This is a writing sample by “nycghostwriter,” AKA Barbara Finkelstein. It is “Godspeed to you, Ike Sandman, whoever you are,” a blog post originally published on the IBM Researcher platform on August 20, 2019. You can get professional ghostwriting services from a published blogger. Email me or fill out the short form on my contact page.
Ike Sandman* sent out an email announcing his retirement from the Research division. I was happy to be included on his list but, frankly, surprised. I thought I had had only one interaction with Ike and I couldn’t remember anything about it. I searched through my old emails for a clue. In 2016 Ike had a problem with a homegrown tool researchers at IBM use for sending out seminar announcements. I tested the tool on a couple of different browsers. Apparently, it didn’t work on Chrome. I reported the problem to one of the tool developers. He, not I, ultimately helped Ike out.
I have a decent regard for my own abilities, but I cannot imagine that Ike, a software engineer who had worked on blockchain, fintech and security projects, found my intervention three years ago so critical that he would count me among his colleagues. I did sort of remember having had an earlier more significant interaction with him, possibly about a web page I made for him. I remember too that in the wake of my help, Ike sent me a LinkedIn connection request. That is so nice of him! I thought. If somebody has even a glancing professional relationship with me, and they want the connection, why not?
I emailed Ike to see if he remembered what project we had worked on together. He didn’t know either. But he was congenial. “If you were included in my retirement email, I am grateful for the good that resulted from our working together,” he wrote me.
Nice again! Thanks to our pleasant but vague interaction several years ago, I had earned a place in the mists of Ike’s memory.
A week after Ike’s email, I received another one from one of his former colleagues. I was asked to contribute to a “book of letters” commemorating Ike’s “remarkable career.” By now I had a glowy feeling of fondness for Ike — but could not come up with a single word of commemoration. I simply didn’t know Ike Sandman.
I could try to analyze why Ike included me in his goodbye email along with hundreds of other people. I could write him off as a social media freak who invites just about everybody he has ever bumped into to be his friend or connection.
Instead, I took Ike at his word. In his retirement email, he wrote, “I cherish the friendships and partnerships with all of you. Together we created software, services, patents, papers and more.”
Despite our not remembering the substance of our interaction, we somehow ended up with a favorable impression of each other. In an Internet world of flaming, doxxing and worse, that counts for a lot. Certainly, Ike showed me that no interaction, if carried out in the spirit of friendship and collaboration, is too trivial to sort of remember. Or sort of forget?
Godspeed to you, Ike Sandman! May you continue to spread your intelligence, scientific curiosity and goodheartedness in the next phase of your life. As you wrote in your email, “Perhaps our paths will cross again!”
*Not his real name
You can read this post on Brook’s Blog, a project of IBM Research.
