I am hopeful that Obama will be reelected, if the economy continues to get slowly better.  The Republicans have not come up with an attractive alternative, and that certainly helps.  And I hope that in his second term, Obama will fix a few more things, such as relations with Cuba, legalizing drugs to end the crime scourge associated with the illegal drug trade, and end the war in Afghanistan (why are we still there?).

   Things continue to go well at Rutgers.   Ben Kravitz finished his Ph.D. with me and now is a postdoc working with the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University.  I have three other graduate students, all doing well.  Lili Xia is also working on the geoengineering grant.  Mira Losic is working with me on an NSF grant to study volcanic eruptions and the Arctic.  Tom Collow is working on a NASA grant to study remote sensing of soil moisture, and completed his M.S. degree.  I published eight refereed journal articles this year, six other articles, and have six more in review.  If you are interested in more information or want to read them, visit my home page and click on Publications.

    Geoengineering continues to be a hot topic.  I gave invited talks about it this year at the University of Washington, Stratospheric Processes and their Relation to Climate (SPARC) Scientific Steering Group Meeting in Pune, India; Princeton University; University of Oklahoma; NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton; King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia; Florida State University; the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Vatican City; California Institute of Technology in Pasadena; NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena; University of California, Irvine; IPCC meeting in Lima, Peru; University of Colorado; NCAR; the NOAA Labs in Boulder; and the University of Hamburg; as well as conference talks on the subject at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, the WCRP Open Science Conference in Denver, a climate conference in Moscow, and the Fall AGU Meeting.  Although a national research program on the subject has yet to develop, I wrote a proposal this year to continue my work, and am to convening a second GeoMIP workshop at the Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK, in March, 2012.

     On my first sabbatical I was a Congressional Science Fellow, sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  I am currently the Retiring Chair of the AAAS Section on Atmospheric and Hydrologic Sciences.  At the annual AAAS Meeting in Washington, DC in February, I learned that AAAS had cut their long-standing support for two AAAS Congressional Science Fellows each year down to one, with the claim that they could not afford two any more.  I guess I learned something about politics during that sabbatical, because I was able to organize a successful campaign to increase the number of AAAS Congressional Science Fellows from one to back to two, by getting a large number of former Fellows to join me in a petition to AAAS.  Congressional Science Fellows are the main way that Congress gets scientific input, and it is important to continue with as many as we can.

    Our solar panels (photovoltaic) continue to work well.  Here is an updated graph of our electric bill for the past few years.  It is easy to see when we turned it on.

   We started the new year in Paris with Gera and Tanya, their daughter Sveta and their son-in-law Ross, visiting our apartment.  We ate at Les Fêtes Galantes, with interesting decor, at the apartment we rented, and at a vegetarian restaurant.  We saw Monet's Water Lilies in the Orangerie, and went up in the Eiffel Tower.  There was not much of a line, fortunately, and they even had an ice rink.  We also went to Montmartre. It was cold, but beautiful, and we were able to watch the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1 with about 30 French Badger fans in an Irish sports bar along the Seine.  Unfortunately the Badgers barely lost, but they get another chance on Jan. 2, 2012.  Later in January I went to the AMS meeting in Seattle and then at the end of the month, I attended the SPARC Scientific Steering Group meeting in Pune, India.  We met at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology and I stayed at the most technically sophisticated hotel I had ever been in, with an iPod to control everything, the TV, favourite channels, lights, air conditioning, and room service.  One night we went to a beautiful dance show.  I then spent a day in Mumbai before flying home, staying at the Taj Mahal Palace (the one that had suffered a terrorist attack the year before) by the India Gate, which was beautifully restored inside and took a very interesting city tour with a young novice guide, including a local bus, local train (not too crowded), Gandhi house with sayings and dioramas, cricket pitch for the masses, cricket pitch for the elite, and where they washed laundry outside.

    In February, we hosted a conference at Rutgers on an international geoengineering climate modeling experiment we are organizing, and it was very successful.  I also attended the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, DC, where I organized a tribute to Steve Schneider, the well-known climate scientist who died last year, and a session on my work on the climatic effects of nuclear war.  A Nature reporter said it seemed I was very frustrated that nobody is paying attention to the work, and invited me to write an article about it, which got at least a little attention.  I also visited the University of Oklahoma where I gave several talks on climate change, even though their US Senators are enemies of our science.  It was nice to see that at the university, they can still think freely and I received no hostile questions or comments at all.  I was able to visit my old friend from grad school Howie Bluestein and his wife Kathleen.

