My mother Sue has written a fine obituary of her mother, my grandmother Kay, who passed away this Fall.

September 6, 2011 Kay Holper dozed off in the company of loved ones and about 9:55 PM, at the age of 96, took her last breath. She is survived by daughters, Sue and Georje Holper, grandson Morgan Stetler, and nieces Cindy Johnson and Nancy Johnson. Born in Illinois October 26, 1914 to George Charles Johnson and Ethel Belle Baker, Catherine Lorraine Johnson spent her childhood in Joliet, her married years 1937-1979 with Frank Holper in Chicago and its suburbs, and her solitary years in Garberville, CA.

At age four, wrapped in a blanket with her sister Marjorie, Catherine watched fireworks celebrating the winning of World War I. She later noted ironically that, despite “the war to end all wars,” she had lived most of her life during active wartime. Opposing all forms of violence, Kay consistently took the side of the innocent and vulnerable, be it disadvantaged groups or individuals she met personally. She spoke scathingly of those who misused their power and gave her own time, energy and financial resources to candidates and organizations defending civil liberties, civil rights, women’s freedom, and the natural environment.

Taking civic responsibility seriously, Kay was instrumental in organizing a union, integrating a church, making ”end racism by any means necessary” a YWCA priority, and mobilizing suburban women to support Martin Luther King’s Chicago open housing campaign. She served on boards of metropolitan Chicago YWCA, Rape Crisis Team and Women for Shelter in Eureka, and Redwoods Rural Health Center in Redway, CA.

Whatever Kay did, she took pains to do “the right way.” She earned A’s in school, hung pictures straight, matched colors to perfection, tailored her clothes to fit, dogged non-profit boards to function properly, and persisted at the computer until her personal writing was formatted to her liking. She was galled that a single speeding ticket marred her otherwise perfect driving record from age 13 into her 90s. At the end of her life Kay disposed of possessions and set her affairs in order as diligently as she had packed her motor home to embark on a solo adventure.

Invoking the scientific method, Kay challenged false authority and relished winning her point. At seven she experimented saying aloud, “I hate God,” to see if He would “strike her down dead” as she’d been warned. She henceforth confronted any authority whose position she considered wrong, be it elder sister, college professor, boss, doctor, Mayor Daley, or renowned nuclear physicist.

Kay loved adventure, naming Amelia Earhart her first hero. Growing up in an era when no women wore pants, Kate and her best friend bought farmer’s overalls and boyscout boots (with a knife pocket!) to wear exploring. Though she never became a forest ranger as she had dreamed, Kay hiked mountain trails, canoed and rafted various rivers, went down the Colorado in a wooden boat, and boasted walking ocean beaches on four continents. In her seventies and eighties she drove alone across the continent, up and down the Pacific coast and through Death Valley where she “had to build a road under the camper to get out.” When her legs gave out, she gathered together letters, journals, dreams, poems and polemics and embarked on the adventure of deeply knowing herself and her times; she entrusted to her friend Nancy Jean Keeler the compiled results.

Kay Holper was humanitarian, perfectionist, trouble-maker, adventurer. Her longtime friend Rick Klein reports, “People’s response hearing about Kay’s death is, ‘What a courageous, wonderful woman!’”

Congruent with Kay’s wish to give back to community and remember Heart of the Redwoods Community Hospice, her daughters are making a gift to that organization in her memory. Expect a celebration of Kay’s life when wisteria blooms in May or in early September around the anniversary of her death. For questions contact Sue at (209) 754-5518 or sueholper@bigvalley.net.

In todays’s New York Times, Errol Morris interviews Tink Thompson, an old family friend, on the nature of evidence.

Katrina Onstad, for The New York Times, profiles the fascinating Miranda July and her fellow filmmaking husband, Mike Mills. People seem to love or hate theme. Those who dislike them, Onstad explains, really hate the trappings of “Urban Bohemia”:

July has come to personify everything infuriating about the Etsy-shopping, Wes Anderson-quoting, McSweeney’s-reading, coastal-living category of upscale urban bohemia that flourished in the aughts.

And:

The urban bohemian irks precisely because his or her quirky individuality is just part of a different kind of uniformity, where the uniform happens to be a bushy beard or Zooey Deschanel bangs rather than country-club khakis. Twee fascinations with childhood innocence can mask an unwillingness to tackle life’s darker quandaries. Who wouldn’t be annoyed by a guy who, say, finds a cracked milk bottle, makes a film about it, then silk screens it on a T-shirt and names his band Milk Bottle? The stakes are low. The results are soon forgotten.

In fact, July’s work stays with you. It’s powerful art, grounded in the specificity of experience.

An underutilized, very efficient data visualization technique originally from Edward Tufte, explained with illustrations by Charlie Park. (Via John Gruber.)

Oxfam America

Oxfam UK

I’ve been very impressed with the quality of the camera on the iPhone 4. I no longer carry my excellent Panasonic LX-3 for snapshots while traveling. The iPhone is good enough. And of course, it’s always with me. But one thing I’ve been really missing is a way to properly hold it steady for long exposures, or video, or even multiple exposures to produce HDR photos. I wish I had some sort of pocketable tripod for it. So did two guys in New York. And they went so far as to prototype the whole thing. They’ve designed something called a Glif which clips onto the iPhone and provides a tripod mount, but also acts as a little tabletop stand for it as well.

Instead of finding some company to manufacture and market it for them, they are using the power of the internet to create and fund the project through Kickstarter. I kicked in fifty bucks. I first heard about it through John Gruber’s website. Now The Economist describes the story in detail.