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Sherri:
As I write this on December 30, 2006, according to the Bush Countdown Clock
there are 751 days, 10 hours, 50 minutes, and 37, 36, 35, seconds left of his
presidency--and even though 2006 was a great year personally for me, time can't
pass quickly enough until our long "national (and international) nightmare" will
begin to be over--though I suspect we'll be suffering the rest of the time and
our kids will be paying the dime for this administration's consistently failed
policies for a long, long time...but no need to dwell on the depressing, we can
all watch the news for that. And the recent elections give hope that
people will start demanding better government.
Our big event in 2006 was
the marriage of Brian to
Ginger on October 28th in the Napoleon House
in New Orleans, Louisiana, Ginger's family home. It being Halloween
weekend, we were surrounded by festive costumed merry-makers and
assorted crazies, as well as the love and
happiness of the newlyweds and family and friends.
Ginger's mother, Kit, invited us to their
home on the Thursday before the wedding, where we met some of the family, and we
met more on Friday at the rehearsal dinner at
Jacques-Imo's, famous for its zany decor and scrumptious cuisine. Here
are Brian and his grandmother and
Ginger and her mother. That very night,
the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Duran Duran were eating there before their
performance at the Voodoo Festival that weekend. Most of the weekend
we stayed in the French Quarter, but on Friday I took a tour of the Gardens area
with long-time friends, Anne and Steve Prudente,
who had come in early for the wedding, and on Saturday, Alan visited the Lower
Ninth Ward with my brother and family. They saw a
collapsed church and many abandoned homes.
The wedding itself was in a
historic home where a plot to kidnap Napoleon
from his exile in Elba was hatched (never carried out because Napoleon died
before they could depart) in the center of the French Quarter, on the second
floor with balconies overlooking the city. Here is
the groom with his mother, and
here are the four of us. Some of
Brian's friends from New Jersey, Ginger's
family, and ours mingled and celebrated the marriage of our son. Dan gave
a moving toast to the new couple, who are now back in Sausalito after a
honeymoon to Hawaii. A farewell breakfast at the
home of Kit's neighbors, Tommy and Edie, was a wonderful way to round out a
weekend of family, old and new friends, and to
celebrate Brian and Ginger's new life.
Ginger is a nurse working
at the Veteran's Hospital in San Francisco, and Brian is an animator with Secret
Level, owned by Sega, also in San Francisco. He continues to write
children's fiction and has other projects, but his CGA stuff is what pays the
bills and their work allows both of them to live in lovely Sausalito. I
visited in June, and again this past December, and enjoyed the fine food (I have
a great recipe for Vietnamese Shaking Beef if anyone's interested), shopping,
and the kids and their dogs, Murphy and Molly, whom Dan enjoyed during his
visit. Dan is now in his third year of apprentice school for carpeting and
flooring, and, because he's in the Carpenter's Union, gets good money and
benefits. He's also taking a computer course at Brookdale this spring,
continues to live at home with us, but is saving money so that he can move to an
apartment with a friend.
My brother, Tom, and most
of his family (Derek from Williamsburg missed the flight, alas!) turned 60 on
Oct. 27th, so we had a family lunch and
celebration at a New Orleans restaurant on the
day of Brian and Ginger's wedding. Alan's
brother and sister and families were
also in attendance at the wedding, and we missed my sisters, as well as Hanne
and Steve, Alan's father. New Orleans is still reeling from Katrina, and
almost everyone we ran into thanked us for coming to visit, and had a story to
tell about their own experiences Katrina and post-Katrina. To sum up, most
echoed the sentiments of the t-shirts we saw in one of the souvenir shops--"FEMA
is a four-letter word" or "FEMA - Fix Everything, My Ass!"
I attended the
wedding of my cousin Dave Magnone's daughter,
Leslie, in St. Petersburg, FL, in November and had a chance to stay with my
former mother-in-law, Mary, and my ex-sister-in-law, Cheryl, who has since
retired from teaching in Rochester, NY, and relocated to Florida, where her
answering machine indicates that she and husband Steve are either "at the beach,
kayaking, or playing golf," in general, enjoying life, as we enjoyed them after
the New Orleans wedding with a midnight walk down Bourbon Street.
Me professionally?
