Our Pearl Harbor Visit

We visited Pearl Harbor on March 16, 2017. We took a launch to visit the USS Arizona, we went by shuttle bus to Ford Island to visit the USS Missouri, and we had a few minutes to visit the submarine memorial and see the USS Bowfin (a WW II submarine).

Arizona Memorial and USS Missouri in the background

The Wahoo, lost in the Sea of Japan, was one of the most famous submarines of WW II.

We had a beautiful, calm day to visit the Arizona.

Oil still seeps from the Arizona. It is said that the ship weeps for its crew, and will stop when the last survivor dies.

Robbie and Ken from the Arizona Memorial with Mighty Mo in the background.

The "Surrender Deck" of the Missouri. It was next to #1 Turret and not the fantail.

Plaque marking the location of the Japanese surrender. Here, MacArthur said the famous words, "These proceedings are closed."

Robbie at the entrance to the Missouri.

We noticed that, while Japanese visitors were a significant portion of the group visiting to the Arizona, the Missouri tour was filled with mostly Americans. Go figure.

We also did a sunset cruise past Waikiki to Diamond Head.

Honolulu on the left, the Grand Princess on the right

At left: Diamond Head

Waikiki Beach Hotels and Diamond Head

Sailboat in the setting sun

Hilton Sailboat Crosses the Setting Sun

40th Wedding Anniversary in Paris

We’re returning from Paris and our 40^th Anniversary Weekend. It was a whirlwind weekend in which we enjoyed some really wonderful tours. We used Context Tours, which allowed us to schedule our own tours and offer them as group tours. As it was, nobody joined us on any of our five tours, so we had private tour guides all weekend. These were:

• Saturday afternoon at The Louvre. We got the “crash course” from a medieval history professor. We saw it all: antiquities (carvings and other objects from Babylon and Mesopotamia), Greek and Roman sculpture, renaissance painting, and Dutch, Italian, and French paintings. We saw Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, and the Mona Lisa. We also saw the Hammurabi code, Madonna on the Rocks, the Reubens gallery of Marie de Medici paintings, and the fortress walls in the basement. We were delighted with the tour.

• Saturday evening on the Left Bank. We went through many Left Bank neighborhoods and had an extended discussion with a PhD student on the history of Paris. It was a Roman settlement, and there are still extant Roman baths. We also saw the Pantheon, the Sorbonne, and the Saint Suplice fountain plaza. Our guide, Frank, told us how the Sorbonne went out of existence officially in 1968, when universities were made (a) free and (b) unified under the “University of Paris” name. Free tuition creates its own set of problems: anybody can go to any university. They must pass an exam at the end of the semester in order to move past the first year, and that weeds some people out. Still, there are many graduating with worthless (or near-worthless) degrees. Jobs are scarce. 
  

• A Right Bank tour that showed us the courtyards of the Louvre, the Pompidou center, the Royal Palace and Royal Gardens, and the Opera. This included the Au Pied de Cochon (Pig’s Foot) restaurant, markets (Les Halles), and the world’s first shopping mall (1770).
  
• A Hemingway walk that allowed me to finally see where Hemingway moved to Paris for the first time in 1922. (I missed this last year by a few steps – it’s behind the Café Descartes and I turned the wrong way).  We saw where he wrote and walked, where he drank and gathered with friends, and where he got ideas for his four novels. Hemingway was not very nice to the people who helped him, and was particularly nasty to those who helped him most. His main novel written in Paris was The Sun Also Rises. He also wrote, at the end of his life, A Movable Feast. 
• Our final tour was a chocolate tasting tour. It was led by Cassandra, a young woman from California, who was working in Paris as a pastry chef. I enjoyed this thoroughly.
  
