Alan and Sherri's 2014

PEACE IN THE NEW YEAR

E-mail:	2582 Crestview Road
Alan: robock@envsci.rutgers.edu	Manasquan, NJ 08736 USA
Sherri: swest@brookdalecc.edu	December 31, 2014
Telephone: (732) 881-1610 (cell Alan), (732) 881-1609 (cell Sher)

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Alan: This has been a year of spending time with family and several nice trips, including to Portugal, Spain, Paris, and Astana. The grandkids are still perfect, here using Grandpa as a sofa.

Things continue to go well at Rutgers. I taught one course this Fall, on climate change to seniors and graduate students, and a seminar course for graduate students. It was fun, except for the grading. At the Fall AGU Meeting I learned about a lot of resources for more in class participation by students, so I look forward to doing even a better job of teaching the climate course next year.

I continue to work on my two National Science Foundation grants on geoengineering, which now support a graduate student, Corey Gabriel, and a postdoc. Lili Xia. And I have a new NSF grant to study the impacts of volcanic eruptions on seasonal and decadal climate. I have hired a new postdoc, and am looking for a new graduate student. Three of my graduate students finished their Ph.D.s this spring, Mira Berdahl, pregnant with twins, Lili Xia, and Tom Collow. Here we all our at graduation. Mira moved to Santa Fe with her husband and twins, and is now working on research part-time with a colleague at Rutgers. Lili is now working with me as a postdoc, and Tom took a job as a research scientist with the National Centers for Environmental Prediction in College Park, Maryland. Our GeoMIP project produced a special section of the Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres, and I am a co-author of 13 papers published there in 2013 and 2014. Altogether in 2014, I published 13 refereed journal articles and 3 other articles, have 8 more in press, and have 2 more in review. It has been a very productive year. If you are interested in more information or want to read them, visit my home page and click on Publications.

The Rutgers Meteorology Undergraduate Program, which I direct, continues to thrive. This year we celebrated our 50th anniversary, with events at the American Meteorological Society meeting in Atlanta in February and at Ag Field Day at Rutgers in April.

Nuclear winter continues to be the most important thing I work on. There has been some more progress. In February, I attended the second International Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where I made a presentation. A third International Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons was held in Vienna in December - I did not attend, but my colleague Mike Mills did and presented our latest work. It was encouraging that the United States and United Kingdom, members of the P5, attended for the first time. They did not yet agree to a ban on nuclear weapons, but they heard the concern of the world about this issue. As Obama has pledged to work toward a world free of nuclear weapons, and he finally seems ready to move forward on issues of concern to him, with recent examples of global warming and Cuba, I remain optimistic.

Last year I was able to give a TEDx talk on nuclear winter in Hoboken on June 28, 2013. It has had over 4000 views so far, which is something, but it is not that many, so I once again encourage you all to watch and tweet and facebook about it, to get it to trend. (Did I get the social media jargon correct?) I have also started to tweet, but confine myself mostly to my nuclear weapons agenda. Please follow me.

In addition to the international meeting in Mexico in February, I gave invited lectures on my nuclear winter work at the American Meteorological Society meeting in Atlanta in February, University of California, Berkeley in March (with Daniel Ellsberg in attendance), at the University of Delaware in March, at Brookdale Community College in March, at the University of Maryland in May, at the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War World Student Congress and at the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War 21st World Congress in Astana, Kazakhstan in August, and at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco in December.

With no action on global warming, geoengineering continues to be a hot topic. I actually made five trips to Europe this year to different geonengineering meetings, in Potsdam in January, Paris in April, Oslo in June, Heidelberg in August, and Berlin in August. I gave invited talks about geoengineering this year in Potsdam in January, Santiago de Compostela, Spain in April, Bergen, Norway in June, and Heidelberg, Germany in July. I also gave talks at conferences on geoengineering in Atlanta in February, Berkeley in March, Paris in April, Oslo in June, Berlin in August, and at the National Acacemy of Sciences in Washington, DC in December.

I figured out how to blog on Huffington Post, and you can read my blogs here. After posting one on why President Obama should say no to the Keystone XL pipeline, the next day I ended up on the Ed Show on MSNBC. I guess people actually read the Huffington Post. And it appears that Obama listened to me. When he talks about the pipeline (still not approved), he says all the things I said.

