PEACE IN THE NEW YEAR
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December 31, 2018 |
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Telephone: (732) 881-1610 (cell Alan), (732) 881-1609 (cell Sher) |
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Alan: The Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons now has 69 signatories,
with 19 ratifications. The treaty comes into force with 50
ratifications. Spain, Switzerland, and Australia look like
they will ratify it soon. I am still excited about this,
and hope that the stigma it places on even the possession of
nuclear weapons will encourage the 9 nuclear states to part with
theirs soon.
On January 17 I was proud and amazed to receive
the first Cassandra
Award at the Global Flashpoints Forum in New York
City. R. P. Eddy tweeted on January 31, “It was a profound honor to
present Dr. Alan Robock with the 2018 Cassandra Foundation
Award. His work on nuclear winter demands a global audience.
Robock beat all 52 nominees across our four factors: Legitimacy,
Criticality, Persuasion, and Solvability. Congrats @AlanRobock
!!” I gave a lunchtime talk about the need
for a ban on nuclear weapons, entitled “Nuclear War with North
Korea: The Cold Science,” with a distinguished audience
including General Michael Hayden, Sen. George Mitchell, Sen.
Saxby Chambliss, Anthony Scaramucci, and Adm. Dennis Blair,
Former Director of National Intelligence. I hope every
little bit helps, but in the current environment, there is no
evidence yet that the U.S. government is listening.
Nuclear
winter continues to be the most important thing
I work on. We are making progress on our Open
Philanthropy Project, and our team gave 4 presentations on
the work at the recent Fall AGU Meeting in December.
We plan to propose an entire session on the topic for the
same conference next year, which will be back in San
Francisco.
My TEDx
talk on nuclear winter now has 21,500 views so far, I
have 1584 followers on Twitter, and now
have 10 Huffington
Post blogs. But Brian Toon gave a TEDx
talk on nuclear winter in November 2017, which was
posted early this year, and he already has 1,661,870
views. (There was something about "my button's bigger
than yours" happening at the time, which made people more
scared, rightly so.) Let’s see if social media can
really change the world.
Things continue to go well
at Rutgers.
They featured
me and three colleagues in the Rutgers alumni magazine
in November, which felt great, although we are only a few of
the people here working on climate change. They told us
not to smile, so we looked concerned about Earth, but I wish I
had smiled more. The section about me is quite well
written.
I am on
sabbatical this academic year, and since I normally don't
teach in the Spring, I taught no formal courses this
year. I spent
the Fall in New Orleans, as a Visiting Professor at Tulane
University, so we could spend time with the grandkids. In the spring
and early summer next year I hope to spend time at
the Univ. of Colorado working on volcanic eruptions.
I am working on my National Science Foundation (NSF) grants
to study the impacts of volcanic eruptions on seasonal and
decadal climate, and to work on geoengineering. My
former student Brian Zambri worked with me as a postdoc for
half a year, and now is working at MIT as postdoc with Susan
Solomon. Lili Xia continues to work with me as a Research
Associate at Rutgers on geoengineering nuclear winter. And I
have two graduate students, Joshua Coupe and Hainan
Zhang, working with me on the nuclear winter grant.
Altogether in 2018, I published 10
refereed journal articles and 6 other articles.
It has been another productive year. If you are
interested in more information or want to read them, visit
my home page
and click on
Publications.
I have to say that the
Trump administration has been a success so far, because there
has been no nuclear war. But there are a lot of things
that have been screwed up, particularly on the environmental
front. However, we can now celebrate the blue wave. And in New
Jersey we went from 5
Republican House members in 2016 to only 1 now
(unfortunately ours from the Positively Fourth District).
We took lots of
great trips again this year, particularly one to the south of
Spain, Gibraltar, and Tenerife in March, and to Kyoto in
September. In January we went to NOLA (New Orleans,
Louisiana) to visit the grandkids, and then I went to the
American Meteorological Society meeting in Austin and then to a
meeting on volcanoes at the Tree Ring Lab in Tucson.
Outside of Tucson, I got to visit an old Titan II nuclear
missile base that is now a museum. The Tucson base had 18
liquid fueled rockets, each with a 9 Mt
(!) warhead, the most powerful
nuclear missile the U.S. ever had. They made you
watch a propaganda film first, claiming
that these missiles kept the peace as a deterrent to attacks.
