1)
Birthdays. Most people
have about one each year, but two friends had milestone birthdays two days
apart: Jim Balter’s 60th on January 14 and Diane Garmendia’s 40th
on the 16th. Diane helped make Burning Man 2009 a joy! (Robin Hamlin
is w/Jim).
2)
2/26: It took me years
to discover that the Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez is a wonderful place to
experience music of my era. Recent past shows I attended included Three Dog
Night and Steppenwolf. The B52s are a joyful-weird blast from the past!
Every two years all kinds of
people converge on the Tucson Convention Center to understand a bit more about
“the hard problem of consciousness”. It is hosted by the Anesthesiology
Department of the University of Arizona, as it is good to know if someone is
conscious before cutting into them. Attendees include neuro and cognitive
scientists, medical people, physicists, mathematicians, philosophers… and
Buddhists, meditators, poets, New Agers… and this year several synesthetes
talking about the world they live in.
3)
4/12: Lucid Dreaming
wizard Stephen LaBerge hosted a workshop.
4)
4/13: We live in
Biosphere 1, but Biosphere 2 allows more flexible alterations. It is currently
being used to study effects of climate change. About an hour from Tucson.
5)
4/14: Not just another
pretty face, Star Trek DS9 actress Chase Masterson attended the convention by
day and entertained us by night. A delightful, warm and down-to-earth person, I
saw her massaging the feet of one of the event organizers!
6)
4/15: No travels to
Tucson are complete without visiting the Saguaro National Park.
7)
4/18: Arizona may be
home to cave men like John McCain, but Tucson is a very progressive city. I
rented a bike for $5 cash (no deposit needed) and rode in Cyclovia!
8)
4/23: My mentor Virgil
Elings received an award from UCSB. He and Gus Gurley owned Digital Instruments
and I owe a lot to both of them.
9)
5/4: My father is now
living in a small care home a few blocks from their house. Keisha is a care
goddess who keeps things pleasant for him.
10) 5/8: The Mesa is a sleepy area. What a surprise to
bike over to their street fair and see such an edgy performance!
11) 5/23: Berzercus the Isla Vista Circus is home grown
local, but some of their performances are worthy of Las Vegas. I am honored to
be a part of it, too!
12) 6/3 30th MIT Reunion! Charlie Hoffman was
a fellow resident of Fifth East – The top floor of East Campus, with no
elevator. Few in authority made it up there and we made our own rules – or lack
of rules – as a result.
13) Freshman year I was in a unique MIT program called
Concourse. “Mind, Matter and Machine” was our theme. We had our own little
reunion! Friends Kevin and Sian.
14) I was successful in dragging former Concourse
Humanities professor David Ozonoff to join our festivities! An MD, medical
historian and Marxist, he got us to read everything from Max Weber to Moby Dick.
And I wrote a term paper on the philosophy of Information Theory that is still
a part of my daily thinking.
15) 6/5: Kevin Rhoads was the best teaching assistant
anyone ever had. He helped us with our Concourse math and physics and had a
basement greenhouse full of… bromeliads. Now a rocket scientist at Dartmouth.
He and classmate Genie Hainsworth skipped the Concourse party, but we had our
own reunion!
16) Montreal is just an hour away from Boston by air
(though it took all day due to storms). Quebec City was a long day trip by bus
from Montreal and both were wonderful!
17) 6/13: From Montreal I flew to Sacramento and rented a
car. Visited my parents and drove to niece Hannah’s graduation from Stanford!
Graduation starts in the Stadium with the Wacky Walk, a bit like our Solstice
Parade! Hannah is applying for MD-PhD programs for next year.
18) 6/15: Elephant Seals near San Simeon. Each season
brings different activities of these unique animals and you can get quite
close!
19) 6/26: Santa Barbara Summer Solstice. Last year artist
Mary Price made me into a star attraction as a Seahorse. If not for this, I
would never have agreed to be the Bearded Lady of the Carnival Fun House which
she asked me to be this year. Big surprise for me: Women loved this! (Photo by
Lois Haymes)
20) Mary and her bright and beautiful daughter Madeleine
were also Fun House stars.
21) The Santa Barbara French Festival is the best ethnic
festival that gets no respect. It includes all things French. Where else can
you see Tahitian and Moroccan dancers on stage with Napoleon and watched by a
French gendarme. A gateway to France below!
22) 7/31: Isla Vista is Santa Barbara’s hippie college
town. People came from around the US and beyond for a reunion weekend. Carmen
Lodise was the “Mayor of Isla Vista”.
23) 7/31: Members of the Gorilla Theater overlapped with
members of the Fabulous Strombolis jugglers in 70s/80s Isla Vista. I was a
member of the latter.
24) 7/18: The “official” Fiesta parade is a horse parade,
but the Children’s Fiesta Parade is more popular!
The Singularity Summit
brings together futurists, visionaries and transhumanists who see a future of
life beyond being hairless apes who watch reality TV and vote for Sarah Palin.
It was held this year at the Hyatt San Francisco and star speaker Ray Kurzweil
appeared by video conference.
25) 8/11: Before attending the Singularity Summit Frank
Yashar and family took me out!
26) 8/12: The next day I attended the wedding of hiking
friend and computer scientist Mallika to her arranged groom Nipun. It was a
cultural experience to remember, spanning many hours and involving rites from
face painting to fire.