Our travels began with me taking a trip to Potsdam for an advisory panel on a European geoengineering project at the end of January. It's a nice place, but the weather was a little slushy. I then went to the AMS meeting in Atlanta the next week at the beginning of February, where I gave a couple talks and we celebrated the 50th anniversary of our undergraduate Meteorology Program at Rutgers with students, faculty, and alumni. A week later, Sherri and I were in Nayarit, Mexico just north of Puerto Vallarta on the west coast for the second International Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons. I put on a suit and gave an invited talk. Sherri and I sat at the Academia tables, and she was even featured on the big screen. The beach was nice, as were the sunsets, the birds had yellow feet, and the ICAN group flew a Ban Nukes banner on a parasail.

In March, I gave an invited talk at a conference in Berkeley, which gave me my first chance of the year to visit the grandkids. Sherri will have pictures below. At the end of the month, after a meeting of an AGU committee to make recommendations about the Fellows program, I went to the Real News Network in Baltimore, where I did a series of interviews about my life, global warming, and nuclear winter. It was an interesting experience, but I'm not sure how many people saw them. I do know that John Cook at skepticalscience.com used a quote from one of them for his 97 hours of consensus on global warming. See if you can find me here, and then read my quote.

We took one of our great trips in April. I organized a GeoMIP conference in Paris (Paris in the spring - a great accomplishment of my research program), and on the way we visited Lisbon, and drove up to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where we visited my former postdoc Gonzalo Miguez Macho, who is now a professor there. In Portugal, we saw amazing carriages in the carriage museum in Belem, the tomb of Vasco da Gama, a monument to all the explorers who left from here, with the bridge across the Tagus River in the background that looks just like the Golden Gate Bridge, the view toward the mouth of the river from which the explorers left, the Tagus Bridge, and a mosaic with a map of the places they visited (see the people walking on it). You can see where the wavy mosaic sidewalks in Rio originated, here at a plaza in Lisbon. In Lisbon there were old funiculars, great ice cream, and octopus to eat. We then drove to Porto, seeing a snail truck on the way. We found much Porto much more charming than Lisbon. We stayed at a very fancy Pousada, part of which was in an old palace, with wonderful appetizers and main courses of fish and octopus. Porto has the world's most beautiful McDonalds, and a great train station lobby with tile murals on the wall. Houses have tiles on their exterior walls and laundry drying. Along the river were a wonderful old bridge and boats that brought barrels of wine down to Porto to be made into port.

We drove north to Santiago to Compostela. Along the Camino de Santiago there were signs, with the clamshell as the symbol for the pilgrims, being what ancient pilgrims carried as an all-purpose utensil, and symbolizing all the routes that lead to the plaza in front of the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. We were actually there for Easter, and the ceremony was preceded by a parade with marchers in black conical hats, and children carrying a huge cross. The ceremony includes swinging a huge pot with incense. The church is very ornate inside, and if you enter a subterranean passage can see the silver casket with the purported remains of Saint James (Santiago), who is also depicted as a knight on a horse crushing the infidels, now tactfully blocked from view by flowers. Gonzalo told us about the tour of the church, which actually let us walk on the slippery roof, which afforded nice views of the town. We stayed at the Parador, a fancy hotel on the plaza just next to the church. It is a former hospital that treated the pilgrims at the end of their journey, and includes nice courtyards here and here and fancy old furnishings. There are other churches in the town, including one that graphically depicts your fate if you do not follow the rules.

In Paris we rented a great apartment (top floor) across from the Arènes de Lutèce. It had a nice view, nice living room, and we entertained my current student, Corey Gabriel and my former student, Ben Kravitz. It had one of the world's smallest elevators. At my conference, we had dinner at a nice restaurant. The bridges had locks and I ate snails. Of course, we visited the Jardin de Luxembourg. The Institut du Monde Arabe had an outdoor exhibit on the Orient Express and an indoor exhibit on the Hajj in Mecca. Carnavalet had a great clock, and the Petit Palais had a portrait of one of America's greatest scientists, who also was our ambassador to France.