The tour was led by former soldiers
who had actually sat at the console ready to push the
button. They even let us sit
there, underground, and then we got to see one of the missiles up close. It
was very spooky. I tried to explain to them that if we had
ever used the missiles it would have been as suicide bombers, as
we would have died from nuclear winter, but they were not
interested.
In February I attended a two
day celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of both
Jule Charney and Edward Lorenz at MIT. They were
both towering figures in the history of meteorology and
climate. Ed Lorenz was my Ph.D. advisor, and I was also
inspired by Charney (and received
the Charney Award from AMS in 2015), who was also at MIT
as a professor. His door had anti-Vietnam War stickers,
which taught me that professors can teach ethics as well as
science. Lorenz advised me to get into climate for my
dissertation in 1974, and I have been working in that field ever
since. It was great to see many old friends. Here I am with fellow Lorenz students
and sneaking into a photo with
former Charney students, and to learn more about these
great men. Here are one slide
about Charney and one about
Lorenz, another slide about Lorenz,
and a picture of the computer that he
was using when he discovered chaos. It was so cold
on the trip that the Charles was frozen. Here are a view from my hotel across the river
with the Green Building (with the radar dome, building 54, in
MIT parlance) where the Meteorology Department (now EAPS) is and
the Citgo sign near Fenway Park in the distance, and a view up the campus with Tang Hall
(octagonal) in the distance, where I lived for two
years. I was reminded of a
party in Lorenz's basement the night I passed my Ph.D.
defense, and when I received my Ph.D.
diploma with Dave Salstein and John Roads, all three of us
Lorenz's students, and a trip I took the next year (1978) to the
Soviet Union with a very distinguished group of
scientists. Here is a group of
us in Georgia, from left to right in the front row,
Vladimir Aleksandrov, Jane, Ed, Jerry North, Bob Cess, Mike
Wallace, unknown woman, Roland Madden (of MJO fame), and Aggie
Madden, (behind Bob Chervin in the beard, white shirt, and blue
jacket), and here are Jane Lorenz and
me in Moscow - I still wear my Bolivian llama wool
hat. MIT also made a wonderful 15-minute movie about them,
which you
can watch on YouTube and would be great for
teaching. And I learned about a great iPhone app, My
Attractor, which draws Lorenz's strange attractor
butterflies.
We then went
to NOLA to attend our first Mardi Gras. Here's Danny with a t-shirt I bought him and the parade float he made in school.
Can you figure out what his shirt says? Here he is wearing the float.
Here are Danny and Vivi at Vivi's school
parade, and at Whole Foods.
We took Danny and Vivi to many parades and accumulated boxes of
beads. Here's some of the loot.
And here are many other images, here,
here, here,
here, here,
here, flambeaux,
here, here,
here, more flambeaux, here, here,
here, here,
here, here,
here, here, here,
here, here,
here, and here. They
let you drink on the street, and it was fun, but after the
5th parade, I had had enough for a lifetime.
In March we took a Road
Scholar trip to the south of Spain. We were based in Estepona, which had cute streets here and here,
orange trees, and nice statues and seafront.
The guide was very good. The trip included Córdoba, with
its beautiful Mezquita (mosque), but
then you saw signs that a Catholic church had been inserted,
including an organ, after destroying
the interior of the mosque. And all
roads lead to Santiago. On the way back we saw the
ubiquitous Che, along with a risque
claim. We visited a seafood processing plant at the
coast, and were shown octopus, up close, and fish.
We cooked paella, and the finished product won first prize
from the judges at the restaurant. It was good. But the classic Spanish
guitar music sounded like it looked.
We visited Ronda, perched over the El Tajo gorge, has
the oldest bullring in Spain,
and then visited a winery, with solar panels in the distance.
The hotel in Estepona was OK and did not have much of a beach, but on
clear days from Estepona you could see
Gibraltar. You have to drive
there, and drive or walk across the runway to get
in. It is British inside, but they do not make you drive
on the left. From the southern tip you can see Africa across the Straits of Gibraltar.
There is a limestone cave inside the
"Rock," with seating for concerts
and nice stalactites, and there are
monkeys on the outside. The
Rock is also full of tunnels used
during World War II to guard the Mediterranean, but there ended
up being no fighting there. From one lookout you can see the runway, and from below
you can see the western side, still used
by the military. It's not hard to find the way back
to Spain.
