrong. But it helps to be sure. And a little reflection puts us in the right mindset.

And let’s face it. Even if you’re not so sure there is a God, if you’re willing to admit even the slightest possibility that He does exist, He is all powerful, and He does care about us, isn’t some small part of you glad there are people who want to seek Him out, and make sure He’s on our side this time?

A few words of St. Paul seem really appropriate here. “Each of you should look out not only for your own interests, but also the interests of others.”

If we all did that, we’d make heaven obsolete, folks. We’d have it right here.

I’ve got just a few other things to say, then I’ve got an overdue appointment with my pillow.

Yes, there needs to be retaliation, once we know who perpetrated it. The retaliation must be swift, effective, and harm as few innocent people as possible. What happened yesterday was a tremendous atrocity. Taking the high road isn’t enough. We need to take the very highest road.

We’re unified. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, home of one prime suspect, there was firebombing last night. Benjamin Franklin’s wisdom behind his Join or Die cartoon holds just as true today as it did some 225+ years ago. We need to stay unified. We’ve become a nation of special interests ever since the end of the Cold War, and we’re the worse for it, in every possible way.

This will not destroy our country. We will do a fine job of doing that ourselves. I love to fly, but right now the idea of hopping on board a commercial jetliner has negative appeal to me. My first thought after this happened was that we need to have two or three, or two or three dozen, armed Marines on all domestic flights, under orders to shoot first and ask questions later. Countries who resort to similar tactics don’t have problems with hijacking.

We can arm this country to the hilt, and we’ll have very few problems with safety. Police states have their problems, but safety generally isn’t one of them. We can trade our freedoms for safety, but in 20 years we’ll be wondering what happened to our Republic, or what’s left of it.

This is not the apocolypse. Don’t get in the gas lines, don’t rent a U-Haul and then go to the grocery store and try to fill it up with milk and toilet paper. People in St. Louis today were acting like the disaster had happened here. Nothing has really changed. A terrorist with limited resources crashed a bunch of our resources into some of our other resources. There is no direct connection between this and the supply and demand for gasoline, milk, and toilet paper. The U.S. economy will keep on chugging away, if anything, at a better rate now that people are thinking more about survival than about how to turn 20 bucks into a million by investing in the right technology stock.

I’ve only got one other thing to say. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America. He knows we need it. Desperately.

Baseball Mogul 2002 offers a glimpse of the future…

Dave Farquhar General , , , , , , , , , ,

I have seen the future, and it crashes a lot. I’ve been playing Baseball Mogul 2002 like a fiend, and I love it. I love statistical baseball and I love financial simulations, so for people like me, this game might as well be heroin.
My big annoyance is that it crashes a lot. It seems to get through the first season just fine, but I haven’t gotten through a second season yet without a crash. That’s annoying. Playing games in a month’s batches seems to make it worse. I suggest you play week by week, saving at the end of each week.

I started off with the Kansas City Royals, of course, and pretty soon I realized what dire straits the team is in if the game doesn’t change. Without a bunch of trades for can’t-miss prospects, it’s virtually impossible to lift the team over the .500 mark, and with free spenders like Cleveland and Chicago in the division, third place is about as well as you’ll do. An out-of-this-world manager like the late (and very sorely missed) Dick Howser could probably improve matters a ton, but Baseball Mogul’s manegerial model is a bit clunky. You can change how your manager manages, but it’s with a bunch of sliders. There’s no way to model, say, a Dick Howser based on the tendencies he used in the dugout and save it. That’s a feature Earl Weaver baseball had way back in the early ’90s and I can’t believe modern sims don’t copy it.

After two seasons with the Royals, I got frustrated. I needed something easier, but not necessarily too easy. So I took on the Curse of the Bambino and took the helm of the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox haven’t won a World Series since they sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1920 for an astronomical $100,000. (Ruth was already a superstar and guided the Bosox to three World Championships, but with him gone, the Sox have been heartbreakers ever since, appearing in four Series and losing each in Game 7. The Yankees have just been scum.)

