In Memorium: Grexer Valerie Mates

Jan 10 22:15 UTC 2004

This is a eulogy for Valerie Mates the Grexer.  Valerie the person is 
very much still alive, of course, but Valerie the Grexer has passed.  
I have a lot of grief (and anger) over her passing, so I decided to 
write this eulogy.

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I first heard about Grex in April, 1992.  My roommate Paul brought 
home a newsletter from The People's Food Coop in Ann Arbor which had a 
little article about Grex in it.  (I learned later that Valerie had
written the article.)  I had a computer and a 1200 baud modem, so I 
tried Grex out.  I chose the login "mark".

I was only on a few times as "mark" - for whatever reason, it didn't 
really stick.  I don't remember much except noticing that there were 
women on Grex, which was encouraging to me.  And one woman in 
particular.

In March of 1994 I was starting a new life, having quit grad school 
the year before, bummed around for a while, and then started a new job 
as a programmer.  I had no social group, and I have never been very 
comfortable meeting people.  So I remembered Grex, where you could 
take your time over your responses, and where people seemed friendly.  
When I ran newuser again and it asked me for a login name, I sat and 
thought for a long while.  I decided I wanted something happy 
sounding, because I remembered a woman who had the login "popcorn" 
when I logged in before.  To me, popcorn sounds bouncy, happy - 
lively.  I had a map of the U.S. on the wall above my computer, and 
the Caribbean was just above my field of vision as I looked at the 
monitor.  I remembered a happy time I'd had at a party called "Aruba 
Night" when I was in college.  Hundreds of people have called me aruba 
ever since.

I first met Valerie in person on April 30th, 1994, which happened to 
be her 28th birthday.  That was the first time I walked with the 
Grexwalkers.  She looked just about the way I had pictured her, I 
think; though it's hard to say now what I pictured.  But there was 
this five-foot-tall person with a big smile who seemed to be the 
center of attention.  She had black hair with a few strands of gray.  
I remember her seeing something interesting (I don't remember what it 
was now) and sprinting 50 feet to get to it, she was so excited.  I 
think maybe I fell in love with her right then.

For most of the next few years, Valerie represented, to me, the 
essence of what Grex was.  Friendly, above all.  Not in need of strict 
rules.  Welcoming of differences.  And excited about life.  These were 
all things that were lacking in my life up to that point, and I was 
thoroughly taken with them.

There are a number of qualities necessary to make any human endeavor 
work.  Good planning.  Discipline.  Attention to detail.  Caring.  
Thoughtfulness.  Determination.  Different people can provide 
different parts of the puzzle.

Valerie, it seemed to me, provided excitement for Grex.  The joie de 
vivre.  A couple of years after I met her I wrote a piece about being 
"alive" that might be the thing of which I am most proud.  (You can 
find it in the archives conference, item 13.)  I'm sure I couldn't 
have written that if I had never known Valerie.

Valerie is able to make things happen.  Since being a founder of Grex 
she has gone on to spearhead a number of other groups and initiatives.  
She has a gift for starting new things.  I guess the flip side is that 
she's not as good at leaving the old ones.

No one should forget, though, that Valerie also gave extreme 
dedication to Grex.  Throughout Grex's existence, Valerie has done an 
immense (and I mean immense) amount of work for the system, most of it 
unheralded.  She used to sign emails as "Grex janitor", which was 
extremely appropriate, since she mostly cleaned up after people, and 
got little attention or respect for it.

I remember going out to dinner after a board meeting once - or maybe 
it was after we moved Grex to the Dungeon.  There were about six of 
us, and Valerie was the only woman.  She sat in the middle of the 
table, and it seemed to me that she was in the center of everything 
else, too.  I guess that was my bias.  But it seemed that we all loved 
her.

Of course, there were always conflicts.  Valerie doesn't like a lot of 
rules, and this occasionally meant she ran afoul of people who need a 
lot of them to live.  She's an extremely nonjudgemental person, which 
means she had trouble dealing with people who *are* judgemental.  As 
Grex acquired more and more of those people, she found it more 
frustrating and less rewarding.

But the real change came when Arlo was born.  No one in the world 
would fault a mother for putting her children first in her life - none 
of us ever have.  But, of course, that meant that Grex was the loser.  
Valerie continued to put in lots of time doing staff work right up 
until last week, but she stopped participating much in the conferences 
after 1998, and that was a huge blow to Grex.  I've always thought 
that the only thing which has kept Grex from devolving into a steady 
stream of insults is a small group of reasonable people who work hard 
to challenge the assumption that such a state is inevitable.  Valerie 
always topped my list of those people.