We then spend a day in
Málaga, where we saw a great Picasso Museum (he was born there),
ate calamares and dessert, and a
demonstration for higher wages, and then flew to Tenerife
to attend a Chapman Conference on volcanoes I helped
organize. The hotel where we stayed was very luxurious,
and the field trip took us to the top of the
Teide volcano, the highest point in Spain. We took a
bus and then a cable car, almost to the top. We and Juan
Carlos hiked around and looked
at the spectacular view
over the old crater was and we could see the Izaña Observatory
on the old crater rim. Then we went to Izaña, where we learned that Darwin had published a paper on Saharan
dust, saw the CO2 in
the atmosphere at its highest value to date, almost 410
ppm, and saw them calibrating sun
photometers for observatories around the world. From
the observatory we could see the low
clouds and Tiede, and here we
are with our fellow travelers. The conference group had a great
conference dinner with volcanic dessert. We walked
around the town of Puerto de la Cruz
with Brian Toon and Maggie Tolbert,
and saw place where they were measuring
growing cracks in the ground. Agatha Christie had been a
distinguished visitor. One evening we watched hang gliders land into the sunset.
In April I spend several
days in Boulder as the Cooperative Institute for Research in
Environmental Sciences (CIRES) Distinguished Lecturer, at the
University of Colorado during which I made plans to return next
year on a CIRES Sabbatical Fellowship, if they will have
me. I then went to Vienna for a week at the EGU Meeting,
followed by several days in Zurich at ETH
(with its own little funicular) at
our annual GeoMIP meeting.
While there we took a boat ride on the
lake, took a train to the top of a
hill overlooking the lake and
city, with interesting light poles,
and attended the annual parade and snowman burning
to mark the end of winter. As the
smoke rises, at the end his head explodes.
In May we stopped in Paris
for a week, as I was on my way to a meeting in Bern. We
ate at a favorite restaurant, Les Fêtes
Galantes. It was the 50th anniversary of the 1968 street riots, and there was even
an exhibition about it. Our
friend Constance Konold invited us
to meet her in Amiens to take a boat ride in the hortillonnages (floating
market gardens). Jules Verne lived there for many years,
and although we did not have time to see his house, I started
reading all his books, which are very interesting for all the
science in them, most of it correct. Some of the metro
stations in Paris were decorated with temperature
change equations - what a civilized place. We saw a
bunch of old Citroens at the Eiffel Tower, still impressive, and covered with names of
important French scientists. We
went to Luxembourg Gardens, where kids sail little boats, even an American one. And, of course
we had tarte tatin. While
there we attended an amazing sound and light show of Gustav
Klimt at the Atelier des Lumières. It is the biggest of
its kind in the world, with 140 fixed video projectors and 50
speakers installed across the 3,300-square-meter
(35,521-square-foot) former foundry, built in 1835. We
didn't know what it was when we went, and were looking forward
to just seeing some Klimt, but were blown away. Here are
some photos of the projections onto the walls: here, here,
here, here,
here, here,
here, and here. We visited our old neighborhood, only
to see a demonstration against Macron,
which went by the Paristanbul restaurant,
still there. Our apartment had a nice
stairway and we ate at our favorite
Spanish restaurant in the 5th. At the end, Sherri
left for home with a suitcase full of purchases, and I went on
to Switzerland.
In June, on the way to a conference in Honolulu, we stopped in
Marin County to see Dan and friends. Here are Dan at work and with the kids and Mr. Gandhi. Vivi meditated and Dan was cute. Dan and Vivi
played at the Discovery Museum with
grandkids of Sherri's friend Marilyn. We had breakfast at Fred's and dinner with their former babysitter
Marylou. Then I went on to the AOGS conference where
I had dinner with Kevin Hamilton.
As
an invited speaker, I got to go on a
dinner cruise with a rainbow and later fireworks over Honolulu, and a nice sunset. Afterwards, I
met the family in Kauai for a vacation. At the hotel, we went fishing, and Vivi caught three
fish. Brian went surfing,
the kids met a turtle on the beach,
Sherri and I wore our old Hilo Hatties matching
outfits from our honeymoon, and in a
picture with the family, but the Hilo Hatties here only had one chair. We also
visited the blowhole and the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, with a waterfall and nice
view down to the coast. And I saw 2 Sherris there. At the top we looked down on the Napali Coast.
