Bonnie via DejaNews

On August 2, after I'd been through all my old mailboxes, it suddenly occurred to me that I'd probably be able to find other old messages of Bonnie's with DejaNews (a Usenet News search engine with archives going back to March of 1995). I also wanted to see whether people had been posting any Bonnie tributes to newsgroups.

I really had no idea of what kinds of messages I would find, if any, because I didn't know how much posting Bonnie did to newsgroups. I think she had been fighting it out on misc.kids back in 1994 before parent-l was started, but that predated the DejaNews archives as well. Anyway, I got a surprise: although there were some recent messages about alternative cancer treatments and web stuff, the vast majority were actually old home-ed messages from back when dm used to post the home-ed digest to the misc.education.home-school.misc newsgroup. I'll say more about that tomorrow.

Anyway, I was reading through all the messages, basically feeling good "seeing" Bonnie just going about her business, and had gotten enough into that mindset that it didn't seem too shocking to suddenly run across this message:

From: bedford@islandnet.com (Bonnie Bedford)
Subject: Re: Radiation side effects?
Date: 1997/07/28
Message-ID: <337726c6.51767027@news.islandnet.com>#1/1
References: <5l11hl$7rc@insosf1.netins.net>
Organization: Island Net on Vancouver Island B.C. Canada
Newsgroups: alt.support.cancer

When I had radiation to my head I put aloe vera gel over the entire
radiated area three or four times a day. I didn't even develop any
redness - no burns at all.

I don't know why doctors don't tell people about aloe vera gel - it
worked miracles.

I also felt a severe weakness that lasted for weeks.

Yep, sounds perfectly normal except for the fact that Bonnie died more than two weeks before it was posted.

But I found out what happened -- it seems like Bonnie had written it offline at one point, specifying deferred delivery, and when her partner Dennis fired up Netscape on 7/28 to post a message to a newsgroup, Bonnie's went out too.

Incidentally, if you want to use DejaNews to read some of Bonnie's writings, I have to warn you that it's not enough to search for just "Bonnie Bedford", because Bonnie often signed her messages with just "Bonnie" or "B", and her name did not always appear in her message headers. You can find more messages by searching the old database for Bonnie's various e-mail addresses as well:

	sbeebe@cln.etc.bc.ca
	bonnie.bedford@vonline.com
	bedford@islandnet.com
	bedford@islandnet.com.no.spam