In Memorium

One of my dearest friends died yesterday. Marjorie Baer, who I knew so long that she was Margie when we met, passed peacefully in her apartment in Berkeley surrounded by her friends. The cause of her death was a brain tumor. The cause of her life was editing and helping hapless friends like me.

We were the spitball crew in Cosimo Corsano's Italian class at UCSC in 1972. When she became an editor at Macworld magazine, she gave me the chance to write reviews about music notation software, something which I knew next to nothing about when I started. I'd been a copyist though, and I learned fast at her urging. For 8 years I was a stringer, publishing occasional pieces for the magazine, building bylines. She used my spouse Jan to write an extensive review of accounting packages for the Mac. When she moved to Peachpit Press she hired me to write a book on Claris Home Page, which was pulled off the marketplace the day the book was published, but still sold every printed copy.

She was a most positive person with a genuinely twisted sense of humor. She never used a sentence to end a preposition.

Her grieving friends include her former roommate Ginger, who now lives in Houston. She broke the news to me gently over the phone.

We're all stunned. We had no idea she was ill.

Speaking for myself, my world is a much smaller place without her.

(I am aware that she'd never have let that last sentence stand.)