We went to a cave, but I got stuck. Dan found a stick. Dan and Vivi were on their iPads alone
and with Grandpa. I learned how to make Spam musubi, and was successful back home.
During the first week in
July I attended the International
Conference on the Management of Energy, Climate and Air for a
Sustainable Society at the Hotel
Nacional in Havana, Cuba, organized by my friend Bob
Bornstein, me, and others. There were scientists from
Cuba, Europe, Latin America, and the U.S. attending. Due
to my status as a Distinguished Visitor to the hotel, I got a
nice room with a view over the ocean
(note the lack of pleasure craft - Key West is not very far
away), access to the V.I.P. lounge, a
bottle of rum, and a bag of chocolates. They have
replaced the old photos in the hall of
fame by the bar of distinguished guests with new ones, but I am still there. While
looking at it, the assistant manager told me, "You know, we have
another picture of you in the hotel, too." She took me to
a special room that honors Fidel and has photos
of important people he met. On one panel, there are pictures of him
with Jimmy Carter, Gerard Depardieu, Dan Rather, Muhammad Ali,
Harry Belafonte, Steven Spielberg, Diego Maradona, Compay
Segundo, Robert Redford, and Kevin Costner, among others.
But the biggest one is of Fidel and me!
Of course, there were beautiful old American cars. I went
with Bob, his wife Sureyya, and her
sister Julia on a tour of the city in a '54 Cadillac,
which I even got to drive. It
is very nice sitting and having a drink
in the patio outside the hotel, or looking at the peacock. We
worked hard organizing the meeting, but had to take a
break to watch the World Cup during
the meeting. I had a Cubano
one day on the hotel veranda, and another night we had lobster and mojitos at a private rooftop restaurant
nearby. Another night we had lobster
and beer. There were beautiful
sunsets. People hang out along
the Malecon. One night we came back in a '49 Chevy (with a Hyundai diesel
engine), and there were other nice old American cars, yellow, green,
red, and blue/white.
There were four of us there from
Rutgers, and here I am with Celso Pazos Alberdi,
the new director of the Institute of Meteorology (the Cuban
Weather Bureau), between me and Bob. Unfortunately,
although I also met with professors from the University of
Havana, I did not see a path forward for future collaboration,
except for my continuing work with Juan Carlos Antuña from
Camagüey (see below about my visit there in October).
We spent the rest of July and August at home,
where we entertained our grandkids for two weeks and Madoka Sato
from Japan. See Sherri's description and pictures below.
In September we drove to
Maine, where we visited Jerry and
Stephie, spent a day on Monhegan Island, and visited Colby
College, where I gave a couple lectures. Jerry and Stephie
have a great house close to the ocean, and they took us for lobster rolls for lunch. I had
been to Monhegan 40 years ago with my mother, and it has not
changed much. The trip out there
had good weather, and we could clearly see Monhegan on the horizon. There
were beautiful views over the town
and up and down
the cliffs on the eastern side. Seagull at sunset. It was foggy on the way back, but we got to see some seals. I had lobster
for three meals in a row, including the scrambled eggs with
lobster at the hotel.
Later in September we flew
to Japan. They take Halloween very seriously there, even a
month before the holiday, such as at Krispy
Kreme and in liquor ads.
We spent 4 days visiting Madoka and his family near Tokyo.
We had dinner with some friends.
One day Madoka drove us to see Mt. Fuji. Here is our first view and a closer view, and an even closer view, and we ate at a nice noodle restaurant. Another
day we went to the Tokyo Museum, and although it was raining,
there were still people painting models in the plaza out front, and Sherri honored Saigō Takamori. Lunch was great.
We had a nice dinner at Madoka's house
with his family. We bought tickets on the 10 a.m.