  The chocolates were delectable. We went from the most traditional (and longest-lived) chocolate store in Paris (and maybe the world!) to the most modern and innovative chocolate boutique. They had the appearance of diamond stores or goldsmiths, and the chocolate was delectable. Along the way we enjoyed a traditional maker of macaroons (a French pastry made of tasty filling between two meringue halves), a modern macaroon shop, the shop of the Breton inventor of salted caramel, a Belgian chocolate shop, and a store that sold only cream puffs – made to order. We’ve had cream puffs before, and I always found them a bit bland. The flavor in the cream filling of these was amazing! I had chocolate and Robbie had caramel and the flavor burst in your mouth. And, as the pastry was left unfilled until the time of purchase, it never got soggy.
  

The coup de grace of our trip, however, was on the evening of our anniversary. We booked a river cruise on the Seine. We chose a smaller boat, Le Carife, which began boarding around 8PM and raised the roof awning at about 8:40. We were able to watch the sun set on Notre Dame, the evening lights come up along the river, musicians of all types – buskers to planned parties, and passed under numerous bridges. Parisians celebrate nightfall with panache, and it became clear why Paris came to be called the City of Light. By 10PM we were cruising by the Eifel Tower, which switches from its intricate line of lights along the triangular trusses to a riot of sparkles on the hour. The boat reached its western turn around at the model statue of liberty, and circled the sculpture. The wine, the food (Robbie had lamb, I had duck) was superb. 

More pictures are available at my photo-bucket page.

Fall 2014

Callander Drive, Veterans' Day, 2014.

It's a beautiful day, and I'm enjoying sitting out on our new front porch. I published on Facebook this morning a picture of the porch with the American flag, but all day I've been flying the Navy flag.  On most of the rest of the days I fly the stars and stripes, so today I'll announce my status as an officer in the United States Navy.

I've been spending much of my fall preparing to teach a course next semester in system dynamics. Preparing for a course the first time is a labor of love: there is no way this works out to a minimum wage! But, the advantage is that when the course runs the second time, the amount of work involved is about 10%. It's especially true for courses where the textbook is rarely updated. This textbook was last revised in 2000.

Next week I begin to work as a consultant in support of US Marine Corps operational analysis. This will absorb the bulk of my free time (especially if I don't have all these lectures finished). It works out well because, as you can see in the picture, the leaves have nearly left the trees and the winter weather will close in soon enough.

I'll try to link more of the photos of the front porch here.

The Concept of Time in Renaissance Italy

Bologna, Italy (June 23, 2014). In the decade after Galileo was placed under house arrest (in 1632), the church had come to a realization that it made a mistake. Church leaders needed to make predictions that depended on knowing several important astronomical facts. In particular, they needed to know exactly how long the year was, and whether the sun moved across the sky at varying speeds. The latter problem would help answer the question of whether the seasons were exactly equal. In addition, Kepler had already introduced the idea that orbits might be elliptical instead of circular, and this created the need to know exactly how far the sun was from the Earth at various points of the year.

The Meridian Line in San Petronio Basilica, Bologna. At noon the sun
crosses this line. It crosses at different points during the year.

Now, if Galileo and Kepler were heretical -- and their hypotheses incorrect -- then there would be no reason to ask these questions. And, there would be no reason to place solar-observing instruments in churches in Bologna and elsewhere. Yet, they did. The meridian line in San Petronio was installed first in 1648 (but not corrected for accuracy until twenty years later).

Such was the background for a week-long course and sightseeing trip to Emilia Romagna with two of Cornell's most distinguished professors, Martha Haynes and Riccardo Giovanelli. (More to follow...)

More Moved In

Kitchen, Wednesday, July 24. I probably jumped the gun in posting some of the earlier pictures. We had not completely moved in. We were so excited about how it all turned out that we could not wait to show off. Now we've had an opportunity to 'soften' the appearance by adding more of our personal stuff. In earlier photos the display cabinet was empty, and I've filled it with what it was designed to hold, the Waterford crystal.


 

So above is a good image of a more lived-in kitchen. The carpet is in place, the picture is hung, the crystal is on display, and noon-time sunlight diffuses through the skylights.