I'm still teaching at Brookdale and this past fall struggled to keep up with all
the crises in the Middle East, along with the World Civilizations survey courses
(one of which is online, with a different set of technological demands on my
time). When I've taught the Middle Eastern History course in the past
there is usually one hotspot, but this year--three, four, five, every part of
the area, including the Horn of Africa--thanks a lot! Of course, it made
for record number of students, in fact I had to turn them away (yes, for a
history course), though some dropped when they realized we weren't going to
spend all of our time chatting about current events and that they actually had
to do some work. I found this interesting book, 1979: The Year That
Shaped the Modern Middle East (David Lesch), which focuses on three events
that created a paradigm shift in the events in the Middle East and beyond down
to today--the Iranian Revolution, the Camp David Accords, and the Soviet
Invasion of Afghanistan, and used that book as a jumping off point for group
research projects. In the process, one group presentation recommended a
website, "Occupation 101," a YouTube for history and news junkies. I also
organized a speaker's series to make up for my lack of background in particular
areas. In sum, my work continues to go well, and, along with my teaching,
I continue to serve as the Faculty Liaison to the International Center, which is
struggling with staffing transitions. Despite that, we continue to raise
money for scholarships, were featured in an article on community colleges and
international student in the Chronicle of Higher Education in the fall,
and are working hard to create more global awareness on campus and to send more
students out into the world.
As for the world, I again
took students to Hawaii with my colleague
Barbara Jones, where her daughter, Kelsey read one of Brian's manuscripts and
loved it (thanks, Kelsey!), and where our students enjoyed their stay and didn't
complain about dorm life or mass transit! Hawaii continues to be a magical
place and Dan connected with some of the students and continues to see them from
time to time. In August I helped celebrate my
Aunt Frances' 91st birthday in Charlottesville, along with my cousin Butch,
his wife Astrid, nephew Gabe and wife Concha and their children. We had a good
time catching up on my mother's side of the family. Other trips Al has described below. 2007
promises to be another year of fun and exploration in that regard, starting with
our January 3rd trip to Paris where we will stay in an apartment on the Left
Bank and enjoy! My love affair with Paris still continues, so that every
chance to get to vacation (not tied to one of Al's conferences, which, frankly,
are in pretty snazzy places--see below) we head to Paris. But also on the
horizon are trips to Mexico, Italy, and I'm sure I'll get back to San Francisco
sometime over the next year. The rest of my time is spent exercising at
this great little health club, Wings, where I take yoga and pilates classes as
well as being tortured in some personal training sessions, volunteer with Meals
on Wheels, and continue to dabble in politics. Retirement? I think
about it and probably will act on it sometime in the next five years, but, for
now, all is well.
Please visit us--our home at the Jersey Shore
has an extra bedroom and we'd love to see you.
Alan:
Last year was great, with one exception. My father's brother, Len, died on
on April 25, 2006. He was a boxer in college and suffered for the last
years of his life from having been hit in tht head too many times, dementia
pugilistica. Here is his obituary. I had been taking account
of his affairs, and he had been slowly declining in a nursing home. He did
not have much of a quality of life by the time he died. He did not
recognize me the last time I visited him.
Of course, we are happy
about the result of the congressional elections, but sorry that we have to
endure another two years of the Bush regime. My favorite recent bumper
sticker: Impeach Cheney First!
Things continue to go well
at Rutgers. My student Luke Oman received his Ph.D. in
December, 2005, and worked with Gera Stenchikov and me as a postdoc for most of
2006 and we produced several important results on the effects of volcanic
eruptions on climate and the climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflict.
We got a lot of publicity about our nuclear work at the American Geophysical
Union meeting in San Francisco in December. You can see a summary of the
results at
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/ . Students Haibin Li passed his Ph.D. exam in late 2006 and student Chaochao Gao should
complete her Ph.D. early in 2007. Postdoc Richard Anyah is working hard on our 5-year
NSF grant to look at the effects of climate change on water resources. A
Fulbright visiting scholar, Elif Sertel, began working with me on the effects of
land cover changes on climate in the Istanbul region. I
published eight papers all together in 2006, and have three papers in press and
four more submitted. If you are interested in more information or want to
read them, visit my
home page and click on
Publications. We hired one new faculty member
this year, Steve Decker, from the University of Wisconsin, and are searching for
one more. As Bob Harnack retired, I became the Undergraduate Curriculum
Coordinator for the Meteorology Program. It is a lot of work, involving
preparing advertising material in print and
on the web, conducting an Open House
in the Fall, reorganizing the curriculum, advising students, and managing the
teaching schedule.
