Tom Donohue, a longtime Bloomington music scene supporter, passed away in Indy yesterday (November 12, 2003) from cancer at age 52. Most recently he owned and ran the record store TD’s CD’s and LP’s, just off Kirkwood.

Tom trained Eric and me at the cable radio station WQAX when it was up in the Union, either late ’78 or ’79. Eric and I were 13, so probably ’79. Between his patience and willingness to share his encyclopedic knowledge of music – enhanced by the fact that he ran, with Dr. Ugly, the best record store in the history of Indiana at Duroc – he provided, for both of us I believe, a role model for engagement with music in general and music communities.

Eric, of course, chose to take some of Tom’s low-key style and apply it later to his role as GM of QAX, and although I’ve never discussed it with him directly, I suspect that along with his father, Tom’s understated humor provided Eric with an adult role model.

I will never forget visiting Bloomington sometime in the early nineties, after Tom had returned from Austin – his absence from town coincided with the peak of my involvement in the local music and arts scene – and running into him on the street. I was overjoyed to see him, for the first time in over ten years. He knew who I was right off the bat. I promised to buy him a beer at Second Story that night, but later, at the bar, I was so busy catching up with with various other folks I hadn’t seen for years that the beer slipped my mind.

A few years later, I was in town again and someone told me Tom had a store again, which excited me. I went and threw fistfuls of cash at him as I stocked up on more or less every local record from the prior five years or so. As we were closing the order (Tom suggesting additional records, naturally) he paused for a moment, looked me in the eye, and said: “You never did buy me that beer.”

And I never did. But even if I had, I’d still owe him a beer, as, I’m sure, many other will concur that they do as well. So Tom, tonight, before I eat dinner, I will drink a toast to your memory and thank you for your contribution to my life and to the life of one of my communities, to the musicians and music lovers of my home town. Godspeed, Tom, and may you be on the guest list.

Anybody know if there’s particular brand Mr. D favored?

CBC News Indepth: Maher Arar‘s statement, given to a press conference yesterday:

They told me that based on classified information that they could not reveal to me, I would be deported to Syria. I said again that I would be tortured there. Then they read part of the document where it explained that INS was not the body that deals with Geneva Conventions regarding torture.

Then they took me outside into a car and drove me to an airport in New Jersey. Then they put me on a small private jet. I was the only person on the plane with them. I was still chained and shackled. We flew first to Washington. A new team of people got on the plane and the others left. I overheard them talking on the phone, saying that Syria was refusing to take me directly, but Jordan would take me.

Does this make you feel safer? Really?

Uh, never mind.

It’s sunny and 78. There’s a faint tang of woodsmoke in the air, and although this is the first time I can recall the leaves staying on the trees in a Puget Sound fall long enough to prove it, apparently deciduous trees here are, in fact, physically capable of brilliant displays of color.

If only there were a joint hereabout serving steins of beer and cider at long outdoor bench tables accompanied by heaps of sausage and mutton as the leaves swirl about in the sun and pleasing towers of billowing cloud pile up brightly in the sky.

UPDATE (10/27): Aaargh. This post took down my server and I’m still repairing it. I apologize for the delay on the Webley transcripts and for the server bounces. Looks like a wipe and restore from backup if I read the entrails correctly; there’s a fiddly bit on the system drive that won;t get lassoed by DiskWarrior. I did get backups of the system drive today – hopefully I can verify them as bootable. All the data is secure so whatever happens the only things that would be lost are the suspected sources of the error – new server-side software I implemented recently but hadn’t backed up yet. Wotta PITA.

On MetaFilter, Class 3 Geomaganetic Storm Likely To Spawn Aurora, notes the ever-reliable, Seattle-based (but sadly blog-free) y2karl.

Time to go for a walk, methinks. For once we’re in for a spate of clear autumn weather.

I have actually seen the aurora here in town – it was literally dancing up and down the broadcast towers on Madison at the border of Capitol Hill and the CD. It was eerie.

Previously, the great display of May 1988 awed me for an entire night back home in Bloomington. I ‘ll go on and on about that… later.

UPDATE: Nothin’ yet. y2karl is gettin’ raked over the cols pretty good for a double-post though. Hey Karl! S’awright! It actually got me outta the house for nearly a minute and a half!

(and: Capitol Hill? Let’s have a beer sometime. I love your taste in music. Did you go to Danny Barnes the other day?)

I feel constrained to point out that although more rain is predicted, at the moment I write this, it’s very sunny.

Oct. 20: FIVE INCHES / Nov. 20, 1959: 3.41 inches.

Mount Vernon in danger of flooding as Skagit river expected to crest at nine feet over flood stage.

UPDATE: Skagit River expected to crest above 1990, 1995 levels at the Skagit Valley Herald. The article has a photo overview of the edge of the river. In the image, the river can be seen at about street level: ordinarily, it’s about twenty feet below the boardwalk you can see in the back of the image along the flood.

I’ve looked for MV blogs but to no avail.

Also, my throat is sore and I expect to host a battle between my immune system and microorganisms over the next few days.

You know, this morning when I splashed through two inches of standing water to retrieve my hermetically sealed Seattle Post-Intelligencer from the courtyard, I recall thinking, huh: it sure is rainin’ a lot here.

I was not expecting to learn that today would be still raining.

CNET News.com: VeriSign to revive redirect service

VeriSign will give a 30- to 60-day notice before resuming a controversial and temporarily suspended feature that redirected many .com and .net domains, company representatives said Wednesday.

AND (no coverage on this yet that I’ve seen) I got a notification email from VeriSign announcing the sale of Network Solutions, the registrar part of VeriSign we love to hate, to “a new entity formed by Pivotal Private Equity.”

(Here’s a Google News search on “verisign to sell network solutions”)

The note describes the buyer as “a provider of equity for middle market corporate acquisitions,” and links to a press release.

So, I guess the venture boys called in their chips?

It seems odd that the sale would be taking place at the same time as the announcement of the intention to reinstate that redirect service. Could it be that the venture money was seeking the redirect service and when the ruckus started, wouldn’t budge?

Hm, maybe not. The San Jose Business Journal notes that Verisign split the old NetSol registrar biz off from the registry proper, and that the registrar is being sold while the registry remains with VeriSign. The registry is the part with the genuine control over the behavior of the TLDs, and therefore the 404-redirect doohickey as well.

Waxy.org takes a look at the Cubs Fan brouhaha. He’s even linked to a Usenet search of the poor sap’s postings.

This is by way of the amusing and insightful thread over at MeFi.

I also called Ken who pointed out that we now know, with certainty, who is the single-most passionately rooting person in favor of the Cubs to win it all as of this moment in time.

Godspeed, Yang Liwei.

Don’t miss the Yahoo slideshow.