# 13 Oct 2012, 10:30AM: Management Secrets of Ancient Rome:
Leonard is listening to the History of Rome podcast and tells me the best bits. Lessons include:
- An emperor is a single point of failure.
- Be proactive about answering your mail (paging Caracalla).
- If the only way you can be removed from your position is assassination, that is how you will be removed.
- If you set up a system where no one can trust anyone else, then no one will trust anyone else. This will lead to backstabbing.
- People get tetchy about holding on to their customs, even if you think they're nonsense.
- Do not disregard the oracle of the sacred chickens.
# 13 Oct 2012, 10:53PM: When I Say "Whom" I Make It Sound Like An Owl Or An Ent:
I am smiling ridiculously wide right now because I have just made plans to see my favorite English teacher from high school, whom I can call "Sam" with some small effort but whom in the third person I feel compelled to call "Mr. Hatch."
(I got to talk to him on the phone! Just now! Eeeee!)
A certain self-consciousness is entering my writing as I think "Mr. Hatch might see this!" Millions of Wikimedians? Kind of used to it. Someone who last graded me when I was fifteen? WHAT ARE MY COMMAS DOING. WHOM AM I KIDDING.
Anyway, I am looking forward to catching up with him. And here's a reminder: if a teacher or mentor was important to you, take the few minutes to look them up and let them know. You don't have forever.
# 13 Oct 2012, 11:28PM: Rest In Peace, John Morearty, 1938-2012:
Sad news.
STOCKTON - John Morearty, the "peacenik carpenter" who led weekly anti-war rallies on Pacific Avenue and helped found the Peace and Justice Network of San Joaquin County, died at home Thursday morning.
John was 74. I got back in contact with him this year, learned he was ill, and went to Stockton to see him and his wife several times. We said our goodbyes, but right now it doesn't feel like enough.
I was watching a film with Leonard yesterday and saw a wipe transition, and remembered how proud I was of making a particular clever transition work on Talking it Through With John Morearty: Dialogues on War and Peace, when I was technical director. John trusted a teenager to run sound and cameras on his show. Am I living up to that example in the community I manage?
He was my introduction into the modern social justice movement. He loved to talk religion with my dad -- they'd both delved deep into Hindu and Christian theology -- and now they're both dead. His voice, that deep rumbly thoughtful voice, I'll never hear that voice again.
Except I will. Before he died, John asked me to work with his friend Jeanne to serve as his literary executors. Some of the works we'll curate are text, we also will be dealing with many hours of audio and video, including dozens or hundreds of episodes of Talking it Through. So I will be hearing his voice again -- the voice I remember from his prime, not the weak whispers of his deathbed. And he gave me permission to upload them to the Internet Archive or Wikimedia Commons, under a license that promotes sharing and translation and teaching.
He made a CD of himself singing peace songs. I can't bear to listen to it right now but it comforts me to know it's there. I'm thinking of his rendition:
My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth's lamentation,
I hear the sweet, tho' far-off hymn
That hails a new creation;
Thro' all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul--
How can I keep from singing?
# (4) 27 Oct 2012, 01:10PM: Tessitura:
Do you miss bloggers from five and ten and fifteen years ago? I especially miss Flea and John-Paul Spiro and Fugitivus. One of the things I learned from Fugitivus:
I had one professor explain it to me really well; she said, you don’t need to be trained to interpret dreams. You just ask a person, "How did this make you feel?" and when they tell you, you ask them, "What else in your life makes you feel this way?" And voila, you now know what that thing in the dream represented.
I can now add a corollary to that. If I feel disproportionately emotionally affected by something, I can ask myself, how do I feel? and what in my childhood made me feel this way?
As long as I'm plumbing my depths, a few other artifacts from the last two weeks:
- I know more of the Lord's Prayer than I thought I did, just not the sentence ordering.
- "You'd be happier and I'd be happier if you could look back on the Sumana of 15 or 16 years ago and see her as a person you like and are fond of, but who was sometimes silly."
- "You're an everything person, you just don't know it yet."
- Until this week I had never actually said the phrase "anchor baby" aloud.
- After a Hogwarts pun: "You have me Rowling on the floor laughing." "You know I'm J.K."
- The Internet Archive has the complete literature of a people, specifically, the Balinese Digital Library collection. It's been a long time since I had that jawdropped awe, that glimpse of a welcome future.
- Overheard at the Internet Archive event as I wove through the lobby towards the Knuth organ solo: a snatch of a conversation about link relations, and a woman complimenting another woman's blog.
- "I understand the you of April 2011 a lot better now."
- "Let me surprise you."
# 29 Oct 2012, 08:46AM: Prepped for Stormicane:
I'm in New York City hearing the winds blow. We have food, water, batteries, a crank radio, books. I'm trying to get a bunch of work done today because we might lose power and internet tonight.
Update from the next afternoon: We're fine, thank goodness!
# (6) 29 Oct 2012, 02:53PM: Leonard And I Will Match Ten Thousand Dollars Of Your Ada Initiative Donations:
Leonard and I met because of the open source movement. We owe our livelihoods to open source, and its values -- inclusiveness, compassion, empowerment, equal and fair treatment for all -- help make us who we are.
This is why he and I are pledging to match up to USD$10,000 of donations to the Ada Initiative made before November 1, 2012.
The Ada Initiative works to increase the participation of women in open technology and culture. They gave me the wording and support I needed to create Wikimedia Foundation's Friendly Space Policy for technical events, which helps everyone at a Wikimedia hackathon feel safer so they can concentrate on rockin' out. If you liked "Be Bold: An Origin Story", the keynote I delivered at Open Source Bridge this year, thank the Ada Initiative, whose advisors helped me shape it. Everyone who wants to grow the open source community benefits from the Ada Initiative's work, and so donating to TAI is like investing in a good piece of machinery; TAI's going to make my work easier for a long time to come.
Please join us in donating to the Ada Initiative, especially if you've also gotten a good career out of open source.
# (1) 30 Oct 2012, 09:08PM: You Did It!:
Leonard and I will be fulfilling our match, because donors gave USD$10,000 to The Ada Initiative. Thank you for matching us.