   March allowed us to see two amazing places, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.  Gera and Tanya invited us to visit the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology along the shore of the Red Sea an hour north of Jeddah.  The facilities are amazing, with beautiful architecture, and they even reproduced Safeway grocery stores, a Burger King, and Baskin Robbins, as well as an excellent restaurant at their Yacht Club.  Inside the campus, Gera's office is part of the main building complex, women can drive and do not have to cover themselves, but when we went into Jeddah, they do, although western women were able to bend the rules and not cover their heads.  But Arab  women have to complete cover themselves when they swim, in a Burqini.  In Jordan we drove from Amman south through the desert, stopping at Crusader castles to Petra, spectacular and well-preserved.  We had fish from the Gulf of Aqaba for dinner, and walked through a long canyon to get to the city.  We even came upon a Bedouin who was able to stay in the old city, with his satellite dish.  On the way back I stopped at Chicheley Hall, a manor house in the British countryside owned by the Royal Society for a meeting in geoengineering governance, still and unsolved problem. 

    At the end of March, I went to a meeting at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican.  Brian Toon and I climbed through the dome of St. Peter's to get a view from the top.  I gave a talk on geoengineering and Brian talked about nuclear winter.  The focus was on the melting glaciers in the Himalayas, and resulted in an excellent statement on climate change from the Vatican.  We stayed in a small hotel inside Vatican City, and the Swiss Guards just saluted us when we showed our keys and let us wander around, including in a back door to St. Peter's.  Breakfasts were simple, but lunches and dinners were quite fancy in a 500-year-old Pope's palace with a beautiful terrace.  The conference room facilities were very fancy, combining photos of the speakers and there talks, such as the one by Paul Crutzen, and using Skype so Rajendra Pachauri could give his talk from India.  But we did not get to meet the Pope.  I then went to Vienna for the annual European Geosciences Union meeting, where I had dinner with Hans Graf, Gera, and Tanya, and saw my friend Ulli.  Later in the month I visited Florida State University in Tallahassee for the first time, as part of a UCAR President's Advisory Committee visit.

    In May I visited the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena to give a talk on geoengineering, and then went to a soil moisture meeting in Oxnard.   I then flew to Geneva, Switzerland to give a talk on nuclear winter at the UN.  I was able to visit the house where Byron wrote his poem Darkness in 1816, the "Year Without a Summer," which sounds like nuclear winter but was inspired by the climatic change from a large volcanic eruption.  (Mary Shelley, a houseguest, wrote Frankenstein with the same inspiration.)  Geneva has the longest bench in the world and the biggest chair in the world.  On the plane over there, I ran into Tom Peterson, who told me that the annual WMO congress was the same week.  I was able to meet three people I went to grad school with who now run their nation's weather services, Antonio Moura (Brazil), Neil Gordon (New Zealand), and Charles Lin (Canada).  They even got me into the great reception at the Russian Embassy.

   Later in May, I attended a meeting on geoengineering at Cal Tech in Pasadena, where we are organizing a research program sponsored by the Keck Foundation.  In June I returned to California again, this time to give a talk about geoengineering at UC Irvine, and then Sherri and I went to Peru, for an IPCC meeting on geoengineering and then to Cuzco and Machu Picchu.  We arrived in Cuzco for the annual Inca festival to ask the Sun to come back, as it was the shortest day of the year, and saw dancing in native costumes and reanactment of a ceremony to kill a llama for good luck, but the killing was simulated, thankfully.  Inca walls fit perfectly, without mortar.  We visited the Sacred Valley and saw Olantaytambo, and then took a train to Aguas Calientes, before taking a bus the next morning up to Machu Picchu.  It was the 100th anniversary of its "discovery" by a Yale professor, and is a spectacular, mountain-top city, but is surrounded by higher mountains.  On the train back to Cuzco, our guide and a woman we met were doing what anyone does in the world.

