This week we’ve been spending some time with Elena’s husband Gunnar and her son Gerry Hadden.

Biking and walking the hills. Gerry’s a great photographer; he took the three pictures posted today.

The evening of the day that Elena died something spooky happened. We turned on one of our computers, which is coupled to an ink-jet printer that we rarely use. And this one time, as the system powered up, the printer unexpectedly kicked into life and printed out a single sheet of paper.

And on the paper was a single ASCII heart symbol. Like a last message from Elena.

Do I really think that her spirit left her body, and hung around for awhile and sent this message? Not exactly. But I do think that our universe is patterned like a novel, with synchronistic and meaningful correspondences built in. These correspondences establish themselves a-causally, as described in John Cramer, “The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics”, Reviews of Modern Physics 58, 647-688, July (1986).

I'm aware that, by switching the discourse to science, what I’m really doing is holding up my little mumbo-jumbo fetish-doll against the yawning uncertainties of the spirit world.

Seeing that heart really gave me goosebumps. The printer whirring in the twilight basement room. One symbol, bam.

Way to go, Elena!

I’m teaching a course in the Philosophy Department at San Jose State in Fall, 2005.

Here’s a link with more information. Philosophy 115: Computers and Philosophy, Fall 2005. If you feel like it, print this handy one-page announcement and post in a suitable location as a reminder.

In short, the class meets once a week, 4:00 – 6:45 PM on Thursdays. I'd like to have as many people as possible enjoy this class, so even if you're not a fulltime SJSU student, consider taking the course through the SJSU Open University. Maybe you can get off work a little early on Thursdays this fall! And I know it overlaps with suppertime, so feel free to bring a sandwich.

In this course we'll discuss the philosophical meaning of computers. The presentations will be non-technical. We'll use in-class lectures and demos, and about a third of each meeting will be devoted to group discussion.

I’ll be using my upcoming book The Lifebox, The Seashell, and the Soul as the textbook.

***

There was an article in the New York Times about R. Crumb, hero of my youth. He did a public interview with the art critic Robert Hughes, who’s compared Crumb to Bruegel. Crumb modestly demurs.

[Picture from the recent book,The R. Crumb Handbook, by R. Crumb and Peter Poplaski (MQ Publications Ltd.)]

I’ve often thought of the Crumb/Bruegel connection;if you look at Bruegel’s few remaining sketches from life (admittedly the attributions of these are shaky), they look for all the world like Crumb drawings. I mailed Crumb my Bruegel novel As Above, So Below a couple of years back.

Our neighbor and dear friend Elena Vialo died peacefully this morning after a short illness. Rest in Peace.

These are some pictures from when she and her husband Gunnar came over for Christmas.

Yesterday, we were visiting with her. Near the bed was a book of poems she liked, The Essential Rumi, by the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic Jelaluddin Rumi. One of us read the last poem in the book to her.

***

Say I am You, by Jelaluddin Rumi

I am dust particles in sunlight,

I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say, Stay.

To the sun, Keep moving.

I am morning mist,

and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove,

and surf on the cliff.

Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,

I am also the coral reef they founder on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.

Silence, thought, and voice.

The musical air coming through a flute,

a spark of stone, a flickering

in metal. Both candle,

and the moth crazy around it.

Rose, and the nightingale

lost in the fragrance.

I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,

the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,

and the falling away. What is,

and what isn't. You who know

Jelaluddin, You the one

in all, say who

I am. Say I

am You.

***

We'll miss you, Elena. It was a joy and an honor to know you.

TPM, or The Philosophers' Magazine has an interesting page of interactive philosophical games.

[This is a picture of Rudy Jr. beating me at Go. He's been able to beat me at every known board game since he was five or six. Up till then he was a good chess partner for me!]

The idea is that you answer a series of questions, and the game chides you if your answers aren't consistent with each other, and praises you if they are. I tried “Staying Alive” and “Battleground God.”

I've started looking at protozoa in my microscope again. There's a nice pond of them at the top of this hill.