I traded in my Tesla Model 3 for a Model Y on October 17, but so far I have only driven it 360 miles, including 50 miles home from the dealer in Princeton.  I'm looking forward to road trips next year when we can finally travel again.  I decided to do the trade thanks to a very generous trade-in offer from Tesla and a $5000 Electric Vehicle Incentive from the state of New Jersey, as well as no sales tax charges.  So it only cost me $5000 for a brand new car with more room, longer range, and more features.  Here I am saying goodbye to my old car and welcoming my new car.  Yes, I still think blue is the best color choice.  I highly recommend you buy one, and when you do use my code https://ts.la/alan20766 for 1,000 miles of free supercharging.

     Things continue to go well at Rutgers.  Along with my colleague Lili Xia (who was promoted to Assistant Research Professor starting next year), I got four new research grants, the Open Philanthropy Project renewal for another three years, an NSF grant for three years to study whether it is possible to target food production rather temperature with stratospheric climate intervention (geoengineering), an NSF grant for two years, with Lili as the Principal Investigator, to look at the impacts of climate intervention on agriculture collaborating with Jonas Jägermeyr at Columbia University, and a philanthropic gift from SilverLining to do climate intervention research.  So we hired one new graduate student this Fall, and are looking for two more students and a postdoc to work with us.

    To support our enhanced work on climate intervention I built a website for a newly-invented Rutgers Impact Studies of Climate Intervention (RISCI) lab.  Separately, I was asked to lead a visioning process for the atmospheric science members of our department.  In addition to recommending new hires to advance our undergraduate Meteorology and graduate Atmospheric Science programs, we realized that we were not visible enough, since our Department of Environmental Sciences does not have Atmospheric Science in its name.  So we named ourselves the Atmospheric Sciences Group, and I created a website for us and a new logo, too.  With no commuting and no travel, there is time to do this.  Plus, I like making websites, one of which you are now reading.

    I taught three courses online this Fall.  I liked the commute and everyone was in the front row, but I got really tired of sitting in front of Zoom every day, for my teaching and my research meetings.  I'll have next semester free from teaching to focus on research.  Usually I also have some travel thrown in, but that will have to wait for a while.

    My graduate student Joshua Coupe earned his Ph.D. in August and I immediately hired him to work with me as a postdoc, completing the work he was doing and starting new projects.  As his defense was conducted via Zoom, I could only drink celebratory champagne on my own, but promised we would do it in person as soon as we can meet in person again.  Here is my collection of corks from all my Ph.D. students, save the first one, Dian Gaffen, before I started the tradition.  My other graduate student, Hainan Zhang, is also completing his Ph.D., and a new student, Brendan Clark, started working with Lili and me in September.

    Altogether in 2020, I published 8 refereed journal articles and 3 other articles, with 2 more in press, and have another 8 articles in review, all of which I expect to be published soon.  It has been another productive year.  I am particularly proud of an article I wrote in the new AGU journal Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists.  It is called "Making your own luck: A meaningful career from being open to opportunities," and goes over my career giving advice to younger scientists.  The Plain Language Summary includes, "Be open to new experiences. Take advantage of chance meetings with smart people. Regularly attend the AGU Fall Meeting. Ask questions about potential opportunities, and often the answer will be, 'Yes.' Work on topics that will benefit humanity."  The only figure is a picture of me and Fidel.  If you are interested in more information or want to read any of my articles, visit my home page and click on Publications.

    We had planned lots of great trips again this year, but COVID cut them short.  Still, we started out 2020 in California, where we watched Wisconsin lose the Rose Bowl at Gene's and went for a walk along the coast with Brian, Dan, Danny, and Vivi, although Danny and Vivi did not look too happy about it.   We visited the Huntington Gardens and Museum, where I saw a great 1774 volcanic eruption painting, Vesuvius from Portici by Joseph Wright of Derby.  We were able to go to Boston in January for the annual American Meteorological Society Meeting.  We visited the Tea Party boat, the Gardner Museum, and the Old North Church, and ate lobster with Bob Bornstein and Lili.

