was the heading of a May 10 email from Jeffrey Hergenrather, MD, advising that Michael Gannon, the SCC webmaster, was in the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital ER, having suffered a massive Arteriovenous malfunction that hemorrhaged. Next email said. “After assessing the situation in the ER the doctors and family realized that there was nothing to offer except for some comfort care.” 

Michael helped with this site, too. He was not only brilliant, he was the kindest, most tolerant person I ever worked with. For several years now we’ve been Skyping 3-4 times a week. We became friends. Every now and then I would feel guilty that the relationship was one-sided —him giving, me taking. But he let me know that he enjoyed the process and found it fulfilling. He was down for the cause. Although he was mild-mannered and zen-oriented, he never made me feel too opinionated or polemical. I’m still stuck in the 20th century, but he never made me feel incompetent. I had an upsetting falling out with someone last winter and Michael helped restore my perspective. He was in his early 60s, I believe. He had made some money in the computer industry in the 1980s and —this is very unusual— it was enough! He walked away from the rat race! He had a beautiful house in Sebastopol, worked in the garden that his wife planted and oversaw, loved his daughter who lived nearby… I’m very glad that when Dustin Sulak and Brad Feuer were in Sonoma County a few weeks ago, Michael was able to join us at the Hergenrathers and we just sat around and shot the breeze.  That was the last time I saw him (except, of course, by Skype).

I am grieving and in disbelief. Below are the two emails Michael sent to me and Christine Milentis of the SCC the day before he died. 

Hi Christine and Fred,

By now your email has hopefully told you the good news…the MailChimp problem  is solved.

It turns out that the tag being used on O’S website was “notes-to-the-scc” but the tag being used by the MailChimp Campaign was “notes-to-scc”. After inserting “the” into the RSS feed URL, it started working again! I have no idea how it happened, but somehow the tag slug must have been changed in WordPress (probable) or MailChimp (doubtful). In any case, they are in sync again.

Christine, I didn’t change any of the other campaigns in MailChimp, I only set up a test campaign. Please feel free to delete it if you want.

Fred, I created a test post called “Fairy Tale” of a cartoon by Jonik in Off Topic. I’ve left it published until I hear from you and Christine that you did indeed receive your emails to that post.

-Michael

Physics joke:

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