Tuesday, August 04, 2015

Nine Months Later

Nine months have elapsed since MB died, and I thought that members of her far-flung network of friends, acquaintances, and fellow practitioners might be interested in an update.

I know that her passing was commemorated at several Buddhist communities.  The Santa Fe group that took care of her at the end had a memorial gathering in mid-November.  There was also a smaller gathering in March, when RS came to retrieve her ashes for the next stage of their journeys to their ultimate homes in Crestone, CO and the Pacific Ocean.

I don't believe that a death notice ever ran in the newspaper in Port Angeles or Santa Fe or online.  I feel badly about that.

Thank you to Robin A. for her offers of technological assistance in cleaning up the blog.  I apologize for my failure to follow up.

A few weeks ago PG and I went for a memorial hike to Raven's Ridge, although we went to the overlook first and stopped at the nubbin on the way back.  We each brought one or more of MB's preferred trail foods (PG brought chocolate and a banana, I brought thick pretzels).  However, neither of us was willing to indulge in her preferred beverage, Diet Coke.

Among the remaining unresolved questions is the future of her web presence.  When the sfpoetry.org domain name used by the archival Santa Fe Poetry Broadside expired in April, MS (my wife and MB's project collaborator) instructed me not to renew it, so that domain now hosts a blog in German.  However, I have used the miscellaneous post-mortem expense bank account set up by MB to cover the monthly $25 to Cybermesa to keep her email address and web pages going, but I don't think she necessarily expected that to happen forever.  If someone wants to underwrite the $300 or so a year to maintain the pages in their current form, please let me know in a comment on this post; otherwise they will only continue to exist if I get the OK from her family members to continue to pay for this out of her estate.

That's all that I can think of for now.  Thanks for reading.

RF

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this update. Some of my old blogging buddies did not plan ahead and leave instructions for what should be done with their blogs after their deaths. The blogs languish without news. I don't know any of the other sites that MB was affiliated with. I am glad to know her dear friends have scattered ashes in the places where her heart soared, and walked the trails she loved.

Wayne Codling said...

Thanks for this. Will Mir's ashes come to Washington or California?

Elizabeth West said...

I have been feeling quite sad about Ocean in View going away, but I don't think we should continue the blog.
Just a nice big "sigh" like a grand grey whale spouting and then sinking under the water. Letting go.

RF said...

To Wayne: Sorry for the delay in responding. My understanding was that 1/2 of Mir's ashes went to Crestone and 1/2 to the Pacific Ocean by way of San Francisco.

To everyone: I'm guessing that the blog will continue to exist as long as Google does unless someone wants to go the effort of convincing Google of MB's death. That's not a high priority for me. I was more interested in finding whether anyone wanted to fund the continued existence of the publicly accessible pages at http://cybermesa.com/~mbobkoff/. I'm not observing any takers, so I will probably cancel the account with Cyber Mesa no later than the end of the year unless I do hear from someone interested in taking on their support.

Gary D. Murfin said...

Today I was cleaning up my saved emails and came across a note from Miriam. It was from back in March of 2014. Miriam sometimes attended the NETS support group that met in Seattle periodically. When I saw Miriam's name I realized that she had not attended any of our more recent meetings. The last meeting she attended she was not looking well at all and from the way she spoke it appeared she was trying to find another treatment option. Today I googled Obits and found the info about her passing and I also found her blog site. I have not gone back in time to review her posts, but from what little I have read, I get the impression she was an incredible woman with great talent. Wish we had know more about her when she did come to our meetings. I plan to share her blog URL with the many people who are still dealing with this cancer, me being one of them. Out of curiosity...how much does Cyber Mesa charge to host her blog site? Hope to hear from someone. Best regards, Gary D. Murfin, Kent, WA