    In February we took a wonderful 2 1/2 week trip to France.  I attended a crop modeling conference in Montpellier, with music and dancing, and the best lunches I have ever had at a conference, served by French chefs.  We had dinner one night with my sister Lisa's friends, Martine and Jean-Louis Fellous. We now often eat cod the same way she served it, using her recipe.

   We then drove to Nîmes for a few days, stopping on the way at Aigues-Mortes, a walled city and port, and then drove to the Camargue, famous for its white horses. At Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Sherri said hi to the bull statue, outside one of the many bull rings still in use in southern France.  For such a sophisticated country, they still maintain such horrific traditions.  The beach there on the Mediterranean is not as nice as ours.  We then stopped at Arles to see the Roman arena, much of which had been used as a source of stones for building, and has a Frank Gehry building in the distance.  All that on a 1-day drive from Montpellier.  Nîmes also has a 2,000-year-old Roman arena, that is also used for bull fights.  The Maison Carrée, a Roman temple was known as the most perfect building in the world, and Thomas Jefferson used it as a model for the Virginia State Capitol, which he designed.  Of course, Nîmes is famous for denim (de Nîmes), and the city museum has a proud display of different versions, and French ads.  The Romans built an amazing aqueduct from Uzès to Nîmes, and the 2,000 year old bridge over the Gard River, the Pont du Gard, still stands.  We took the tour, which let us actually walk through the aqueduct on the top.  You can see the centuries-old buildup of lime on the walls.  Visting in February was great, with no crowds.  Where the aqueduct arrives in Nîmes, there is a nice park, which leads to a river which leads to a fountain and a pool.

   Next, we flew to Paris, and I saw a nice glory from the plane.  We stayed near Rue Mouffetard, with its fish markets, and a bakery we discovered with the best bread ever.  We can't wait to go back when it is safe. We ate at a favorite restaurant, Les Fêtes Galantes, but here's a "restaurant" where we did not eat. We had reserved a time to go to the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit at the Louvre, where we saw some of his sketches and astronomical diagrams, a copy of the Last Supper, the Benois Madonna, and Salvator Mundi.  The Mona Lisa was not part of the exhibit, but we dropped by to say hi anyway.  It really helped that we read Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci before we came, which was much more informative than the audioguide and the tiny signs in the crowded exhibition.They were repairing Notre Dame, still taking down the scaffolding that was there when it burned.  Obligatory Eiffel Tower photo.  Obligatory Paris street scene.  We had dinner with our friends, Paul and Laure, and probably the best pizza in Paris with our friend Candace, who introduced us to some of her friends.  We went to the Saint Geneviève Church, named after our grandaughter, which is also where Blaise Pascal is buried, after whom the SI pressure unit is named.  One millibar is one hectoPascal.

      The main reason we went to Paris, was for me to make a presentation at a two-day ICAN meeting for activists and to push France to sign the Ban Treaty.  Beatrice Fihn and Setsuko Thurlow, who had accepted the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for ICAN, talked and then Setsuko showed a banner from her school in Hiroshima of all the classmates she lost.  I was part of a panel discussion, and talked about nuclear winter, and led a workshop the next day.  I was really happy for the opportunity to contribute to our effort to end nuclear weapons.  There were about 180 people there (notice me in the front row) in the second week of February, and no reports of any COVID.  While we were in Paris, there was one report of a woman from China sick in a hospital.

      For the last week of February, we went to New Orleans to visit the grandkids and go to Mardi Gras.  The Tulane students really partied near where Brian lives.  We had sushi (Vivi likes ikura) and oysters with Cindy Ebinger, who had hosted me at Tulane the previous year, and who will be the Chair of the AGU College of Fellows next year, and Thomas Stewart, the World's Most Famous Oyster Shucker.  We really enjoyed being with Vivi and Danny, and can't wait to see them again.  We went to several Mardi Gras parades with them and Brian.  When their arms were available, they caught loot from the floats.  We took them to the avocado slide in Audubon Park, which also has nice birds, and Danny and Vivi rode a motorized skateboard.  A friend gave kimonos to the kids.  Sherri showed them how to wear them.  The view across the Mississippi River from behing Audubon Zoo is not the most attractive.  We flew home on a packed United plane on February 29, and survived our last trip.

