YandA at the AGU 2011 SFO

San Francisco, 8.11.2011 

OK, tradition must be preserved, you don't have to read, but I have to write.

Here we are in Sunny San Francisco, as usual at this time of the year, among the thousands of other migratory birds of the species nerdus geophysicus in all their drab plumage ( blue-ribboned  white tags hanging around their necks, the leaders having the right to coloured stripes designating higher rank)  and appendages (computer bags and poster tubes  - at least these are sometimes bright yellow, but mostly black). They are to be met – at danger to life and limb – in large flocks,   hurrying along Fourth street, covered coffee cups in hand, in the direction of the Convention Centre , huge swarms at each road-crossing necessitating the intervention of traffic agents at certain times of day. No policeman would dare issue a ticket for jay-walking to any individual in this mob. Feeding times are typified by long, noisy lines at each trough, but these mostly move fast as no-one dares hold up the schedule of the hungry attendees  balancing corporal with intellectual nourishment.   

At latest count, this year there are 21000 participants in this conference (counting staff and exhibitors, presumably, but still). The logistics are enormous, but seem hardly to jog the routine of this vibrant city.

And in less than a week the birds will be gone, flown back to their various cities, having met and embraced dear friends and colleagues and fertilized one another's minds and imaginations with ideas for the next meeting a year hence…

The weather is fine but seriously chilly, so fast walking is the order of the day, which it would have been anyway, given schedules and distances. We are lucky to be lodged in a hotel very close and on the direct route to all the centres of activity – Convention hall, ceremonies, restaurants, shopping and some of the musea.  We can drop off our impedimenta on the way to dinner, rest or change clothes if indicated.

So far  Arkee has been busy, we have had two dinners with friends and Yosefa has been to two musea with a spouse with whom I have hit it off very well.  We went to the Asian museum to an exhibition of the Maharajahs of India and how they lived – not a word of how they might have oppressed their people in the process of getting rich and awarding themselves luxurious habitations, dress, jewels, carriages and other appurtenances. They were presented as benign, all-knowing rulers, the closest thing to gods, who distributed charity according to the needs of their subjects.

One day Arkee put up his poster and stood by it, he got good and also critical feedback and met quite a few friends.  Today he is free and we finally got to walk (after the first morning rush on the pavement  past our hotel was over)  - which we needed to do. There is no fitness room in the hotel, along with a few other deficiencies, and the one across the street at the Marriott would have cost us $9 each per session. It is difficult to keep fit on our food consumption  under local conditions.

After that we had planned to go the Jewish museum and see an exhibition on Houdini (yes, he was Jewish) but they are not only closed on Wednesdays, but Thursday mornings as well. So we went toy shopping and after a light lunch – to a presentation on climate change by Richard Alley which is going to be a PBS television programme next April. The presentation was an urgent call for help and publicity by concerned scientists whose advocacy is sorely needed on the subject. Themes were on renewable energies being used in various locations around the world and convincing evidence of global warming from ice-core analysis, presented in easy-to-understand graphic and pictorial short films which we hope will have good effect. We were very impressed with the presenters, I even asked for an autograph.

Tomorrow I  hope we will finally get to the Jewish museum, there are two more we are saving to see with Maya. We will move to San Mateo and Arkee's family in the evening.

Happy Holiday to our Muslim Friends

As the holy month of Ramadan 1432 AH draws to a close, the four of us, Pollyanna, Titan, Yosefa and Arkee want to wish all our Muslim friends Eid Sa'id and we all pray that:-
Happiness be at your door
May it knock early
Stay late & leave the gift of Allah's
Peace,love,joy & good health behind

Boaz’ July barmitzva – or Singing (Tora) in the rain

Y: It was to be a small affair,  to mark Boaz’ thirteenth birthday just before they are due to return to Israel. But being his thirteenth, something special had to be made of it, one way or the other.  It was Boaz who decided to have an Aliya la’Tora rather than any other form of marking the formal coming-of-age that even non-observant Jews like us consider important. So here we were in Berlin, complete with formal dress (even down to Gabi’s formal underwear),

ready to present ourselves at the Reform synagogue on Shabbat morning. Incongruously, Boaz and Shaul rode off by bicycle, the rest of us traipsed in by underground train…

Even worse,  we really hadn't believed the weather forecast for pouring rain, after leaving Israel sweltering under 30 degree heat! But umbrellas were in plentiful supply and dress shoes were only changed into at the entrance to the synagogue, so all was well.

The synagogue is a community hall in an ecumenical building donated by the US Army and dedicated to several religious denominations. The Reform movement obtained the use of this facility when the community became large enough: it now numbers some 120 members. About 30 of them were present, several were Hebrew speakers and welcomed us warmly, friends of Galia and Shaul also came to the service. Grandpa Menahem,

Shaul,
 
Galia

and honorary  Grandpa Arkee

took Aliyot. Then Boaz, complete with his grandfather's kipa and a talit from the other grandfather, performed with perfect aplomb, obviously enjoying his role and doing it very well.