I've also come to appreciate how much little things change the feeling of a room.  Robbie was wondering what to do in the triangular area behind the faucet in a corner sink. She originally thought a colored, decorative plate might work. Once we put it in place, however, we agreed it missed the mark. Then Robbie tried a big bouquet of sunflowers. This seems to be a great choice.


This picture also shows the view from my desk to the outdoors. I spent enough time in my career in cubicles and, before that, on submarines. I insisted that, wherever I work in the new kitchen, I would not stare at a wall. Here, as you can see, I will not stare at a wall. I will stare at the old grill that needs to be replaced, and the deck that needs to be resurfaced, and the lawn furniture from the last millennium. I also get to watch chipmunks, cardinals, butterflies, bluejays, robins, and the occasional fox. I'm thinking a bird feeder is a good idea for this view.

Our old kitchen had a corner china cabinet that held most of our crystal. We have collected a nice set of Waterford over the years, mostly through the generosity of Robbie's parents. We displayed the Waterford in the china cabinet, but it got quickly crowded by souvenir wine glasses, champagne glasses that memorialize various events, Renaissance Faire crockery, and the occasional beer stein. In the new kitchen, we're determined to set the Waterford apart. There's enough storage behind the cabinets for all that other stuff.



And, as for the space in the cabinets, I thought it might be useful to show off the chef's pantry. This was an important 'holdover' from the old kitchen. In fact, one of the reasons we resisted renovating the kitchen (well, one of us resisted it) was the convenience and storage capacity of our chef's pantry. In this one cabinet we could keep all of our food that was not refrigerated. So, to avoid 'stepping down' in quality in the new kitchen, we had to insist on a chef's pantry.




In the 40 years since the kitchen was redone, the design of a chef's pantry probably has been changed many times. In fact, I would not be surprised if it disappeared from the list of available cabinet styles. We were glad to find that cabinet makers do continue to offer chef's pantries. As you can tell, the storage available is enormous.

Again, there is a lot more available (with sardonic commentary of course) on the photobucket site.

Morning Light Photos

I took some photos this morning in the morning light. There's still some unfinished stuff in the photos, but the appearance is really coming along. Here's a photo of the entryway with the Tuscan painting in the background. The sunlight is glinting along the cabinet in the back.






Next, I'll post a photo of the view from my workspace looking toward the center of the room.

















Finally, I'll post a picture from the dining room table looking toward the island.





There are a lot more pictures in the photobucket album. 

I'll try to include a link to the album:

This should bring you to the album.

There are over 40 pictures with my sardonic commentary. It can easily be missed.

KWC

Our Finished Kitchen

We just moved in to our new, remodeled kitchen. Robbie plans to take real "serious" pictures this weekend, but I thought I would jump the gun, add a little value to this blog, and show everybody a preview.

The first picture is from the area of the dining room table. You see the island and my workstation. The brown chair is placed at Robbie's desk. Robbie wanted a stool and a counter, so we set that up. Notice the pendant lights and the skylight. This is a bright room, and it can get warm on these 98-degree summer days.

The second shot is from the entryway. You can see the island stove and the new floor. Notice the third skylight near the center of the picture. The afternoon sun shines through that for about an hour, making the dark corner quite bright. 

The third shot is from the area of the prep sink, with my back to the sliding glass door. Near the center of the picture is a tile mural of a street scene that adds a little color. In this picture you can see the (somewhat) odd reflection from the refrigerator. The ice and water dispenser has a small curve at the top, giving off a fountain-like appearance.
 

 One of the most enjoyable aspects of this kitchen is the wide variation in lighting. By changing dimmer settings, we can make the shape of the kitchen seem to change. I left the lights on for these photos, but this morning Robbie sat in the morning twilight with all the lights off enjoying the natural light.

Better View of the Mural

We thought we might add a few pictures.  And, here's a link to the photobucket account.

Kitchen from the Dining Area