Shinkansen to Kyoto, where I attended the SPARC conference, opened with drums, but the night
before Madoka called our hotel at midnight telling us trains had
been cancelled starting at 9:30 am the next day due to the
approaching Typhoon Trami. My forecast had told me we
would get to Kyoto before the typhoon, but the train had planned
to go farther southwest to where the typhoon was
approaching. Fortunately, we were able to get onto an
earlier train, but many arriving later that day to Tokyo airport
got stuck there for a day and our conference ended up starting a
little late. In Kyoto we got automated warnings on my Apple watch and iPhones. The typhoon was strong over Okinawa, but as it approached Kyoto
the wind speed went down due to friction over the land and the
eye dissipated, as you can see here,
here, here,
and here. The lowest surface
air pressure we saw was 970.9 mb,
but there was not that much rain and wind. We had a nice
afternoon, including seeing sparrow
snacks in the market and a local
temple, although the metro and
a lot of places were closed. In
Kyoto, we a shrine near the conference
center, with a beautiful park,
a clearly marked exit, and a Torii gate nearby. One night we
went to a local restaurant, full of
noisy middle aged women drinking beer
and having a good time. One of them apologized to us for
the noise. We walked through the Gion district, where
foreign tourists from other Asian nations rented kimonos to walk around in. We
then went to the Forever Museum of Contemporary Art, and saw an
exhibit of the work of Yayoi Kusuma. The pumpkins, pumpkin
paintings, and Fuji were
great, as were a mirror room and boat she
designed. Even the coffee shop
served pumpkins. Madoka and Emi came to Kyoto for 2
days and took us to the Byodo-in shrine,
in Uji city, which is on the 10 yen coin.
The water was raging in the nearby
river, swollen with rain from the typhoon. On the way back
to Kyoto, we stopped at the Fushimi Inari shrine, with spectacular orange gates, crowded, but each one has the name of its sponsor
on it. We also went to a shrine full of buddhas (no
photos) which was the largest wooden
building in Japan, and to the
tallest pagoda in Japan. That night we ate at a hole-in-the wall restaurant Madoka
knew, with beautiful, and tasty, sashimi.
We met a Swedish woman there, touring Japan alone, who showed us
pictures of her dressing up in a kimono.
Sherri went to a shrine where people who have broken up a
relationship write a wish on a piece of paper and then crawl through the gate, hoping for better luck in the future.
We took the Shinkansen back to
Tokyo, past the Kirin brewery, but
Fuji was cloud-covered. The best view was from Madoka on his way
to Kyoto. You can see the crater on the side from its most
recent eruption, which annoys Japanese by ruining the symmetry.
In early October I went to
the annual UCAR meeting in Boulder, and then we left for NOLA
for the rest of the year. I have a desk at Tulane,
courtesy of Prof. Cindy Ebinger, and helped teach one of her
classes. I'll be giving a seminar at Tulane in January as
well as a talk at LSU in Baton Rouge.
My second trip to Cuba was
to Camagüey in October, to a workshop
organized by Juan Carlos to celebrate the 30th anniversary of
his research station. Here are Juan Carlos and his family,
and with Juan Carlitos and the two
instruments I helped send to him, a GPS and a pyranometer,
the old lidar, still not working, a discussion ("No matter who falls, no
matter who dies, the revolution will not disappear."), the group at the meeting, Terry Deshler and Errico Armondillo who
dined with me on a rooftop as a thunderstorm approached,
and citizens exercising in the main
square in the morning. Here are a beautiful square, a bus, another
bus, and a ceremony with the
ubiquitous Che.
The next week I went to
Puerto Vallarta, to give an invited
talk at the annual meeting of the
Mexican Geophysical Union. There were a nice fruit basket and bottle of champagne
waiting for me at the hotel. Here are part of my audience and cruise ships sailed in and parked here. Here's how they do Halloween.
In November Sherri
and I went to San Francisco to see Joan Baez with our friends
Bob and Sureyya, Gene and Ellen Sherman,
and Ian and Norma Gilson. Unfortunately we arrived
at the same time as the worst air
pollution on the planet, due to the Camp Fire to the
north. Compared to what the people in Paradise,
California suffered, we were fine, but the smoke ruined our
plans for visiting Sausalito and hiking, and we all left
early. However, we took advantage of the De Young Museum, where we saw a great
Gaugin show. I bet you recognize this
as a Gaugin. But what about this?
Here is the view of Mt. Sutro from
the museum. We had a great dinner
before the concert. And Joan's
concert was wonderful. She waved
to us at the end, and she and her
son Gabe on percussion and the rest
of the team took a knee at the end,
in the same city as Colin Kapernick did. Before we left we
had a nice dinner with Brian and Dan
at a favorite Chinese restaurant in Sausalito.
