02/19/09: Mom's obituary
This is the text of the obit that appeared with slight edits in the Times Argus and Caledonian Record:
Joan Marie Brunelle Dawley, 76, died Friday, Dec. 12, 2008 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH.
She was born May 25, 1932, in Montpelier, VT, the daughter of Edward Brunelle and Dorothy (Dunton) Brunelle.
She married George Siekierski in 1951. They lived in Montpelier, VT; New Haven, CT; and West Springfield, MA and had a son, Keith. They divorced in 1962 after a period of separation.
For several years she was a reporter for the Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus, writing human interest stories. There she met Lee Dawley, originally of Gowanda, NY; they married in 1963. After their move to S. Ryegate in 1964, she worked at the Caledonian Record in St. Johnsbury and the Orange County Council of Social Agencies. Lee was stricken with multiple sclerosis in the late 1970s, and as his condition worsened she spent more time tending to him. From 1985-2004, caring for him was her sole occupation.
Always an advocate of higher education, she was late to attend college herself. She studied at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT from 1976-1980, first focusing on the visual arts before pursuing a B.A. in Philosophy. She went on to a four-year graduate program at the State University of New York at Albany; she received her Masters in Philosophy in 1990. Studies in linguistics also led her to summer programs at Ohio Northern University in Ada, OH and Kossuth Lajos Tudományegyetem in Debrecen, Hungary. Her engagement with ideas was lifelong, and she continued to read in history, philosophy, and neuroscience until her final hospitalization.
She was predeceased by husband Lee Dawley, son Keith Siekierski, brother Philip Brunelle, and sister Kathleen Haggett. She is survived by brother Robert Brunelle (and wife Jackie) of S. Barre, VT; two daughters, Andrea Sharp (and husband Steve) of Essex Junction, VT and Janice Dawley of Burlington, VT; and son Hugh Dawley of Burlington, VT as well as several nieces and grandchildren.
A memorial ceremony will be held at 1:00 PM in the Fellowship Hall of the S. Ryegate Presbyterian Church on May 25, 2009. Donations in lieu of flowers can be made to the American Heart Association or the American Civil Liberties Union.
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The Times Argus created a guest book that anyone is free to sign. I was surprised to see that my mother's childhood friend Claire Buley signed it soon after it appeared, even though they hadn't been in touch in decades. That tells me that out of sight is not out of mind for a lot of people, and that each of us leaves an impression on the world as we pass through it. You are not forgotten, Mutti.
Joan Marie Brunelle Dawley, 76, died Friday, Dec. 12, 2008 at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH.
She was born May 25, 1932, in Montpelier, VT, the daughter of Edward Brunelle and Dorothy (Dunton) Brunelle.
She married George Siekierski in 1951. They lived in Montpelier, VT; New Haven, CT; and West Springfield, MA and had a son, Keith. They divorced in 1962 after a period of separation.
For several years she was a reporter for the Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus, writing human interest stories. There she met Lee Dawley, originally of Gowanda, NY; they married in 1963. After their move to S. Ryegate in 1964, she worked at the Caledonian Record in St. Johnsbury and the Orange County Council of Social Agencies. Lee was stricken with multiple sclerosis in the late 1970s, and as his condition worsened she spent more time tending to him. From 1985-2004, caring for him was her sole occupation.
Always an advocate of higher education, she was late to attend college herself. She studied at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT from 1976-1980, first focusing on the visual arts before pursuing a B.A. in Philosophy. She went on to a four-year graduate program at the State University of New York at Albany; she received her Masters in Philosophy in 1990. Studies in linguistics also led her to summer programs at Ohio Northern University in Ada, OH and Kossuth Lajos Tudományegyetem in Debrecen, Hungary. Her engagement with ideas was lifelong, and she continued to read in history, philosophy, and neuroscience until her final hospitalization.
She was predeceased by husband Lee Dawley, son Keith Siekierski, brother Philip Brunelle, and sister Kathleen Haggett. She is survived by brother Robert Brunelle (and wife Jackie) of S. Barre, VT; two daughters, Andrea Sharp (and husband Steve) of Essex Junction, VT and Janice Dawley of Burlington, VT; and son Hugh Dawley of Burlington, VT as well as several nieces and grandchildren.