I received the Editor’s Award
from the Journal of Hydrometeorology, “for providing timely, insightful,
and comprehensive reviews that have helped to ensure the publication of high
quality research,” which was presented at the American Meteorological Society
Annual Awards Banquet, February 1, 2006. I also received the Rutgers
University Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research, the university’s
highest honor for distinguished research contributions, May 4, 2006,
given by President Richard McCormick.
My father and Hanne came to the ceremony.
I was elected
President-Elect of the Atmospheric Sciences Section of the
American Geophysical
Union (AGU) in 2006, and started my service in July, 2006. I will serve as
President-Elect for two years, President for the next two years, and Past
President for two more years. This means I help run all activities of our
section, including at meetings, publications, and awards (such as AGU Fellows).
I also now manage the Atmospheric Sciences Section portion of the AGU web page.
My one specific campaign pledge was to have better social events at the AGU Fall
Meeting. In December, 2006, I organized a Chinese banquet with entertainment
from Lynda Williams, who
performed songs specially written to pertain to weather and climate. It
was well-attended and very successful.
Al Gore gave an
inspirational talk the AGU Meeting, challenging scientists to have the courage
to speak out more to the public and communicate the results of their work, so
that the public can make more informed policy decisions. I got to sit in
the front row, and Al Gore walked into a room with 4,000 people and walked right
up to me and shook my hand. After the address,
I was
able to talk with him briefly. His new movie is great and is helping
to convince most Americans of the danger of global warming. He is my first
choice for Democratic candidate for President in 2008, and I hope we all get
behind him soon.
As President-Elect
and then President of the Atmospheric Sciences Section, I serve a four-year term
on the AGU Council, which runs AGU. At my first Council meeting, at the
December 2006 AGU Fall Meeting, I pointed out my concern that ExxonMobil
sponsorship of the student Morning Mixer violated our policy of contributors to
AGU obtaining special privileges from their donations, that it kept students
away from an opportunity to engage with AGU leadership, and that it hurt AGU’s
reputation to be associated with a company with an anti-science policy when it
comes to global warming. My concern produced much discussion, and as a result,
Fred Spilhaus, AGU Executive Director, said that naming the session after ExxonMobil was a huge error on the
part of AGU, and that it would be corrected and never happen again. And he
promised to be vigilant about similar problems in other AGU activities.
But I still have to follow through to get AGU to change these policies in
writing.
I visited the University of Texas in
Austin in March. It is supposed to be the nicest place in Texas, but I did
not find it charming. In March, I left for a conference on soil
moisture observations at the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, Netherlands,
where I visited Leiden.
Then I visited Warsaw for the first time, giving lectures at the University of
Warsaw. I tried to get some collaborative work going, but it did not work
out. Next I went to Vienna for the European Geosciences Union meeting,
where I got to visit with an old friend, Ulli Pechinger,
along the flooded Danube.
When I got home, I had to go to San Francisco for a UCAR University Relations
Committee meeting.
In June I was invited to attend a meeting
in Les Diablerets, Switzerland to serve on the review panel for the new World
Meteorological Organization Ozone Assessment.
It is a beautiful village at the
foot of the Alps. Sherri joined me and
we drove through the Grand St. Bernard tunnel to Italy and ended up in Nice,
France, where we spent several days. The Chagall
museum is exquisite. The old town is
very scenic, as is
the rocky beach. We went to Monaco one day,
driving along the Grand Corniche, and saw the
oceanography museum and aquarium. We
finally drove back to Geneva in a long, all-day trek through
the western foothills of the Alps, but it was very
scenic. We went to bars to watch World Cup games in Les Diablerets and
Nice, with the Swiss watching
Switzerland, the
Italians watching Italy (in Nice), and the French watching France. It
was fun watching with knowledgeable fans, and we watched the final games after
we got home. In July, I went to a 3-day meeting at the Deutsches Museum in
Munich, which I had visited at age 16 with my family. They still do the
demonstration that electricity stays on the
outside of a metal object, and they have an exhibit of boats that includes
models of a Titicaca reed boat and Brazilian jongada
like I have in my living room. I went to the
Hofbrau Haus and had a traditional meal.
