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People...

Contents

• Joe Jefferson
• Some of my Friends
• In Memory....

Joe Jefferson

Joe is... Joe. His interests are as broad as mine, and he's just as wierd and almost as unpredictable. A few years ago we met online, promptly got into an argument, and have kept right on arguing ever since. I'm not sure when I realized I couldn't imagine life without him any more.

We got married on January 28, 2007.

At present, after a hiatus of some years to serve in the Air Force and work for a living, Joe has finished his undergraduate work in anthropology and is awaiting his degree. He is also applying to graduate schools, planning to obtain an advanced degree in archaeology, after which he hopes to spend his life between digs, the laboratory, and the classroom. In his spare time, he builds models of military hardware (especially medieval siege engines and WWII-era planes and tanks), reads voraciously (he's as big a fan of science fiction and fantasy as I am), and watches the Simpsons, South Park, and WWE. (Is there some law of nature that requires good taste and bad taste to add up to a constant, I wonder?) <G>

Joe has stated to me, more than once, that he'll volunteer to go on the first manned mission to Mars in any capacity whatsoever. I think his real ambition is to be the first xenoarchaeologist. After what the NASA Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and the ESA Mars Express orbiter, have found on Mars, who knows -- maybe he'll do it.

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Some of my Friends

Below are links to the Web sites of some friends. A surprising number of my friends are admitted Luddites and don't have web pages of their own. (Some aren't even on-line.) So this isn't really a representative group, but it includes some interesting people.

Graham Cluley

Graham and I got acquainted because of our mutual experience with an abusive religious group -- he as the boyfriend of a woman who joined, me as a long-time member. Graham and a former member of this group, Ayman Akshar, founded TOLC, Triumphing Over London Cults in the early 1990s, the first organization of former members of this group. After the Internet exploded, Graham put TOLC on the Web.

We also share an interest in computer viruses, and particularly in getting rid of them. In Graham's case, this interest is professional; he works for Sophos AntiVirus.

Lillian Csernica

I got to know Lillian through Science Fiction and Fantasy fandom, but we came to have something far greater in common -- our faith. Her's has been tested. If you want to hear a wonderful and true story straight out of the age of miracles, ask Lillian to tell you about her older son, Michael.

Lillian is a writer of horror and dark fantasy. I'm not terribly fond of either genre as a rule, but she's written some fine short stories. I recommend avoiding her work if you're squeamish, though.

Jeffry Dwight

Jeffry is one of many friends I made during the heyday of the GEnie on-line network. We "met" in the Science Fiction & Fantasy Roundtable, or SFRT as it was called. He's a multitalented geek, as so many Science Fiction and Fantasy (SF) fans are. First, he's a gifted programmer with a knack for writing tight, unbuggy code on that loosest and most buggy of platforms -- Microsoft Windows. Second, he writes and edits well -- mostly technical manuals, although he has written some fine short stories, poems and songs. Third, he's a better-than-passable musician who has done at least one CD. (I have that one.)

Most of Jeffry's life these days is tied up in his two sons, Nicholas (Niki) and Zachary (Zack), two adorable little boys he adopted in the Ukraine a couple of years ago. He tells the story on his web site, and I highly recommend it for people who need a reminder that not all the news in this world is bad. It's also mandatory reading if you are considering adoption, especially adoption in a foreign country, as a single parent or as a couple.

Robert Glaub

Robert is another friend from GEnie, a fellow SF fan whose day job is as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. government. He maintains the Ashes of Empire newsgroup on sff.net and populates it with items from the news that came to his attention and that he thinks the rest of us would like to see. In the last few years, he has shown a particularly sharp eye for interesting scientific breakthroughs, particularly those involving space travel and the environment.

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In Memory....

Below are tributes to a number of people, all now deceased, who through their lives -- what they did and (even more) who they were -- influenced me significantly in one way or another. Some are saints in my church. Some, although not saints in my church, led similar lives and influenced people in similar ways. Others were not saints by any definition, but nonetheless managed to have a positive impact. Some of these people I knew personally before they died, but in most cases, I know them only by reputation, and by following their actions from afar, so to speak.

I prefer to let these people speak for themselves, so where possible I have just posted a name, dates of birth and death, a couple of identifying facts (such as positions they held, books they wrote, or titles by which they were known), and a few quotes by them or by someone else about them that illustrate why they had such an effect on me.

