Having gone home, I’m now going home

4/1/08

Now I’m waiting in the Indianapolis airport for the flight (through Denver) for Seattle. I guess this is really going home. I’ve lived in the Northwest for more than half of my life.

So here’s a brief account of the memorial trip:

It was too late when we arrived to see many of Mother’s friends. But my cousins were all still there when I arrived. I was introduced to their kids and we swapped some stories of growing up together. I also got to talk with Mother’s brother, whom I hadn’t seen for 25 years. He and I have moved farther from the constraints of our Hoosier youth than any of my family, including my mother.

At the graveside ceremony today, Mother was remembered as “quite a Lady.”

I appreciated talking with our neighbor who is energetically planning her 100th birthday party July 5th.

Following the service, we all had barbeque sandwiches at my cousin’s house. She pulled out her family photo boxes and we all reminisced some more. My cousins are all salt of the earth. I got to spend some more time with my uncle and recognized that we have still more to talk about.

This brief time provided a place in my life for the grief, the pride, the disappointment, the unfinished conversations, the unmet expectations, the fond memories, all that history that leaves this world in a way when a person dies -- and leaves behind the strength of that person's life. My mother gave me a good start in life.

Following the family time, we drove to the Brown County woods for a look at the first house I designed and built. It’s changed, but the basic house and its relationship with the site continue to provide a rich structure for the personalization it’s owners have applied over the past several decades.

Now to move on with life with a big hole in it.

The last trip home

3/31/08


I’m sitting in the Denver airport, having missed the flight to Indianapolis because of “a light in the cockpit” requiring a return to the Seattle terminal. We were both sick over the weekend. It’s just as well we didn’t try to fly yesterday. But now I’ll miss most of the calling hours at the Funeral Home.

I’m sure Tom Wolfe’s definition of going home is more complex than mine, but I believe I am going home, at least for a day.

Quietly in her sleep

There was no recovery. Mother was moved to a nursing home this past week where she apparently gained some sense of awareness and was even fed some applesauce.

Last night her breathing became slowly quieter till it was no more.

I'm writing her obituary today. Maybe I'll post it.

Now What?

I've been home a couple of days now. Getting back into work is helpful, though my efficiency isn't very great. I'll be working this weeekend to get caught up. There was no way I could work while in Atlanta. It was certainly physically/structurally possible, but emotionally impossible. The distance makes it harder and easier. The latest report from my brother is that there's been no change beyond the same roller-coaster we've been on for over three weeks now. It's just wait.

Going home

5 March 2008

In the Atlanta airport waiting for the flight home, I’m reflecting on the time here. Mother had quite shallow breathing when I said goodbye last night. The roller coaster continues. I’ve done all I can. With my brother looking after the house, I’m looking after the finances – long distance. Together we will see that the bills are paid, at least in the short term. We’ve decided to leave her house just as it is for now. There’s still a chance she will move back there, even for a brief transitional stay.

It’s challenging time. There is confusion, with the uncertainty and potential changes. There is the inevitable reminder of our immortality. As I went through Mother’s files, looking for how to keep things going, get things changed, I had to reflect on the challenge my files would present my kids if they had to figure things out. Wow! It would be challenging. I’ll have to clean up with that in mind – someday.

Continuing the vigil

Visiting rehab facilities. Trying to figure out what next. Mother still only wakes up occasionally, and doesn’t recognize anyone. Yesterday she was very clear in repeatedly pointing to her mouth that she wanted something. Probably hungry maybe dry mouth. The feeding through the PEG port was just getting going. She hadn’t had anything in her stomach for 24 hours, so that’s a likely response. It took quite some time to get the mouth cleansing and moisturizing to happen. That seemed to satisfy her.

The most challenging thing is not knowing how the recovery will go. At what point do we need to see progress to know the brain is re-connecting itself? Yesterday it was as though she woke up for a few minutes, looked at me with uncertainty for awhile, then went back to sleep to work on assembling the puzzle in private. She always liked puzzles.

