Join Us in Supporting John Cowan

John Cowan is known to Lojbanists as a long-time leader of the Lojban community, developer of the first official parser of the language, and as the author of the “red book”, The Complete Lojban Language (CLL).

In the last couple of years, John has suffered from multiple medical conditions, along with the loss of his wife, leaving him living alone in Manhattan, New York City. Last year, those conditions worsened, and he spent time in a rehab facility. But he is no longer able to live independently. After nursing him back to health enough to enable it, his daughter Irene helped him move down to Virginia Beach, where he has been staying with Irene and her husband (my son Avgust Michael) and their several kids. The apartment isn’t suitable for the long term because it is too small and John cannot easily manage stairs, so the family is anticipating moving back up here to the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC next summer when the lease ends.

All of John’s household stuff (furniture, clothes, books) remained in the Manhattan apartment until now, and we finally arranged to move his stuff down here to the DC area, where we can sort it and store what should be kept until the family moves back here. The move took place last week (Mar 5-7).

The GoFundMe is intended to defray the costs of the move, and the storage fees for a few months. The move was estimated to cost $6500, but that estimate turned out to be much too low, since it took 2 full days for packing and then moving the stuff, and extra packing supplies had to be purchased at NYC retail prices. The total came to $11,818, which includes the first month of storage. We expect additional storage costs of $2000-$2500 until the final move takes place in July or August.

Because these donations will be taxable to John, we are adding $3500 in estimated taxes and rounding up to make the target for this fundraiser $17,500.

This does not include any costs for that summer move to back to the DC suburbs.

I, Bob LeChevalier = lojbab have fronted the $11,818, so the donated money will initially be reimbursing me. I’ll probably be the one paying for the storage from the funds, and will pass the additional money to John for taxes and other expenses.

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Any excess funds raised above the target amount will go towards that later move or to John’s continuing medical costs.