PEACE IN THE NEW YEAR

To see last years’ messages and pictures, go to http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/1999 or http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/2000 or http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/2001 or http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/2002 or http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/2003

BE SURE TO CLICK ON UNDERLINED LINKS TO SEE PICTURES OR GO TO LINKS

Top of the news:

    Sherri and Alan are on sabbatical this academic year and will leave for six months in Paris in mid January.  Please come visit us.  Our phone number there will be 011-33-1-1-4314-9379.  We will also be reading our email, at the same above email addresses.

    We have had wonderful trips this year, including a safari in South Africa, Easter Island, and Antarctica (Alan only).  See below for links to pictures.

Sherri:   I am happy to leave 2004 behind.  I worked very hard for a Kerry victory and am sorely disappointed that he lost.  Last March I was asked to host one of the Kerry Meetups, and I agreed, thinking there would be 20 people at the local coffeehouse.  Surprise!  Over 50 folks and we had to run interference with the espresso machine most of the time.  That meeting started a grassroots effort to elect Kerry and other Democrats in Monmouth County, NJ.  It eventually reached 1000 members and we had our own website, “visibility events,” and new voter registration efforts.  And we will continue under the title of Monmouth Democrats for Change.  I was very busy co-coordinating this group, but had the time because I was granted a year’s sabbatical, chiefly to design online courses in World History.  Well, I’m getting to work on those and will have them ready when I return in the fall of 2005, so if anyone  happens upon any interesting websites, send them along.

    Even though this was planned before the Kerry loss, I am looking forward to living in Paris for 6 months with Alan, also on sabbatical.  I will continue to learn French, having taken some courses last summer and fall, and will observe developments in the European Union and the Muslim experience in France.  We have a lovely apartment in the 11th arrondisement (X marks our apt.), near the Père Lachaise Cemetery, and I am looking forward to gaining the perspective that comes from living in another country.  And, bien sur, of learning more about Paris.  We won’t have a car, so I also hope to benefit from all of the walking I’ll be doing, and I’ve sworn to speak no English once I arrive (but you know about New Year’s resolutions!).  What I may also do is to write a book about the plethora (is that a French word?) of American music in France—on our two visits during this past year, it was everywhere, and I think it would be a hoot to interview the hotel owners, radio announcers, restaurant and shop owners, to see why it is so ubiquitous—I even have a title for it, Supertramp in Paris, not me, bien sur, but because of a conversation I overheard during our trip to Paris last January.  We were having coffee after visiting the Père Lachaise cemetery when an American that was leaving asked his companion, “Is that Supertramp?”  Sure enough, in the background of this very French brasserie, Supertramp’s something-or-other was playing.  More seriously, I do plan to write on my experiences from time to time, fulfilling another dream of mine to be a "foreign correspondent," so if you would like to read my musings, send an email (mine will remain the same), and I’ll reply.

    As Alan writes below, this year we are living large, traveling and enjoying the benefits that come from sabbaticals, good health, and having enough money (and frequent flier miles) to indulge our love of travel.  We also realize that the day will come when we will not be able to do as much.  In 2004 my father’s wife, Marge, died, as did several of my uncles, and other relatives grow increasingly frail.  But we have recently visited my Aunt Frances, who will be celebrating her 90th birthday in August, and Alan’s Aunt Esther, already 90, and we cherish their lives and friendship.  We have also spent time with Alan’s family in Costa Rica and here at our house, and with my brother, Tom, and his family in Nags Head, NC.  In December Dan, Al, and I went to San Francisco to meet Brian’s girlfriend, Ginger, and their dogs, Murphy and Molly.  Here are the four of us, and Dan, Brian, and Ginger.  We also sampled some of the San Francisco treats, and I don’t mean Rice-a-roni!  It’s a wonderful city, only surpassed by, hmmmm, Paris?

    Our home renovation (new kitchen, two rooms, a study for me and a dining room, laundry room and deck) were finally completed and they make the house very livable.  Of course we are leaving it for 6 months, but Dan will stay in the house while we’re gone and take good care of it (or else!).

