Posted by Paul B. Laub on June 30, 2001 at 03:45:07 from 204.30.110.246 :
Ed, I can't imagine you're gone! My memories remain too clear for that to be true. I see you clearly, with your new wife, at a bagel shop on Elmwood Ave. in 1990. It is the Friday morning after Thanksgiving, and from Philadelphia I am back in Buffalo visiting my Uncle Billy and Aunt Elaine. We exchange glances, brief hellos, and then, each of us, hungry, attend to our bagels and cream cheese. I guess I haven't seen you since. From '85 to '88 I lived at 124 Jewett Parkway with you, sociology student Dave Broad, bibliophile and WWII veteran Jim Austin, actor David Fendrick (who portrayed Tom Paine), committed activist Yusef Alhak, Cannabis my black cat buddy, and Omega the peppy puppy. Then in jest I called your place "St. Elwin's Monastic Residence". Did you know that? How this big, boxy, scary (haunted maybe?) house contrasted with the cool, sleek Frank Lloyd Wright Darwin Martin House across the street. Hell, best years of my life were spent there, at 124, thanks to you, Ed! Know that. You were willing to take in this bookish roomer that I was, and still am. [ I write these words at 12:33 am PST 30 June 2001 from my current residence, again a rented room, these days located in the heart Silicon Valley, San Jose, a room in a townhouse shared with three cats and the owner. These days I punch out a living as a "code-monkey" (http://tuxedo.org/jargon/html/entry/code-monkey.html). Anybody want to know about exception handling or ill-conditioning problems in eigensystem extraction? I am at work in my spare time on my first book "Robust Perl Programming for an Imperfect World". Mixed in with all of the dry code is a search for a programmer's ethic, something that looks beyond California's latest boom to bust to something of enduring value. Quality. That search owes much to you and your house of books, and all that I learned during my sojourn there. In my book I am starting with the Greek concept of "techne". ] On wintery mornings back then, I'd wake at 6 am to the sound of a whistling teapot and the stocato clicking of you at your Selectric typewriter. You'd be writing notes for his Soc 101 course, or perhaps annotating one of Emma Goldman's lectures. Your intro courses then were all questions. (I know. I read many of your class handouts.) "Why are you taking this course?", you'd demand. "Aren't you wasting your money if you don't study?", your lecture notes begged. You urged your 18 year old students to write a journal over the semester, thinking, writing, reconsidering. What could be more radical than encouraging a freshman from Nassau Co. to think for herself? I know you hoped that they would keep at it after the course ended. At the time I was a tormented, short-lived grad student in Applied Mathematics at SUNY Buffalo. You recognized my torment and responded with an inscribed copy of Inge Bell's self published masterpiece, "This Book is Not Required". When you begin to think of your life in terms of "career", Bell wrote, worry becomes your constant companion. Too terribly true! Thank you Ed for helping me frame the question ... and for leaving it to me alone to find that answer. It hurts, though, to know that I no longer have you to bounce off my tentative answers. I'm 39, soon 40. I guess I am on my own now. Paul