Jocalo, I only knew you as a blogger - but that knowledge was a rich one, and I am immensely grateful to you. When I first 'discovered' blogs in 2002, I spent nights on end exploring them. I was initially drawn by the hyperlinks, the sense of somehow going deeper and deeper into a new universe of discourse. At some time, just after you started blogging, I discovered 'A Writing Teacher's Blog'. It was perhaps at that moment that the new excitement of blogging and the older, familiar peacefulness of literature and writing fused in my understanding.

You inspired me and have continued to do so: today, for the first time in a long while, I re-read your site, your links, your early posts. For the first time, I noticed in your Guided Tour to Blogging  these words: 'Yikes, you've found my weak spot. I'm not a techie...' Neither am I, John, and perhaps that was the gift you gave to so many of us who were teachers or writers - but not techies: the confidence to try different ways of working, to accept different challenges, and to see our teaching each day as exploration and discovery.

'The Windhover' has always been my inspiration, too - it's funny but I never noticed that on your site before. Why do I feel I know you so well? Is it perhaps because in Community College English- you took the time to explain to me - an English woman living in Austalia - what Advil was? The professional - and the personal: nothing was too trivial for you.

Today I was thinking of Sir Christopher Wren. His son wrote his epitaph, on his grave in St Paul's Cathedral, and it says, simply,  'Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.' 

Thank you, Jocalo, for your monument, your outstretched hand to many of us who never met you, but knew you through a network, a community,  of blogs.