A memorial ceremony will be held at 1:00 PM in the Fellowship Hall of the S. Ryegate Presbyterian Church on May 25, 2009. Donations in lieu of flowers can be made to the American Heart Association or the American Civil Liberties Union.
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The Times Argus created a guest book that anyone is free to sign. I was surprised to see that my mother's childhood friend Claire Buley signed it soon after it appeared, even though they hadn't been in touch in decades. That tells me that out of sight is not out of mind for a lot of people, and that each of us leaves an impression on the world as we pass through it. You are not forgotten, Mutti.
12/22/08: Joan Marie Brunelle Dawley, 1932-2008
My mother died on Friday, December 12. She was 76 years old.
I've been working on an obituary over the past week and wondering how to distill her life and place in the world down to a single column in a newspaper. It's hard to do, so I ended up copying the structure of the obituary she wrote for Dad in 2004. Lots of names of relatives, educational milestones, jobs she held. Those are all meaningful, because they highlight things she valued: family, professional achievement, the life of the mind. But they only hint at some of her most characteristic traits -- her shyness, her tough-minded skepticism, her strong sense of humor, her imagination.
I loved her very much. I will miss her.
11/30/08: Life lessons
This is a story about my engagement with the life and work of Robert Downey Jr.
It starts with a series of roles I saw him play in movies in the last couple of years. A Scanner Darkly (hilarious motor mouth double-crosser), Zodiac (drunken reporter sliding into the trash bin of life, delivers my favorite line of the movie to Jake Gyllenhaal: “You’re doing that thing, the thing we discussed, the thing I don't like, starts with an ‘L’ ” (i.e. looming). I remember quoting it for Art Sousa one day at work and him looking bemused), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (hapless petty thief drawn into a crime investigation in Hollywood; lots of back and forth funny banter with Val Kilmer, who plays a homosexual private detective nicknamed “Gay Perry”), then the biggie, Iron Man (I have a lot of misgivings about this movie. It is really violent and disturbing, the Afghanistan characters are simplistic to the point of stereotype, and the final battle between Iron Monger and Iron Man is a lame coda to the film. But… every moment Robert Downey Jr. is on the screen is redeemed for me by his light touch, line readings that are perfectly natural and funny and surprising in a genre that tends to sour brooding and leaden delivery. He’s not being ironic, either. It’s obvious he’s enjoying himself, that he loves the material). Tropic Thunder sort of an after thought. There is apparently a whole series of movies he’s done that focus on his powers of mimicry (Chaplin, Heart and Souls), and this is another in that vein. He is completely unrecognizable here, even apart from the “pigmentation procedure” (i.e. blackface), he speaks in a deeper voice than normal and enunciates in a bizarre faux-ghetto vocabulary and rhythm. The effect is striking, but not particularly worthy in itself. The one exception is the scene in which he pretends to be a Chinese rice farmer, speaking Chinese with a ghetto accent that even to me, almost completely ignorant of Chinese, sounds absurd and hilarious. The fact that the child drug lord he is talking to briefly seems to believe he really is Chinese proves to me that the “movie within a movie” is actually three levels down, that there is a movie within a movie within a movie. At the very least, his character has three levels. (“I’m the dude playin’ the dude, disguised as another dude!”) Talk about metafiction!
It starts with a series of roles I saw him play in movies in the last couple of years. A Scanner Darkly (hilarious motor mouth double-crosser), Zodiac (drunken reporter sliding into the trash bin of life, delivers my favorite line of the movie to Jake Gyllenhaal: “You’re doing that thing, the thing we discussed, the thing I don't like, starts with an ‘L’ ” (i.e. looming). I remember quoting it for Art Sousa one day at work and him looking bemused), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (hapless petty thief drawn into a crime investigation in Hollywood; lots of back and forth funny banter with Val Kilmer, who plays a homosexual private detective nicknamed “Gay Perry”), then the biggie, Iron Man (I have a lot of misgivings about this movie. It is really violent and disturbing, the Afghanistan characters are simplistic to the point of stereotype, and the final battle between Iron Monger and Iron Man is a lame coda to the film. But… every moment Robert Downey Jr. is on the screen is redeemed for me by his light touch, line readings that are perfectly natural and funny and surprising in a genre that tends to sour brooding and leaden delivery. He’s not being ironic, either. It’s obvious he’s enjoying himself, that he loves the material). Tropic Thunder sort of an after thought. There is apparently a whole series of movies he’s done that focus on his powers of mimicry (Chaplin, Heart and Souls), and this is another in that vein. He is completely unrecognizable here, even apart from the “pigmentation procedure” (i.e. blackface), he speaks in a deeper voice than normal and enunciates in a bizarre faux-ghetto vocabulary and rhythm. The effect is striking, but not particularly worthy in itself. The one exception is the scene in which he pretends to be a Chinese rice farmer, speaking Chinese with a ghetto accent that even to me, almost completely ignorant of Chinese, sounds absurd and hilarious. The fact that the child drug lord he is talking to briefly seems to believe he really is Chinese proves to me that the “movie within a movie” is actually three levels down, that there is a movie within a movie within a movie. At the very least, his character has three levels. (“I’m the dude playin’ the dude, disguised as another dude!”) Talk about metafiction!