There’s the quality of life issue that my brother and I are struggling with. We just talked with the weekend neurologist. It’s just wait. Another EEG tomorrow to see if there is any sign of seizure, which would be treated. So far, no such indication.

It’s time to do my laundry.

Sitting in hospital rooms

Mother is about to move to her third room since I got here two days ago. She is mostly sleeping, and has been since a significant stroke two weeks ago. One minute she was going about her business, still re-organizing the house after losing her husband a few months ago. Two days later she was not responding to anyone. I was getting reports from my brother, who was spending virtually every waking moment in her hospital room, occasionally switching off with his wife, while the two of them talked to the parade of doctors, who each had a different story to tell. I couldn’t tell if she was recovering or dying. I made the trip across the country, and I still can’t tell.

The large cast of specialists can’t really say what is going on, or what the prognosis is. One has a very strong view that she has encephalitis, another says a stroke. One tells us she is dying and to engage hospice. Another gives her a 37% chance of a full, or nearly full recovery. Meanwhile, we signed the order to avoid extreme measures to keep her alive. This means, in this Georgia hospital, that they won’t insert a breathing tube into her lungs, and they won’t use shock or beat on her if her heart stops.

Along with all the specialists who rotate through her room, I’ve gotten to know her physician and her heart specialist, who have a longer relationship with her. Her physician actually made house calls when her husband was sick. This is The South. It has a history of graciousness and a strong set of rules about behavior. This overlay of social rules, despite its class-associated roots, does provide significant comfort through its structure. The South is friendly on the surface. And as my favorite Tanguera says, how you talk about it matters. I’m still glad I didn’t grow up here.

The situation seems more stable today. After two weeks of doctors not knowing what was going on with her, there is a bit more clarity to the course of treatment. In fact, it’s still pretty much the same as it has been: whether or not the cause of the fever is known, the treatment is antibiotics – two varieties now. She had a port into her stomach installed today (a PEG). So she will no longer suffer the tube into her stomach through her nose for nutrients. She will be back on her familiar dose of cumidin blood thinner, and off the heparin, which has been questioned by FDA for its uncertain raw materials sourcing. Her heart specialist says that area is working as it has been since the pacemaker was installed several years ago. The lung guys (a different one every day) say there’s nothing to worry about there.

So it seems to be just this brain thing. And nobody knows. While I’ve seen her awake for brief periods, and the neurologist always gets her to wake up by pinching her, she can’t communicate much. She can nod and shake her head appropriately to questions, though she hasn’t done so for me. I did have a brief time alone with her yesterday when she squeezed my hand and looked at me as though she knew who I was. She’s still sedated from the PEG procedure this morning, which happened before I got here. So I’m still looking forward to the next opportunity to communicate.

The neurologist presents the most optimistic scenario. Brain injuries can go like this: nothing for some time, then slow recovery. The statistics for recovery offer reasonable hope. I’m going with that for now.

More Random

As usual, I have too many projects going. Let's see, there's the day job, which is picking up a bit after a lull -- and needs my attention before a deadline tomorrow. There's the Greenwood Townhouse project, which could be our home someday, and is moving along slowly in the design phase. I've migrated the design tools (mostly AutoCad) to an instance of XP in a virtual PC on my main Vista machine. I'm continuing to maintain the 4 or 5 PCs in the house, with the laptop at the "stereo" cabinet in the family room, where we dance, and the PC that quit behaving after last month's Microsoft Tuesday Patch Day. There's the 1459 pieces of Tango music that is continually updated and the occasional tanda playlist to build. There's the Circe Snow clothing line to get moving. There's the support for blog entries for family (how do I scan this? Where that photo). There's taxes and business records to attend to. Oh, yes, 1099s to file. I think those were supposed to be in by Jan 30. oops. There's a financial management job I took on without realizing where the balance between research and family politics really lies. There's the really major project of selecting the right wines for the wedding in June. The hot tub has been sitting unused for nearly a year now, with us in desperate need of a soak, and my repair still pending. The access to the loft in the studio is still non-existant, waiting for me to replace the dangerous stepladder. I really want to finish the controls on the hydronic heating system in the studio. It's still being controlled based on only room temp. This causes significant swings in temperature of the wood floor. I have most of the pieces in place to control room temp with more constant floor temp, using a predictive algorithm, recognizing the time constant of the building, using outdoor temp and solar gain as influences. I just need to implement. My "life style changes" include running every day. More time away from projects, but better focus when working. And then there's Tango. It's hard to call Tango a project. But it is a major focus of my energy. It's not just the dancing. It's . . . I don't know what to call it. Anyway, did I say too many projects? I wouldn't have it any other way.

