Background
When 8/9/96 began looming ahead a couple of months ago, I started wondering if and what I should be doing about it in the Grateful Dead Forum. I first considered having some high-falutin' panel discussion, but that seemed too contrived for a sad day. Some had suggested nothing at all, that we should just spend the time quietly.
But the reality was that I knew people would be gathering in our little corner of cyberspace regardless. After Jerry died, the need to talk to other like-minded souls was greater than ever. On the day he died, we had up to 12 chat rooms full of grievers, and had over 1000 people at an impromptu auditorium gathering that night. I knew there would be no such level of activity this time around, but that people would be expecting something. What I came up with was a form of a memorial service adapted to the auditorium format. Since people sit in rows of 16, there would essentially be mini-chat rooms for people to talk to each other, while the 'service' would proceed along a certain topical format. People were encouraged to discuss the issues in their chat row while it was being discussed on stage. We had a good turnout, and many fine comments from the audience. Since I was up on stage, I have no idea how it felt in the rows, but I would like to hear from you if you were there
.
The following is a transcript from an AOL online auditorium event
held on August 9th, 1996 at 9PM EDT, a year after the death of Jerry
Garcia. Structurally, this is how it went:
I was the emcee. I had two "onstage guests," David Gans and Mary
Eisenhart. The other names you see are screen names of audience
participants who submitted comments on the different topics. The
transcript has been edited to provide the illusion of
intelligibility!
Geoff Gould
AOL GD Forum sysop