11/08/08: A beautiful sight
08/05/08: Dispatch from Oahu
We're having another slow morning today, downloading photos off our cameras, blogging and recovering from our marathon day trip to the big island of Hawaii yesterday. Beth booked a trip with Polynesian Adventure Tours that required us to get up by 4:30 AM and didn't get us back to Oahu until about 9:30 PM. It was a difficult schedule, but worth it for all the ground we covered, and the cool sights we saw. These included: the Mauna Loa macadamia nut farm and factory, an orchid farm, the Kilauea caldera, the black lava plains of Kupaianaha, and a distant view of new land being made where magma is spilling into the sea. It being daytime, we couldn't actually see any red glow, but the huge acidic cloud hovering over the outlet repeatedly pulsed with brownish explosions. Hot stuff!
The other big day trip so far was to the Polynesian Cultural Center just north of us in Laie. It was a total tourist trap, complete with staffers who took photos of each group to be sold later at $18 a pop, some sketchily differentiated "island" areas with timed programming of music and dance, an Imax theater, a buffet-style luau, and a final stage show titled "Horizons" that had some cool fire-juggling at the end. The weirdest thing about the place is that it is owned and operated by Brigham Young University -- a Mormon college with 95% Mormon students. Being a skeptical person, I kept wondering what religious agenda the place was trying to promote, but I never identified anything. It just seemed like a money-making venture.
The rest of our time has been spent in Honolulu at the zoo or various restaurants, hiking, swimming in the deliciously warm ocean at the beach, and driving on roads with names like "Kamehameha", "Likelike" and "Kalanianaole". It's all starting to seem normal. Nice!
I hope to post at least one more dispatch before we leave next week. In the mean time, check out the new Hawaii photo album in my gallery.
tags: Hawaii
The other big day trip so far was to the Polynesian Cultural Center just north of us in Laie. It was a total tourist trap, complete with staffers who took photos of each group to be sold later at $18 a pop, some sketchily differentiated "island" areas with timed programming of music and dance, an Imax theater, a buffet-style luau, and a final stage show titled "Horizons" that had some cool fire-juggling at the end. The weirdest thing about the place is that it is owned and operated by Brigham Young University -- a Mormon college with 95% Mormon students. Being a skeptical person, I kept wondering what religious agenda the place was trying to promote, but I never identified anything. It just seemed like a money-making venture.
The rest of our time has been spent in Honolulu at the zoo or various restaurants, hiking, swimming in the deliciously warm ocean at the beach, and driving on roads with names like "Kamehameha", "Likelike" and "Kalanianaole". It's all starting to seem normal. Nice!
I hope to post at least one more dispatch before we leave next week. In the mean time, check out the new Hawaii photo album in my gallery.
tags: Hawaii
07/15/08: Reasons to be cheerful
I just watched the first episode of Joss Whedon's web musical, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. It is hilarious, in the vein of silly superhero creations like The Tick and Mystery Men, but with Sondheim-esque compositions! It stars Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion! It was independently produced by Joss and his relations! It is the future of entertainment financing and distribution!
No joke, I watched it five times already (via iTunes download, because the demand caused the free web site to crash). You will love it. Go see.