In June we took our second great trip, to Norway. The view of the fjords flying in was spectucular. The Oslo harbor had nice views, and a statue of Frnaklin Roosevelt. The Opera House is spectacular. The City Hall had murals, photos of former Nobel Peace Prize winners (the award ceremony is here), and a Munch room, although we saw one of the Screams in another museum. The Nobel Peace Center (a former railroad station) has exhibits on Nobel Peace Prize winners, including Al Gore and IPCC. The Vigeland Outdoor Museum had dancers, old people, and kids drawing school assignments. Norway is famous for its explorers, and Sherri went to see Ra II and an exhibit on Amundsen, who beat Scott to the South Pole in the summer of 1911-1912. We took at train to the top of the mountain overlooking Oslo, where we had a nice lunch, saw sod-covered buildings, and walked down to the new ski jump, where we walked up and looked down. Pretty scary, but Sherri came in first place. And it provides a nice view over Oslo. The museum there also has an exhibit on Amundsen, including a stuffed dog who helped pull him to the South Pole. And there was a statue of an errant jumper. Sherri had a nice cappuccino, and we had big and little Aass beers. After a two-day geoengineering meeting in Oslo, we took a train to Myrdal, passing the Aass brewery, beautiful snow-covered scenery with isolated houses in the highlands, and then the Flåm railway down to the Sognefjord. The scenery began immediately with small waterfalls, and then big waterfalls, spectacular valleys, distant waterfalls, and more picturesque valleys. We took a boat to Gudvangen, and then a bus to Stalheim, where we stayed at one of the most scenic hotels in the world, perched above a waterfall. Here are the view from our room and from the front patio. The next day we took a boat to Balestrand, where we stayed for two nights. The views along the fjords were also incredible. This little community is pretty, but I don't know if I could abide the constant roar of water. Sherri liked the wind-blown look, as did I. We ate at the buffet at the Kviknes Hotel, and had coffee on the terrace afterwards. It was a favorite vacation spot of Kaiser Wilhelm, and he used these steps to disembark. He was sitting on this chair when he was notified of the ultimatum that started World War I. The chair has been there for 100 years, and anyone can pick it up and look at the bottom, where they recorded its history a 100 years ago. At a church next to our hotel, there was an ornate wedding, with the bride and groom leaving in an old limo. We took a walk in the hills and along the fjord, and it was just spectacular. Then we left Balestrand and took a boat to Bergen, where we spent several days. Along the way we saw salmon farms and a refinery. There was dried cod in a museum and fresh seafood to eat by the harbor. We took the funicular to a lookout over the city, walked along the harbor, where there were many ships used to service the oil rigs in the North Sea. At dinner, we sat at a table next to Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top (on the right), but I did not get a picture of him. I like the bathroom doors for men and women at the Bergen airport.

For the first week of July I taught at a summer school on volcanoes in northern Iceland. In Rejkyavik I visited the new Harpa Concert Hall, where it is easy to get great photos here and here and here and here and here. There is a businessman in town who had an unfortunate meeting with a volcanic eruption. On the drive to the north coast we saw a salmon fisherman, who paid thousands of dollars for one day of fishing, spectacular scenery, and green and white marshmallow farming. With Thor as our guide we drove through passes with mountain streams and flowers. Here are another large marshmallow farm and a farmer transporting marshmallows. Seriously, it was explained to me that the hay in the plastic covering ferments a little over time, providing nutritious food for livestock and allowing farmers to keep much large flocks of sheep and cattle through the winters. We drove past the largest city in the north, Akureyri, being visited by a cruise ship. How would you like to live in this farm? I stayed at a converted farmhouse next to Godafoss waterfall. One day at the school there was a thunderstorm with hail, the first one in 30 years. Global warming? They had to take pool toys indoors. Afterwards the students went to the hot tub while the faculty drank beer. Here are the other intrepid teacher and his class. We visited the Námafjall geothermal area, which remarkably had a turnstile. The volcanologists took observations and we got a photo of the entire class. We drove past a geothermal power station and hiked around the Krafla crater, which remarkably included flowers and snow. There was also snow in the hills, which prevented us from driving across the interior on the way back.

At the end of July I taught in another summer school, on geoengineering in Heidelberg. A few of the students wanted their pictures taken with me here, here, and here. There was a nice footbridge across the Neckar that we took to the university, that was also the beginning of a canal. Even it had a lock. We had a nice final dinner behind a mansion the university owns. You could see the Heidelberg castle from the city during the day and night, and from another footbridge across the river. And I saw a nice sunset.

In August I spent a week in Berlin at the first world meeting on Climate Engineering. I gave several presentations. The remnant of the Berlin wall at Potsdamer Platz is close to a longer part. Just there are also the remnants of the old Gestapo headquarters, memories of Berlin's sad past. You can see the TV tower at Alexanderplatz (nice looking from below) through the Brandenburg Gate, now has a Starbucks in its base - does this mean we won the Cold War? We walked to a final session at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt past the Reichstag. There were chemtrails protestors outside, but they were ignored. Bridges across the Spree also had locks. The David Bowie exhibit had lines too long for me. Tourists can drive old Trabants. You can see the McDonalds next to Checkpoint Charlie.

