Blaise blows our minds

Wait till you see Blaise Aguera y Arcas talk at TED (below) about the gorgeous power of Seadragon and Photosync.

Blaise's talk gave me a sweeping tummy-flipping sensation.  Similar to the first time I faxed a picture, received a voice mail or sailed on the open sea.  Simply marvelous.   Enjoy!





Blaise and Adrienne (Fairhall) have two wonderful kids, Anselm and Eliot, who are about the same ages as Simone and Naomi.  Adrienne's Wall is the name of their family blog.

Adrienne also has delivered masterly contributions to the world.  Both in physics and neuroscience.  She has created tools we can use to decode the language of the brain and see into what a person is experiencing.  Her elegant mathematical operations actually track a neuron's electrical activity and may one day allow us to stimulate an experience for example, give a person the sensation of a prosthetic limb.  Wild no?

Another Adrienne discovery about how we experience is the revelation that what we see and feel  depends upon what we saw and felt previously.  She recently helped teach a visual processing medical class about this, where she showed that-the details a person would notice when looking at a painting, for  instance-depends at a fundamental, microscopic level on what their eyes were focused on previously.  The idea is rather complex, Adrienne said, because it implies that perception is always changing: "What one experiences influences how one experiences it."  More here.

Margit and Naomi meet

Nice

Welcome Naomi!

Proud Papa sings Naomi her first lullaby.

"I'm a big sister!" -Simone

It was 8:46pm on May 16th, 2007.  Naomi arrived weighing an ounce less than 7 pounds and stretched to 19 1⁄4 inches.  Basking in the special day when our family grew to four.  

Somehow when newborn Naomi is getting her first bath, she lifted her body up onto her elbows and knees.  Dr. Sarah de la Torre said this was highly unusual.  

I find myself enamored with the little foot prints.

What a little mouth you have. 

"I can help you take care of Naomi!  Look Mama. " -Simone

Simone sings a lullaby to Naomi.

Sonya meets Naomi.

Theresa meets Naomi.

Yahoo Naomi is here! We were so excited we whipped up a birth announcement and sent it to our friends and family. 

Terminal socializing

Here are some snaps of Simone at the airport terminal making friends.

Did you just go on a trip?  Where did you go? - Simone

"That's funny." - Simone (David is on the left.)

Jessica, Blaine, Lucinda and Arno come over for dinner

A Citizen of the United States!

After five long years of rigamarole. Santino Luan becomes a Citizen.  What a Day!  From left to right, Petra (5 months pregnant), Santino and Meseret.

Santino started life as a Dinka tribe cattle herder, fled war, wandered over 1,000 miles across the desert (crocodiles, carrying babies, no food, no water) thinking he was one of the last boys alive on Earth, then refugee camps and now he is working at the Smith Tower.  He studied for his GED in night school and kept a group of 18 other Dinka Lost Boys together by having them meet to do tribal dances.  


He went home to marry and eventually was able to bring his wife over (that also took a number of years) and now they have a wonderful little boy and another little boy on the way.

Wilfred and Elinor visit us in Sun Valley

Simone sounds out

Simone seemed to enjoy crowds from the day she was born.  She also liked Barrack Obama.  She joined me at the WWFC Pac events and managed to get a few sounds out with each guest.  There is a bit more about the Political Action Committee on this page.

Knocked up and low on carabiners or Enjoying Zion

Missed the cool hikes.  Totally forgot to pack my spiderman climbing shoes and couldn't get the pretty blue Petzl Adjama harness higher than my knees.  To get into the Zion spirit, I used a giant carabiner to hold up my shorts.

Susan, our resident horticulturalist, often hung with me (thought she surely would have rather done the  wild cliff hanging treks with Molly, Sonya and Patty).  We struck off into the beautiful old riverbed (below) on the first day.  We collected a few high altitude mosses to seed into the cracks outside the gothic windows back at on the 40th floor of the Smith Tower.  There is a chance they will take there.

These inner canyons belong in the Louve. 

The striations of red remind me of an ancient city in Jordan.  

Susan taught me a cool way to identify a Douglas Fir from the cones.   

See the little mouse tails and feet sticking out from under little tables.  

If you see those you know you have a  Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglass Fir).

My wonderful friends, Susan Holmes Lipsky, Sonya Stoklosa, me (one month to go), Molly Kingston and Patty Ryan making our way through Zion.

The water must have rushed through here on a mission!

wedding