On Mitzvah Mondays and Simon Shepherd

The smiling fellow on the right is Simon Shepherd. He used to work as a research analyst in my European Storage Research team back when I was head of Storage Research at IDC. Simon has a wife, Stephanie, and a lovely little daughter, Scarlett. More on Simon in a minute.

Another of my former IDC colleagues, Djuna Woods, posted a recent blog entry on the idea of a Monday Mitzvah. For those of you who are Hebraicly challenged, mitzvah refers to one of the 613 Jewish commandments, but has colloquially come to mean "an act of kindness." Djuna's challenge to us is to perform a guerrilla good deed and share the good-deed idea with the rest of the world. Kind of "random acts of kindness" meets "viral marketing."

I was reading through some of my favorite storage bloggers this morning and came upon one written by Taylor Allis at Sun Microsystems. In it he writes about Simon, who left IDC a number of years ago to join StorageTek, which was later acquired by Sun. That's where Simon met Taylor. Sadly, Simon passed away recently, after battling glioblastoma, or brain cancer, for 14 months. Stephanie requested that friends and acquaintances of Simon support the search for a cure by making donations in Simon's name to:

The Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign

The Institute of Cancer Research

123 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3RP

You can donate by check or credit card online using this link:

The Royal Marsden Cancer Campaign

If you note that the donation is in Simon Shepherd's name it will be directed to the correct fund.

I made my donation to the fund today. Now, I'll say thanks to Djuna Woods for the inspiration to make this a viral mitzvah. Please join me in celebrating Simon's memory and helping to find a cure.

Independence Day: Time to Leave the Nest

Like many parents, I struggle with the balance between protecting my children and being over protective. When I was growing up, my siblings and I were allowed to travel only as far as the sound of the car horn would carry. In rural Colorado, that was probably a mile. Three toots from the horn was our instruction to come home. I was five years old and free to wander independently through the neighbors farms, in the woods and across the fields. I learned, early, to avoid the neighbors pig pen. Pigs can be quite mean.

We had a fort in the rocks, a fort in the woods, a fort in the sagebrush, and a fort in the willows. I didn't think much about the independence and freedom I was given. It's just the way it was.

Times are different, I hear, and I'm told I have to watch my children more closely now. My children aren't as independent as those of my friends. It's summer now. The time when many children go away to camp. Mine prefer day camps and home to the idea of overnight camp. It's Independence Day in the United States, and I wonder just how independent I should let (or force) my children be.

I found this little fellow out beside our pool. I hope he was not pushed out of the nest too soon.