But how to take on the high-revenue, free-spending Yankees? The Bosox were a challenge unto themselves. Nomar Garciaparra, the greatest shortstop alive today, was injured at the beginning of the 2001 season, of course. MVP candidate Manny Ramirez’ presence in the lineup helped soften it, but I had a cripple playing first base (Brian Daubach was nowhere to be found, not that he has enough punch to really justify holding down that position). So I traded for Toronto’s Brad Fullmer, to get some protection for Ramirez. And Boston limped its way to the playoffs. It wasn’t exactly pretty. The Boston bats racked up tons of runs. Pedro Martinez was masterful, of course, but behind him I had four No. 4 starters: Frank Castillo, Bret Saberhagen (I was glad to see him come off the shelf, but he was the epitome of clutch pitcher, one of those guys who’d give up 9 runs if you didn’t have to win, but when the pennant was on the line, he’d pitch a shutout), David Cone (another ex-Royal, dumped unceremoniously for salary years ago, like Sabes), and Hideo Nomo. Fortunately the Bosox had a solid bullpen. We beat Cleveland in the first round of the playoffs, in five. Pedro had to pitch twice. Sabes won the other game. Of course we faced the Yankees in the ALCS. Boston won in 6, again behind Pedro and Sabes. It would have been poetic justice to have Cone face them in the series and win, but I had to go by the numbers rather than entirely by emotions. That brought us to Larry Walker’s and Mike Hampton’s Colorado for the World Series. Pedro won Game 1. Sabes won Game 2, of course. Castillo lost Game 3. Pedro pitched Game 4 on short rest and lost. I didn’t want to pitch 37-year-old Sabes on such short rest, so I pitched Cone instead. He lost. Sabes came back for Game 6 and won. A shutout, of course. Pedro came back strong and won Game 7.

The curse was lifted. Pedro, with a 19-6 regular season record and a 5-1 record in the postseason, took home the Cy Young award and an All-Star appearance. Manny Ramirez also brought in an All-Star appearance, but most importantly, the team brought in the World Championship.

The 2002 season was where things went nuts. The big-market teams started looking like Rotisserie Leagues thanks to free agency. I went and grabbed Anaheim’s Troy Glaus to play third base and Cleveland’s Kenny Lofton to play left field and bat leadoff. Then I grabbed Minnesota’s Eric Milton to give Pedro a legitimate #2 starter behind him. A couple of weeks into the season I noticed Houston’s Billy Wagner was still unsigned, so I nabbed him to give closer Derek Lowe some help in the bullpen. We rolled through to a 109-53 record, obliterating Oakland and New York in the playoffs. This time there wasn’t even any danger of Pedro’s arm falling off. (He went 27-1 in the regular season with a sparkling 1.53 ERA.)

Then I ran into the free-spending Braves. The Braves’ pitching staff was mostly unchanged from the real 2001 roster. (It was already an All-Star team.) But the lineup… Rafael Furcal, ss. Andruw Jones, cf. Chipper Jones, 3b. Barry Bonds, lf. Sammy Sosa, rf. Tony Clark, 1b. Quilvio Veras, 2b. Paul Bako, c. With the exception of the bottom three, they had arguably the best player in the league at each position. (The other three would be the second- or third-best player on a lot of teams.) Oh yeah. They also had superstar Moises Alou riding the bench. I took a look at Atlanta’s finances. Yep, they were bankrupting the team, deficit spending in hopes of pulling in a World Series. It came down to Game 7, Greg Maddux vs. Pedro Martinez, a showdown of the two greatest pitchers playing today (and arguably the two greatest pitchers alive). Maddux beat Martinez 2-1 in a heartbreaker. (Hey, you try shutting out that lineup!)

After facing that, I felt a little less guilty about running a Rotisserie-style team out of Boston. I’d passed on signing Kerry Wood as a free agent the season before for just that reason. No longer. Atlanta, unable to afford Maddux and Glavine for the next season, let both of them walk. I signed Maddux to a four-year deal, which pretty much guaranteed he’d get his 300th win in a Boston uniform. And between the two of them, I could pretty much count on getting at least three wins in a 7-game postseason. Throw in another clutch performance by Sabes (re-signed for purely emotional reasons–I was either going to get Sabes another World Series ring to go with the one he got with the Royals in ’85 and my fictional Bosox in 2001 or I was going to ship both Sabes and Cone back home to Kansas City, to finish their careers where they both belonged all along. But Cone retired so I opted to go for another ring.) and I’m pretty sure I’d be able to lift the Curse of the Bambino again.