The Rabbi and the Hazanit and the Gabait all had their good wishes to express to him (in German, unfortunately for us, although the Gabait also said some words in Hebrew )



 and there was Kiddush with all the children

around the Kiddush table and a light buffet which everyone enjoyed.

We had a family lunch at a very pleasant restaurant in a room to ourselves. The little ones took advantage of the space and relatively relaxed mood to run around and enjoy one another’s company and a good time was had by all.

Any thoughts of going off down town after that were shelved by the need to get out of our glad rags and (for us at least) to move from the apartment we had been borrowing to the hotel where we would be staying for the next two nights. This took us the rest of the afternoon. Galia and Shaul hosted some friends for a farewell party at the club-house of their lodging-house and so were occupied for the rest of the day.

The next day we decided to part forces. Arkee was interested in going to a museum of modern art. Had I not been with my grandchildren, I would have done the same, but I did not want to regret not being with them. The rain let up somewhat and we went to explore a large and interesting flea-market.

 Dina has an eye for bargains and picked up several for herself and the children and the day would have been completely enjoyable if  Hillel, aged four, standing off at the side for a moment, had not been picked up by a well-meaning woman who could not speak to him. Presuming he was lost, she carried him off to the information booth at the gate. Several long and horrible minutes were spent looking for him until Dina went to call the police and found him there. The experience was worse for her than for him, I think, as someone was found to speak Hebrew to him, but such events can be terrifying, if nothing worse. 

We recovered sufficiently from this adventure to make a few more purchases and have a snack lunch under umbrellas, and finally  left the market under increasingly heavy rain, drained out.

A: The modern art museum was excellent.  It contains the Marx collection of Warhols, Rauchenbergs and others of the mid century.    There was a special exhibit of a British artist Richard Long, described by the museum as follows: The exhibition entitled “ Richard Long: Berlin Circle” is the first solo show in Germany of works by Richard Long in a major museum in almost ten years. The title of the exhibition refers to the eponymous work “Berlin Circle”, dating from 1996, which features in the Sammlung Marx. The works on display are “Sandstone Circle, 1977″; “Black and White Circle, 1988″; “Turf Line, 1990″; Berlin Circle, 1996″; “Autumn Turf Circle, 1998″; “Basalt Ellipse, 2000″; and the wall work “River Avon Mud Circle, 2011″

There were films on "Land Art" and a strange exhibition called Secret Universe by a weirdo named Horst Ademeit.  He believed that he was being irradiated by "cold rays" and took thousands of Polaroid pictures over decades.  Some are interesting, some are junk.  In the complex reference systems developed by Ademeit, certain motifs play a constant role: electricity meters, peepholes, building sites, electric cables, collections of bulky trash or bikes. Ademit began to cast the flood of images he produced in a concrete form in October 1990: he arranged measuring instruments and a compass on a newspaper and photographed them with a Polaroid camera. Over the course of 14 years, he made 6006 numbered Polaroid pictures.

Y again:  On our last day we decided to go with the children to the zoo.

This was thoroughly enjoyable and interesting, the animals in the dark included some I had never seen alive (an aardvark for instance) and the big cats deigned to play to the audience and not just lie around. After avoiding the wasps at the lunch tables we went to look for the seals and the bears. Even little David was enjoying crawling along the paths and barking back at the sea-lions! A pity we had to leave them there as we had a plane to catch.

YandA Homeward Bound December 22, 2010

All good things come to an end including our trip to the West Coast.  We packed on Monday morning, said our farewells and thanks and went off to the airport with Maya.  We checked in at Lufthansa and she went off to United to return to Eugene.  We expect to hear from her in the blogosphere.
We found the airport in a bit of chaos.  Snow in Europe had disrupted flights and people were sleeping on the floor in London and Frankfurt while San Francisco was full of rebooked travelers.  We found our friend and colleague Karoly from Budapest, who should have gone home on Friday, waiting for our flight since his BA flight was cancelled.  We got off about an hour or more late because the automatic fueling system at the airport had broken down and planes were being fueled manually.  We visualized little fuel elves as a bucket brigade on the wings...

Eventually we arrived in Frankfurt with several hours on our hands before our flight to Tel Aviv late at night.  There. too, stranded trravelers were sleeping on the floor awaiting  news of their fate.. We took the S Bahn into town and walked from the station to the Stadel Museum through the snow.    Note YandA at war.

The exhibition now on display is very interesting.  It is called Chronology of Painting and has two large galleries in which paintings from the collection are arranged in chronological order with events of the relevant era listed above on the wall.  The first gallery ran from 1300 to 1830 and the second from mid 19th century to the present.  Well worth seeing if any of you get to Frankfurt.

