Steve Jobs Reportedly Felting Better

As a socially responsible nerd, I consider it part of my duties to find cool software and share it with you all, uncover big business' security lapses, and help friends and family out with their personal computing problems. It was in this last capacity that I found myself spending a few days remote accessing a computer that belonged to the parents of an old and close friend, reinstalling software, replacing lost (but fortunately backed up) files, and setting up a security plan after Dell's stellar, one-size-fits-all-problems advice to simply reformat and reinstall Windows.

Knowing I spent a lot of time on their computer, they tried to compensate me, but I refused (as any self-respecting nerd would, for friends). A week and a couple problems later, though, I decided I could reasonably ask for a favor in return. My friend's mother, Marguerite, produces the most exquisite needle felted dolls and I've been dying to ask her to make one for me for ages.

Although she had never felted the realistic likeness of a human before, Marguerite took on the task of felting me a beautiful Steve Jobs doll from this well-known portrait of him. And boy, was it a task. Marguerite told me, "Steve took me 50 hours, 30 of which were spent on his face. Roland [in the first photo above] took me about 17 hours, so much less because I didn't need to make him look like anyone specific. I could more or less go with whatever he turned out to be." All that time certainly shows in these photos. Thanks, Marguerite!


View more of Marguerite's felting.

Stepping Up and Out

Yesterday, Jeanne and I attended a graduation-like ceremony for our son Benjamin - a junior at Fenway High School. The event, called "Stepping Up," took place in the Tower Auditorium at MASS College of Art. His class consists of about 70 kids so the size of the room seemed just right.

As is the tradition at this 25 year old Boston pilot school, graduating seniors line up opposite their junior colleagues, offer a bit of advice, and hand them a candle. It's a torch passing ritual that harkens back thousands of years. Because modern fire codes don't allow for lit torches in college auditoriums, the students used battery driven candles.

The senior's advice centered mostly on "working hard" and "being yourself." Juniors were warned to meet their senior project deadlines as early as possible. "Uh oh," I thought, my family has turned procrastination into an art form.

I was impressed by one student who quoted Leonard Peltier: "You don't have to be perfect to be holy..."

For a while now, I've been impressed also by Ben's ability to maintain his individuality and ideals in a culture that prizes - and often demands - conformity and obedience. It's not just the mohawk and earings; the kid has progressive values. I suppose his parents have something to do with that.

Roots and wings. That's what we give our children. The skills to fly the nest AND the keys to the condo, just in case.

We've also talked about not feeding him so he won't grow so big, but it's too late. He's reached six feet tall already and can look straight into my eyes. And when I look, I see me and my father and Ben's grandfather in there. Weird, huh? (Ed. Uh, that's the same person twice. I think he meant his grandfather, not Ben's.)

Best of luck to the rest of the graduating classes and the soon to be seniors, all of whom are going to have to re-evaluate their ties to corporate America and its wasteful, destructive appetite.

And start behaving as though community and kinship means something more than who's on the MySpace/FaceBook friend's list.