Manage of the unmanagable

She was one of those 'young managers'. Do you ever deal with those? People who climb the ranks quick because they're so damn good, professionally and personally. Probably.. you have ...but not enough.

Anyway in 1992 I was on 'mandatory sabbatical' from university looking for a place in a world. A desire to work in theatre box offices and short order cook lines was winding down. She hired me when the public library still resided the Virgin megastore site, an age ago.

I was one of a gaggle of six or so in our mashup division, a good job, good pay, some more serious than others. With slackers and the occasional junkie cluttering up my sofa or apartment floor I was in the category more to the serious side. I was not always so great. Abby in her unflaggingly quiet sterness sorted me more than once. A good investment for the mother corp for the next nine years and for me... The person in my mind who gave me this profession I love so much; someone completely unlike me my mentor.

Just married she had her first child just shortly after. Still remember the crowded workroom scene and the quintessence of giving Goodnight Moon that bright day in '93. My son nightly clings to a bunny just like the one I gave to her daughter J.

I inherited a new manager and quickly moved elsewhere. It was a big system no need to sit still. In two years we were back together A. expecting her second child then and my eye on a higher position, just married myself now. I covered part of her leave soon after. But not for the maternity, for medical. When her little second one was only 6 mos. A. was diagnosed with breast cancer.

It was terminal. She did everything best she could, as ever so, and we prayed against hope that she would be relieved, protected for being as fine a person as she was. She was an exceptionally fine person. Swearing on my heart this is not looking at someone through the tragedy kaleidoscope glasses. How young was I to wonder as much?

***
I think many of us have chatted when there is loss how it is a capital challenge the appearance of a person, their every moment. I remember an exchange with Tony about how inconceivable it becomes that our children just appeared that it fills us with the dread they, or us, will ever disappear from each other. I know some of you have felt such dread -- or worse. This was my foundation of schooling for it.

***
She is as kind and good and hardworking as A. ever was. We have worked nearby one another for 6 years and it was only in the chatty intercession of Christmas break we connected the dots. "Oh did you work at the library downtown? Did you every know A.?" But "Yes" I gulp. Turns out C. is the sister in law of A. The one who kept the time at palliative care, the one there when other family members had retreated or never began for the dread, anger or unending despair of it all.

Perfect. Perfect it would be C.

C. it turns out had just seen that girl, J., her niece. They were going to buy the graduation dress she will wear this year. I saw pictures of her and of the baby boy who was barely a toddler when he lost his mama too short a while after she took him to Disneyland. They are well. Beautiful children approaching that age I was when their mother hired me.

We went over all I knew and few things I didn't. That A. bought her daughter a wedding dress before she died. What she wanted for her husband another colleague of ours. Again how it was that C. was there.

A circle closed. A cycle of life exploded for me in a thousand pieces. What do we really ask of this life each day? To demand longevity? Or, to value not what we consume but what we create? My heart was elated in its way that it was C. It was the gladness I had which surprised me. So glad it was her that was there for A. What matters but what we have for each other? A moment of faith delivered to me; someone otherwise a skeptic.

I feel some disquiet at the consolation I got in this intersection of story. Worrying I was make it all trite; but as I set it down I hope it conveys, as for me, hopefulness, gratitude.

**** with no small measure of thankfulness to Susan who gives so much through her storytelling and no doubt helped me meld my mother-womanness with value and not demand.

Somewhat Derivative and Entirely Tenuous

Preface
I am a bit of a techie. I took to email in 1988 and wrote my first website in good ole html circa 1998. Now looking into Web 2.0 in 2008 simultaneous with a 2.0 outlook on my own life I have noticed a subconscious renewal of a sympathetic view of technology. I have revived my passion for what I call bibliodiversity and my thorough disdain, in equal measures, for those who either oversell technology or fear-monger misshapen luddite decrees. Fear not the machine, I think we'll agree.

Segue
This week I had the pleasure to recommend the excellent blog WhyMommy? on an open line show.