We then returned to the airport where it was A's turn to get an exotic serving of dinner, this time a swan bearing a baked potato.

We eventually boarded the plane and arrived in Kiryat Ono at 0500 to sleep, perchance to dream and now back to the real world.

Sn Mateo December 19, 2010

Friday we packed up and left San Franciso under black skies and heavy rain. We took the BART to the airport, expecting to meet Maya (coming from Oregon) and be picked up by Fred. However, fog had canceled Maya’s plane, fortunately only temporarily, but this we did not know until we reached the airport. We presumed she had informed Fred and Mariel and tried to phone them but they were not answering the phone, and after a couple of futile, money-wasting efforts, came to the correct conclusion that they were on their way to pick us up anyway. However (see previous YandA’s) these are people who do not use a cellphone, in the event it was in the other car.. and Maya was also unavailable. We waited by the payphone in case they should call us back... Arkee sent me outside to look for a brown Toyota station-wagon, but Fred was driving a brown Accura sedan (and the station-wagon, when finally viewed, was a white Subaru!) Fred saw me walking up and down and tried to call me but the car windows were closed due to the weather and Fred is not as mobile as he used to be. So we waited, Fred at the kerb in the car, Mariel upstairs at one gate, and us downstairs with all our belongings at the other for about forty minutes until Mariel paged Arkee over the PA system and we finally got together.


And of course as we got to the house we found Maya’s message that she was just about due to land and off went Arkee and Fred back to the airport again. A good time was had by all.

The weather is not conducive to great initiatives, so yesterday was shopping and football and catching-up day. In the evening we met our friend Mike at an Afghan restaurant and enjoyed an ethnic meal together.  Today is Sunday, we hope to get into the city for a cultural visit with a family party at the end of the day.

San Francisco III

 ThursdayAnother fine but cold day with lectures for A and wrestling with wifi for Y. The internet connections either at the hotel or the convention centre give some illusion of normalcy, but sites come up very slowly and most tasks have to be postponed for better days. However, I took the Acer with me to wait out Arkee's engagements and managed to talk to Ella on skype with the aid of ear phones to cover the noisy background. We met with Margy for an intimate lunch  at another exotic place which serves teas and food in various peculiar combinations – mine was called English service and included a quiche, a scone with jam and clotted cream and English tea on a three-tiered tower – see pic. (blog of Y's exotic lunches-A)

Arkee and I went to investigate the Contemporary Jewish museum. Two exhibits were very interesting: one of a scribe – female – writing a sefer torah – with a complete explanation of how it is done, samples of the tools needed and a video demonstration. The other was a collection of art that had been stolen by the Nazis from a Dutch collector and returned to the Dutch government. Finally, after forty years, 200 pieces - out of a thousand - had been returned to the family and a sample was being exhibited here.  They were mostly Dutch masters of the 15^th to 17^th centuries and very lovely. We hope to go to another during the weekend when Maya is here.. It seems the Orsay is being refurbished and a huge collection of impressionists is being loaned around the world meanwhile, so we are in luck. This evening – yet another dinner with good friends. After all, someone has to take on these onerous tasks for the common good…

Friday AM Lovely dinner last night at The Stinking Rose with Barbara and Leo Stanger.  Tonight we start the weekend with Fred and Mariel and Maya.

Tough life.

Love,

YandA

San Francisco II

San Francisco December 15, 2010
The meeting is going along well.  Yesterday A stood by the poster and had a few nice discussions.  In the evening we went to dinner with dear friends,  Ray Goldstein and his wife Jane from San Antonio and Daniel Winterhalter from Pasadena.  We went to John's Grill, a San Francisco landmark that is on the register of historical places in American literature.  Dashiel Hammett is said to have written The Maltese Falcon there and the place figures significantly in the adventures of Sam Spade, his detective.  Excellent company, fine food and  enjoyable conversation.  It wss Ray's birthday which made it even nicer.
Today I heard some interesting talks about the dynamic systems of Saturn followed by lunch with Mike Schulz and another friends.  I mention the lunch because Y had something unique stuffed fried pear wontons.  Here they are:

Nice variation.

The streets and shops are full of Xmas shoppers and the town is lively.  Nonetheless you see "retail space for lease" signs and beggars in the streets.  One of them is quite creative and has a sign saying "my wife has been kidnapped and I am short $0.99 for the ransom"
The weather has been cooperative, but rain is forecast to begin on Friday and to continue through the weekend just when Maya will be with us, alas.  We still hope to have some fun with her.
This evening we will attend the ceremony in which a friend from APL will be installed as a Fellow of the AGU in recognition of his contributions to science.  We will then go to dinner with Barry, Ralph and other friends from the East Coast.  Tomorrow night we are meeting Barbara and Leo Stanger who are in California to visit their daughter Debra and her family who live in Ukiah.
Love,
YandA