My most amazing trip of the year, to a place I had never been before, was to Astana, Kazakhstan for the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War 21st World Congress, where I gave an invited talk about my nuclear winter work. I also talked at the student conference. I flew right over Moscow to get there, and arrived safely. The old airport in the dark was not promising, but when I woke up the first morning, look at the view from my hotel room! While there is an old Soviet-style city nearby, this new city, built with petrodollars by long-time ruler Nazarbayev (who has a triumphal painting in the conference center), has produced a middle-class existence and spectacular architecture. (Nazarbayev also is strongly anti-nuclear, as his country suffered greatly from the Soviet nuclear tests on their territory.) Look at these amazing buildings here and here and here and here and here and here. Even the trash lady had a new smart phone. The Khan Satyr, beautiful at sunset, designed by Norman Foster, is the world's largest tent, but what do you think is inside? It is actually a modern shopping center, complete with a dinosaur themepark, monorail, rides, food court, bumper cars, Sponge Bob, fancy shops, a beach, and vertical ride in the center. Walking up the outdoor mall, I found a statue of young pioneers that leaves nothing to the imagination, this in a Muslim country. I also found beautiful natives, whose curves matched the beautiful buildings, and my favorite, a curved wedge. A fountain along the way was pretty in the day and in the night. I came upon a photo shoot for an Astana Tour de France rider. At the center is the Baiterek Tower, which affords a gold-tinted view from the top. At the very top is a gold handprint of Nazarbayev, for which people stand in line to put their hand in for a photo. You can even ride a Segway outside. Next to the conference center is a smaller one that I thought looked like a volcanic crater, but others likened to a dog dish. You can see the pyramid from the front as kids use the ramps for bicycle jumps. The pyramid is the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation. Inside you can look up to tip through the hole in a circular conference table. There are a few statues from Egypt, and as you ascend to the top, you see the circular conference table that can seat 100, with peace doves painted on the windows. Nearby, across the street from the U.S. Embassy, is the Khazret Sultan Mosque, big enough to hold 5,000 worshippers, with spectacular crystal chandeliers here and here, people praying, a silver Koran, here one panel close up, a gift shop selling perfume and Indian toothpaste, women checking their smart phones, and an ad for various levels of hotels for a trip to Mecca. The Nur-Astana Mosque mosque, the second largest in Kazakhstan, was near my Marriott Hotel. It was also beautiful inside, and with a nice view when leaving. You could even pick up a bike from the bike-share rack outside. A 3-D version of the Kazakh flag hangs inside one museum. Outside at night is a fountain, with the mosque and conference centers in the distance. I used some of my rusty Russian there, had nice dinners with new colleagues, and got home safely, even though my trip was just after the downing of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine.

My last overseas trip was to Stockholm in November for a small volcano workshop. It was gray the entire time and snowed, but the people and food (Swedish meatballs and reindeer) were nice. I walked through the old town and visited the Nobel museum, with an exhibit of the most recent winners. The Nobel Peace Prize medallion on the reverse is designed by Vigeland. I saw St. George slaying the dragon indoors and outdoors. On the flight back I saw a glory, and global warming in action over southern Greenland, with icebergs flowing into the sea, ice flowing down to the sea, a glacier collapsing into the sea, and beautiful shadows of peaks on the ice.

I also traveled to Boulder several times for meeting of the UCAR Board of Trustees. I lost my reelection for a second three-year term, so my last meeting will be next February. My term was interesting, and I met a lot of nice people, but a lot of the experience was not pleasant, being pressured to agree to firing senior scientists when budgets were falling, and dealing with strategic plans and financial details. I'll still be visiting NCAR as one of two Rutgers Member Representatives every year, and for a week next summer as host of a geoengineering workshop.

In December I went to San Francisco for the annual AGU meeting, including the Atmospheric Sciences dinner with a number of friends. Sherri, Ginger, and Danny came into the city one day, and Ginger took Danny skating in Union Square. We stayed in California for the rest of the year. We were with the kids for Christmas. For some reason Danny started calling me "Pineapple Grandpa," so we could not resist this picture. I also explained to Vivi the mysteries of our greatest state.

