How should I begin?
This is a blog about my father.
Peter Hartman was killed in March, 2005. For a couple of years now, I’ve been thinking about starting a blog where I and other family members could post little tidbits–memories, anecdotes, jokes Peter told us, observations he made.
A lot of my memories of Peter are good ones, but not all of them. And I want us to be able to post some of the less than complimentary things, mixed in with the good things; I want to remember him as he was, not an idealized perfect version of him. But everything here will be from people who cared about him; even if we post some things that don’t show him in the best possible light, it should be understood that everything here is posted in loving memory.
My biggest remaining hesitation about this project is that I suspect Peter would not have been happy with it. He was, in some ways, a very private person; and even though he worked in the high tech industry for decades, I don’t think he was ever very comfortable with the Internet.
But I’m going ahead with this project for now, with some trepidation. I’m justifying it to myself by saying that Peter’s gone now, and that memorials are as much for the living as for the dead. It’s possible that in a few weeks I’ll just get too uncomfortable with this project and abandon it, but I think it’ll be helpful to me to have a place where I can post this stuff. And I’m hoping that other family members will contribute.
My plan is to post regular (perhaps once a week) brief tidbits. I’m hoping others will join me in that; of course you’re welcome to also post long rambly entries (like the ones I’m prone to posting in my main blog/journal), but I’d like the main focus to be on short items.
Anyway, welcome to the blog.
