Update on Tami Friedman

Tami’s daughter, Rachel, has established a memorial (blog?) for
Tami’s memory, and please share it as Rachel asked us to do :

www.forevermissed.com/rebecca-tamar-friedman/about

Rachel said that an address to send cards would be her own address :

Rachel Jagodowski
86 Waid Rd
Monson, MA 01057

DE Bob WB5AOH

As so much of the web is so very ephemeral, I have taken the liberty of extracting some information from the memorial linked above :

Rebecca (Tami) Tamar Friedman (nee Whaples), of Austin, Texas, passed away peacefully on Saturday February, 8, 2020 after battling a long illness.

Tami was born 07/17/1951 in Bloomington, IN to Dr. George W. Whaples, PhD and Dr. Miriam Whaples (nee Karpilow), PhD. Tami spent her childhood in Bloomington and Westminster, MD before moving to Amherst, MA with her family. She graduated from Amherst Regional High School in 1968.

She moved to Austin, Texas in 1973 where she graduated from University of Texas’ School of Nursing. She lived and practiced nursing in Texas for a number of years before moving back to Western MA in 1987 where she continued working as a nurse and became interested in the work of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the GNU project.

In 1990, she moved to Brighton, MA where she worked as a hospice nurse and also worked for the FSF for several years before returning to her beloved home in Austin in the late 1990’s. Tami spent her remaining years staying involved in the FSF community, getting involved in the HAM radio community, cat rescue, and volunteering her time as a nurse to help others.

She was predeceased by her brother, Jonathan Whaples, in 1990, her daughter, Nylah Siddiqi, in 2006, and her nephew, Benjamin Rives, in 2008. Tami is survived by her son, Noah Friedman, and his partner, Carrie Lang, of Seattle, WA; her daughter, Naomi Friedman, and her partner, Matt, of Longmont, CO; her daughter, Rachel Jagodowski, and her husband, Matt, of Monson, MA; her daughter, Esther Friedman, of West Barnstable, MA; her sister, Barbara Rives, of Nantucket, MA; her nephew, Sasha Rives, of Nantucket; and her three granddaughters, Nylah, Analise and Molly Jagodowski.

Tami was very dedicated to her work as a nurse, especially as a hospice nurse. She truly felt that patients who were terminally ill still deserved not only the highest of care but the dignity and humanity that she saw as lacking in much of hospice and elder care. In her honor, please consider making a donation to the Alzheimer’s Association at https://alz.org/ to help advance research of Alzheimer’s and dementia as well as support those who are suffering from those diseases.

February, the cruelest month

The days are short. The weather is colder than might be preferred. Hell! The month only has 28 days 75% of the time. Melancholy abounds even as the cedar pollen counts drop toward zero.

Tom Morin passed away – quite unexpectedly – in February 2007. Now Tami Friedman, another long-time member of The Robot Group, Inc. has followed suit.

From Eric Lundquist comes this missive :

I am sad to report that Tami Friedman KD5RJU passed away the morning of Feb 8.

She passed away peacefully in a nursing home after extended illness.

Right now, there are no arrangements planned, per her daughter Rachel who is taking care of her affairs.

If I get an address for the family to send a card to, I will pass it
along, but since she has no family in Texas, there won’t be any
services here.

DE Bob WB5AOH

Rest in Peace, Tami.

RoboFest 7 Press Release

URGENT – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 4th, 1996

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT :
The Robot Group
P.O. Box 164334
Austin, Texas 78716
512-288-9135
http://www.robotgroup.org
robo@robotgroup.org

We interrupt this regularly scheduled program to bring you an important announcement. Local city officials were notified today of an impending invasion. The group claiming responsibility for the warning is none other than The Robot Group. The group made up of artists and engineers has quietly gone about creating robotic art forms for over seven years without incident. The Robot Group a local hi-tech arts organization well known for its annual technology festival RoboFest and as yet has no confirmed connections to terrorist groups. There are few details about the invasion other than a specific time frame.

The invasion is scheduled to begin on September 14th and will target the University of Texas area. There are unsubstantiated rumors that the invading force will use robots to conquer the Dobie Mall tower. The Robot Group would not comment on this rumor fearing retribution from the “outside force”.

The Robot Group claims that they are not responsible for the immanent [sic] invasion of Austin and are simply acting as the conduit for this warning. The group claims they were contacted and infiltrated by “outside forces” earlier this month. “These outside forces are way outside of our normal sphere of influence” claim the group “but they are forces that we have no control over”. The group would not elaborate on how this “outside force” made its initial contact or how they have taken control of The Robot Group. They could only add that the warning about the upcoming invasion was all that they could safely communicate.

The threat to Austin citizens and property is minimal as long as we cooperate they say. “Our cooperation is really quite simple. The only thing the invaders require is attendance to this year’s RoboFest” the group went on to say. For some unspecified reason this controlling outside force is demanding that thousands of Austin citizens be in attendance for a special message on September 14th and 15th. What will occur if the demands of the invading force are not met remains to be seen. The Robot Group claims that the “outsiders” have the ability to watch us constantly and that they know our every move. As proof of their ability to watch us closely from the sky, the invaders have commandeered one of the group’s blimps and will use it to monitor the invasion from the airspace around the Dobie Mall Tower.

Robot Invasion of Austin

It’s coming : the time to bias your transistors and heat up your resistors and march to RoboFest 7. The Robot Group will be hosting their seventh annual technology festival on September 14th and 15th in the Dobie Mall. This year’s festival will be the entertainment event of the year for robots and robot lovers of all ages.

The Robot Group wants the City of Austin to be recognized as the “Robot Capital of the World” and this is the first step in gaining that well deserved recognition. Every year the group assembles and re-assembles the dozens of robotic creations, that have graced the pages of Newsweek, Mondo 2000 and Fringeware Review, specifically for RoboFest. This year the robots are going back to school. RoboFest 7 will be held in Dobie Mall a stone’s throw away from the University of Texas and will feature many guest speakers and exhibits from our prestigious University. In addition the group’s most recent creations will continue to amaze the Austin audience. Plans for this year’s RoboFest include an outdoor flying blimp, a hexapod walker, an army of cardboard robots, and RoboVision a new telepresence application using video feeds from the outdoor blimp.

This year’s festival also includes a tie-in film festival with a robotic theme. The Robot Group will be presenting three classic films in conjunction with RoboFest. The film festival will be showing at Dobie Theatre which is also located in Dobie Mall. The films are two 50’s era sci-fi classics “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and “Forbidden Planet” and the ‘82 mega cult classic “Blade Runner”. The “Blade Runner” print will be the 35 mm Director’s Cut of the film and it will close both the movie festival and RoboFest 7. Admission for the two day festival is $4.00 for adults and $2.00 for children. The films will each have an admission price of $3.50. One hour free parking is available in the Dobie Mall parking garage located on Whitis Street across from Dobie Mall.
Resistance is futile Austin will be invaded come September.
Join us or you’ll regret it.

Editor’s note : The text of the original press release has been preserved without editing for spelling or grammar. Some links have been deleted whereas the others have been updated.