Sandhill Trek

Googling Hedda Hopper

Mamie Van Doren's pal.

Googling Dennis Hopper

Played Goon in Rebel Without a Cause.

Googling Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper was an Admiral in the US Navy and she is credited with inventing the compiler.  She invented a language called "FLOW-MATIC."  The specifications for FLOw-MATIC provided a framework for the COBOL language.

Googling Max Hopper

Max Hopper was Executive Vice President in charge of IT from 1982 to 1985 at Bank of America.  He left an indelible imprint on enterprise computing in the eighties.  From re-engineering the online realtime transaction processing at Bank of America to engineering the ubiquitous airline reservations systems network, Max was an IT giant.

Joan Kanwisher

I visited Joan Kanwisher at her home in Woods Hole near the Bell Tower this week.   Joan was cleaning out her closets, bundling up sketches and prints for the Community Center.  She let me paw through what she had uncovered and pick out a few for gifts. 

We have, in our dining room, three drawings she did of Eel Pond Bridge, Nobska Light, and the Marine Biological Laboratory.  They are signed but not dated.  The first two were gifts in the late sixties, the last we received some time in the last five or ten years.  Joan was very generous to let us expand our little collection of her prints and drawings.

The negotiation was funny.  She was ready to give the pictures away.  I wanted to give her a material value.  We ended up closer to my end of the scale.  I felt like I had gotten a steal of a deal.  She felt glad to have some cash to contribute to her community cause.

Joan is in her eighties and faces heart valve surgery next week.  She is the kind of woman I just want  to hug.  She's diminutive and pretty, with beautiful eyes.  We are holding her in the light of our love and concern as she faces her surgery.

In 1965 Joan would have been about 42. That year, when the last train departed from Woods Hole, Joan wrote to the railroad company and the Falmouth Conservation Commission to propose that the right of way be converted to a bike path.  Ten years later that bike path was finally dedicated after more than a few legal battles and administrative hassles.

Where are they now?

The Webgrrls Top 25 Women on the Web in 1998 are listed below with their affiliations as of 1998. Using nothing but my mouse, my keyboard, two typing fingers and Google, I've done my best to blog-stalk these high performers to provide an update on where they are today.  Here then are the first six (first, that is, in alphabetical order):

• Sarah Allen, engineer, Macromedia Software - Sarah is now at Lazslo, using (choke) vi.;
• Donna Auguste, in 1998 CEO of Freshwater Software, a company she founded (and sold to Mercury Interactive in 2001 for US$147 million) - Donna is now doing philanthropic work in Africa and around the world through her Leave a Little Room Foundation;
• Janelle Brown, then, the Culture Writer for Wired News and co-founder of Maxi Magazine. Today Janelle still writes, edits, publishes;
• Red Burns, founder and chair, NYU Interactive Technology Program. Everyone's "top people" list then and now;
• Denise Caruso, then: digital commerce columnist and executive producer for Spotlight. Now, Denise has a lower, if as impactful, profile;
• Denise Castellucci, creator, Voices of Adoption Website. Denise appears to have moved away from public activism at this time;

That's six down, and nineteen to go. Look for more of the top 25 Webgrrls of 1998 here later this week.

Wendy and Matt

Married for hours by this point...  Wendy and Matt had a small reception last night at the Harbor Inn, a facility on the US Naval Submarine Base, Point Loma, San Diego.  We civilians parked outside the main gate and rode a Navy shuttle bus to the Harbor Inn.  Great food!  Dancing.  Toasts.  Roasts.  Family.  Friends.  Love...

Wendy and Matt Paynter

whyBlog... Britt Blaser shares

Bloggers like blackbirds...

Frank,

I started because Doc Searls and I were having marathon phone calls, enjoying our echo chamber. As Dave Winer had exhorted him, Doc pushed me into blogging, perhaps just to get us off the phone.

I have a genetic need to work out my thoughts, hopes and resentments on 'paper'. So my blog does for me what legal pads once did.

I keep blogging because I've met so many great people like you through this medium. I'm amazed to be introduced to a blogger I've never met, and our conversation picks up where it left off.

Out of the threads of our now-shared thoughts, hopes and resentments we're making a quilt of our common sense of how things should work. Each individual piece of our quilt stands on its own, but collectively a better picture emerges than any tapestry that one of us might weave alone.

But enough about me. Whadda you think of my latest post?

Thanks for asking this question, which seems to be blogger flypaper.

Posted at http://www.blaserco.com/blogs/2004/12/02.html

Britt Blaser

whyBlog... even more

More material on "why we blog"  arrived.  Rebecca Blood - she who wrote the book on blogging - wrote, "...my answer would be much shorter than any of the others you've posted: The world is endlessly fascinating. I blog to share the interesting things I find."

Later, I got this note from Lindsay Vaughn:

Why do I blog?   For the same reason I write poetry, learn the Irish language, and make mail art to send out to strangers: because, while none of these activities makes me more functional in the "real world", there is no reason good enough not to.

I blog because I've met some fantastically weird and interesting people over the internet and through my four years of blogging, including my husband and some of my closest friends.  I'm also an American expat in Ireland and it can get lonely in the Land of No Yanks.  I blog because nobody listens to me when I speak gibberish in the flesh, but bloggers actually like it, or at least that's what they say.  I blog because I'm intensely paranoid/scared/angry/on the brink of breaking down nervously, and if I do that here I make less of a gooey mess.

I blog because for as long as I can remember words have been my medium, my escape, and sometimes my downfall.  "Girl, your mouth is going to get you in trouble someday" - she was right.  I've lost a job due to blogging and have had to face some seriously pissed off friends and relatives, and still I keep coming back for more.  That's because I'm a self-centered uncaring cow.  But I'm also thoughtful and kind, somehow.

I blog because blogging has helped me realize how much of an absurdist weirdo I am.

I blog because bloggers make me uncomfortable.  In a yummy sort of way.  Kind of like a big fat chocolate pie that makes you feel so bloated that your trouser buttons are just about to pop off, and you feel a quivering sickness in your gut, and a rising dread in your chest, and the voice of an anorexic floods your mind yelling "No maxi dresses for you!" and all you can do is keep going because nothing in the world is more satisfying than indulging in something you know deep down you shouldn't be allowed to.

Eat 'em up!

And Riri, in a comment at the Kitchen, points us to her own recent post on the question, which contains linkage to Vu d'ici:  "10 reasons why blogging is good for you".