Category: Misc

Arm is healing pretty well — no surgery or pins required. Starting to do small things with the hand; now tying my own shoes at least. Can’t change a diaper quite yet. Can lift a wallet and remove money just fine.

After a week and a half of trying to get ahold of the woman who hit me (kept getting phone ringing into empty space, or a teenager who would say “I’ll get her” and then put the phone on the table and wander away, leaving me hanging for five minutes), finally talked to her. She opened with “But you hit me!” (referring to the fact that I hit her right rear flank). Oh my god. Me: “That’s a matter of a half second’s timing, and was only because I swerved to avoid being hit head-on! Has nothing to do with who had right of way, who turned left into oncoming traffic.” She softens. “My life sucks. I’ve barely left the house since our accident. I’m afraid. The clutch went out. I have a seven-year-old boy. I’ve been looking for work for six months but nobody is hiring. I still live with my mother.” and so on. It’s pretty clear she’s got nothing, which is why she was uninsured to begin with. I’ve decided not to go after anything. She’s agreed to try and help pay for damage to bicycle, maybe some of my medical co-pays.

Well, okay. Me, I’m ready to heal up and get back on the horse. Just want it to be over, move on. Walking to BART now, the commute takes ~45 min total, twice the time it took to ride. People wonder whether I feel cursed, this happening so close to Matthew’s death. Nope, not at all — I’ve been riding for many years without incident. I ride hard, but do believe I ride pretty safe, and that this was a freak incident. I’ll be wearing an orange safety vest from now on, though.

Before and after, one wrist/arm with twin fractures, the other normal. Click if not squeamish. Although the E.R. told me to “see an orthopod in a few days,” my PCP wouldn’t give me a referral over the phone. Tomorrow I go in, no doubt, to waste two hours and half a day of work, take my blood pressure, and get referred to “an orthopod.” I hate that aspect of HMOs — against all common sense, referrals always required. Actually worked today one-handed, which is NOT half-speed, but around 1/4 speed since left hand has to float and search for each letter. Patience wearing thin, going to file a police report tomorrow and am now considering suing after all. I can’t change Miles’ diapers, can’t even pick him up. Can’t drive, can’t ride, can’t pull change out of my pants. Amy has to tie my shoes. My life is screwed for a month while the driver is scot-free. It’s a moral imperative to get her off the road, that’s a given, but I’m starting to think compensation makes sense too … unless it would be trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

First day back at work after the move. Miraculously, I was able to keep my bicycle commute (had been prepared to sacrifice that if necessary to become a home owner). It’s 50% longer than before, but the beauty part is, 80% of the ride is now totally off city streets. The Ohlone Greenway cuts north/south through Berkeley/Albany/El Cerrito, several miles of quiet asphalt amidst trees, along a creek, through grasslands, beneath the BART tracks. Not only is it an even better way to start the day, but Amy is happy knowing I’m safer on dedicated trails rather than battling for space with cell-phone drones in rolling caves.

Webnet — the group of all UC Berkeley campus webmasters — had a session today on RSS / XML in practice. They invited me to speak on ways I’ve delivered RSS publishing to the jschool “for free” by reformulating various student sites to use Movable Type as a content management system. Did a 30 minute presentation, spoke alongside representatives from IST and the Interactive University project.

Hydrogen fuel cells may not be the faultless fuel panacea we’ve dreamed them to be. As it turns out, mass hydrogen production will result inevitably in a lot of runaway gas which will damage the ozone and create “enigmatic ‘noctilucent clouds’ that would shine at night far above the planet’s surface.”

Now we have to decide whether we prefer greenhouse gases from fossil fuels or sunburns from depleted ozone. All that glitters is not gaseous. Or something disappointing like that.

Registered and set up matthewsperry.org on birdhouse hosting. Posted the call for witnesses and info on the upcoming memorial concert. The concert info has also gone out on PR Newswire and is all over the net — here it is on Yahoo!

Update: the site is now pretty much designed and is off and running. Ideally this will become the locus of all new info / events related to Matthew.

Attended a demo co-sponsored by Apple on Final Cut Pro 4 yesterday — we’re mostly interested in it for its bundled audio editing application, which may mean an affordable way out of the OS9 quagmire (we can’t upgrade the lab to OS X because we need Pro Tools free, which only runs in OS 9 and won’t run in Classic — considering dumping Pro Tools altogether). The demo had impressive moments, but also a lot of cheese, and overall nothing compelling enough to us to warrant the upgrade. We’re thrown back on other possibilities – switching to Bias Peak, or just having students dual boot the machines (an eventuality we had hoped to avoid).

Anyway. When we got in the car to head to the event, coworker handed me a map he had printed out and it pointed to… Powell and Vallejo in Emeryville — the exact intersection where Matthew was killed. “Why do you have this?” I asked. “That’s where the event is.” And it dawned on me that of all the places in the Bay Area where this event could have been held, it was being thrown 100 feet from where Matthew was killed. Coincidences mounted. Only ~25 people inside, but one of them was an old friend A and I had sort of lost touch with. Strange afternoon.

Matthew’s memorial service was held at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland yesterday.

We should all live our lives such that the people around us are inspired to throw such a remembrance when we pass. I have never been to a memorial like this — great musicians from all over the country came to play things they had played with Matt before, to improvise, to speak, to remember, to pray. Parents, siblings, friends voiced their feelings. Stacia spoke courageously. The cast of Hedwig played two songs from the show, which left everyone with Kleenex in hand. Little Lila was hoisted on shoulders to see friends and family clapping to Klezmer music. I held small sleeping Miles in my arms and felt so grateful for his existence, our relationship. Friends showed their love for one another. We all cried, and started to move through the wall toward acceptance of Matthew’s loss. At the end of the service, we saw Stacia smiling a bit – the first time in days, so gratifying.

The existence of the chapel blew many of us away – as if a big chunk of old Europe had landed in the middle of Oakland, virtually hidden. Of course, if I had made it to one of Matthew’s performances inside the chapel, its beauty would not have come as such a surprise — he played there twice, with ensembles scattered throughout its Borges-ian labyrinths, where tall banks of urns are interspersed with indoor gardens, sculptures, excerpts from texts of various religions. Dappled sunlight, ferns, total serenity. At the time, it seemed Matthew was playing all over the place, there would be lots of chances. Don’t let chances pass you by, they may not come again.

Matthew loved the idea of urns shaped like books — the bookends of one’s life – and some of his ashes will be stored in a set. More ashes will go to water.

Later, to Stacia’s cousins’ house to sit Shiva (Matthew and Stacia are Jewish, many of us there were not), continue the remembrance, eat good food. Handed out sound board recordings from the SF Hedwig cast performance. Showed Stacia a picture of Matthew in Pensacola 1988 with Grecian Formula 69, looking so much younger (because he was) (Matthew is on the right). Stacia laughed and commented that his knees looked knobbly.

Now that the memorial is past and well-wishers begin to clear out, the hard part begins for Stacia and Lila – how to support themselves, pay mortgage, raise a girl without a father, fund Lila’s education, and so on. A recurring memorial concert is planned to help raise funds for the family, and friends will be pulling together to do what we can.

Farewell Matthew – we love you and miss you. But as Matthew’s brother put it yesterday:

You are vibration, you are music.