In 1982, my father and his second wife Carol moved from Oakland, CA to an 80-acre plot of land up two miles of dirt road in Southern Humboldt County. There they would live for the next thirty years, raising three children and acting as informal hosts to the innumerable visitors who collectively would come to know the property as “The Land.” Upon her retirement as a middle-school teacher, my stepmother began to travel extensively and her children—me, my sister Julie, my half-sisters Katy and Megan, and my half-brother Will—became concerned about the safety and welfare of our aging father alone on The Land, and we suggested that he send us daily emails assuring us that he was still alive. He enthusiastically embraced this task. The circle of my father’s family and friends is vast, and as the audience for his updates expanded I realized that he was doing more than simply reassuring us that he was alive; he was showing us how to be alive, and how to die as well. As his eldest son it fell to me to archive and (lightly) edit these wonderful communiqués, the wit and wisdom of which constitute my father’s legacy to his children, and to the world.