   On March 4 I drove to Soka Gakkai in New York City and on March 6 I drove to Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory to give a nuclear winter lectures, and have been home ever since.  We had planned a trip to Iceland and Greenland to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary for July and August, but it was canceled.  We have rebooked it for 2021, so stick with this channel and I will provide a lot of pictures of glaciers next year.  Greenland is one place I've never been, and we look forward to it.  And as soon as we can travel again we will head to New Orleans to see our family there, and to Paris to eat, shop, and enjoy life.

    I tried to attend a couple conferences online, but it was not the same at all.  Of course, I saved money, time, and CO₂ emissions without the travel, but there was no chance to meet and talk with people at coffee breaks, in the exhibit hall, and at dinner.  Those unplanned interactions are what make conferences so valuable.  I gave two presentations, for 4 minutes each, at the Fall AGU Meeting, but one was after 10 pm.  There are posters and recorded talks I have not seen, so I plan to watch some in January, but there will be no chance to ask questions or discuss them with people in real time.  I am very much looking forward to the Fall AGU in 2021 in New Orleans in person.

    Our solar panels (photovoltaic, shown here with our electric car and hybrid) 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 $0.23 per kWh plus we get the electricity, worth another $0.12 per kWh.  The figure explicitly takes account of the SRECs and annual settling of the bill by the electric company.  All negative values are payments to us.  Since we earn about $2000 per year from SRECs, plus get about $2000 worth of electricity, the solar panels make an annual $4000 profit. 

    Not only have we not paid an electric bill in years, but we emit no CO₂ for our electricity generation.  I know all my flying cancels this out, although not in 2020, and we do use natural gas for heating and cooking, and buy products, mostly food, with carbon footprints, but at least I feel good about being green with the Tesla and electricity.  I will start paying carbon offsets for my emissions as soon as I can be sure I have found one that is legitimate and can begin traveling again.  And I will work with Rutgers, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the American Geophysical Union to pay carbon offsets for all travel, like the European Geosciences Union now does.  But as I say in my global warming talks, "it is more important to change your leaders that to change your lightbulbs," so I will pay even more in political donations than carbon offsets to address the global warming problem.

   So what did we do during the pandemic?  My former student Chaochao Gao sent us a box of masks from China, which we are still using.  Sherri tried to fashion one from a pair of my old underpants, but decided Chaochao's were better.  I planted four tomato plants in the yard, and they grew, but we ended up with no tomatoes, thanks to nighttime visitors, one of which I captured on our Nest camera.  Neighbors built elaborate fenced gardens, and I'll think about it for 2021 if it seems we'll spend all summer here again.  I took up baking for the first time, making sesame white bread (before and after), savory olive and cheese loaf and rye bread, whole wheat bread (on the right), and banana bread.  I arranged drawers in the kitchen.  We Zoomed with friends, starting a regular Saturday Zoom with my best friends from college.  We watched Jupiter and Saturn come close to each other, and begin to move away.  I made latkes. We dealt with two storms that destroyed solar panels, tropical storm Isaias (barograph trace with August 4 passage) which ripped off one set of panels, and a nor'easter during Hanukkah (see the barograph trace on the right) that took down a tree onto our house.  It poked two holes in the roof (from the outside and inside) and broke two solar panels, but missed the cars.  We saw lots of wildlife: bunnies in our front yard, a wild turkey walking around the neighborhood and at a local pond, deer in the neighborhood and along the bike path, and, of course, squirrels and birds in the yard.  Lili and her family visited us at the beach, and we took a chance and had Tony over to celebrate his 80th birthday with a "cake" and a Zoom.  We played petanque on the bocci courts at the beach.  We shopped at outdoor markets, where even JFK had a mask.  Sherri and I both needed a haircut, so we had it done outside.  Here are Sherri and me afterwards.  And I needed one more later, but my hair is pretty long now and it's cold outside.  I had to celebrate my birthday via Facetime.  Sherri celebrated her 75th birthday on Zoom. We celebrated Madoka's 60th birthday on Zoom with him and his family. We found time to go through all our old slide trays, about 50 of them, and scanned the best ones.  That's how we traveled this year.

