hope and its many efforts
It’s been two weeks since l last wrote and what a time it has been. Sadly, it’s not been in a good way. The map above shows the route my friend James and his family were taking on their way home. As you probably have read by now, they were reported missing last week. The story got better--James’ wife and children have been found, but as of this writing, James was still missing. You can read all about it here and I have a good RSS feed, too (check here as well). I am not a close friend of James, but hopefully that is more due to geography than anything else; I stayed at his place when I first visited New York with Gill and Al. I have seen him a few times over the years and have always been really stoked to get a chance to talk to him and see how his life was. I last saw him (with his wife and kids) at Ravi’s wedding and caught a glimpse of him at WWDC.
It’s just so crazy to watch all of this unfold and actually know the people that are involved. It’s been amazing to see the Web community rally around this, too. As I was going to sleep last night, I thought a lot about his situation, which, of course, led me to think about my friend Annie’s situation--she was diagnosed with cancer over Thanksgiving and went into surgery a few days ago. It is a long story, but we’re hoping that the surgeries did what they needed to do and that she is on her way to a full recovery, but... well, she still has a long way to go.
So, Thanksgiving comes and all of a sudden one is put into the position of realizing just how very lucky one is and the little things, once again, become more significant.
A fitting coda - my aunt Marty wrote an essay about her experience with losing my uncle Bill last year in Santa Clara Magazine. It’s supposed to fantastic...I am going to read it tonight.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006