Thursday 01/25/2024
Tidied up and left for Shustek a bit earlier than usual. Today all the Thursday volunteers, those who work at Shustek doing cataloging, and those who work at Yosemite doing other curatorial tasks, were to meet at Yosemite for lunch. Ordinarily we all meet at one of a rotating list of restaurants. But today would be Gretta’s last day so lunch around a table at Yosemite and say goodby to Gretta. Which meant bringing something to eat, so I left early to stop at the store and buy a sandwich.
Gretta started with CHM in 2015, so I’ve known her for nearly a decade. For the past three years she’s been in charge of the acquisitions (“acquisitions registrar” is I think the job title), and on Thursdays that meant managing a crew of us old fart techies(*). The other days of the week I’m sure she had other things to do. But she always kept this diverse crew busy and focused, and always was cheerful and constructive, quick on her feet, ready to answer whenever somebody said “Gretta….?” which was about every ten minutes through the day. I am very sad to see her leave. She’s moving to Vashon Island in Puget Sound, where her husband has gotten a job running a year-round environmental campground.
I left Shustek about 3:30 which was later than I meant, because at 4pm was the annual Resident-Trustee Budget meeting, where the financial state of CH for the past and next fiscal year would be discussed, and the rise in monthly fees revealed. But traffic on 101 was backed up at Shoreline, so I moved over to Middlefield, and it was 4:10 before I got there. I didn’t miss much. The rise is 6%. The good news is, we are losing less money next year than this, and look like reaching break-even again in FY26.
(*) including IBMers me, David Bennett, and Steve Madsen, and Paul Laughton. Paul’s claim to fame, though, is that he wrote most of Apple DOS for the Apple II.
Codgerville 