Author Archives: Karl

Thanksgiving 2007

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It’s been a challenging year. The herniated disk (I’m still suffering with it). The Comcast.net reenginerring and relaunch effort (we launched successfully and they promoted me the same day Mom was diagnosed with cancer). Handling various stability issues with Philly Future that nearly killed the site. Being with Mom as she ended up in the hospital more and more (look on the archives here – a pattern emerged from back in 2005). Learning to be a dad.

So while it’s been a struggle – I have much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving and every day.

This is my last post on Mom for a while. I mentioned I would share some pictures and Richelle did prepare a terrific slideshow for her memorial service, but I think this recent one says it all.

I Fooled Myself

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In the past, I fooled myself into thinking I could not miss what I did not have.

I grew up without a father.

Looking at many I grew up with, sometimes I thought I had it better. I had quite a few friends with dad issues that haunt them to this day.

But now, upon reflection, it feels like I’ve simultaneously lost a Mom and a Dad.

What a strange thing to write. I must be entering the so called ‘anger’ phase.

If only life were that sequential, I could expect the emotions to wash over me, to pass me by on my way towards ‘acceptance’.

But our lives aren’t really like that are they? They happen, in a cosmic kinda level, at something resembling all at once, and our minds attempt to give it order and structure, if there are such things, they are beyond our current understanding.

All I know is that Mom did exist, and she left a legacy in me, in her other sons. Her grandchildren and great grandchildren.

I’m rambling on my blog. Not like me at all. I’m trying to reach for something in writing I can’t quite get to yet. And my guitar is failing me on some level.

So good night folks.

Halloween Pictures

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It may have been the day before Mom’s funeral, but she wouldn’t have wanted us, especially Emma, from having some holiday fun. We may have been harried making arrangements for that Thursday, but we had a good time. I feel particularly blessed to live where we live – a true blue old fashioned Philly neighborhood. It’s a great place for Halloween.

A Great Example of Networked Journalism

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EarthTimes.org: “Consumer Reports Names Their All-Star Appliances”:

“Our brand-repair histories are culled from approximately 450,000 respondents reporting on nearly 2.5 million appliances,” said Robert Markovich, editor at Consumer Reports. “Choosing a reliable brand will boost a consumer’s odds of getting a reliable model and in the end often save consumers money.”

You can even say the report was ‘crowdsourced’.

Now if only we could collate a list of safe and fun toys that parents would want to buy.

Why It Matters

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We maybe on the eve of a new war (USAToday: Poll finds Americans split on taking military action in Iran). Do *you* think you’re doing all you can to inform your fellow citizen of facts or opinions? Do you think it matters? Do you think people are informed enough to weigh in on this? Why do you think that is and who gets the praise or the fault?

How Can This Be?

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The greatest book about the Web, bar none, is David Weinberger’s Small Pieces Loosely Joined. I think the book nailed the nature of the Web, and the motivations behind how we use it and why it has become such a large part in our lives. So when I quote the following, I really believe it. It’s one of the things that motivates me to continue in the line of work I am in.

David Weinberger: Small Pieces Loosely Joined – Kids Version:

So, here we have two worlds. In the real world, people are kept apart by distance. Because of the vastness of the earth, different cultures have developed. People live in separate countries, divided by boundaries and sometimes by walls with soldiers and guns. On the Web, people come together – they connect – because they care about the same things.

The real world is about distances keeping people apart. The Web is about shared interests bringing people together.

Now, if connecting and caring are what make us into human people, then the Web – built out of hyperlinks and energized by people’s interests and passions – is a place where we can be better at being people.

And that is what the Web is for.

Taking that as gospel, and taking the following as the truth most of us agree on (most folks still think Saddam had something to do with 9/11), can it be that the Web as an information platform has failed? And if so, what can be done about it?

