I was looking for something at work yesterday and found this site with an great description of WashU, my new day home. It's the second entry, "the best (and richest!) university you've never heard of" that I was interested in, and I got hooked into David's writing.
There are alot of blogs out there and I bounce around some new ones out of curiosity once in a while. Last week I found, via Yahoo, a place to search a community of bloggers for the topics I was interested in. There was a lot of junk out there, but some interesting sites too.
So David's blog stood out for being highly readable and thoughtful. He writes about his cancer but also literature, science, world events, local events and has connections to towns I know: St. Louis, Nashville, Atlanta, Philadelphia... he likes to hike and was in grad school but the cancer interefered with that.
I kept reading and thinking I needed to come back and read more later, follow his links, read more deeply. I realized as I went forward in time, scanning his posts, that the cancer might have won. Then I got to the most recent entry. It was posted in May of this year.
The last post is about his treatment progress in a new trial. Then nothing.
I went to the comments on that last post, and a few into it I found his brother's post. David died May 12, 2005 after battling melanoma for nine years.
It was sad and telling Tom later I got teary. I am carrying this small nugget of grief for the loss of a man I never met, for family and friends unknown.
There were many other comments on his blog, following the announcement of his passing. Check them out. And check out some of his other writings. David was very talented in his ability to speak of what was happening to him without sentimentality, and got on with his life as well as he could in his condition. There's an understated courage in his willingness to both lay out details for us to see, acknowledging the pain and the uncertainty that had completely disrupted a life, his life.
I'm entranced by the beauty of his postings that reach into a future where he is not corporeal.
This seems to me to be the highest use of technology, a cold world of zeros and ones, that can be transformed into art. And sometimes it becomes a tool for connection between and among us. If David's thoughts can be found and shared and appreciated with the click of a mouse, now and into the future, what else can we do with these tools to inspire and comfort and support each other?
I swim in technology every day, cutting edge stuff, old stuff, and lots of bad stuff, sometimes an electronic junkyard of developers with virtual sledgehammers doing their best with what they had just a few years ago. And I keep coming back to this: technology is only good when it actually improves our lives. We all need to hold it rigorously to this standard.
This is why I will go for days without checking my email. And I've tried a Blackberry and hated it. The Palm was good, but that's because I could look up imporant info. I think the pseudonym "leash" works really well for the BB - and I didn't make that up, other techno-wonks did.
More better faster is not the reason to go toward innovation. Let's just try to keep it to better. I don't need MORE technology or more information, I need better tools.
If a piece of innovation it isn't helping you live your life in the way you always wanted to, then chuck it. Maybe the technology isn't ready yet, maybe you aren't ready. But do what works for you. And let geeks (bless them) figure out how to keep beautiful writing/art like David's up for all of us to see.
I hope it doesn't get washed away in the tides of time. His spirit is in those pages. I can imagine what it cost him to write some days. And I suspect it sustained him through many dark moments.
I think he'd like that it's still sustaining people, still touching us, rippling out into a community, into the wider world.
Comfort to you and your family and friends - may your life and memory be for a Blessing.
Monday, June 16, 2003
This is the first post on my new blog. What will become of it?
posted by David # 12:41 PM comments(0)