My last trip of the
year was to Utrecht University to give invited talks on nuclear
winter, geoengineering, and volcanoes, and then to Washington
for the Fall AGU Meeting. In Utrecht,
I climbed the Dom Tower (the bell clappers were eaten apples), with
views of the city, and my host,
Claudia Wieners took me on a trip on the weekend to see dykes and windmills.
Here
are the old ones, now a tourist attraction, but there were
many more of the new ones. She
wanted it to be an 80 km bike ride, but I was not up for that,
so I rented a car. The trip was even more pleasurable
because I went shopping at the Culture
Boat. Here are the inside,
the price list and my purchase.
In DC, I went to the
National Portrait Gallery, with the famous paintings of Michelle and Barack
Obama, as well as, among many other interesting works, Gilbert Stuart's George Washington,
his incomplete one used as the picture
on the $1 bill, a fatter George
Washington by Rembrandt Peale, Katherine
Hepburn and her actual 4 Academy Awards, e. e. cummings, Eugene V. Debs, Alexander Calder, Ernest Hemingway, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Japanese crossing the Delaware.
Our solar panels (photovoltaic, shown here with our hybrids and a rainbow) continue to work well. Here is an updated graph of our electric bill for the past few years. It is still easy to see when we turned the solar panels on. SRECs are now $0.23 per kWh plus we get the electricity, worth another $0.12 per kWh. Not only have we not paid an electric bill in years, but we make money on the deal and emit no CO2 for our electricity generation. I know all my flying cancels this out, but at least I feel good about being green. I did not buy a Tesla Model 3, as it was not convenient, being in New Orleans for the end of the year, but I hope to buy one in 2019.
We didn't see Bob Dylan this year, but did see Christine Lavin in February and Springsteen, on Broadway in March, alone and with Patti, saw photos from the Dylan
archive in Asbury Park in April for the third year in a row,
and enjoyed the annual Bobfest in Red Bank,
on Bob’s birthday. In August we saw the Beach Boys in the Ocean Grove auditorium
with Madoka. In
September we saw Joan Baez
for the first time in Red Bank. They did the kneeling thing there, too,
so we were not surprised when they did it in San
Francisco. We look forward to seeing her again in
Princeton next April.
We did not go to a Wisconsin football game
this year, and although they started out well, they lost a
lot of games. One problem was that their starting
quarterback got injured and missed several, games, but
they ended up on a good note, defeating Miami in a bowl
game (this time the Pinstripe Bowl) for the second year in
a row. The backup quarterback, Jack Coan, had a good
game, and they have the best running back in the country,
Jonathan Taylor, so I have hopes for a better season next
year.
Sherri: 2018 was busy with visits to grand kids and travel to fun places, which Al has aptly described. I did less political protest stuff due to being away from NJ for much of the year, and, as Al is on sabbatical and we plan to do some travel in 2019, I will probably stay out of the loop for a while. In the meantime I’ve become somewhat educated about Minecraft, learned to release the drone from my hair, and condone their imaginative play, which leads to living room destruction from time to time! Vivi, now 6, is as avid an iPad fan as is Danny, now 8, and they both have strange conversations as they enter each other’s world and design stuff that isn’t exactly non-violent. On the other hand, we made Christmas decorations from recycled materials, decorating one of the wreaths with the Gandhi doll that I used to use in my class to amuse my college students. Vivi took Mr. Gandhi to school, along with a kid’s book about him, and we use him to counter the Minecraft and Nerf Gun Wars that take place on a too regular a basis.
Besides our trips to California and Hawaii, the kids came to NJ for two weeks in July, and we had a great time taking them to the beach and watching the fireworks, playing with the Salganik cousins, visiting Monmouth Museum with friend Susan Rosenberg, and making pickles with Grandpa. Brian was with them for most of the trip, and we celebrated his birthday there. Also visiting NJ for a week in August was my former Japanese exchange student, Madoka, and we spent a wonderful day in New York City, with former colleague Tony Snyder, visiting the 9/11 Museum and seeing “My Fair Lady,” traveling via the Sea Streak.
