Dear Administrators

Dear MyLife.com Administrators,

I went to the MyLife.com website in hopes of emailing you or contacting someone on the phone. There is no contact information.

The design for Mylife.com is fatally flawed.
My Father, Robert Allen Caigan died in 1978
and you have him listed as ALIVE.
You asked if I wanted to send him an email, which I did.
I have not heard back from you and for the sake of argument let me state that I do not expect to receive an email from him.

Please remove my father from your web site.
While you are at it, please update my mother, Linda Caigan, as deceased.

This is your MISSION STATEMENT:

Our Mission

Our mission at MyLife is to provide the most comprehensive people search service to help you easily find and stay connected with friends, family, loved ones and colleagues.

MyLife is the go-to people search site delivering accurate results and making staying connected easy.

I think that you are failing at your mission.
I want an apology.

Respectfully,
Bob's Daughter
aka Emily Caigan

Khem thinks that my humor on this blog is somewhere between Charles Shultz (Charlie Brown creator) and Morticia Addams.The best part of this description may be that one is a character and the other is a human. I always loved the play Six Character's In Search of An Author by Pirandello.

xoxo,
Bob's Daughter

INBOX

My email INBOX at SUNY New Paltz, where I teach, is a public address. This makes it a public space for people to reach me. It is a conceptual space. Students no longer wait in line during office hours to speak with a professor, they email and hope to either discuss an issue virtually or set up an appointment. This public space is also a place where "others" can email me and expect to find ME. Conceptually this challenges the materiality of a relationship where there has previously (meaning in my experience) been DESIGN. As an instructor I expect myself to wear certain clothing and comport myself in a manner consistent with my role and work. I have depended on the architecture of the university; the library, an office, classrooms, lecture centers, studios. Now the space called INBOX is a free and open access space. I can ignore email, but it requires attention. It is in my space.

Occasionally something unexpected and interesting comes to my INBOX. A search engine, like MyLife.com added my name to a conference invitation list. If I respond I doubt that a person will know who I am and yet, I am interested in their conference. Here is the information. It addresses DESIGN interwoven with anthropology, technology and other areas outside the realm of creating objects or buildings. I am intrigued because concepts have become the spaces that I occupy more than a diverse number of structures. Will someone please design a better INBOX?
Design Conference

Respectfully yours,
Emily Caigan, MFA
(aka) Bob's Daughter

caigane@newpaltz.edu
Women's Studies Program
SUNY New Paltz

Linda's obituary was in the NY Times.

Mr. X wrote from Florida with condolences from he and his wife. He told me about his daughter (my childhood friend) and that she and her husband live 15 minutes from he and his wife - and how "fantastic" that is. That he would like news of Peter and I and that he and his wife miss both our parents.

I felt numb.
The obit asked that people contact Peter
if they would like information about a memorial service.

I used to hate Mr. X's wife.
I have grown to merely dislike her.

One day, when I was 12 or 13 years old,
after Bob had died, I saw Mrs. X in a bakery.
As I was taught to do, I said hello to Mrs. X.
She seemed startled and replied,

"Hello Emily, how are you? Is your mother still living in sin?"
She looked almost as shocked as I did that she had said these words
and publicly. I responded,
"Do you mean, 'Is she living with *** ?' yes, she is."

I left... and I cried. Bitch.
Linda had a boyfriend.

I called Uncle Herbie.
I tell him about the email.

He said, "I'm not going to tell you what to do.
(pause)
I can tell you what I would do..."

I replied,
"I don't want you to tell me what to do, I want an opinion."

"Well in that case, Fuck him, you don't have to email him.
I wouldn't!"

"Thank you Uncle Herbie, I feel much better.
That is just what I needed to hear!"

"Listen, you just can't take all this to heart!
I have to take this call, hold on please...
(beep, beep, beep beep, beep, beep, beep)
Who is this?"

"It's Emily
Uncle Herbie, that was the redial button not the flash button."

I LOVE UNCLE HERBIE.

XOXO,
Bob's Daughter

Space for Time

She has been traveling during the snow storms
and is grateful to be home.
I said that I am excited for her Performative Lecture on Wednesday night.
She quickly replied, "Oh, another lecture!"
"But this one is only 10 minutes away", I laughingly quip back.
"Is that time or space?" - silence - she wins!
I love a good playmate.

Time or space...I have been thinking about this ever since our conversation this morning. I know what she means. Space is much farther, though perhaps does not change the variable of minutes. It is the same for this blog. New information is not linear. I am not moving backwards to discover SOMETHING - I pursue and maintain - thoughts, feelings, absorbing, integrating, from a subjective perspective. Perhaps this is what an internet memory CANNOT do - yet?
xoxo,
Bob's Daughter

thinking about time...

Time is not measurable in my mind. It is a theory, a practice that a community agrees upon. Theater works in much the same way. When a play is well done the actors create a reality that the viewers believe and for the duration of that ritual the performer/s and audience engage in their own time. They play with time. I too am playing with time. I am playing with stories from my memory and finding new stories that may create present and future stories - and perhaps interrupt or interpret past stories.

I told my uncle, my father's elder brother what I am doing.
He said several things...
1. I don't know why you would want to do that.
2. Be sure you want to find things out. I know someone who did something like this and found out his relative was a "madam".
3. After telling him how excited I am about finding the patents he said, "Don't count money you never earned" and started laughing.

My uncle loves me very much and I love and adore him.
We do however think very differently.
xoxo,
Bob's Daughter

YIPPEE - the most appropriate word

I opened an email account that I only check every few days and found an email from Gideon Lowenstein! So wonderful. I will not post it here as it doesn't seem proper to post someone's mail to me, but I will post my response.

Hi!!!!

I only just checked this email address and am so happy to find your email.
I became a bit shy after calling you out of the blue.

The email that I check several times a day is ecaigan@zapgarden.com

You googled (or binged) me?
Fun!

This is how this all began...
www.robertcaigan.blogspot.com

You may have already found it?

Here is some information about my brother Peter
http://dreamlandrecording.com

http://www.petecaigan.com/Petes_Site/Petes_Site.html

and a bit more about me:

http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=44782986&locale=en_US&trk=tab_pro

An interview I did with the artist Carolee Schneemann will be in the forthcoming catalog for the Samuel Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz. One of the topics is social sculpture and I often think of this in terms of architecture. Once it is formally published may I send it to you?

May I ask a couple of questions?
Did you ever build the chair that is also a carrying a case?
I am very curious about this.
Did you and Dad go to Harvard together?

Thank you for emailing.
Best wishes,
Emily

I wonder if he will check this blog?

Mr. Loewenstein, if you read this it would be wonderful if you would comment. If that is not what you feel comfortable doing then please do let me know at my email address and I will make our correspondence private. Knowing you is more important than this project! I am of course presuming that you are reading this.

This is the beginning of an adventure. Somewhere between play, curiosity, possibility, outrage and a daughter's thought of 'what if?'

Last night MyLife.com popped up and asked me if I would like to reconnect with Robert Caigan. It says that I can send him an email. I don't know what their source is, but my father died in 1978. Sick, twisted, funny...the beginning of a play?

Perhaps the internet is the new immortality and my father, I thought died before he could enter it. Apparently not so. I had just stated to my husband, "I think something new is coming", a shift.

Now I am going to send an email to my father...