Arnold Zwicky's Blog

I am saddened to report the death of my good friend Mara Chibnik, in New York City, of pancreatic cancer. Starting in the 1980s, Mara became a mainstay of the newsgroup soc.motss and the social life (including gatherings, like the annual motsscons) surrounding it, and a close friend of many of the regulars on that group; she became part of the soul of this social world. Her role was as a wise, sympathetic, supportive, and good-humored visitor from the straight world, and we all miss her terribly.

Mara’s education: an A.B. in French from Brown (1963-67); doctoral work at Columbia in French and Romance Philology, 1967-73; a Sc.M. in Computer Science from Princeton (1987-89). She worked as an administrator at PANIX networks in New York City (ultimately as director of policy and customer services), almost up to her last days; when she got the death sentence, back in the fall, she worked to put everything in order for the rest of the staff (and the people she maintained websites for). She started a “How I Am” blog on October 29th and kept in touch with her wide acquaintanceship through it; her last posting was on March 23rd. Eventually, on her blog every day became Thanksgiving Day. Happy Thanksgiving!, she wrote.

On Facebook and Google+, people have been posting photos of Mara (usually with her husband, Martin Smith, and often a collection of motssers as well). Remembrances of good times.

This entry was posted on March 27, 2012 at 9:52 am and is filed under Death notices, Gender and sexuality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.