About
November 2021
15 years later, the endgame stretches out, and it remains to be seen whether this marks its middle or last stage. Dusty Davis, my young friend and web guru mentioned below, tragically died five years ago, and my list of memorial entries grows, while I linger long enough to require an updated introduction. The occasion is a second retirement, now from a full-time volunteer job as Executive Director at City Farm SLO, following the last one from Cal Poly in 2012. I intend to use some of the freed up time to return to the project that began with this blog–revisiting, preserving and winnowing past experiences–and part of the time continuing to add to the new.
This website is the beginning of my endgame.
Since 1994, I’ve used the web to create materials for classes I’ve taught, to archive publications and other writings, and to organize and distribute photos. My website has been housed at Cal Poly University San Obispo, where various colleagues helped me develop and maintain it. Turning 63 last year, I entered the Faculty Early Retirement program, which relieved me of teaching duties during Fall Quarter. After clearing most of the files and books accumulated over the last eighteen years from my office, I started migrating some of my web activities off campus.
This past summer I took another step toward the new life of old age by reducing my teaching load to two courses during spring quarter only, vacating the office fully, and bringing home to my small study the books and files that survived the two-year process of document dumping. The movement of electronic assets followed suit. I discovered Flickr to be a great tool for sorting and exchanging the images I’ve accumulated, most of them digital, but also my old photos and those of my parents that need to be scanned. My aim is to do this kind of sifting of grain from chaff with the motley collection of journals and letters that fill my file cabinet. I’m content with the belief that this life is all I get. Rather than a mess to clean up, I’d like to leave behind an ordered recollection of what I’ve learned and enjoyed.
Ever since I worked with my late colleague, Doug Smith, on the Blake Multimedia Project in Hypercard in the early 1990’s, I’ve profited from apprenticing with people more knowledgeable and skilled than me in digital rhetoric. In starting this new project I’m fortunate to have found a web designer whose creative abilities and technical skill are of the highest order. The fact that Dusty Davis is a former student and a long term friend makes the work a continual delight.
September 2006