And that's not the half of it! I still have a new Hellboy movie to watch; the Batman movie comes out in a few days; the X-Files movie premiers July 25; and my birthday follows two days later. And then I'm going to Hawaii for two weeks. My head asplode. Yay!
tags: Dr. Horrible
No joke, I watched it five times already (via iTunes download, because the demand caused the free web site to crash). You will love it. Go see.
And that's not the half of it! I still have a new Hellboy movie to watch; the Batman movie comes out in a few days; the X-Files movie premiers July 25; and my birthday follows two days later. And then I'm going to Hawaii for two weeks. My head asplode. Yay!
tags: Dr. Horrible
07/06/08: R.I.P. Thomas M. Disch
I just learned from Making Light that Thomas M. Disch, the author of 334 and On Wings of Song -- two of the best works of SF I've ever read -- killed himself two days ago. Damn. Fucking damn it. Yes, he was a bastard sometimes, particularly lately, but he wrote some amazing stuff that spoke of a larger spirit and artistic sensibility than most people ever know. I wish he had had a better life.
ETA: NY Times Obituary
tags: Thomas M. Disch
ETA: NY Times Obituary
tags: Thomas M. Disch
05/24/08: At WisCon
It's a couple of days into WisCon, and I'm struggling to keep up with all the programming, people, and basic physical needs like eating and sleeping. But I'm hanging out with Liz and John and getting reconnected with lots of other folks and blogging, and it is good. I plan to write something up after the convention, but in the mean time I've been posting to Feminist SF -- The Blog! Go there if you're interested in up to the minute reports.
tags: WisCon 32
tags: WisCon 32
03/31/08: Giants among men
Last night I joined my sister, a friend of hers, and my nephew for a kickass performance by They Might Be Giants at Higher Ground. I saw these guys perform back in the late '80s when they visited my college, and I swear they look exactly the same as they did back then. The cool thing is, they've produced about 20 million albums in the interval, so they had a lot more songs to choose from. The show was great -- full of humor, energy, and unexpected wackiness. Highlights for my nephew included battling me with one of the giant foam fingers that were handed out before the show and joining the conga line that John Flansburgh berated into existence halfway through. There were not one, but TWO encores, the second of which included the ever-popular "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", introduced with an amazing Spanish-style acoustic guitar performance by Dan Miller.
And if the performance wasn't good enough, I felt completely at home amongst the nerdy crowd. I had a nice chat with Bill Simmon and Emily Stoneking, and saw a number of other people I recognized. And as I was driving out of the parking lot at 10:45, I guffawed at the sight of a license plate that said "TARDIS". Yep, pretty much a perfect night.
And if the performance wasn't good enough, I felt completely at home amongst the nerdy crowd. I had a nice chat with Bill Simmon and Emily Stoneking, and saw a number of other people I recognized. And as I was driving out of the parking lot at 10:45, I guffawed at the sight of a license plate that said "TARDIS". Yep, pretty much a perfect night.
03/23/08: Spring is coming...
Finally, we're officially out of winter. Yeah, we keep getting ice storms and other crapola falling out of the sky, but summer IS on the way. Thank Peep, because 2008 has been one of my least favorite years so far. Relationship distress, a nasty case of work, and an inner ear infection that gave me persistent vertigo all combined to give me an insomnia/anxiety/depression sucker punch disabling enough that I decided to take antidepressant meds for the first time in my life. I'm on the mend now, and seriously looking forward to sunshine, more time off, and having energy to write in this blog again.
So, in honor of the sunny Easter day outside, here's a link to this year's celebration of Just Born products, the 2008 Official Sacramento Peep-Off. The rules are simple: "You have 30 minutes to eat 'em, and then there's a 5 minute "cooling off period" to see if anyone is going to puke 'em up. [...] If you puke, you have to eat the puked Peeps to stay eligible." You gotta respect that "reduce/reuse/recycle" ethic.
tags: Peeps
So, in honor of the sunny Easter day outside, here's a link to this year's celebration of Just Born products, the 2008 Official Sacramento Peep-Off. The rules are simple: "You have 30 minutes to eat 'em, and then there's a 5 minute "cooling off period" to see if anyone is going to puke 'em up. [...] If you puke, you have to eat the puked Peeps to stay eligible." You gotta respect that "reduce/reuse/recycle" ethic.
tags: Peeps
