RIP Steve Jobs

I've been thinking about Steve Jobs all week, ever since his death was announced. The media coverage has been amazing -- even the Ridgecrest paper printed a big article about him. A day or two after he died I was reading articles and blogs (assembled courtesy of Google News), and people kept theorizing about WHY everyone was so upset about his death, as if it were surprising and puzzling.

At first this annoyed me. If I want to feel sad about someone's, anyone's, death, surely I have that right.

But finally I conceded that it is an interesting question. There probably isn't another CEO on the face of the earth who so many people would be so sad to lose. Most celebrity deaths cause me only a moment's pang. And I don't feel sad about Steve Jobs because he created my favorite toys. I don't own an iPod (though someday I'll break down and buy one), an iPhone, or an iPad (though I'd like to). I did once have a Mac, but no longer.

It is scary, though, to have lost one of the leaders of modern technology. I sometimes worry about where we're going with "all these computers" (I'm quoting the former director of my former workplace) and apparently somewhere in the back of my mind I was counting on Steve Jobs to help lead us safely through these woods. Now it's up to Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and the guys who run Google. I'm not reassured.

I have more personal reasons for feeling sad too. I've been able to identify a couple of them.

First reason: Steve Jobs lived in a house in Palo Alto that was walking distance from my mother's house (though in a much nicer neighborhood). His house was important to my family because before he bought it, it was owned by the family who owned the Golden Retriever who -- I think this is right -- sired our Golden Retriever's puppies back in 1971 or so. I hope I've got that right. The dog's name was Jorn, and I *think* he was the father of Penny's puppies. Either that or he was Penny's father. Gad, I hate my sieve-like memory! Anyway, he was a nice male Golden Retriever and he lived in Steve Jobs' house with his family before it was Steve Jobs' house. And for years, every time I walked or drove by that house with my mother or a sister, one of us would comment that it was Jorn's house. Then Steve Jobs bought the house -- when, I don't know, in the 1980s? 1990s? -- and after that, every time I walked or drove by it with my mother or a sister, one of us would comment that it was Steve Jobs' house, but it used to be Jorn's house.

I remember that Steve Jobs bought the house next door to his, tore it down, and planted the lot with fruit trees and cosmos. Ah, the things you can do when you're rich. One article I read referred to his "modest" home in Palo Alto, obviously COMPLETELY missing the point about what it means to live in Palo Alto. Why would you want a colossal brand-new mansion in a fabulously exclusive gated community if you could live in a delightful old house in Palo Alto, enjoy the walkable streets and the excellent schools and libraries -- and knock down the house next door to make your yard bigger?

So anyway, remembering Steve Jobs' house is all about remembering my mother, and all the walks we took together in Palo Alto. Losing him, I somehow lose her just a little bit more.

Second reason: From 1983 to 1988, after graduating from college, I worked as a typesetter in Palo Alto for a young woman (10 years my senior) named Lauren Langford. One story that keeps being told is the one about how Steve Jobs studied calligraphy at Reed and that's why the Macintosh had such beautiful fonts, at a time when other computers were basically doing dot matrix. Well, I remember when the Mac came out and graphic designers started doing type with it. We at Langford Typesetting were HORRIFIED by how ugly Macintosh type was. We had an enormous typesetting machine that printed out gorgeous type. We were snobs and proud of it.

Lauren died young too -- she was 50. She fought her cancer (first breast, then ovarian) almost till the end, but in the end she went peacefully, dying at home surrounded by friends and loved ones. When I read about Steve Jobs dying peacefully at home, I remembered Lauren. That's what it all comes down to, doesn't it? You fight and fight, but at the end you finally just let go.

There are more connections I could make. All the people I know who went to Reed College. All the people I knew who worked at Apple in the old days. Heck, anyone who lived in the Bay Area at any time over the past 35 years can probably connect their lives with Steve Jobs' life.

And at the end of the day, the fact is, he was so young, with a young family. I'm sad for them all. Also very thankful that I get to go on, live another day in Ridgecrest.