The game even fabricates newspaper accounts of the season’s big games. The picture is almost always the same, and you can usually tell the story was computer-generated rather than written by an intelligent human being, but it adds an element of drama to it.

I also noticed the injury model is fairly realistic. Keeping Pedro Martinez healthy for a full season is virtually impossible, both in this game and in real life. But there are players who will tough themselves through their injuries. Mike Sweeney suffers about one serious injury per year, an injury that would knock most players out of action for a couple of weeks, maybe a month. In Baseball Mogul, Sweeney sits. In real life, Sween tapes himself up and keeps going until he either gets better or the injury hampers his play so severely that even he realizes the Royals are better off with his backup playing. That doesn’t happen often.

The other glaring drawback is that you can’t watch the games. I’d love to watch the All-Star game and at least the World Series.

So. We’ve got a baseball simulation that crashes a lot, doesn’t let you watch the key games (or any of them, for that matter), where injuries are all or nothing, and the managerial model is more crude than I’d like.

Those are serious shortcomings. But the rest of the game is so fabulous that I can mostly overlook them.

Now, the question is, who pitches Opening Day 2003? Martinez or Maddux?

Who was the most influential woman in your life?

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

My good friend Brad came to me with a question a couple of weeks ago: Who was the most influential woman in your life?
He wasn’t looking for my answer so much as he was looking for what I thought people’s answers would be. So I countered with a question: Married or single? He asked what difference that made. “Well, if you’re married, the right answer is your wife, whether it’s your mother or not,” I said. “And if you’re single, the right answer is your mother. Now the true answer could be something totally different.”

Brad laughed. I think he might have said I’ll be good at staying out of trouble with a wife someday, but I’m sure I’ll be very good at getting in trouble, or at least getting lots of dirty looks. Guys live for that.

Brad was looking to shoot another video together, with that as the theme. The pieces just didn’t come together this year so we had to shelve the project. But his question lingers on.

Who was the most influential woman in my life?

Certainly I learned more from my mom than anyone else. She taught me weird ways to remember how to spell tough words. Do you ever have trouble remembering how to spell “Wednesday?” It’s the day the Neses got married. wed-Nes-day. Got it? And how to remember the capital of Norway. Well, I knew Oslo was the capital of some Northern European country, but I couldn’t remember which. So she wrote “nOrway” on a slip of paper. I never lost the Oslo/Norway connection after that. (That’s probably not very impressive to my European readers, but Americans are notoriously bad at geography. I don’t know how many Americans know Norway is in Europe. Some Americans may not know what Europe is, for that matter.)

And yes, mom taught me how to tie my shoes and how to blow my nose and how to brush my teeth and lots of stuff like that. And when I didn’t understand girls (which was often… Who am I kidding? It is often) she was always there to listen.

But the question was who wasn’t that. It was: Who was the most influential woman in my life?

Well, there was this girl that I met right after college. I told her I loved her, she told me she loved me, she changed my life, and set me off in an unexpected and (mostly) better direction and…

AND she couldn’t hold a candle to my grandmother, my mom’s mom, so even though I was devastated at the time, in retrospect I’m really glad we broke up.

What can I say about Granny? She grew up in southern rural Missouri, in the Depression, one of about a dozen kids (my grandparents came from families of 12 and 13, and I can never keep straight which came from which, especially since both had siblings who didn’t live to adulthood). Now, she got in some trouble growing up, but I think that experience, along with having lived through the Depression, helped her learn how to do the right thing even when resources seemed limited. She moved to Kansas City during World War II and got a job at Pratt & Whitney, working on an assembly line making airplane engines. She married a Kansas Citian. On a truck driver’s salary, they managed to raise four kids.

I remember a lot of things about her. She always had time for her family. She never wanted anyone to make a big deal about anything she did. She really knew how to cook. She made the best quilts in the world. And before anyone starts complaining about her falling into female stereotypes, I’ll tell you this. She absolutely loved working in her yard, and one of the things that pained her the most was her deterriorating ability to take care of her yard as she got older. Besides, she built airplane engines! Have I ever done anything that manly? I’m doing well to change the spark plugs in my car.

But if I had to sum Granny’s life up in a sentence, I’d say this: When it came to doing more with less, she was one of the very best.

What am I known for? A book and a series of magazine articles about doing more with less.

So, who was the most influential woman in my life? I think it was Granny.