We then took a road trip south to visit my roommate from college, Gene Sherman, in Los Angeles, and my sister Lisa, in San Diego. The kids were actually good travellers, helped by Legos and an iPad [not shown]. Gene, Danny, and I contemplated surfing at Redondo Beach. Here's the happy family (Ginger had to work and did not come). Here are Ellen, Brian and the kids, Gene, and Sherri coming up from the beach. On the way to San Diego, we had lunch with Sherri's friend Emily and her son Michael. Lisa took us to see beautiful sunsets at her beach in Encinitas. Vivi and Danny really dug it. Steve taught Danny how to play Qwirkle. The next day we visited the Birch Aquarium, with a beautiful view over the Scripps pier. Unfortunately Danny and Vivi were eaten by sharks. At the playground, unfortunately, Lisa and Steve got stuck in the slide. Danny learned how to use chopsticks.

We did see Bob Dylan this year (my 46th show), and it was OK, but not my favorite. Dylan again chose a lot of new, dark material, and the old stuff was not very melodic. The theater in Newark is fabulous, and the sound was good, but Dylan preferred that it was rather dark, and it was hard to see him, too. I keep saying I will never do this again, but fully expect to change my mind the next time he is in the area. Sherri came with me, and has already been to 22 Dylan shows with me - that's true love.

We saw a lot of great folk music this year, starting with Suzanne Vega in Red Bank in March, who was great. We were a little disappointed with Rodriguez, whom we saw in Newark in May. He was a little frail, and only sang songs from his two albums we know, but still enjoy listening to the albums. In July we saw Neil Sedaka in Ocean Grove, and he was not bad - he has an amazing number of hits he wrote. We saw Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey, with their longtime accompanist Paul Prestopino at the old auditorium in Ocean Grove in August, and it was very inspiring. They are in their 70s, but still very talented and still doing their think even though Mary died a couple years ago. We saw Arlo in November and it was really great, too. He played guitar and piano, and told the usual stories. We were inspired to by an illustrated book of one of his songs, "Me and My Goose," for the grandkids. I read it to them, but I'm not sure they liked it. Next year he will do a 50th anniversary tour of Alice's Restaurant.

We had a number of dinner parties. Here are friends at one of them.

Rush Holt gave the commencement speech at our School of Environmental and Biological Sciences graduation in May. It was great, and was the first commencement speech I had ever heard that included the words "thermohaline circulation." I am sad the he is leaving Congress, but very happy he will be leading AAAS starting next year.

We finally saw Book of Mormon in New York City with our friend Tony Snyder, and visited Governor's Island earlier that day for the first time. A 10-minute ferry ride of the southern tip of Manhattan, it provides great views back at the city and of the Statue of Liberty.

Our solar panels (photovoltaic, shown here with my new Honda Accord Hybrid and a rainbow) 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 the solar panels on.

Wisconsin did not go to the Rose Bowl this year again, but still managed to play on New Year's Day 2015. Rutgers joined the Big Ten this year. I had tickets to the Wisconsin game in New Brunswick on November 1, but it was pouring down rain, so I didn't go. And it turned out to be a terrible game, from the viewpoint of interesting football, with Wisconsin crushing Rutgers.

Sherri:

Grandchildren continue to be my focus this past year—I was fortunate to visit them several times throughout the year, and they us for a week in early November—actually traveling on Halloween, so Danny arrived as Luke Skywalker, and Vivi, Princess Leia, though without her buns! We had a great time while they were in NJ—eating at Brian’s favorite pizza place, Pete and Elda’s, visiting the children’s section of the Monmouth Museum at Brookdale, enjoying visits with some of our friends, including Cyndi and Ron, and winning lots of stuff at the Point Pleasant Arcade, along with several visits to the beach. Vivi found a tube she liked. Unfortunately, they timed the trip for the week that Alan was in Stockholm, but they got to see him on the news while he was gone. Before Alan left, we fed Brian lobster and visited Alan's cousin Laura and her family, and Alan's brother Jerry and his wife Stephie, in Princeton.

Once again I taught the online Middle East class for Brookdale, and was able to keep up with the class while traveling to Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Paris, and Norway, as well as out to San Rafael. The class had several veterans willing to share their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan with the others, and I’m planning to teach the class once again, though the numbers of serious conflicts makes it more difficult than ever to manage all of the information. With the most recent terrorist attacks in Paris, a city which I love as many of you know, it’s a course that needs to be taught, whatever changes I have to make in the course of the semester, or however it interferes with my travels.