We’ve been in New Orleans since October, while Al is a visiting professor at Tulane, and I’m “Grandma Does the Big Easy” for a while. We visited at Mardi Gras as well as in April, but this is the longest I’ve stayed here, helping Brian set up his new home. It was fun being here for Halloween, as well as Christmas, making cookie houses and ornaments, and just veggin’ out watching “Woody Woodpecker,” or “Stick Man” (check it out!). NJ friend, Anne Prudente, and former sister-in-law, Cheryl West, visited right after Thanksgiving and we had a great time on walking tours in the French Quarter, the Garden District, and eating at Commander’s Palace, one of the best restaurants in the city.
Brian is now officially divorced, and recently bought a home close to the kids’ school (7534 Birch St., New Orleans, 70118). He continues to work at inXile, a game company in New Orleans, and sometimes works remotely, so he’s been able to travel and work from our place in NJ, as well as from his father’s in New Hampshire, and his friend, Jerry’s in California. His house is an old one, so he had to do a bit of restoration to make it livable, and we’ve helped him do a lot since we’ve been here. We brought four huge suitcases with dishes and other household items, and wish we could have brought furniture, but living near universities with students coming and going has helped us get some inexpensive furniture. He is contemplating teaching in the Digital Design program at Tulane in the spring, and is now on one of his travels visiting a friend in Brazil.
Dan is still living in San Rafael, continuing as a “supergun,” or associate manager at a Nuggets Supermarket in Corte Madera. He didn’t travel east this past year, but we saw him while in California in May and in November, and hope he’ll be visit us sometime this coming year. He’s content with his life and job, including when he has to travel for work conferences to Sacramento once a month—mainly because he stops at a Jersey Mike’s and stocks up on a few subs for himself and his friends! He’s still a Giants fan, even getting a tattoo, which is something I thought he’d never do, though with poor showing, he tends to keep it covered! And he was a great help in Hawaii with the kids in the pool for hours!
Also on hold, since I’ve been away, is as a volunteer
for Meals on Wheels, and I recently stepped down as Chair of
the Monmouth Human Relations Commission, but plan to
continue as a member. I’m
also the absent co-leader of the Brick chapter of Dining for Women, a
wonderful organization that helps support women’s
empowerment groups around the world. But I will resume when
I’m back, along with struggling to keep my French at an
elementary level by going to Frenchies every other week, led
by my good friend, Kathy Hjelle. We had a friend gathering before we left,
to celebrate various birthdays and our friendship, which is
so very important to me.
And thanks to George Brinton, Sheryl Geisler (the
real leader of the DFW group) and Val Nappa, for looking
after our house while we’re away.
Tony and I
are pictured here celebrating a
former BCC student, Varsha Narayan's 40th birthday in July.
It's wonderful to stay in touch with former students and to
hear from them from time to time, such as Alex Holodak,
Randy Thompson, Michael Lee, from the BCC Democratic Club,
as well as Dave Piasecki, who campaigned for me when I ran
for Wall Township Committee, as did Varsha, Christine
Connor, and Jennifer Smith, who is now living in England.
I’ve had a few aches and pains this past year, my long-ago broken ankle and a left hip problem, but doing okay, and, with my constantly getting the kids meals and helping set up Brian’s house, along with walks around Audubon Park, I find I can eat the great food in NOLA (including Gooey Cake, not as well-known as pralines but really, really good) without gaining much weight. And it’s been a wonderful experience to be close to the grand kids and to watch them grow—both physically and intellectually. Both are doing well in school, and we’ve been able to chaperone Danny’s field trips, walk them to and from school, and listen to their crazy dialogues—for example, they’re looking forward to seeing their favorite band, “Imagine Dragons,” at the halftime show of the NCAA Championship on January 7th, (“Believer” and “Radioactive” two of their favorite songs), but also like some oldie groups, like the Stones (“Satisfaction”), and we actually listened to Dylan’s Christmas album (to please Grandpa!). It’s been a real joy to watch Grandpa with the kids—from lifting them by their arms, to helping with science projects, and using their 3-D glasses to spy into outer space. And, even though Vivi calls me “mean Granma,” from time to time (because, as she explained, I make them do things they don’t want to do but need to do), we are really cherishing this time with our adorable ones.
May your 2019 be a healthy and fulfilling one. Happy New Year.
Love,
Alan and Sherri