My ex-wife, Geri Lynn Younggren Boone, (known to most of her friends as Geri Younggren, in case anyone is searching on that name) died on November first of 2001. I've written a bit of stuff about this in my Web journal, and I believe other folks have also written things. Geri was ill for a long time, but her final illness was abrupt and short, which in a way was a blessing -- she had suffered quite enough already.
I'm seriously considering redesigning this site, partly
to make it easier to navigate and partly to make it
easier to maintain. It is a tangled web, and I want to
comb out some of the knots. Whether I'll be able to
devote sufficient time to this project to have any
actual results, I do not yet know.
I have begun something of an irregular journal to let people know what I’m up to (I was asked for this, and it seemed an entirely reasonable request.)
As part of my growing interest in Chinese traditional tea (and, for that matter, in tea in general), I have put up a first-draft page about trad tea-brewing.
I have added a paragraph or three about the machines I'm using to provide these pages to you, in case anyone's interested.
I'm beginning to write a page of wretched trick questions.
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If you are a potter, or if you like pottery, you may want to have a look at some of what I've been doing with that. Unfortunately, it's scattered around the site; but there are some places where concentrations occur --
My allergist finds a winning approach to my food allergies.
I finally take formal notice of my interest in lasers.
...Where the glazing dishes play: A Bazilian begins to
investigate American Art Pottery and reaches
unreasonable conclusions, at some length. (Last I looked
it was three longish pages of text, and there were
various pictures as well.) I include this item as a
stand-alone because it has been a major driving force in
my life during the last three years and more. I have too
many interests, and I find lots of them important, but
there’s something special about this. (You may
want to look at what I have to say about
“Attention Deficit Disorder”,
a very real condition with a rather poorly chosen name.)
A metapage of links to things I find
interesting. I’ll be expanding the list as I find
stuff. Perhaps I should caution you that I have too many
interests, across too large a range. It may take a while
for that to show up, so don’t give me a hard time if
there are only a few links in the list, okay? Thanks.
My apologies, first off, to all of the real Bazilians out there. Having made up an entire family, I get a distinctly eerie feeling when I see their name on, say, an album, and I’d guess that anyone who is actually named Bazilian gets at least as strange a feeling seeing something like this page or the other Bazilians on the Web [no relation, as far as I can tell, though they do refer to a King Hugo in the family line].
Speaking of real Bazilians, here are links to two interviews with Eric Bazilian. The first, conducted by Bob Gajarsky, is from 1996. The second, in audio form, about twenty minutes long, and conducted by Victoria Ann Davis, is from May 5, 1999. It’s GeoCities, but you can dismiss the stupid console that pops up.
Eric Bazilian seems like an interesting guy, and he appears to have ADD...
I’m actually Jon Singer, one of at least eight Jon Singers on the Web the last time I looked. I’m also Jojo Bazilian’s Regrettably Destructive Testing Service, and you heard it here first (unless you heard it from me earlier). This is to say nothing of all the other Bazilians, and I don’t need to make the obvious joke, because I already did.
Lately I’ve been thinking in terms of my areas of interest, within and among which I pursue various projects. Many of the projects are (no surprise) informed by more than one area. If I were into cake decorating, for example, that would fall under graphic arts, design, food, and maybe calligraphy. That makes it difficult to cubbyhole certain projects, which is fine by me: I’m distinctly uncomfortable about being cubbyholed, myself. (What do you expect from a shabby dilettante?)
Before I specify, I would like to point out that information informs and underlies all of these. (“We want ...information!” - our motto. This world not being Patrick McGoohan’s TV show, sometimes we do get it, if we’re lucky. Moreover, sometimes we even get to share it around. I like that one a lot, not just in terms of dropping info on people but also receiving it.) Of course, in saying that, I’ve cubbyholed myself: I’m an information-hacker and a teacher (and, perforce, a writer, a bit of a musician, almost an artist ... and I should be a dancer as well, but I've had only the tiniest bit of training at that side of things. One lives with certain limitations.)
As I think I mentioned above, I tend to think of myself as a sort of shabby dilettante who wants to grow up to be a polymath. Fat chance; I’m already 51, and I sincerely doubt that I ever will grow up. Here's a recent (August, 2001) photo, taken by Daphne Stern:
(The photo of Daphne was taken by the redoubtable Sandy Stone. I took the photo of Sandy, so it comes around full cycle.)
Age is rarely kind to us; here is an earlier picture of me, scanned from a photo that was taken at the Medio Multimedia Xmas party in 1994. Medio, one of my former employers, has long since disappeared. So has even more of my hair, and the remainder is a lot grayer now.
I am, by the way, the same Jon Singer who wrote (with
Michael M. F. Butler) a little thing called “Pyro
Joe’s Hot Flashes”, which seems to have
appeared on rec.humor.funny.reruns or some such group
and is
out there on the Web.
(...In which JoJo Bazilian delivers himself of some peevish rhetoric.)
...Do it at your friends’ houses. (Wretched things
to do in your microwave oven.)
Strictly speaking, I think ephemera have their (single) day and are gone. I don’t actually know how often I’ll be able to replace this one. Certainly, as of mid-1999, it does not actually merit the title. You might prefer the journalish thing that I mention up toward the top of this page, which seems to change more often.
As to the random thought, it is maybe not entirely random;
but then, they so seldom are.
Here is a scan
of a postcard that I bought a long time ago (1987) at a
strange and wondrous bookstore called Collets (they
dropped the apostrophe around 1984), in London. I
can’t find any of the cards themselves, and I
don’t see a signature on the drawing; I would like
very much to know who the artist & publisher are. If
you have any firm info on this object, please send me
email. There is one obvious candidate (whose name I
forget; I’ll put it here if and when I remember
it), but a careful examination of the style reveals
differences from his. I have put two black slashes
across the image so I’m not violating any possible
copyright that may exist.
A little essay (not mine -- it’s by Gene
Garman) about the 1797 treaty with Tripoli. I’d consider
reproducing it here, but it’s copyrighted. Besides,
links are precisely what this Web is about.
My email address is jon (at) bazilians (dot) org [sorry not to
have a real mailto, but my email eventually reached 40% spam, and
I decided enough was too much]. My phone number is +1 240 604 4495
until further notice.