Representative Tom Lantos (Lantos Tamás Péter)
Holocaust Survivor
Professor of Economics
U.S. Congressman, 12th District, Northern California
February 1, 1928 - February 11, 2008

• "The bloodbath, the cruelty, the death that I saw, so many times around me during those few months between March of 1944 and January of 1945 made me a very old young man. I was sixteen, but I was very old." Interview in "The Last Days", a Holocaust Memorial book, 1999
• (On the passports issued by Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg proclaiming him and other Hungarian Jews to be Swedish subjects, which he credits with saving his life.) "This was like me declaring you to be prima ballerina of the St. Petersburg Ballet; it had no validity. And yet“these miraculous, worthless pieces of paper worked." Speaking to a journalist about the Holocaust
• "For decades to come, the world’s preeminent historians will analyze the Iraq War and its manifold impact. But one impact is already clear: when dealing with a looming threat to international peace and security, Congress will insist that all – and I mean all – diplomatic and economic remedies be pursued before military action is undertaken." Speech before Foreign Affairs Committee, U.S. Congress, on March 6, 2007
• (Speaking to Yahoo Executive Jerry Yang about Yahoo's compliance with a Chinese government demand for the identity of a Chinese activist.) "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are Pygmies." Before the U.S. Congress, November 1997
• "It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress. I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country." On announcing his retirement from Congress, 1997
• "The veneer of civilization is paper thin. We are its guardians, and we can never rest." At the U.N. Commemoration of the Holocaust, 2008

Bishop Alexander Mileant
Bishop, Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia
Scientist and Researcher, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
1938 - September 12, 2005

• "From a spiritual point of view the history of humanity is nothing other than a war ... focused in human hearts, in which the kind beginnings placed there by their Creator fight with the sinful poison of the serpent-tempter. The victories just as the defeats in this war are not long-lived, as each of us knows well by his own personal experience: today I am illuminated by bright desires; I feel like a son of God and want to love everyone, but tomorrow — I am full of bitterness and evils, a pitiful toy of any little passion.... This intense war, knowing no truce, arising in every human personality, pours over into society, taking hold of families, social strata, and even whole governments and nationalities." Paschal Epistle, April 18/May 1, 2005
• "...just as we cannot persuade ourselves that we are full when we are hungry or that we are rested when we are tired, similarly we cannot convince ourselves that our behavior is correct when our conscience tells us otherwise." Conscience: God's Voice in Mankind, 2001
• "The Holy Scripture teaches that humility is the essential virtue, without which it is impossible to bear any good fruit at all. Our Lord Jesus Christ began His Sermon on the Mount with a call to humility, saying: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven' (Matthew 5:3)." The Poverty that Enriches: On the Virtue of Humility, 2002

Peter Benenson
Founder, Amnesty International
July 31, 1921 - February 25, 2005

• "I’m reminded of the words of a 16th century man sentenced to death by burning: We have today lit such a candle as shall never be put out." Upon publication of "Appeal for Amnesty", 1961
• "The candle burns not for us, but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prisons, who were shot on the way to prison, who were tortured, who were kidnapped, who ‘disappeared’. That’s what the candle is for." On the 25th Anniversary, 1986
• "In 1961 I wrote, 'Pressure of opinion a hundred years ago brought about the emancipation of the slaves.' Pressure of opinion is now needed to help Amnesty International achieve its ultimate objective: to close for business. Only then, when the last prisoner of conscience has been freed, when the last torture chamber has been closed, when the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a reality for the world's people, will our work be done." On the 40th Anniversary, 2001

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom of Sourezh
The Way of the Pilgrim
Living Prayer
June 19, 1914 - August 04, 2003

• "I met Christ as a Person at a moment when I needed him in order to live, and at a moment when I was not in search of him. I was found; I did not find him." I Believe In God
• "All the years when life had been hard I had found it natural, if not easy, to fight; but when life became easy and happy I was faced quite unexpectedly with a problem: I could not accept aimless happiness. Hardships and suffering had to be overcome, there was something beyond them. Happiness seemed to be stale if it had no further meaning." I Believe In God
• "There is no atheist in the world who has ever measured the depth of the absence of God as the Son of God made man measured it on the cross when he cried to his Father: 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'" The Prayer of Intercession
• "One of the chief things that we are called upon to learn is awareness - awareness of our own self and of the other person's situation, an awareness that will stand the test of life and death. All life is at every moment an ultimate act." On Death
• "The Resurrection is a revelation of the mercy of God, of the power of God, of the love of God, but also of the greatness of man. Death has no fear for us; it has become a gate into eternity.... Let us conquer our doubts and hesitations by listening to God himself speaking to us, and let us respond to the word of God and to the event of the Resurrection with faith and gratitude! Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!" Easter Homily, 1986

Rumer Godden
Kingfishers Catch Fire
In This House of Brede
December 10, 1907 - November 08, 1998

• "...an Indian proverb...says that everyone is a house with four rooms -- physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person." A House with Four Rooms
• "There are several things children will not put up with in a book. You have to have a proper beginning and a proper end...."
• "It takes a lot of courage to be a writer."