    Brian has graduated with an MFA in computer animation from the Academy of Arts University, and is planning a trip to Paris with his girlfriend, Ginger, a nurse at the Veterans Hospital in San Francisco.  After their trip Brian hopes to find a job in his field, preferably in film, and since many of the companies that do animation are located in the Bay area, they hope to remain there.  Dan is in his third year of a carpet-floor apprenticeship with the Carpenter’s Union and continues to complain of the aches and pains that come with the job.  But he still loves sports, particularly basketball, having replaced Michael Jordan with LeBron James, whom he saw lose to the NJ Nets recently.  They are both healthy and are making their way in the world.

    So, our lives continue to be blessed with the benefits of health and the ability to travel to great places, and by the fact that we both love our work, even though we have some time to expand our horizons on sabbatical.  We look forward to a 2005 filled with family and friends, new experiences, and a strong commitment to continue to work for the policies that will make America more respected in the world.  With a NJ governor’s race in 2005, I plan to work for Jon Corzine’s election when we return from France, and, in France, to be the model of the “non-ugly American.”  Venez nous visiter et Bonne Annee!

Alan:   I, too, am very sad and disappointed about the state of the world, and the election of Bush.  What is wrong with my fellow Americans, and why can't they see all the bad policies that will make their lives worse?  Right now I am over the shock and denial and getting to a realization that we have to play the hand we have been dealt.  I feel good about our efforts to elect Democrats, especially Sherri, who worked so hard.

    Things continue to go well at Rutgers.  I am still Director of the Center for Environmental Prediction, the group of faculty and students in our Dept. who work on meteorology and climate, but as I have been on sabbatical since September, Tony Broccoli is Acting Director for this academic year.  Under the auspices of CEP, I again took a group of 20 undergraduate meteorology majors to the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting, this time in Seattle in January.  As a result of this and many other activities, the Meteorology Club, with more than 50 members, was named AMS Student Chapter of the Year (out of 48 chapters in the country), and they received their award at the AMS meeting.  This year they received honorable mention in the competition.

    I continue to take care of affairs for my uncle Leonard Robock, who is in a nursing home in Northern Virginia.  Things are pretty well organized now, so it is not as much work as it was last year.  He is not doing too well, but getting excellent care.  Fortunately the rest of my family is healthy, including my father who will be 90 in July, and continues to play tennis, attend conferences, and take international trips, the most recent to Bulgaria and Romania.  My sister Lisa, will get married to her boyfriend Steve in August, and we are all happy for them.

    I continue to work with my four graduate students, Chaochao Gao, Tom Atkins, Haibin Li, and Luke Oman, and one postdoc, Gonzalo Miguez-Macho.  Gonzalo is leaving soon to take a faculty postion in his native Spain, but I plan to visit him there during our sabbatical in Europe.  Much of my work is in collaboration with Gera Stenchikov, Research Professor at Rutgers, and with Kostya Vinnikov at Maryland.

    I published nine papers all together in 2004, and have four papers in press and three more submitted.  If you are interested in more information or want to read them, visit my home page and click on Publications.  I also organized three sessions at international conferences.

    My term as Editor of Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, one of the two most influential journals in my field has just ended, after 4 1/2 years of my service to my profession.  It has been interesting, but a lot of work, and I am happy to give the job up to my successors.

    I taught my graduate course in Physical Climatology in the spring, but that was the last course I will teach until September, 2005.  It is very nice to have a break from teaching, not because I don't like teaching, but because it gives me the freedom to travel and finish up some papers that have been sitting around.

    I have been even more fortunate than usual with my travel opportunities this year.  I have been to six continents this year and all seven in the past 18 months.  The most spectacular trip was to Antarctica, but our safari in Africa and trip to Easter Island came close (see below).  I was there for 6 1/2 weeks, where I helped to launch ozonesondes on balloons to measure the ozone hole.  It was beautiful, exciting, fun, and very cold.  It was also somewhat lonely.  There were 400 people with me at McMurdo, but it was the longest I had been apart from Sherri since we met.  I had enough time to make an extensive web page, http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/Antarctica/, so please visit it to see many fabulous pictures of ice, volcanoes, glaciers, and life in a very different environment.