The purpose of this post is mostly to work out how to embed video. This only uses Windows Media Player. It seemed the easy place to start. It seems to use way too much bandwidth for the quality that results. I'll work on a more general solution that is more efficient some other time.

This is from Yira Yira on 14 November, 2007




Ah, the culture of music and dance. Today it seems so remote from my daily routine. I don't know why. It doesn't have to be.

Shrimps on the Barbie

It was wild at our house this weekend. Well, by comparison to our usually quiet domicile. Tango music is different from kids running around yelling. We really needed that infusion of kid energy. It was good to see everyone.

Michael posted his photos on Flicker

I posted photos and a video on my site

Here's one, clipped from a video.

About the technology:

I can't seem to quit fooling around with video and photos. And with the tools for managing them. Windows Movie Maker ships with Windows and JAlbum is freeware. These are both very simple to use. Even though I'm curious about how things work and what's available, when it's time to create or post something, I want it simple and I want to be in control. And I don't want to spend too much time figuring out how to do it. Cutting clips from videos for posting was a new thing for me this time. This business of photo quality is no longer about how to get the wet film quality out of a digital camera. We still want the 4x6 prints, and use the canon picturemate for that (even though, at 30 cents each, they cost twice as much as costco prints from uploaded digital photos). What I'm finding is that we just want a print now and then. So getting them right away (well the printer seems slow, but that's just because the other printers are so fast) let's us just choose what we want more carefully before printing. No more sending a batch off for printing.

Anyway, with quality being less important that having content available online, there's a new way of thinking about it. With you tube postings of everything tango, and Elizabeth finding these gems, the quality of the image is much less important than just being able to see, say D'Arienzo performing in a 1937 movie, or what milongas look like in Buenos Aires this year. Or a glimpse at one trip to BsAs. Simply getting vacation pictures posted matters more than the megapixels.

I'm still curious about this 3-screen convergence. I'm gaining understanding about how it is happening, what it is, something of where it's going. And I like being a part of it. Last night's realization was that the small screen of the cell phone and the large screen of the TV (whether from the consumer electronics broadcast/cable direction or IPTV) have the same requirements for User Interface. How we interact with the two devices should be the same. The TV remote is disconnected from the screen, unlike the cell phone, but the information that can be presented on the screen, and the means of selecting it are the same. Touch screens on the cell will slowly emerge, with iPhone pushing, but the basic paradyme is the same. It's very different from the computer screen, where you have lots of pixels and sit 19 inches away from it with a mouse as a pointer. The interaction models are typically migrating from the computer to the other two screens, but the user experience must be different because of the limitation on the amount of information that can be presented and the means of navagating. blah blah blah It's time for me to go to work making it happen instead of just talking about it.

Time for a trip to Argentina

Leaving soon...

note, following return: Elizabeth's blog documents this trip better than I could.

Just keeping it going

Just a quick break from working to keep my place here. I believe that if I don't make an entry occassionally, it will all disappear.

Alan and John

Ava's tree

Anthony Lakes reunion 06

The consensus was that it was a good gathering. Good food, good hikes, good times.

Uploading photos to the blog

The photo from the Cabin with everybody eating a snack is a 3000 x 2000 pixel file uploaded (it took awhile). The photo of Alice's house is 800 x 533 pixels. This is just an experiment.