27) The happy couple just before the wedding ended. It
did not end with kissing the bride.
French Festival creator
Steve Hoegerman fell in love with French culture sailing to Tahiti in his
youth. He fell in love even more in France and married a French woman. Provence
is especially dear to him and he leads small group tours of Hidden Provence. I
have never done a group tour and you are more likely to find me in Brazil or
Southeast Asia than in France. But I decided to give it a try and it was a good
experience.
28) First was a week in Paris, on my own and then with
the group. Bikes can be rented every few blocks now in most French cities and
dropped off at any other station. A great way to get around! Here I am at a
neighborhood church called Notre Dame.
29) 9/25: A young unicyclist kindly lets me go for a spin
on his unicycle!
30) 9/25: I took many photos of the iconic Eiffel Tower,
but none as beautiful as this one on a night boat ride.
31) 9/26: Parisians come from all over. On the left is an
African immigrant selling souvenirs. At right is a traditional French cutie. I
learned that French people are rarely blond.
32) 9/27: We flew to Nice and started Provence
adventures. Antibes was home to Picasso and is still an art center.
33) 9/28: Cap Ferrat. We took the train to a series of
small coastal towns and walked.
34) 9/30: Steve’s Hidden Provence took us to stay at a
real monastery called Notre Dame de Laghet. It is known as a place of miracles
and the walls are covered with testimonial art depicting people saved from all
sorts of natural and man-made disasters. One is not supposed to ask who was
responsible for the disasters in the first place.
35) 10/1: Peillon and Peille are medieval villages
perched in stunning beauty.
36) 10/1: On a street in Peillon.
37) 10/1: We begin our travels into the “Maritime Alps”.
All travel is on this tiny train that is like a bus on narrow gauge tracks.
Spectacular views and tunnels abound!
38) 10/1: Steve began a friendly conversation with this
lady and I had to capture this.
39) 10/2: Entreveaux – A beautiful medieval village
complete with draw bridge!
40) 10/2: Our entire group! People were from around the
US as well as Australia and Israel.
41) 10/3: Perhaps most memorable: An optional hike to a
“goat village” which is a ghost village with just one elderly couple remaining.
The train no longer stops at the trail head, so we had to either walk on a
highway with no space to spare or on the tracks.
42) The gendarmes stopped us repeatedly, telling us this
is illegal. Steve explained it is legal, but they could be helpful if they
would tell the railroad to stop at the trail head.
43) We are not in Paris anymore. What a lovely world at
the “goat village”.
44) 10/4: I head out on a hike on my own from Annot and
encountered this scene! Modern vehicles don’t quite fit in medieval villages!
45) 10/5: The end of the rail line is Digne. A friendly
street sweeper greets us.
46) 10/5: Art students talk to us at their school in
Digne.
47) 10/7: Back in the big city in Nice. Nice is a lot
like Santa Barbara, complete with red tile roofs and similar weather. But the
water is warm for swimming and they speak French!
48) 10/7: As in Paris, rental bikes are a great way to
get around!
49) 10/7: Yes, some women do go topless here.
50) 10/10: Artist/activist friend Jerry Fresia and his
wife Chiqui Miguel kindly let me stay at their villa on Lake Como in Italy. The
place looks like one of Jerry’s paintings.
51) 10/12: Continued by rail through the Italian and
Swiss Alps. The Gotthard Tunnel is a series of tunnels. While I was there they
broke through a single parallel tunnel that is now the longest tunnel in the
world.
My destination was the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN research center. CERN
was started by some visionary physics people while Europe was still smoldering
after WWII. Their vision: To bring former fighting countries to work together
on visionary research. It has exceeded their wildest dreams. Thanks to Bill
Clinton canceling our US accelerator project (what ever happened to a visionary
US party?), CERN is now for the whole world, not just Europeans. The Large
Hadron Collider accelerates tiny pinches of protons to have the energy of an
entire high speed French TGV train. The hope is to find the Higgs Boson that is
thought to give mass to all particles… and to find things that are unexpected.
It was very inspiring to be here.
52) 10/28: Summer Solstice never ends! Here I am with
lady friend Cynthia at the Summer Solstice Halloween party!
53) 11/5: My mother celebrated her 80th
birthday in Sacramento and the family gathered.
54) 11/6: On the way back I stayed with MIT friend Dr
Lisa Masson in Modesto. Here we are at a dinner party in Stockton honoring her
and others who ran a marathon fundraiser for leukemia research.
55) 11/25: Every five years my birthday falls on
Thanksgiving Day! Sister-in-law Krisztina baked our traditional family birthday
“gold cake”!
56) 11/25: And here we all are with my birthday cake…
before Thanksgiving dinner!
57) 11/26: Cynthia and I rented bicycles and rode through
San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge and returned on the Sausalito
Ferry!
58) 11/27: Friend Steve Freedkin was off in Santa Cruz
with his girlfriend Rachel… but by chance they had to come into San Francisco
while we stayed there!
59) 11/29: No visit north is complete without stopping at
the Pinnacles National Monument near Soledad to go hiking. We had almost given
up finding a place to eat when we had this beautiful and delicious meal in a
local Mexican restaurant!
60) 12/12: Merry Fishmas! The Fishbon artist collective
is a mix of Burning Man and other creative people. They have weekly workshops
and talks as well as several major events each year. Anything can and will
happen at these events.