The loss of her then surprised me, I must say.  I never imagined Grex 
without Valerie.

response 2 of 93:

Jan 10 22:23 UTC 2004

Have you ever had sex with her?

response 8 of 93:

Jan 11 03:34 UTC 2004

I met Valerie at a JCC Colossal Computer Sale meeting, shortly after 
Grex was started.  I was with Arbornet; I'd known Valerie as "popcorn" 
on-line on M-Net but never met her in person.  I used to get 
invitations to the December 31, 1999 New Year's Eve party each year, 
but that was several years before 1999.

Things were a bit on the tense side between some M-Netters and some 
Grexers in those days.  Grex was this little startup with about 50 
users, and M-Net was the big dog.  Almost all of the Grexers were ex-M-
Netters, including all of their founders.  Grex was a reaction to the 
Dave Parks ownership period of M-Net; an attempt to run a conferencing 
system in a community governed sort of way.

At the JCC sale, we kind of avoided one another for the first part of 
the day, as I recall it.  STeve Andre was with the Grex side, and Jim 
Knight and I were on the M-Net side.  Mike Bernson had wandered 
through, and said hello to both sides; he never cared about politics.  
A few others from on-line had come through as well, and probably fled 
from both of our tables to avoid getting tangled up.

M-Net had an enormous pile of HP terminals that had been donated to us 
from Medstat, and Grex had some anonymous expansion cards and the 
like.  We were both making money, and we both needed it desperately.

At some point, someone decided it was time to break the ice between M-
Net and Grex, but I don't recall who.  We talked stiffly for a little 
while, we would have all gone our separate ways shortly, but then 
something else happened.  What I recall most sharply is this young 
woman came in just *bouncing* all over the place.  She couldn't stand 
still, it seemed.  Or stop talking.  She just *blasted* exuberance all 
over the place.  I don't know if we were introduced, but it was clear 
who she was.  I described her on one system or the other, in an item 
about introducing someone else, as being very popcorn-like.  There was 
just no imaginable way she could have been anyone else.

I remember her for her attempt to implement a unit of not-quite-
currency on Grex which was called "mathom".  (M-Net has gribblies, 
which are distinctly currency, though they've never been used to buy 
anything.)  I never understood "mathom".  It wasn't "mathoms".  It 
wasn't in units.

If you've ever used figlet... Valerie brought it here.  It's a way to 
use ASCII art to create larger characters.  It's still here; there are 
different fonts, but the only one I've seen used in years is from 
aruba.

There was this huge collaborative funding effort between Arbornet, 
Grex and the Huron Valley Community Network; it was called WINS, and 
it was intended to bring a big old computer networking grant to Ann 
Arbor.  HVCN hadn't been incorporated yet; Grex wasn't a 501(c)(3)
yet.  It was Valerie who brought it together.  I spent a fair amount 
of time working with her on it.  I also brought the news to a WINS 
meeting that Arbornet pulled out of it.  It ruined the project... as 
far as I can tell, Valerie is one of the few people involved who never 
blamed me for doing this.  (Then she and mdw, and HVCN tried to put 
together another proposal at a late date.  It failed, but they tried.)

My password expired at two separate points; I hadn't logged in for a 
half year or so.  Each time it happened, I mailed "staff@grex.org" a 
request to reset it, and each time, Valerie was the one who 
responded.  Not just to set my password, saying "of course we know 
it's you", but making it exceedingly clear I was welcomed back.

I, too, am going to greatly miss Valerie.  I'm reeling with the loss 
to Grex.  I've already e-mailed her, twice saying that she can always 
come back.  I surely do hope she does.  Maybe after a little time 
passes, she will.

response 10 of 93:

Jan 11 04:17 UTC 2004

This item is not about that, Richard.  This is about appreciation for 
a valued member of the Grex community who has left us.

response 12 of 93:

Jan 11 05:51 UTC 2004

Mark - what a thoughtful thing to post.  It warmed my heart and brought back
many great memories.  Valerie and I have lost a common interest.  That's a
loss, but far from fatal.  I hope and expect that her long friendship with
you and other Grexers will have lost no more than that.  Thanks.

response 14 of 93:

Jan 11 17:23 UTC 2004

Re resp:11:  I guess that makes me a reality hold-out.

response 16 of 93:

Jan 11 18:20 UTC 2004

I don't remember meeting Valerie.  It just seems that she has always been a
part of the conferencing community in Ann Arbor, and was there from the
beginning.

I have always liked Valerie and respected her, both for her brilliance and for
her genuine concern for people's feelings and for doing the right thing
*because* it's the right thing. 

I'm not sure what to say, except that, like Mark I never imagined Grex without
Valerie and I think the system will be infinitely poorer without her.

response 18 of 93:

Jan 11 20:05 UTC 2004

Valerie's responses were everywhere I looked when I first started using the
grex conferences.  And she was one of the first grexers I met in person.

response 20 of 93:

Jan 12 02:26 UTC 2004

(Valerie resigned from staff and does not plan to be an active
participant on this system, but she has never said she will never come
here again.  In any case, if the people posting here were interested
exclusively in talking to Valerie, they'd have used email instead.)