Marie Dorn
The Love of Debate
I think I first met Marie in the early 90s when our company had taken its first steps into an "alternative" product lines, with a Document Management system from a company called Tab. It was basically a very large, very expensive desk, with an IBM 386 computer stuck inside it along with a 5-1/4" optical drive. (Some cutting edge stuff here!)
As our company ventured in to more and more "non-traditional" office product lines (intelligent typewriters, weight scale systems, document management and desktop computers) I seemed to always be the one that got tasked with taking them on. Maybe because I was willing. Maybe because I was curious. Or maybe because I wasn't afraid to give it a try (with virtually no training or support.)
So, on that fateful day, I walked in to "pretend" I knew anything about this monstrosity and met my nemosis. Generally, I was pretty good at tap-dancing my way around not knowing what I was talking about, but on this day, with this person, it was clear that my normal routine was not going to fly (she was a tuff room!)
Bethpage
Sometime after that day, Marie came to work for out company in the Document Management Department, as the "actual" expert on that Tab system that she'd operated and maintained herself for months.
And, although I'm not completely sure how it unfolded, I'm pretty sure that the rough time she gave me in our first encounter, blossomed into a daily cat-n-mouse debate about one thing or another. With each of us trying to one-up the intellectual gymnastics whenever we could.
And form these original debate club meetings (we'd actually go across the parking lot to the Subway and argue about random topics over lunch), grew a friendship that culminated in our 2 families becoming close. Our kids became surrogate siblings.
Marie and I ended up sharing a passion for writing and embarked on a lengthy journey to write a couple of manuscripts (I learned later that you couldn't actually call them a "book" until they were published.)
My Friend Marie
Over the years we've remained close. Through a divorce and subsequent wedding. Through building 2 houses (and multiple moves!). Through marrying off our kids and enjoying being a parent-from-a-distance with the grandkids. Through thick and thin and ups and downs.
We still get together today and share stories about raising our kids together, shooting large fruit and how best to save the world from either humans or AI (whichever seems to represent the preeminent threat at that point in time!).
Besides being a writer, painter, sculptor and organic farmer (among other things), Marie has also done her share a dabbling in song writing over the years. This is a demo tape she put together of her material in 1993 (Recorded at Attic Recording Studio)
Marie's Demo (1993)
This one little clip sums up Marie better than anything else I could say, even in a 10,000 word essay.