Yes. I have been an openline caller. -- eye roll.
And I am parent blogger -- double eye roll.

So shoot me. (But it was on CBC radio, so was I not somewhat dignified?)

The pointy bit
The topic was a new online resource for Breast Cancer Survivors from the Breast Cancer Foundation. When I made my comments I had a bit of an out-of-occupation experience. The panel and host were very interested in my comments about WhyMommy's blog, how it tells a story, where it educates, how it seemed a part of WhyMommy's healing and that it sustained a mixed audience of cancer patients and (for lack of a better word) civilians. Their Breast Cancer Map is collaborative but in-house capital 'P' Product. The host questioned if the sort of content the blog offered might someday be included in the Foundation resource.

Sigh. Why oh why -- must be always compete to include?

This is such a drone. A constant battery in the aging information age of the limitlessness of possibilities and the pedantic 'solutions'. Each technology vehicle must aspire to be all things to all people??? Well it can't.

As a librarian I have argued and debated the issues of the one true way for the the false idols of 'the Internet' and 'computers' and 'technology' for years ad nauseum. My response to these important experts was, roughly, as follows. "I am really thrilled to hear about this new resource. But I wouldn't expect it to do the sort of things that the blog does. I mean, I understand that the information that each item emits intersects but that is the limit. We really benefit from institutions generating one kind of online community and individuals generating another and the only work need be done is to draw the linkages. It would not seem important to me (read, it would seem detrimental) that institutes ever take responsibility for creating a setting for such personal dialogues."

In making these comments I was at once at ease and then suddenly uncomfortable with my own position. I realized quickly how far it went to a case of eating my words. You see it was a lightning bolt of dialogue liberties. Literally, for years I have preached the same philosophy about, again for lack of better words, "surviving technology. My philosophy = let's not reinvent the wheel. I have done this not fully appreciating a commitment it made to my own thinking and actions.

In this sad little information age we live in, that need still meet its own age of reason, we parrot the endlessness of possibilities and so often fail to create anything out of option paralysis. I think of Cancer Foundation IT staffers cringing at the thought of including 'social software' in their institutional communication tool. Ah, the liability of information delivery. How could we include this without any functions for fact checking? How would we choose who to include or exclude? It is truly a nightmare from the corporate view. We constantly have this problem in schools. But -- this is my paradigm shift -- but why should we care? If we really do nothing more than what I advocated -- nothing more than link maybe we will more fully embrace the tolerance for difference and disagreement the wealth of connectivity engenders. We might rise above the possibilities and acutally be productive!!!! I guess I rode along back in the debates last summer about brand affiliations online and did sneer. I thought of it only one way when really it has as many levels as the latest releases for Wii.

We can't, and shouldn't, care about every affiliation anymore. (this from a cataloguing librarian and media copyright specialist?) We can't read into the image of McDonalds Southwest Salad on the sidebar quite the same as we might a few years back. Don't we want to attempt the possibilities of linkages without arbitrating each one? To keep arbitration a requirement will only go to our continued desire for 'all the possibilities' and, as I've said, continue to obliterate actual creation. Even though it might not be for me I can't quite sneer the same way today I did yesterday.

I am glad to see the link for the WhyMommy blog near the Cancer Foundations' site on nothing more than my say so. What a crazy idea that defies my hitherto held standards of inclusion. Hypocrisy and I remain, I suppose, intimate strangers.

And there is my big egghead post for Easter. Or what my daughter, in a perfect metaphor, calls the Humpty-dumpty holiday; if that isn't an understatement and a half. My sweet Lord.

Signed, Stephen Fry

ps.. yes I could have edited that but come on, it's just the Internet.

All Aboard

Big love out to WhyMommy today and her breast cancer survivors post. I'll dedicate my share of it to lighthouse friend and survivor Beth! Please remember my slogan for WhyMommy's breast cancer battle; she can do it, we can help.

All aboard, people!