    In July, I attended the second of four Lead Author meetings for the next IPCC report, this time in Brest, France, seeing Pachi for the second time this year.  Brest is not that exciting, as it was terribly bombed in World War II, but they had nice ship carvings in a museum.  We spent an extra week in Brittany, seeing a Celtic festival in Quimper, where they wore kilts and played bagpipes, and saw the headliner, Suzanne Vega.  There was also a very strange show of lighted giants that night.  We also saw rows of stones in Carnac, Pen Hir, and Pen Hir again, and had lunch (delicious baguettes from a local store) watching the surf on the Quiberon Peninsula.  We then spent a few days in Vannes, including a cruise of the estuary and dinner with Michael and Camille Wehner.  We went to Auray, where Ben Franklin arrived from the U.S. The food was fabulous, and here are various meals we had and food we saw:  here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

    In August I attended a meeting at the University of Hamburg on nuclear winter and large volcanic eruptions, which was the genesis of Juan Carlos' idea for the meeting in Havana next October using the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis to publicize the dangers of nuclear weapons.

    Then we got in my Prius and drove to Boulder to begin a three month vistit as part of our sabbatical.  I got there in time to atttend a three-day symposium to honor and remember Steve Schneider, where I gave a talk on nuclear winter, and Pachi presented his remotely.  It was a fabulous three months, with me working at NCAR in the Mesa Lab every day and Sherri talking classes at the University of Colorado and trying every yoga and exercise class in Boulder.  She even made the Boulder Daily Camera, in an article about her Aqua Zumba class.  We went hiking every weekend, spent time with many friends, and sampled many of the great restaurants in Boulder.  Susan Solomon invited us to dinner at her house in the mountains where we went for a hike with her.  Activities included a Colorado Rockies baseball game with Bob Chervin and his son Reed, hiking in the flatirons above NCAR with Brian Toon and Maggie Tolbert, sushi at Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, spending a night at Susan Solomon's yurt in the mountains, perched over a canyon, and crossing the Continental Divide to the source of the Colorado Rivier, which flowed gently there, seeing beautiful aspen turning yellow.  On the way down Boulder Canyon from Nederland, I set a personal record with a half hour of over 100 mpg on the Prius.  We got two one-foot (30 cm) snow storms while we were there, but the snow melted quickly and Boulder knows how to handle snow.  NCAR was beautiful in the snow, from a distance and up close.

   At the annual UCAR meetings, I was elected to the Board of Trustees for the next three years, to my surprise.  I got a lot of work done, actually running the NCAR GCM by myself to get enough results for an AGU poster and a GRL paper, which I will write soon.  Lili and Mira joined me for the month of October, supported by my NCAR Fellowship.

   Brian, Ginger, Gunzie, and Dan visited us in Boulder.  Brian, Ginger, and Gunzie took a hike with me into the mountains from NCAR.  We went for a hike up Sugarloaf Mountain, where Sherri and I had previously been.  Here are Sherri and Dan. Gunzie liked climbing our stairs.   

    Just before leaving Boulder, I went to Moscow for a meeting on climate change (Pachi for the fourth time) .  It was my first time there in 20 years, and it is now full of cars and new buildings, and GUM was certainly different.  But Red Square is still the same, and I visited it a snowy night with Gera and Tanya.  The old churches were along the roads, and the Hotel Ukraina, where I stayed on my first trip in 1979, was unchanged. I was invited to nice meals, and I was impressed that the Russian position on global warming is one of great concern, and they published a national plan warning of droughts and forest fires even before the hot, dry summer of 2010.  I then stopped in Hamburg for another geoengineering meeting on the way home.  The next week I went to our second Keck meeting at Cal Tech, and was able to surprise Rich Turco at his retirement party at UCLA.

    We've been in Sausalito since the end of November.  We arrived here in time for Gunzie's first birthday.  Ginger's mom Kit was also here.  We are renting an apartment right on San Francisco Bay, with a view of Tiburon, Angel Island, Alcatraz, the Bay Bridge, and the San Francisco skyline, with Berkeley and Oakland in the distance.  We have had fabulous clear weather, quite unusual for December but probably linked to the current La Niña.  We sometimes see fabulous sunrises here, here, and here, and there are lots of birds flying around.   One Saturday there was a boat parade and then fireworks.  We can walk to the Golden Gate Bridge in 30 minutes, which we walked across and back.  Just past it is a fabulous view over San Francisco, particularly when there is a little fog.  The Marin County Civic Center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is spectacular, and we visited it a couple times already.

    At the Fall AGU Meeting, I gave a talk on nuclear winter at the Fellow's Speak section.  I only had 13 minutes, so gave the essentials.  I had rented a tux for the evening, but decided to wear it all day and gave the talk in the tux.  It was amazing how many compliments I got on how I was dressed - it made me think about getting dressed up every day, but only for a few seconds.  That night I shook hands with Mike McPhaden, AGU President, and then was presented at the ceremony by Carol Finn, AGU President-Elect.  She was quite dressed up, too, including fancy shoes.  The next night, there was a dinner to celebrate, and I had Gera and Tanya, Lifeng Luo, Lori Bruhwiler, Liang Yang, and Bruce Doddridge to help me celebrate.  Rich Turco was there, as was Russ Dickerson.  Tanya made a nice montage of everyone at our table.  Sherri and I danced.