    Sherri and I went to Paris in January.  It was cold and snowed one day, but we still decided it was a fabulous place and we would come back for our sabbatical.  The Eiffel Tower was lit, we visited the Galeries Lafayette, and saw Jim Morrison's grave, in the Père Lachaise Cemetery near where we will live.  I attended the AMS Meeting in Seattle in January, where I sponsored two of my best friends, Bob Bornstein and Cliff Mass, to become AMS Fellows.  In February, I returned to Russia for the first time in 13 years.  I attended a conference in St. Petersburg, which is still one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  Here are the view over the frozen Neva Rivers from my hotel, people walking across the Neva near the Peter-Paul Fortress, the Alexander Cathedral, the Hermitage, the military headquarters, and me in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral and the statue of Peter the Great.  All though the center of the city is still spectacular, the lives of the people have changed a lot.  People were smiling in the subway, everyone has cell phones (US $0.05 per minute is says on all the billboards), and they complained about traffic jams by the Ikea.  I saw a Volvo dealer and a drive-thru McDonalds.  The conference was in a small resort town north of the city along the shore of the Gulf of Finland.  Here are my colleague Nina Speranskaya in front of her poster, and her husband and daughter at her apartment.  In April I attended a tree ring conference in Tucson and went to the EGU meeting again in Nice.  In May, Sherri and I were able to go to see wild animals in South Africa after I attended a conference in Capetown, near the Cape of Good Hope.  I took over 500 pictures, and over several days we were able to see just about every animal that was there, including the big five: lion, leopard, rhinoceros, buffalo, and elephant, and also hippos, vulture, impala, yellow-billed hornbills, warthog, waterbuck, zebra, and giraffe.  We even saw one kill.  Immediately after returning from Africa, we went to Milwaukee to attend the wedding of Carlos Lopez and Robin Gilson, daughter of our friends Ian and Norma.  Here they all are, visiting us a couple weeks later at the beach in Sea Girt, NJ.  We went back to Paris in July, where the conference dinner was a cruise on the Seine, where we got a great view of the Eiffel Tower.  We got there the weekend that Lance Armstrong (in yellow) won the Tour de France.  I took a vacation in Costa Rica with my family, just before I left for Antarctica.  In November we went to Easter Island for a few days before a conference in Púcon, Chile.  We saw the Moai, statues carved to honor ancestors and protect the inhabitants.  On the slopes of the volcano where they were carved, here are Sher and me next to one, Sher standing to show the scale, and me lying for the same purpose.  I then made my annual trip to the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco in December.

    We saw Bob Dylan again once this year, in Washington, DC.  It was great - my 36th Dylan concert.  I was also excited to be able to read the first volume of Dylan's autobiography, Chronicles, which is a wonderful rambling look into his life, and to see his first TV interview in 20 years, on 60 Minutes.  Of course I also bought his updated book, Lyrics.  But my proudest Dylan news of 2004 is that I wrote an article, entitled Tonight as I Stand Inside the Rain, about the use of weather imagery in Dylan songs.  It will be published early in 2005 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.  Click on the title to read it now. 

    Wisconsin did not go to the Rose Bowl again this year, but could have if they had won one of their last two games.  They also lost the Outback Bowl on Jan 1, 2005, so maybe did not deserve the Rose Bowl.  But it would have been great.

    What with no teaching, winding down my editorship (I will only be finishing papers already in the review process), and a relaxing environment in Paris, I hope I will be able to take some time to think and focus on new directions and challenges.  Or else I will just sit at cafes and do nothing.  Either way, I am looking forward to the next year.

May your 2005 be a healthy and fulfilling one.  Happy New Year!

Love,
Alan and Sherri