When I’m in New Jersey, I’m still exercising, mostly yoga, some water exercises, volunteering with Meals on Wheels and helped the Chhange Center at Brookdale with another of their Big Read projects, this time focusing on the novel, In the Time of the Butterflies. In addition, I still serve as secretary of the Monmouth Human Relations Commission, and am still very active in Dining for Women, a national organization that has monthly dinners and raises money for various international projects that work to empower women. We’ve also spent time with friends, gathering on several occasions to celebrate birthdays and important moments, or just hang out. I keep thinking that I’ll get more involved in the political scene, and, with our current governor and his miserable policies, there’s plenty to criticize, but my travels and focus on the West Coast have kept me from doing very much on that score except donating to various and sundry progressive, dare I write LIBERAL, groups. I still support Obama and will support Hillary when she runs for president next year—about time we had an experienced foreign policy advocate with a social conscience take over from the initiatives that Obama has started. In the summer, my ex-sister-in-law and her husband dropped in, along with our friend Anne, and I saw my former student Varsha.

Brian continues to work at Sledgehammer Games and will turn 39 in July. He’s a surfer and a worrier, always something keeping him concerned about life in general, but he has a good one, living in the Bay Area with two adorable and healthy children. I took them to the Discovery Museum a lot and never get over the view. Kit, Ginger's mother, also came. Danny and I planted a garden out back, which Danny occasionally watered, but it only produced one small pumpkin. Ginger continues to work nights at the VA Hospital in San Francisco, and they’ve recently added a puppy to their family, Pumpkin, who is a terror right now, but the kids love him. Dan, who will celebrate his 35th birthday on January 20th, recently quit his job at the Safeway and is looking for another, and plans to take a computer course at the College of Marin, still loves sports, and dotes on Brian and Ginger’s dogs and his niece and nephew—he scored the best present this Christmas with a Hot Wheels racing set, which both kids played constantly. Danny, now 4, loves Star Wars and is having a good year at his preschool, where we attended a Holiday Concert to see him decked out in a snowflake headband, along with a potluck dinner, and took them to see Santa. The only snowmen they saw out in California were ones they ate. Vivi, now two, is a whiz—can count to 19 and speaks in sentences, most likely inspired by her need to negotiate more effectively with her bigger brother. Both are lots of fun to be around as they are both pretty happy kids and exude the pure joy and wonder over the simplest thing. Vivi likes playing with her stickers. The other day they were playing out back with Ginger’s mother and, somehow, miraculously, got so wet that Danny shed his shirt and proceeded to stay that way the rest of the day, earning the nickname of “Vladimir,” to which he supplied his favorite add-on, “poo-poo.” We even considered posting a short video of his new look and moniker, “Putin Poo-Poo,” but were overruled. We took them to a New Year’s Eve “Noon Ball Drop” at the Discovery Museum, so celebrated the coming of 2015 several different times that day.

Another highlight of 2014 was going to Steely Dan and Stevie Wonder concerts. Both still have their stuff and I enjoyed them. We also saw Rodriguez, of “Sugarman” film fame, Arlo Guthrie, and even Bob Dylan—but this was my 22nd and very, very last concert—too weird and too removed, whereas both Steely Dan and Stevie were magnificent, connected with the audience and can still sing. It was fun, especially the Stevie Wonder concert that I attended with my high school friend, Marilyn, at the Oracle Arena in Oakland.

One additional highlight of my trips to San Rafael this summer was that Madoka Sato, my long-ago foreign exchange student from Japan, visited us for several days, along with a photographer friend and his nephew. They had already spent some time photographing Native American and Japanese-American internment sites in the West, and decided to spend a few days with us, which they did in the granny cave. Madoka is a Professor of History and American Studies at Otsuma Women’s University near Tokyo, and we visited some historical sites like China Camp in San Rafael, a restored Chinese fishing village which was celebrating its heritage, Angel Island, the Ellis Island for Asian immigrants, as well as going into the city one day to Golden Gate Park and Chinatown.

As I write this from Winslow, AZ, after a wonderful day seeing the Petrified Forest, Painted Desert, and eating an absolutely wonderful meal at the Posada in Winslow, where we will “stand on the corner” tomorrow before leaving [tune in next year for the rest of the photos], I am gratified to see more executive action in the right direction from Obama, on Cuba, on immigration, on Iran, and on North Korea (and if you haven’t seen “The Interview,” please do so-both for patriotic reasons and because it’s pretty funny, even with some excesses), and happy about my life. Please come visit us if you’re in the New Jersey area and have a happy and healthy 2015.

May your 2015 be a healthy and fulfilling one. Happy New Year!

Love,
Alan and Sherri