Granny died a little over six years ago. I miss her.

A lot.

I had a conversation with my mom a while back about my two grandmothers. Granny had nothing for most of her life. My other grandmother wasn’t like that. She was a successful doctor, a psychiatrist. She married a successful doctor. He was a general practitioner, and one of the best diagnosticians you’d ever see. I can say a lot about him, but I’ll say this and have my peace: His father spent a lot of time hanging out with tycoons, and must have learned a few things and passed them on to his son. The guy had money, but in a lot of ways he lived like my other grandmother, who had nothing. A good rule of thumb is that if you have money but live like you have none, you’ll end up with a lot more.

I’m talking a lot more about my dad’s father (he wasn’t a dad) than I am about his mother (she wasn’t a mom). Frankly I know more about him. I know she was brilliant. Yes, she was smarter than my mom’s mom. Granny didn’t always have all the answers. My other grandmother always had an answer. And it was usually right. It was also usually long. (I get that from somewhere.) I remember asking her once if Cooperstown, NY is close to New York City. It took her half an hour to answer that question.

But I never had much of a relationship with her. Neither did my dad. He’d talk about “my mother,” or “my father.” I heard him call his father “Dad” once. They were arguing. About me. As for her, well, I never heard him call her “Mom.”

I haven’t seen her or spoken with her since October 1990.

It’s hard for me to talk or write about this, because I don’t want to rag on my relatives. I always had a great deal of respect for them. I know what they were capable of, and I think that’s why I’m disappointed in them.

My dad grew up being told he’d be a failure all his life. He didn’t get good grades, and he was rebellious. I suspect a lot of that was because he had two absentee parents. But Dad was smart. It seems his biggest problem growing up was that he mostly used his great mind to figure out when he had to perform and when he could get by with slacking. He also couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted to do with his life. He had the same gifts his father had, but he wanted to be as different from his father as possible, and that posed a dilemma for him. He once told me his father didn’t know what to do with him. But that’s OK. Dad was only two years younger than I am now when he finally figured out what to do with himself.

The decision was made that my dad’s younger brother would carry my grandfather’s torch after he died. I don’t know what role she played in the decision, but she stood behind it. My dad watched as his brother made mistakes and both his brother and his mother paid for them. My dad tried to help. He didn’t want his help. She didn’t want his help. Finally my dad gave up. Dad had made himself a success; in his own mind, he’d proven them wrong. I don’t think he was interested in proving them wrong in their minds; he just didn’t want to see them struggle. Loyalty runs in the family.

I asked my mom which of my grandmothers really had more? Her mom thought she struggled all her life, but she was always able to provide for herself and others. Always. Had she been able to see that, I think she’d still be alive today.

When Granny died, she left enough for her four kids to fight over. But they didn’t fight over it. That wasn’t how she raised them.

I know one of my duties is to provide for my relatives, and in that regard, to be perfectly honest, I always let my dad’s mom down. But I guess I always assumed since she never wanted my dad’s help when he was alive, why would she want mine? To my knowledge, she never attempted to contact me after he died, so I had no way of knowing any different.

Dad’s mom died yesterday. All I have on her living conditions is hearsay, but I know poverty when I hear it described.

More Like This: Personal

04/14/2001

Dave Farquhar General , , , , , ,

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One night last week, I had a beer with a good friend. He invited me to join him for dinner; I always learn a lot from him (I hope it’s mutual) and it seemed like he needed to talk, so while I’d already eaten, I joined him for a beer.

Hopefully I can say this without betraying any confidences. There are two people who mean a great deal to him; I know both of these people, so I understand why. In their minds, he let each of them down. In his mind, there wasn’t much he could have done differently; there certainly wasn’t much of anything he could have done better. He did his best, and in these instances, his best wasn’t good enough. In the time since, they’ve let him down. The question is, did he get their best? He doesn’t know. And it hurts.

It always hurts when a friend or someone else you really care about lets you down. When someone you don’t like does something stupid to you, it hurts, but let’s face it. You don’t expect anything else from those kinds of people. What more can they do to you? They continually try to show you what more they can do, but usually it’s not much. It’s lost its impact.