    We went to one concert this year, a free one outdoors at our local theater, and no Wisconsin football games.  Wisconsin, after an abbreviated season, did go to the Duke's Mayo bowl on December 30, when they beat Wake Forest 42-28.  I don't think they should have had a season at all - it was not safe for the players - but greed prevailed.

    And one final thing: Black Lives Matter.  I was really educated this year about the reality of black lives in the U.S., and the horrific legacy of slavery and native genocide in the U.S.  Rutgers has an ongoing project to expose its racist and genocidal history, called the Scarlet and Black Project, those being the Rutgers colors. I added some of the findings to the diversity page of my new Atmospheric Science Group website, "Rutgers is currently home to a vibrant scholarly community, but it was established in 1766, in a different time and culture. The Rutgers Scarlet and Black Project is an ongoing study to confront our colonial history. Some of the findings of our Committee on Enslaved and Disenfranchised Populations in Rutgers History include: The namesake of Rutgers University, Colonel Henry Rutgers, owned slaves, as did many of the early presidents of Rutgers College (now Rutgers University). Slave labor built the Rutgers campus. The land on which Rutgers sits was stolen from the Lenni Lenape natives. Rutgers benefited from the land-grant Morrill Act of 1862, which allowed New Jersey to sell land taken from western Native Americans for the benefit of Rutgers."

Sherri:   As you can see from Al’s earlier entries, we had some fun times at the beginning of the year, and then ... here’s the first entry of what is now over a 300 page of my Covid journal, with much of it like the paragraphs below ... but maybe you understand the repetitive nature of life these days, as we await the vaccine. So I’m going to copy a few comments from them, along with my thoughts these days:

   After two weeks of virtual quarantining, fortunately, with no signs of the virus (and maybe for Al just minor symptoms as I hear him coughing now) [Ed.: false alarm], I’ve decided to join the crowd and report my daily comings and goings—but perhaps not chronologically, just, at least to begin with, random thoughts that I’ve had/experienced as the days have gone by—largely being in the house, walking the boards (until they closed on Thursday) and the beach (last Sunday’s walk was really nice in Sea Girt), and doing indoor chores—once I catch up to today’s date, March 28th, just one day short of the day in February when we returned from Mardi Gras, I’ll try to write daily, as I think this thing is going to continue for a while.

   But, for now, around 2:49 on a rainy Saturday afternoon, am going to vacuum the downstairs to get some exercise! I will return!

   So, didn’t take too long to vacuum the downstairs (Al’s assigned the upstairs this week), and I’m back to scribbling some memories of these strange times—just yesterday as I was walking the neighborhood on a 70 degree sunny day, my “shuffle” feature of songs was strange, first, Rodriguez’ “Like Janis,” with “now you sit there thinking, feeling insecure, the barking court jester proves there’s no proven cure...” and more words that are dreary, ending with, “I know you’re lonely” from his album “Cold Fact.” There followed one about the “Black Death,” and some other morbid songs that I can’t quite remember, maybe Steely Dan’s “Black Cow,” or “Don’t Take Me Alive,” and Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish,” maybe, can’t remember, but many of them were somewhat bleak-still the walk was good.

   And much of the rest of the year has been the same, except for some outdoor dinners in the spring and summer with some friends, occasional walks with friends, cataract surgery in August and September, which went well, and Zooms, many, many, with my Pi Phi sorority friends from William and Mary, former colleagues at Brookdale, my Dining for Women group, LWV and Indivisible Diversity groups in which I participate, as well as those friend and family zooms that Al has mentioned. I also reconnected with some of my Brookdale students, like Varsha Narayan, and two others from my time teaching at John Marshall High School in Richmond, Va, Jennifer Gunn and Barney Cobb, who invited me to his induction in the Virginia High School Athletic Hall of Fame, which is now scheduled for April of 2021.  On our trip to Boston in January, I met a former colleague from Brookdale and her husband, Johanna and Mike Kobran, and we had a lovely lunch at a popular restaurant downtown. And our trip to Montpellier was also made more enjoyable by seeing much of the town and surrounding area with friends of my good friend Kathy, Lily and Michel Bernard, who had us over to lunch at their house which he’s added to and renovated, but also took me to wonderful places near Montpellier, Palavas-les-Flots and Le Grande-Motte, and another day to St. Guilhem-le-Desert, and Villeneuvette, just beautiful scenes along rivers and beaches, and near the rocky promontories—just a spectacular view of Southern France in the winter. It’s such a joy to be treated with such kindness and by the experts in the region, so am thankful to Lily and Michel, as well as to Kathy, and hope that we can be as good a tour guide to them when they visit us, post-pandemic, bien sur!

