JM: Thanks for your ideas. I may mention my mother from time to time, but I still hesitate to do even a brief bio, given her wishes.

As for something longer, that’s out of the question for a second reason, too: “Happy families are all alike.” Unhappy families? More fun—in fiction.

David

And I would like to quietly vote interest in a biography, however brief, of your mom.

In fact, it’d be nice, in a possibly Teleread + automatic blogging future, if there were a way to collect the work of loved ones for this purpose. Not for publishing, but for remembering and preserving personal and family histories.

i’m always with you and rooting for you, as ever… as you well know.

Loss and grief are always hard, no matter what, who or when, but you have many, many people who care and want to help get you through and you will. Anything else I could write would just sound trite so I will stop on this subject here.

Regarding Internet links, etc. - yes, I agree with you. Removing them is not so different from when the Soviets would alter images to remove a person, as if they never had been, or had ceased to exist, and this is what some of the larger conglomerates are doing - it sounds like PW has had a hand in this, i know because i went searching for some of your articles and was unable to find even the permalinks, which I found quite disturbing.

When you can do this on the Web, it gets worrisome to me. Since when did become rewriting history become part of publishing and not something we publish *about*?

I always thought that the Fourth Estate held us to a higher standard than that… It grieves me to think that my fellow members of the Estate do not feel bound by the same code of honor or conduct.

Alas, so be it. But tant pis for everyone who will miss that work and the work that went into those pieces. In the final account, one feels it reflects poorly on the company who removes the links, but certainly not on you at all… if anything, you are missed and they are noticed but for all of the wrong reasons.

I’ve said my peace.

Be well,

As for writing in great detail about my mother, that would be tough; I learned yesterday that she didn’t even want a newspaper obituary, just a little paid death notice. Even so, I don’t regret sharing what I did about her life and death. It will be something to show her almost-born great-granddaughter when the time is right—without the risk of any pulped wood having been misplaced. Of course, I’ve always had mixed feelings about writing up personal lives of nonVIPs who aren’t in the news, not unless they want or will tolerate it. Anyway, isn’t that part of what fiction is for?

While I’m remembering my mother, however, let me mention she herself worked in her 20s as a social worker, so, ahead of time, she perhaps knew the drill.

Just as relevantly, she also wrote for a stretch for a business news reporting service. Oh, these writer genes. It’s not the same as having had Toni Morrison as Mom or Kingsley Amis as Dad, but I’ll do a little brag anyway. No copy editor was ever as demanding as my mother was with my Hanukkah thank-you notes. All the teachers and the digital libraries in the world can’t replicate that. It is one reason why I can’t think “literacy” without also thinking “family,” and why I see TeleRead as a library for all, not just K-12, given the importance of parents as role models.

A few final details here. Ever the planner, my mother wrote a simple but eloquent obit for family and friends—which my sister read aloud yesterday but which I’ll not reproduce here. Unfortunately Mom was too shy to develop her talents. She grew up, in an age much different from our MySpace era, among people who thought it was uncouth even to make the daily papers for noncriminal activities except for birth notices and the like. In declining an obit, she went even beyond her peers. Who knows if she got a byline on her business reports, or how far they circulated? I suspect she didn’t get any public credit and may well have wanted it that way.

Thanks,
David

Condolences on your loss.

I hope you’ll write down your memories of her–she lived through some of the most exciting and horrible years of our history.

Rob Preece

Paul

Paul