    The next week I went to Cuba as part of a AAAS delegation.  We stayed at the Hotel Nacional (view from my room, Christmas tree in the lobby, celebrating 53 years of revolution), and visited the Cuban Institute of Meteorology (INSMET) - their national weather service - across the harbor from downtown Havana, where Anne Thompson gave a short talk.  The group of atmospheric scientists was not large - Roger Rivero, René Estevan, and Juan Carlos Antuña from Camaguey, Tomás Gutiérrez from INSMET, Anne Thompson from Penn State, Olga Mayol-Bracero from the University of Puerto Rico, and me.  We met both in the old casino of the Hotel Nacional and on the veranda.  Anne, Olga, and I took a tour of the tunnels on the front lawn where the tour guide, Estela, had lived for three months in preparation to defend against an American invasion that never happened in October, 1962.  Fidelito attended the opening ceremony on Tuesday and did a TV interview.  On Tuesday night, the American delegation hosted a dinner at the Hotel.  The next night, the Cubans hosted a dinner at the National Aquarium, which included a dolphin show.  The dolphins pushed the four divers around in precise formations, but we felt sorry for them confined in such a small tank.  The last day of meetings I was invited to lunch at the Cafe del Oriente, one of the nicest restaurants in Havana, by Fidelito along with Michael Clegg (US National Academy of Sciences), Sergio Pastrana (Cuban Academy of Sciences), Vaughan Turekian (AAAS, back), Peter Agre (front), Tomás Gutiérrez, and Juan Carlos Antuña.  After Fidelito handed out signed copies of his new book, Nuclear Energy, I gave him two Rutgers baseball caps, one blue and one black, one for him and one for his father.  He asked which was for him, and I told him to take either one and give the other to his father.  He said that maybe his father should decide.  I said, "What!?"  He said we were going to meet with him that afternoon. 

   It turned out that Peter Agre and I were the only Americans invited, along with Juan Carlos and Tomás, and we spent 3 1/2 hours with Fidel.  We waited for a little while, and then entered the same room where I met with Fidel last year.  He greeted me, and we sat at a table with Fidel Castro Ruz, his wife Dalia Soto del Valle, his sons Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart and Antonio Castro Soto del Valle, and Peter Agre, Juan Carlos Antuña, Tomás Gutiérrez, and Betty Muñoz (interpreter) on the other. Fidel talked 99% of the time, and we talked only 1%, but it was fascinating.  Fidel seemed to really enjoy the opportunity to talk about lots of things.  Peter and I wrote down what we remembered from the meeting, which you can read here.   As we were leaving I shook hands with Fidel, and he commented that I had grown since we had met the year before.  So I stooped down to be the same height, but I can think of many other captions for this picture.  I gave Fidel a baseball cap and he said he would put it on before we left, but did not.  However, Fidelito liked his.  We left the next day, and I was surprised at how many flights there are each day between Miami and Havana.

   I stopped in the Everglades on the way back, where I saw birds, other birds, alligators, and alligators with birds.  In the Everglades, I happened upon a defunct Nike missile base, which had been aimed at Cuba.  It was very strange to think how crazy that was and how much better off we are without a military concern for Cuba.  I then visited my father and Hanne in South Carolina.  They have left their place in New York after more than 40 years, and will be living permanently in Bluffton.  It was strange to look out the window as I landed at Newark on my way home from Hamburg, look out at New York City, and realize that I do not have a home there anymore.  My father is slowly fading and his memory and awareness are not what they were.  But he has no physical problems, except a little difficulty walking, and is now 96 1/2 years old.  My Peace Corps friend, Paul Rodell, came down for the day from Georgia to visit. 

    I saw Bob Dylan for the 44th time in August at Convention Hall in Asbury Park.  I flew in that day from Hamburg, but was able to sleep on the plane and stay up for the concert.  It was quite good and Bob actually played guitar on a couple songs.  The opening act, Leon Russell, however could have been skipped. We saw Peter Yarrow in a small church in May, and it was excellent.  But we all miss Mary.

