Michelle’s memorial - just Beth, Lisa, Melinda, and me locally with Jeneane online. But I read from the outpouring of posts and thoughts that surrounded Meg’s passing last month and I think it was good to carry this forward, to carry the grief so many of us felt through a closure that bespeaks acceptance of her choices and allowed many of us to share again the sadness of that moment of learning of our common loss.

Thanks to everyone who sent notes, words to share, kind thoughts and shared sorrow. Michelle Goodrich is gone and we remember her with love.

Mandarin Meg memorial gathering — non-denominational, non-sectarian, simply human gathering of people who wish to acknowledge and remember the passing of Michelle Goodrich at 3:45 today, Pacific time in Suite 8111 Hyatt San Jose at 1740 North First Street, San Jose California.

People with thoughts and memories to share are welcome to speak them, to read them, to type them in real-time via IRC chat client to a chat room named #MandarinMeg on Freenode which will be available starting about ten minutes before the memorial begins.

This gathering will be loosely modeled on Quaker practice: coming together in silence, followed by some brief comments by me regarding our purpose there, then continuing quiet while people speak when they feel moved to share. We will ask that each person speak only once until all present have had a chance to share. After an hour of silence broken by our thoughts and memories, I will break the silence by standing and thanking those in attendance.

If you can not be there but have something you would like read aloud for those who are there, simply email me at fpaynter@gmail.com

• Brian Moffatt linked to meg
• Loose Poodle (Peter) linked to meg
• Chris Locke linked to meg
• Jeneane Sessum linked to meg
• Claude Covo-Farchi linked to meg
• Leslie Winer linked to meg
• Mike Golby linked to meg
• Kuan GC linked to meg

These are just a few of the people who linked to Mandarin Meg. Gary Turner linked to meg. I hope he is recovering well from his surgery. My neighbor JR at Duly Noded linked to meg.

This week in this post I will link to more people who linked to meg. If you have a memory of meg you would like to share at our memorial on Friday, but can’t be there or can’t be online to share it, then you could leave it in the comments below and we could read it out loud on Friday.

From 3:45 to 4:45 Pacific Time (GMT -8 hours), people will gather at BlogHer to honor the life of Michelle Goodrich, our friend Mandarin Meg. The memorial will be in room 8111 at the San Jose Hyatt Hotel.

Hyatt San Jose
1740 North First Street,
San Jose, California, USA 95112

An IRC chat room named #mandarinmeg will be open on Freenode and friends around the world are invited to join us as they can and share their memories online. We’re sorry that the timing can’t be convenient for everyone everywhere. Late afternoon at BlogHer seemed like a good time for North America, and not impossible for Europe (11:45 pm London, 12:45am Berlin, and morning in much of east Asia and Australia).

If you are not all that famuiliar with Internet Relay Chat, here is an easy way to join up. Download the Mozilla 1.7.13 browser for your operating system from http://www.mozilla.org/download.html.

Install the browser, but don’t select it to be your default.

Open the browser after it has been installed and click on the Window button in the menu bar at the top. The pull down menu that opens has an item near the bottom called IRCChat. Click that and in the text are on the bottom of the page enter:
/attach freenode

after you are attached to freenode you will be asked to idfentify yourself with a nickname. Just pick a one word name you want to be known by and hit enter.

type /join #mandarinmeg

you will be connected to the mandarinmeg room

if you want to give it a try this week and you have problems, just email me and I’ll try to walk you through it.

I’ll look forward to sitting with you next Friday and remembering meg.

An email today…