Salon: Michael Massing: “What Orwell Didn’t Know::

Orwell had expected advances in technology to allow the ruling elite to monopolize the flow of information and through it to control the minds of the masses. In reality, though, those advances have set off an explosion in the number and diversity of news sources, making efforts at control all the harder to achieve. The 24-hour cable news channels, the constantly updated news Web sites, news aggregators like Google News, post-it-yourself sites such as YouTube, ezines, blogs, and digital cameras have all helped feed an avalanche of information about world affairs. In Iraq, reporters embedded with troops have been able via the Internet to file copy directly from the field. Through “milblogs,” soldiers have been able to share with the outside world their impressions about their experiences on the ground. Even as the war has dragged on, it has given rise to a shelf-full of revealing books, written by not only generals and journalists but also captains, lieutenants, privates, national guardsmen, and even deserters.

In short, no war has been more fully chronicled or minutely analyzed than this one.

…Yet even amid this information glut, the public remains ill-informed about many key aspects of the war. This is due less to any restrictions imposed by the government, or to any official management of language or image, than to controls imposed by the public itself.

…In his reflections on politics and language, Orwell operated on the assumption that people want to know the truth. Often, though, they don’t.

Back to work

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Getting back to work after Mom passing away is a weird and strange. I’m still busy reconciling everything in my head and heart.

Funerals absorb so much of your time that you don’t get a chance to think about things until after they pass.

I’ll share some pictures later, but one thing that became apparent from the slideshow that Richelle put together was that she was, most likely, happier now than she had ever been in her entire life.

Ya know, there are two stereotypes of old people who have had extreme levels of tragedy and struggle to deal with in their lives.

One, the wizened old soul who rose above such tribulations and became a font of information and history.

The other, the poisoned heart, who can no longer see the good in much anything, and rails against the unjust nature of our world – especially to him or herself.

Mom grew into someone resembling neither of these.

Instead, as she aged, she became more childlike with each passing day. When I say this I don’t mean unknowledgable – no I mean more aware of wonder. Of laughter. Of surprise. Of the importance of deep hugs and never staying angry and unreconciled. And of never saying goodbye, but of saying see you later and I love you.

It doesn’t seem fair that it took so long to get to this place, and then to have her snatched away.

But at least she did get to this place. That I was there to witness it. And I will be there to share it with my daughter (I hope).

Mom passed on Saturday at 3 in the afternoon

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Mom was in the hospital with what was thought to be congenital heart failure. By Wednesday she was looking good, but the swelling in her right arm had not gone down. She and I talked about this latest trip to the hospital, just a few days after the last, but that everything should be alright. Her spirits were good.

On Friday I spoke to a doctor who told me it was a blood clot in her right arm that was the trouble. Blood thinners should help, but they wanted to be conservative since her platelets were low as a consequence of her chemo.

I called to check on Mom Saturday around 1 PM and heard that she was in ICU.

This was a shock. While she has issues she was dealing with, her Doctor sounded confident with me on Friday.

I ran to ICU and got there around 2PM.

It turns out, around 6AM Mom was having difficulty breathing, they did a CAT scan and found another blood clot, this one in her right lung. They asked her if it was okay to temporarily be intubated. Mom has been in this situation before, and so she said yes.

By the time I arrived, Mom was looking like she had on other ICU trips, drugged, but stable. I held her hand as the doctor on staff told me what they would like to proceed with. Mom became agitated, possibly hearing me and the doctor discuss these things, possibly just because she was snapping out of her medication. They gave her morphine (which they had done countless times before on other trips to ICU) and she calmed down. The doctor and I talked for around 2 more minutes before her stats went haywire and alarms started ringing. I remember one doctor asking this doctor if she needed help and she said yes, get everyone. Someone pulled me away and asked me to go to the waiting room.

I was there for 10-15 minutes when they called me. They told me there was no heart beat, that they were keeping her alive at that point with CPR. They asked if I wanted to be in the room with her.

Within seconds of my arriving one doctor said he felt a faint pulse and I grabbed mom’s feet and demanded to her that she stay. The staff worked for 15 or so more minutes, with me present, but she was gone.

A nurse told me it was like she had waited for me to arrive, and then decided to let go.

I’m coming out of the daze of the day and am waking up with a million questions and what-ifs. I don’t know how many of them are coming from my head, and how many from my heart.

Thank you everyone for your support, your thoughts and prayers.