But like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, who, at the end of a day whose events particularly repulsed him, realized it was his 30th birthday, these last couple of days are significant. Thursday was the holiday known as Maundy Thursday. Some 1,972 years or so ago (no one’s ever precisely pinned down the day) on Thursday night, the most infamous letdown by a friend in history took place. A young Jewish rabbi was praying on a hilltop with his three closest friends trying to keep watch despite total exhaustion. An armed mob of his political enemies ascended that hill, led by another one of the rabbi’s closest friends. Judas Iscariat walked up to the man he’d followed and dedicated his life to for the better part of the past three years and forever tainted a sign of love and respect. With a kiss, he pointed the target out to the mob. The result of that betrayal, of course, was the arrest, trial and execution of Jesus Christ.

But I’m convinced that Judas’ kiss hurt more than the crucifixion. The Pharisees and the Sadducees were nothing more than self-righteous scum who couldn’t stand seeing someone understand the things they didn’t. This was to be expected. And the Romans? Well, what else do you expect from a spineless governor under the thumb of a totalitarian dictator? He didn’t get his office by doing the right thing, after all. But Judas… Judas was capable of so much better. Jesus knew it, and the 11 knew it. They’d all seen him do great things. Those religious leaders were no loss. They were lowlives, doing what lowlives do. Judas showed flashes of brilliance, then he flamed out. The other 11, who were just like him, went on to change the world. Judas could have been one of them. But he chose another path, even though he knew better.

Or maybe the significance of last week means nothing, because to me it seems a sacrilege to compare 11 people who changed the world to a ragtag band of people who keep online journals. Or maybe the awkwardness is perfect, because some of us have been attaching too much importance to it. Maybe that puts it in perspective a little.

At any rate, we’ll never change the world, but for whatever reason, there are people who have high expectations of the crowd known collectively as Daynoters. Maybe it’s because of the difficulty of doing what a Daynoter does–getting up each day and having something to say. It’s hard to write something new every day. And a lot of the Daynoters not only write something every day, but they write something consistently thought-provoking, or entertaining, or informative, or useful, nearly every day. And occasionally, someone writes something that manages to be all five.

It’s hard to do. We all know it’s hard to do. Usually we just settle for writing something, anything, each day. We write our stuff, then we go wander around and see what some of the others have to say. Invariably, there’s a jewel out there somewhere. Someone exceeds expectations. And maybe what they write is something we can relate to, so we feel close to them, even though in most cases it’s someone we’ve never met in person and in many cases it’s someone we’ve never even spoken with on the telephone. Even still, expectations rise.

Most of us are computer professionals or hobbyists, and in this field, wild and hairy problems breed. They’re everywhere. When one of us gets surrounded, we post something to the backchannel mailing list. Invariably, someone’s been there before, seen it, conquered it, and has guidance to offer. Again, expectations rise.

I would argue that in some cases, we may expect more of a fellow daynoter than we would a close friend. I know my friends’ faults. I spend enough time with them that it’s impossible not to know them. I don’t know any of the Daynoters that well. I know Dan Bowman better than any of them, but I don’t know his faults, let alone those of the other 29-some people on the Daynotes mailing list. From where I can see, his biggest fault is drinking too much Pepsi. But he’s the exception. At least I know he has to drink Pepsi. I’ve got some indication the guy’s human. What do I have of these other guys? All I know is they know more than I know, write books that sell more copies than mine do, write for bigger-circulation magazines than I do, get more Web traffic than I do… It’s easy to start thinking of them as larger than life.

And then the talk strays from computers… I like talking about computers, because there’s almost always a right answer, and it can be proven conclusively. If you want to boot off an IDE hard drive, you plug it into IDE0 and set it as master. Period. End of argument. Anyone who disagrees with it goes off and quickly makes a fool of himself. Sure, there are holy wars, like AMD vs. Intel, or Apple vs. 98% of the market. But you can do something even with those arguments. No sane person would use a non-Intel CPU in a mission-critical system? I can respond to that. My Cyrix-based PC was only up to producing a 292-page book. In the end, it turned out that Cyrix CPU was a whole lot more reliable than my wrists were.

When the talk turns to political or social issues, there are few slam dunks. Is the American way of doing things demonstrably better than the European way? The majority of Americans think so. The majority of Europeans do not. And professional politicians, having no answers, frequently fall into logic traps, or, worse, finger-pointing and name-calling and other things no human being over the age of 15 should fall into. We turn away in disgust when politicians do it. And when the world’s problems show up on the Daynotes backchannel, and the great minds can’t slam-dunk them?

