Archive - Mar 12, 2010
RIP: Greenwich DTC Chair and friend, Dave Roberson
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 03/12/2010 - 13:05“In the end, we all die alone”. Last November, Greenwich Democratic Town Committee Chair Dave Roberson started off his tribute to his recently deceased father challenging this view. He spoke about those who cared for his father in his final hour and he spoke of his belief in that “great cloud of witnesses” that Saint Paul talks about.
Monday, Dave challenged that view again. The newspaper reports talked about a witness who saw Dave’s car veer off the road as he suffered an apparent heart attack. They talked about the EMTs that pulled Dave from the wreckage and tried in vain to save his life. They did not talk about the angels or the great cloud of witnesses that I am sure God sent to be with Dave as he moved from this world to the next. Perhaps some of my sleeplessness Monday night was not due to the stresses in my own life, but my spirit longing to be near an old friend as he moved on as well.
Dave had a lot of friends in politics. He was a cheerful, dedicated, hard worker. As I think about his life and the crowds that will gather to memorialize it, I remember a scene from the movie Norma Rae. In it, Reuben Warshowsky, a union organizer, talks about his own father’s death and those that came to the funeral
On October 4, 1970, my grandfather, Isaac Abraham Warshowsky, aged eighty-seven, died in his sleep in New York City. On the following Friday morning, his funeral was held. My mother and father attended, my two uncles from Brooklyn attended, my Aunt Minnie came up from Florida. Also present were eight hundred and sixty-two members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and Cloth, Hat and Cap Makers' Union. Also members of his family. In death as in life, they stood at his side. They had fought battles with him, bound the wounds of battle with him, had earned bread together and had broken it together. When they spoke, they spoke in one voice, and they were heard. They were black, they were white, they were Irish, they were Polish, they were Catholic, they were Jews, they were one. That's what a union is: one.
That is also what we, the friends of Dave Roberson are: one. We became his friend through politics, through church, or many other activities. We might not all share the same religious beliefs or political beliefs, but we share an important kinship, or friendship with Dave Roberson and hopefully that will spur all of us on, to work for a better country and a better world.
I will miss Dave.
Note: For those of you who have not seen Dave’s tribute to his father, I am including it below the fold.
Review: Facebook Fairytales
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 03/12/2010 - 10:51We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so the only reading material around the house was either books we checked out of the local library or copies of Reader’s Digest. When my parents got divorced my mother headed off to college as part of her effort to build a new life for herself. She took a creative writing class and received a comment on her first paper that it read like a story from Reader’s Digest. My mother, not realizing this was intended as a put down, was very pleased.
Since those days, I’ve gone on to enjoy reading James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, and others that are a long way from my early literary explorations. Yet I still enjoy, from time to time, picking up a story that reads like it is from Reader’s Digest.
I read a lot of books about the nature of online social networking. Tara Hunt’s book The Whuffie Factor is one of the best books I’ve read about online social networking, especially for young sophisticated geeks living in silicon valley, silicon alley, or other places such people gather. Shel Israel’s book, Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods seems the best for older business people. Shiv Singh’s Social Media Marketing For Dummies is one of the best for marketers, and the best for the general population seems to be Leslie Poston’s Twitter for Dummies.
But if you want to find a book that truly captures the power of social media in a way that your beloved Reader’s Digest reading aunt who plays the church organ out in Kansas can understand, there is no better book than Emily Liebert’s Facebook Fairytales: Modern-Day Miracles to Inspire the Human Spirit. The stories read like Reader’s Digest stories, in a good way. They are simple, touching, well written stories about how people have used Facebook to connect with one another in special ways. They have stories about strangers becoming friends and helping one another through major life events. There are stories of adoption, organ donation and more.
So, if you are a young sophisticated geek living in a silicon region of our country and want to find a book which will communicate what is really important about what you do to your beloved aunt who is skeptical of all this online stuff, get her a copy of Facebook Fairytales. For that matter, if you are just an average reader who would like something simple and uplifting to balance out some of the bad news of the day, Facebook Fairytales might bring you a little joy as well.
As a final note, especially in terms of the latest government regulations about product endorsements: I have received copies of each of the books mentioned in this blog post by publicists looking for a good review. I actually receive many requests to review books, but I don’t like writing negative reviews, so I turn down many of the book review requests and only do occasional reviews of books that sound like I’m going to like them. That’s how I came to review Facebook Fairytales, and like the other books I’ve received to review, I’m pleased that it did not disappoint me.