Managing Gamers -- a preamble

Working in a technical environment presents opportunities to engage people with outstanding specialized talents and skills. I went to college with them. I've socialized with them. I've worked with them. I've seen this technically developed mostly male group create much of what we now take for granted in the world around us. I believe that the gamers represent an identifiable subset of that technically engaged culture. This cuts across cultural background and nationality. It's a phenomenon worth exploring. I typically hesitate putting people in categories, so I’m struggling with the words to describe this group, even to group them. Not all those who respond to technology as do gamers are actually gamers, but exhibit behaviors in the workplace that suggest management in a similar way.


The Gamer

A growing component of the technical workforce is composed of a highly skilled sub-culture in which the participants have grown up heavily engaged in computer games. Members of this group have developed a specialized skill set, but more importantly have developed as competitors, with a set of attitudes and views that differentiate them from the mainstream workforce. This group of individuals has finely tuned responses, developed in a virtual world that enables them to outperform all comers in certain realms of the real world.

Expertise quickly developed: When faced with a carefully structured set of problems to solve, the gamer can often whip through the options, arriving at the optimal solution quickly because they have learned that they can win by forging ahead. They often believe themselves invincible, since they have survived every challenge they have faced, including death, in their virtual worlds.

Cooperative problem solving: Despite the image of the individual against the computer game, there is an extensive group of massively multiplayer online games. These gamers consider themselves sociable and successful in cooperatively achieving mutual goals.

Processing of visual information: Moving quickly through huge amounts of data presented visually develops a specific analysis and problem-solving skills that gamers bring to any visually presented problem, whether it’s an online form to be filled out or a large spreadsheet scrolling by.

Persistence and flexibility: The gamers willingness to continually try different approaches, coupled with the belief that there is a way through the maze, sets them up to not only plow through concepts and approaches doggedly with an open mind, but to have no doubt that an optimum solution exists.

Ambition and competitiveness: Gamers play to win. While there is generally a sense of following the rules of fairness and an a often a teamwork attitude, winning is the driver.

Insubordination: Spending hours upon hours in virtual worlds that they share only with their peers, gamers often disengage from those outside their world. In particular, the guidance and criticism of peers far outweighs any direction given by authority figures in the workplace.


This analysis is based on an article by Erin Bilba in the April 2006 issue of Wired magazine. Maybe sometime I will continue with my thoughts about how this understanding of the gamer character can influence the management of this valuable component of our technical workforce.

How to provide a workplace environment where gamers excel: to be continued…

From the bus to the office

Things I noticed today on my way to work:

• The sun on the south side of buildings in winter is very different from the summer version
• The Smith Tower is a wonderful building and continues to stand taller than the giants around it
• Architecture is powerful
• after many years, some wood utility poles collect a lot of staples.
• doors to buildings with for lease signs are sometimes mistaken for toilets
• some seagulls are really big
• people mean it when they say "have a good day"
• working is better than not working
• cobblestones have a lot of character
• attitude is evrything

Sunday Morning

The days are getting longer. I have to take the bus in to work late to see daylight, but I've done so recently. I like working in the city. And riding the bus. This photo was actually taken last spring. I walk through this new city hall on the way to work some days.

Oaxaca thoughts

Photo of Cactus at Mitla, near Oaxaca, Mexico. Great place in the world. It's where I want to live in the wintertime. Additional photos are posted here.

I’m sitting here on my last of 19 days in November/December in this gritty city thinking about spending more time here. Elizabeth and I sat down this morning with William, our landlord and close neighbor, whom I’ve spent time with over the past weeks. His father was born and raised here and he moved to a Sicilian neighborhood of New York where, after being a taxi driver in Oaxaca, he developed a travel business that William wanted no part of.

William now finds himself married to a Oaxacan, running a Bed and Breakfast -- engaged in the very business his father wanted him to join. I was sympathetic – it’s similar to being raised in a family of builders and and trying to be a mechanical engineer.

I would like to spend a part of the year here. And so would Elizabeth. The thing is, the old part of the city is what is attractive. There is a lot of building going on in the surrounding area, adjacent to the city, and the prices of a two-bedroom house are under $50K, US. It sounds attractive to a baby boomer on the leading edge of a bubble that everyone knows is huge and no one knows where it is going or how it will be funded.