As mentioned below, I saw a poster for the Stones the night after I got there an
attended a concert in the Olympic Stadium. The city has nice
parks, full of naked people.
In July and August, I accompanied Sherri
to Hawaii where she again taught a two-week
course. I gave a couple talks, but we found time to go
snorkeling and I climbed
Diamond Head with Dan. When Sherri
and I were returning from snorkeling, we were interviewed for a local TV
station, KNHL.
You can see a web page about our fame-making performances here. I went
to Boulder at the end of September to give lectures at the University of
Colorado and also in October to attend the annual UCAR meetings. It is a
very nice place to visit. At the end of October we went to New Orleans for
Brian and Ginger's wedding (see above). I also gave lectures in Iowa in
November and was able to attend a Wisconsin game (see below).
I went to San Francisco twice at the end
of the year, once in November to attend a conference on geoengineering, and then
to attend the AGU meetings (discussed below). Geoengineering is the idea
that we can block out sunlight to prevent global warming, but it is a bad idea
for many reasons. Sherri and Dan went with me on the last trip, and we
visited Brian and Ginger, and our friends Bob and Sureyya Bornstein.
I got to see Bob Dylan
perform twice this year, once in Reading, Pennsylvania on August 23 and once at
the Meadowlands (Continental Airlines Arena) on Nov. 16, with my brother Jerry.
I was pretty close both times, standing in a baseball field in Reading and
sitting in the 14th row in NJ. He sang 5 songs from his great new album
Modern Times at the second show, which was fabulous. This makes 38
times I have heard him live, and I look forward to more. In addition to
continuing to perform 100 shows a year, Bob has started as a radio DJ, doing a
weekly Theme Time Radio Hour on XM radio. He talks, jokes, and
shares his encyclopedic knowledge of American music as he plays songs all
related to one theme. The first one was Weather, and now there have been
34 shows so far. I recorded them all. If you want to listen, please
let me know. In addition, Sherri and I used some of my miles to fly to
Cleveland in August and visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
the birthplace of rock and roll. They had a
special exhibit on the early years of Bob Dylan, which was very interesting, and
we heard a lecture by a guy who had done a biography of Dave van Ronk and talked
about his interactions with Dylan when he first came to the Village. At
the end of September we saw the Thyla Tharp musical The Times They Are
A'Changin'. It made me realize again how hard it is for anyone to
improve on the way Bob does his own material. She had inferior singers and
dancers exercising all over the stage. The show closed soon after it
opened, but I had to see it as soon as I could.
I got to see many other
great concerts this year, Christine Lavin in January, Bruce Springsteen in April
doing his great new folk song album, the Stones in July, Peter, Paul, and Mary
in April (their first one since Mary's bout with cancer) and August
(Mary still has her fire), Crosby,
Stills, Nash, and Young in August, and Arlo in October. Some of these
folks are getting quite old, so I feel lucky to have had a chance to see them,
maybe for the last time. I just happened upon the Stones concert in Munich
at the Olympic Stadium when I was there for a conference, and ended up sitting
next to Wladimir Klitschko,
world heavyweight boxing champ. He is a very nice guy, with a Ph.D. in
exercise physiology, and talked for quite a while. I see from his web site
that he and his brother were just named UNESCO Champions for Sport.
Wisconsin did not go to the Rose Bowl
again this year, but will be in the CapitalOne Bowl on Jan 1, 2007. They
only lost one game this year, to Michigan, and Ohio State did not lose any.
I gave a talk in Iowa this fall and chose the weekend of the Badger game, so got
to see Wisconsin win a game this year. I had not been to a college game
for a while, and it was great fun.
May your 2007
be a healthy and fulfilling one. Happy New Year!
Sherri:
As I write this on December 30, 2006, according to the Bush Countdown Clock
there are 751 days, 10 hours, 50 minutes, and 37, 36, 35, seconds left of his
presidency--and even though 2006 was a great year personally for me, time can't
pass quickly enough until our long "national (and international) nightmare" will
begin to be over--though I suspect we'll be suffering the rest of the time and
our kids will be paying the dime for this administration's consistently failed
policies for a long, long time...but no need to dwell on the depressing, we can
all watch the news for that. And the recent elections give hope that
people will start demanding better government.
