Michael Finley and I go way back. He was once a contributing columnist for the Pioneer Press’ tech section (when the paper had a tech section). He’s a talented writer — and I don’t just mean tech writer.
A year ago, Mike and his wife, Rachel, faced the ultimate horror: Their daughter, Daniele, killed herself. She was 24.
Now Mike has released a collection of his writing going back four decades, and is giving away the electronic book as a tribute to Daniele.
I have been reading the e-book on an iPad, an ideal medium for this poetry-filled PDF volume, since many of the entries are hyperlinked to YouTube versions that provide lovely moving imagery along with Mike’s soothing narration. This one is my favorite.
Mike describes his effort in an Aug. 18 e-mail to me and others:
I have a linkI would like you to download, as a favor. It’s a book I have been working on for the past year, since Daniele died August 18, 2009.
It’s called ‘YUKON GOLD: Poemes de terre,’ and it is a collection of my favorite written things going back to 1970.
It’s considered a very lofty thing to have a ‘collected works,’ and a dubious thing to publish it yourself. But the past year has been so weird, and in some ways so stimulating, that I kept working on this week after week, determined to put it into friends’ hands by Daniele’s birthday — which is today.
After Daniele died, I felt the need to come up with some kind of statement about her and about our family, some way to commemorate how special she was, and how much we miss her. This is it.
Here is the link. It’s a big file, but it is safe to download, and you can look at what’s in it whenever it’s convenient for you.
What would I like from you? That you download it. If it interests you, tell one other person about it, someone you think could handle this kind of information. Tell us what you find interesting.
Comments about Daniele would be especially terrific, if you knew her, or even if you didn’t, but are coming to know her now.
Today's Joy of Tech comic!