Well, it turns out they’re human too. And soon, the same traps come up, and we’re disgusted. But it’s worse than seeing Dick Gephardt roll around on the floor and throw a temper tantrum. We expect that of Dick Gephardt, because we already know he’s a finger-to-the-wind, unintelligent, uncreative individual who can’t think for himself who’s in politics because he’d be a total failure in the real world. He’s not worthy of respect. But then we see people we know, people who’ve earned our respect, reduced to that…?

Sometimes when that happens, we join in. If we agree with them, we try to help them out. If they’re attacking someone we agree with, we lob a grenade.

Or we can get disgusted and ignore it. All of our keyboards do have Delete keys, and a lot of our delete keys are starting to wear out from excessive use these past few days.

Or we can get disgusted and try to stop it. Or we can get disgusted and leave the community.

On Tuesday, the Daynotes.com mailing list shut down to mixed reactions. In some cases, our disgust with one another turned into disgust with the one who would try to exercise authority over us. Personally, I thought it was the only sane thing to do–close things down, let things cool down for a time. That turned out to be the right decision. Reality hit. People started realizing that name-calling wouldn’t solve all the world’s problems, and that a valuable resource was suddenly gone.

I don’t know how many people know this, but I had a run-in with a fellow Daynoter back in January, 2000. You can ask my sister about it, because she was visiting when it happened. She and I lived in the same house for about 18 years, so she’s seen me mad, but never madder than I was that night. I was ready to chuck it all and leave the community then. It was bad enough that I had gender in common with this guy, let alone had my name on the same Web page as his. I didn’t want people to associate him with me. But my sister advised me to sleep on it, say as little as possible, do as little as possible, and sort it out after I’d had time to cool down. I called a friend who knew both of us and got his counsel. With their help, I determined that leaving wouldn’t solve anything. So I didn’t. He and I haven’t spoken since. And that’s fine. We couldn’t resolve our differences, but at least we didn’t let it become a war.

Late on Thursday, the Daynotes.com portal was also shuttered. I didn’t see any point in that measure. It was more a symbolic gesture than anything else, and as far as I can tell, the only thing it accomplished was making a lot of people as mad as I was that night in January 2000. I was mad too. Chris Ward-Johnson and I both published that address as a resource for people to reach us and others like us. Now we look like just another fly-by-night dotcom.

And as soon as the thought had occurred to me that Daynotes.com’s absence might be intentional, rather than just a flipped bit in Tom Syroid’s Apache configuration file, the coup occurred. I had notification in my inbox that I’d been subscribed to the Daynotes mailing list at Bobwalder.com. I had messages in my Daynotes folder–mail from the new backchannel, all thanking Bob for his efforts. Then I had notification that Bob had registered the domain name daynotes.org and he expected it to be active come Monday. In the meantime he offered an alternative portal for people to use…

And the talk on the backchannel? It was mostly like old times. Lots of well-deserved thanks and congratulations headed Bob’s direction. A little patching up. And some traffic was exactly like old times. Jonathan Hassell wrote in asking for recommendations for a hotel in New York. Then I made a rare appearance, asking my cohorts across the Atlantic whether Murphy’s Law meant the same thing there as it does here, because I didn’t know and I wanted to invoke it in the Shopper UK article I was writing yesterday. The result? Jon got hotel advice, and I got a brief, “Well, over here it means ‘anything that can go wrong will go wrong…'” from the Good Dr. K.
This has dragged on far too long, so I’ll conclude with this. Three years ago this past week, I had a life-changing experience. I spent a week in a big room 120 miles from home with about 50 people I didn’t know from Adam. And I learned something in that room. Friends aren’t people who like you because of the superhuman qualities they see in you. Our group spent close to 90 hours together that week, and trust me, we didn’t see much in the way of superhuman qualities in one another. Indeed, mostly we saw the very worst that 50 people can offer the world. We could have held it against one another. But those 50 people continued to stand by and admire one another. I never did figure out if that was in spite of what we knew about one another, or precisely because of what we knew about one another.

I’ll never, ever forget that life lesson. True friends learn how to work around their weaknesses and disagreements. It’s hard sometimes, but even at its worst, it’s a whole lot easier than living in isolation.

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