But we don’t want to move to another suburb, no matter what it is close to. Here is what we’ve found out about this city, after living and mostly walking around within a mile of so of the Zocalo.

Oaxaca is remote, much as Eugene is, from the political and cultural center of its state and its country. It’s probably more representative of its state than Eugene is, but much more separate from its country, politically, at least. It is a very corrupt city, much as Mexico City was 25 years ago when I visited there. I think Mexico City and Mexico in general has come a long way politically since PRI was defeated by Vicente Fox and PAN in the last election. We’ll see if it sticks with the elections next summer.

The corruption in Oaxaca is still so great that the execution of leftist party leaders this week appears to be unchallenged, or at least not vigorously investigated. The taxes are skimmed off by the politicians who are only out for what they can get today. There is no planning. In particular, there is no sense of what to do about a scarce water supply as the city continues to grow at an unprecedented rate. Property values, while seemingly low by US standards, have quadrupled over the past ten years. I don’t think it is going to stop any time soon. Despite the remoteness, and the threats of serious water shortage, I believe property values in the central city will continue to rise. Possibly at significant rates, much as the central areas of Eastern European cities have exploded since the wall came down.

It’s not just to make money for our kids that I would want to own something in the Oaxacan city center. It’s a way of life here that we can both engage. This culture values art. Music, dancing, and the visual arts are supported here. There are festivals, not only experienced in the churches, but offered to the public in the Zocalo on over 100 days of the year. Last night we watched kids, primary and middle school age from pueblos in the area, perform dances and share their local crop-influenced views of the world. It ended in great fireworks and bounty being tossed to the audience. This strong engagement of tradition and old-fashioned ways will not go away anytime soon, despite parents taking videos and talking on cell phones.

Maybe it’s nostalgia. Maybe it’s just a relief to disengage from the media of the US and simply be remote. The Zapotecs we have talked to, while perhaps a small sample size, are the most impressive people I’ve met, in engaging me as a basic, mono-lingual person. They seem to know what is going on in the world, choose to be a part of their own culture, and speak more directly to me, with better English than any European who’s second language is English, much less the third language after Spanish. (Victor, the tour guide at Monte Alban; Maria, the weaver in Teotitlan; Martin Chicon, the folksinger; Jaime and Noe, the taxi driver) There are many distinct indigenous cultures. The Zapotecs are simply the ones we came into contact with and heard speaking to their friends and family. There are apparently over 100 languages spoken in Mexico today. In Oaxaca, Spanish is taught in public schools, but not English.

Elizabeth spent time in the university library and was impressed with how vigorously these kids are pursuing the study of art and architecture. She feels that the thirst for learning among the young people she saw is well beyond the engagement of young people in our culture. Of course it could just be that they are more physically social and verbal in their pursuits than the online kids at home and we just can’t observe the thirst, curiosity, and mental engagement of our own kids. Then again, one wonders how rich the online material is, compared with a library full of luscious photos of artwork.

We visited the home of Roldolfo Morales in Ocotlan. He was well supported by his community until his death in 2001. And he returned that support by insuring that important buildings were restored and are cared for in the public interest. One of Rufino Tomayo’s paintings was sold in Paris last year for well over a million dollars. It seems to be a painting that was never shown locally. The local community wants it back. Tomayo collected some of the most significant archeological artifacts from across Mexico. He endowed a museum containing his collection. Gilberto Aceves Navarro had an opening last week. He and Francisco Toledo are some of the last of the old guard painters. Toledo is apparently working to return the architecturally and historically important Camino Real convent to public use.

The art community is strong, the politics are corrupt, and technology is being embraced. I got off the plane and my cell phone just worked. I’m sure the bill for the few times I used it will be outrageous, but it serves as an indication of the potential for and investment in connectedness of this community. While there are internet/phone places on every street, many businesses continue to use typewriters. At the market, the guy who types for anyone needing written words still bangs away on his trusty Corona.