    Wisconsin is going to the Rose Bowl AGAIN this year!  Unfortunately, we did not plan for it again and will be on a plane to Hawaii for a conference and vacation on January 2, 2012.  Who knew that it would not be on January 1 as usual?  But I'm not complaining.  I'm so fortunate to have all these opportunities.

Sherri:  “LL”—Living Large in 2011—that’s my summary of this past year. From ringing in the New Year in Paris, along with friends Gera and Tanya, their daughter and her husband, to barely getting there because of the biggest snowstorm in the Northeast in a long time, after just returning home from my first visit with my adorable grandson, Daniel (also known as “Gunzie” because of my son’s after-the-fact wish he had called him Gunnar), this year has been especially memorable. And on January 2nd, 2012, we’ll head to Hawaii, where Al has to work, but friends Ron, wife Cyndi, and Tony, my colleague for 40 years, will join us for adventures on Oahu and Maui—a great way to start 2012, along with ringing in the year watching the fireworks from our apartment in Sausalito, and spending it with our grandson.

   As you saw from the pictures above, we visited some fantastic places, saw many of our closest friends, in places near and far, and are now ensconced in a beautifully decorated apartment with stupendous views of San Francisco, San Francisco Bay, Angel Island, Berkeley and Oakland. And having just spent three months in Boulder, CO, with its warm people, fantastic mountain vistas, and intellectually stimulating activities, as well as lots of exercise, I didn’t think that Sausalito could top it—but it has, not least because my family is close enough for me to bother them all the time! Perhaps I should have spent more time at the various Occupy movements, though with the places I’ve been living, I’m more like the 1% than the 99%, but not in my sympathies with their cause. In fact, I was waiting to take our grandson, Daniel, to Occupy Oakland, but that one got dicey even before we arrived, and they shut down the one in San Francisco shortly after we arrived. I think their message is resonating and should help Obama, who I support without reservation. He’s doing great work considering the obstacles that have been put in his way from his first day in office—while the 2012 election may be about jobs, jobs, jobs, and that is an important issue to be sure, his foreign policy achievements, not least the killing of Bin Laden, should go far in bolstering his credentials as a capable leader.

    I am officially on a transitional sabbatical, working on various projects for the college, which I’ll describe shortly, and in June 2012 I’ll officially retire. But one of the projects is the development of an online Modern Middle Eastern History course, which I plan to offer as an adjunct in Fall of 2012. So, while I’ll be retired and “out of the classroom,” literally, since it’s an online class, I’ll still be agonizing over the state of the world and straining to keep up with the developments in that region. Spring 2011 was my final full-time teaching stint, but what a semester it was—with the Arab Spring and Fukushima and Bin Laden’s death coming just before the end of the semester, my Contemporary World History classes and I had a wonderful time—at least I did. One student asked if I had ever taught in a time of so much “breaking news,” and the only other time that springs to mind was in 1989, with the end of the Cold War. In fact, when Mubarak left office, we watched the developments in one of my classes, which actually dazzled a few of the students, and when things in Libya started to develop, I put us all on a “Qadaffi watch,” not to be realized during the spring term, but when he was killed I wrote to the students that the “watch” was officially over, and a few replied with comments about the Middle East and the influence the course had on their being more attentive to current happenings.

    Another of the projects is to find funding sources for the International Center, and, though pickings are slim, continue to look for ways we can attract international students and secure money to send more students on international study trips. If anyone has any ideas, please send them along. I am also helping the CHHANGE Center (Center for Holocaust, Human Rights and Genocide Education Center) with a grant from the NEA, and in the next semester plan to study Spanish, as I would like to do volunteer work with the immigrant community when I return to New Jersey, sometime in the summer. Brian and Ginger’s nanny is from Peru, so hope to learn from her as well.

    In Boulder I audited two courses, one on the Modern Middle East and another on Nazism and the Holocaust. They treat seniors well in Boulder, both with discount bus passes and no tuition to attend classes. So, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I’d hop on the Skip, and 15 minutes later be strolling through the campus en route to the classes. Both of them were enjoyable, I learned a lot from the professors and from the students, and met several other auditors along the way. One wonderful thing about Boulder is its people—unfailingly pleasant, hospitable, eager to help. Their friendliness was a bit unnerving at first, but I quickly got used to it and now find that in California, there is not the same warmth when first meeting someone or from a vendor, and perhaps that’s because we’re in a more urban area. To be sure, the laid-back driving in Boulder is not replicated here, but, when a podiatrist I recently saw warned me to be careful of the aggressive drivers here, I had to reply, “but I’m used to it, I’m from New Jersey.”

