Don Maslin

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Sun Sep 19 09:17:12 2004

At 11:57 PM 9/18/2004, you wrote:
>DONALD A. MASLIN
>Nov. 2, 1927-Aug. 28, 2004
>Donald A. Maslin, 76, of La Jolla died Aug. 28.

A fine man, clearly - one of those saints who'd help whenever
he could.

A month ago, a young woman I knew passed away at the age of 32
from another bout of cancer. She had many cyber-friends, spent
time with them in IM, and took many digital pictures. Her older
parents weren't very computer-literate, so they really appreciated
my offer to help archive, scrub and re-purpose her PC and laptop.
They knew they didn't want to lose her pictures, but they were
at a loss as how to save them.

Every hobby faces this, of course: we're going to lose human
repositories of wisdom and stuff, young and old. We can be
thankful that they've done major and minor brain-dumps to
this mailing list.

No one would argue that it would be insensitive to contact the
family to tell them what their relative meant to a group of
friends in cyberspace. They may not even know about us.

I also don't think it's crass to remind the family that we'll help
find a good home for all the stuff that the departed treasured
and hoarded, because chances are good that there's no one within
their family that appreciates it the way we do. And heavens,
as many here have discussed, it doesn't hurt to put a clause
in your will to direct the disposal of your treasured junk.
And perhaps someday we'll all have a decent cyber-deadman's-switch.

It may mean the world to you now, but how many times have you
heard stories of families filling multiple Dumpsters to clean out
Grandpa's house of junk after he died? It'll mean nothing to
the person cleaning up, unless you write it down.

- John
Received on Sun Sep 19 2004 - 09:17:12 BST