John Hunter passed away this morning,
Oh my god. John Hunter was incredibly
kind and warm -- I can't believe he bought
me this laptop. I can't believe that such
a wonderful man could be dead -- so suddenly.

    What a tremendous loss.

Dear Merlin,
    John Hunter died yesterday --
getting unstuck. It is entirely appropriate
to be stuck -- to feel it, smell it, taste it
feel it drilling though your head

I keep pacing around the house.
I just need to leave.
    calmly.
My thoughts are with John's
family. & with the folks in Louisiana.

    A rat in a maze --
panicked -- & the water
level rises still. escalates.

    Our loss of John makes me
want to code furiously.

I feel the urge to code furiously,
but only have the capacity to tweet about
it, and lack thereof to censor myself.

I don't believe I'm losing
my mind. I believe I never had
one to begin with.
  I'm not losing my mind. I never
  had one to begin with.
  I'm not losing my mind.
  That would imply I had one
  to begin with.
Left the house without shoes --
waiting for my laptop to charge.

  I want to share this with the
  group -- so I can come to
terms with it myself. forgive myself.

  Connection with a stranger -- can be a form of escape.
but it can help you gain perspective on
your own life. I think it has for
me.
  I am a severely broken
person. Ok. Time to get shoes,
shower, & then go to try &
talk w/ Greg Wilson.

I must be mistaken. Maybe I was.
Who's to say that I wasn't.

The scientific python community lost one
of it's giants this week, and
I lost an important mentor.

Remembering John Hunter (JDH)

    People keep dying. I don't know
how to deal with that -- I feel like
I never really processed dedushka's death --
nor Ken Green's, nor Jessi Debaca's,
nor babushka's

... I lost another mentor. Most of
these people (all?) don't know that they
were mentors to me -- but they were.
I looked up to John -- I secretly
wanted to please him -- but did not
even dare to do so directly (I
have Fernando Perez to thank for getting
my first contribution into Matplotlib.

I remember feeling really bad after my first
sprints at SciPy 2009 -- John actually
knew who I was -- and wanted me
to work on some matplotlib stuff --
  I ended up doing some rote work with
David Warde Farley (and felt kind
of like a third wheel - since dwf
(pronounced "dwoof" - did I get
that right, David?) is more than
capable as a command-line
cowboy (David doesn't know this --
but I learned a great deal from
just sitting next to him and watching
him string together standard unix
tools, pipe-after-pipe -- to clean
up some scipy wiki content, to
try and export it to a new site.
David's also a role model in other ways --
he's very calm and collected (unless
he senses you've pushed the bozo button from
some punditry vending machine - instead of
understanding and engaging with the full complexity of some
social or political issue)

    John was extremely kind and understanding -- 
he wanted to invite & welcome me to
code alongside other matplotlib developers,
but there was no expectation.

  I got to hang out with John the 
most at the PyData conference in
Mountain View in late February. He was
giving a matplotlib talk, and was seeking
feedback on what to talk about --
& how to do it. He's warm -- and always
had this kind smile about him.

    After hanging out with John at PyData --
this email arrived in my inbox

Fernnado knew about the email -- & I was at
a barbecue at his house -- to sort of
celebrate an awesome week of lots of
Python Giants in from out of town.
  Fernando was giddy -- "Have
you checked your email?" -- with a
twinkle in his eye "Let's go have you
check your email right now" -- & he
walked over to turn on his desktop machine.

    On the mailing lists -- I always tried to
emulate John's approach -- helping everyone
even if in the slightest manner.

I was offered commit rights sort
of out of the blue -- after sending
a couple of pull requests.

    We are a community.
We need to remember John, & keep
remembering John -- for many, many,
many years to come.

I feel the urge to reach
out to everyone I know & don't know.
I'm desperate -- i think I've been that
way since I was a little kid -- I
remember having the same feelings when
we were leaving Moscow -- a ten-year old,
talking to friends and my teachers,
many for the very last time.

I am posting this, but it isn't finished.

This is broken, half-finished, confused,
necessarily so -- because there is no way
to mend what we have lost. This
is an expression of my current state --
and if I don't let this out, it will just
keep ricocheting around in my head for years
to come.

    This is a first pass. This is me
grieving. This will never be enough. This
is just a start.