   Back in the spring I also helped Brian home-school Danny and Vivi from a distance, which was a chore, but led to them successfully completing their school year, and now they’ve been going to school from 8:00-3:30 each day. Along with reading with Vivi, I also helped Danny do various assignments, and here’s one of them on how he will change history, one of his social studies assignments (guess he’s his father’s son!):

   I will make fun video games and apps. I want to make a good game that entertains people and makes them want to play it all the time. I want people to remember me by thinking of the things they liked about me. I hope they think I was fun to be with and really funny. My friends would remember that they were happier when they were with me.

   Here’s another entry from a Facetime call back in May—putting his talents to work!

   Last night we did Facetime with the kids, and Danny showed me a Lego figure of me that he made—Super Sherri, whose superpower is a broom! Then he also made one of Grandpa, and said he didn’t have the right lego for the hair, but found something white that adorned Al’s head—he also showed us his “first anime,” Ded Dod, he called him, along with another figure that was shooting at him, and he got it to move before we left the call. He’s a hoot.

   But over the summer and fall months, Vivi was not to be outdone, and while she and Danny continue to play nicely together, she’s also stepped out into the world, specifically, by playing softball, enjoying getting hits and running away from the ball in the outfield when it comes her way, but she’s a quick learner! And, Vivi had a magic moment when we were at Legoland last December, buying this cookie that seemed to bode well for the coming year. . .and they recently constructed a cookie village loaded with candy (probably mostly consumed by now)!

   Brian continues to work remotely for a video game company in California, has not been able to travel, continues to dislike New Orleans, but has been there since the virus began, along with his girlfriend from Peru, Fiorella. She is learning English, so I thought I’d begin to learn some Spanish—¡Estupendo! Dan continues to work at Nuggets Markets near where he lives in San Rafael, an “essential worker,” of course, who told me back in early April that they had had to close their “grain bar.” I didn’t know what that even was, but, in typical California fashion, he informed me of that custom, surprised that I didn’t know. Not sure when we’ll see our family, but we already know that the first trip on our schedule is to visit the grand kids, now 10 and 8, and try to recapture the magic that we have with them whenever we get together.

   As Alan mentioned, we’ve enjoyed our walks on the beach and here’s an entry from a walk in the park back on May 6th:

   Now it’s around 5:45PM and we took about a 2 mile hike along a path at Allaire State Park this afternoon. It was a glorious day, full of sun and little wind, and few people as well. We took masks but no need to wear them as most of the folks we passed were bikers and few of those. The woods were solemn, trees just budding, a few even decorated with Xmas ornaments and Easter eggs! When I got home I sat on the back deck, then moved to the front porch to read The True Flag by Steven Kinzer, whom we had watched interviewed. Great book so far, scary in its explanations of American foreign policy, but important to read. And I overcame my guilt at “doing nothing,” as Mom used to say, that is, reading during the day.

  Some of my time during the past year was spent in writing letters to voters in swing states, and, after the George Floyd killing, attended a local protest along with a friend.  I’m now reading Obama’s book, in addition to some light reading at bedtime (I got the hard cover Obama book and it’s really heavy, have to use a pillow to support it!), and will continue reading, zooming, protesting and donating to good causes, with hope that the Biden administration will bring competence, sanity, and humanity to our country and to the world. Until then, zooming, cleaning, cooking, exercising, streaming, and decluttering (trying to, at least), will take up some of my time, along with time for some phone calls (remember them?) to friends—thanks to those of you for your cards and your emails, and don’t be shy, give a call or send an email—will be good to connect again and to hear from you.

   Have a healthy and happy 2021!

Love,
Alan and Sherri