Damon Knight
Science Fiction Editor, Writer, and Teacher
Curmudgeon Extaordinaire
September 19, 1922 - April 14, 2002

• "Like other children, I was never innocent, but I was ignorant and I knew it. I hungered to learn everything I could about the world, and in particular those parts of it that my elders were determined to cover up. I found out about them anyway, even in libraries, and I acquired a taste for the hunt that the Hood River school system could not suppress. To this day I feel that there are hidden things I need to know and that ferreting them out is one of the greatest thrills in the world.

"For parents who are disturbed by libraries' refusal to screen what they allow children to see on computer terminals and on the shelves, I have a couple of practical suggestions.

1. "Forbid your children to go to any library. Go to the library yourself and bring home carefully selected, wholesome books. Put the books on a shelf your children can reach, and replace them every month or so. This will keep your children from reading smut, and at the same time it will teach them that libraries are dangerously attractive places.
2. "Get rid of any Web-capable computer you have in your home, and forbid your children to visit any household that has one.

"Don't falter! Don't give up! If consistently followed, these two measures will turn your children into lovers of the forbidden, make them rebellious learners and immeasurably enrich their lives." Letter to the Editor, Eugene Register-Guard, July 31, 1999

• "I am off to the library to get one or more biographies of Karen Blixen, because I love her so much that I want to know all about her, but I am apprehensive that what I read will make me love her less. I feel more and more that dead subjects of biographies are helpless victims, and that biographers intent on "warts and all" often produce a work that is all warts."
• "Most fiction (nearly all genre fiction) gives us the pleasure of seeing poetic justice done. Horror fiction jolts us by reminding us that the universe is not like that. In my opinion people read it for the jolt rather than the message. (They can get the same message by reading the newspaper.)"
• "It occurs to me, now and then, that maybe a critic ought not to write about any author until the latter is dead; but I'm afraid some of you bastards will outlive me."
• "Anybody who was a lonely bookish child can probably remember the feeling that there must be a better place than this. Who's to say there isn't?"

C. S. Lewis
Mere Christianity
Til We Have Faces
November 29, 1898 - November 22, 1963

• "I believe in Christianity as I believe in the rising sun; not because I see it, but by it I can see all else." Mere Christianity
• "I ended my first book with the words no answer. I know now, Lord, why You utter no answer. You are Yourself the Answer. Before Your face questions die away." Til We Have Faces
• "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." God in the Dock
• "Nothing is yet in its true form." Til We Have Faces

St. John Maximovitch
Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco
Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia
June 4, 1896 - July 2, 1966

• "All the righteous were sorrowful in the world, because they were strangers to the sinful world.... Righteous men left for the desert. What made them saints? Suffering? Suffering alone does not make saints, but striving towards God, love of God, and the labor of overcoming obstacles to holiness..." Sermon: On Saint Seraphim of Sarov (18/31 May 1953)
• "The highest creation on earth, man, had been given a commandment by God not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.... The devil planted the thought that the command was issued, not out of God's love,... but because God desires to dominate.... When man came to believe this diabolical idea, he was instantly separated from God.... and man began to hide from God." Sermon: On the Fall of Man (21 February/6 March, 1954)
• "As long as the earthly life of a man endures, up to the very departure of the soul from the body, the struggle between sin and righteousness goes on within him." Sermon: The Church as the Body of Christ

Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhi)
Founder of "Missionaries of Charity"
"Saint of the Gutters"
August 26, 1910 - September 5, 1997

• "We have to bring God's love to the people by our service. And the poor people have tought us what it really means to love and to serve God -- although full understanding will only come after we die."
• "A child is a gift of God. If you do not want him, give him to me."
• "The other day I dreamed I was at the gates of heaven, and St. Peter said, 'Go back to earth -- there are no slums here.'"

Jacobo Timerman
Journalist, Human Rights Activist
Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number
The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon
January 6, 1923 - November 11, 1999

• "Any totalitarian interrogator -- whether he be Nazi or Communist -- has a definite conception of the world he inhabits.... Any fact that fails to conform to this conception is suitably distorted in order to fit into the scheme.... For that reason... those who hold a fluid, pluralistic view of reality may find certain convictions quite implausible that to totalitarians seem natural and convincing. There's a ring of absurdity to [this] when you read about it, but a much more terrible aspect when you hear it in the context of an interrogation unraveling under the auspices of expert torturers." Prisoner without a Name, Cell Without a Number
• (About being tortured) "All that a man feels is that they're ripping apart his flesh. And he howls." Prisoner without a Name, Cell Without a Number
• (About being Jewish) "Once, a member of the [Argentinian] military junta said of me, 'He's in prison because he is an arrogant Jew.' Yes, I was born arrogant, because I am a proud Jew."
• (About society's insensitivity to injustice) "I see how, gradually, the theme of the Tehran hostages doesn't horrify anybody. We have incorporated the hostage business into our sensibilities. It's become not a moral question but a political question, a question of talking, with different viewpoints."

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