    I’ve had more time to exercise, with the aqua zumba video just a sampling of the kinds of things we did in Boulder, along with hiking. I joke, though it’s only a half-joke, that after folks ask your name and where you’re from, they follow by asking where you hiked most recently. I also thought that a bit strange, but quickly got into the groove of mild but spectacular hikes in the Rockies and Front Range—every weekend we hiked, and the pictures reveal the variety and beauty of the places we visited. I thought we’d travel more around the state, but we stayed fairly local, and I only went to Denver once during our entire trip. We did connect with a friend we had met at one of Al’s conferences in Pucon, Chile, back in 2004, Libby Prueher, and many of Al’s friends and colleagues, so most weekends were filled with activities. Joining a health club near our condo, I also took advantage of Boulder’s reputation as a yoga capital of the world, and tried Kundalini (even the baby loves me to rub his hands and feet together quickly, to awaken the charkas, don’t you know!)—the teacher, Guruk, played “live” on his guitar, and we chanted away, did “breath of fire,” and I miss those times. I also became reacquainted with water exercise, which was easy for me to resume because of the wonderful recreation facilities in Boulder—one just 5 minutes walk from our condo—I’ve continued both yoga and water classes in Sausalito, and, with the walking and hiking and exercising that I’ve done since leaving New Jersey, have somehow managed to lose about 10 pounds—a great feeling when you realize you didn’t have to starve yourself to do so.

    I returned home in November, just after our renters moved to their new home, so was able to visit my friends Anne and Steve, attend a Dining for Women dinner, a local group I helped to found along with Sheryl Geisler, and see many of my closest friends, along with going into Brookdale to check things out and visit with colleagues. It was wonderful to be back home, and comfortable, though without Al around, I ended up raking leaves and fixing stuff I didn’t think I could do, but it got done and we are fortunate to have some wonderful friends looking after the place in our absence, including a neighbor who keeps check on our solar panels. One of the reasons for my return was to attend a Mid-Atlantic World History Conference at Rutgers, where we saw long-time participants, along with meeting new colleagues. I’m still the Vice President, though I didn’t do much to help with this year’s conference, but my good friend, Joan Rykiel, presented and Tony and I, along with Joan and George, stayed over on Friday night at the same hotel where the Rutgers football team stays whenever they have a home game, so we saw the entire team and Coach Schiano, the highest paid public employee in New Jersey, and some of our tax dollars are work!

    Our aim in coming to Sausalito was to be near our kids, so a quick summary of their lives this past year. Dan, now almost 32, continues to work at Safeway in their Deli Department. He moved out of Brian’s house and now lives with one of his co-workers quite close to where he works, is still interested in the NBA (thankfully they settled their strike) and football, and is doing okay, no real setbacks, more status quo at this time. Brian, who turned 35 last July, likes working at Sledgehammer Games, a division of Activision, as a CGI artist, and his company recently released “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III,” (CofD: MWIII), which has made his company very rich—apparently our grandson’s picture is to be found on the dashboard of a humvee in some versions of the game—and to think, I carted him to peace marches when he was young, wouldn’t let him have guns or videogames—it’s come back to haunt me. He’s a great father, very protective of his son, and it’s been nice to just “hang out” since we’ve been in Sausalito. He still loves surfing, and is working on his children’s books, along with fixing up his house in San Rafael. Ginger, his wife, works at the Veteran’s Hospital, returned when the baby was 2 months old, and has the midnight - 8 am shift, so they have a nanny that comes to the house during the day while Ginger is sleeping. Brian has the night shift, and has done a good job of getting the baby to sleep, is very efficient in attendin

    The baby is a pure joy to be near—he’s so alert, expressive, and hasn’t reached the stage where he’s got definite opinion or preferences. He quickly picks up on and wants to copy things that you’ve shown him, and is pretty active, though likes to cuddle as well. He loves music and banging just about anything he can get his hands on, but is very even-tempered and we’re having a great time with him. As you can see from his pictures, he’s a charmer, and, since our Sausalito home is within easy walking distance from the downtown, he and I have turned into “regulars,” walking down to the houseboats and browsing in the cute souvenir shops along the way.

    May the year ahead be filled with family, good health, prosperity, and pro-Democratic thoughts! If you get out this way before May, or to New Jersey sometime in 2012, please get in touch and let’s get together.