YEAR2006
Diary2
Home | NewYorker3 | Diary2 | NewYorker2 | Restaurants | Marian at the Met | Marian at Princeton U | New Yorker | Books | Movies, Theater | MoviesEtc2 | MoviesEtc3

Continue Diary for 2006, starting in June:

  1. June 9. To the lab today to hear Rip P lecture on the physics of pellet feed of D and T in a large tokamak. Found that his speech is slow and halting (Parkinsons) and that another colleague (Stefano B) has been in the emergency ward at the Princeton Hospital for a lung infection.
  2. Jun 23. Hyoncha Pak arrives at 7 Ham.
  3. July 2. Annual get together of the Motley/Mulhall/McDonaugh Clan in the village of Wohmelsdorf, Pa. My sister Nan showed us around her suburban house, where she has worked long and hard to beautify the surroundings. Couldn't believe the number of new shrubs planted in the last year or so. For a protracted lunch we munched on Bernie's special bean soup, Tim's special chili con carne, along with the usual hamburgs, hot dogs, chicken, and pork. The kids, including Gregory, splashed happily in the small, above ground swimming pool.
  4. July 5. Mark W showed us views of the moon and Jupiter, along with 5 visible moons, with his 10 inch reflecting telescope. I was flabbergasted at the fine details of the moon available with an amateur telescope. With the addition of a scanning control and a camera, he will be ready for the big time. Would get one for myself, but reason asserted itself. Marian and I are now in the throwaway, rather than the accumulation, period of life.
  5. July 14. Off to the last PU summer concert by the Sequenza Trio in Richardson. Especially enthralled by the second movement of the Schubert Piano Trio. Noted old friends like Herbert H and Pearl, who is now in a retirement home near Jamesburg.
    E Flat.
  6. Jul 14. Decided to do something about my toenail fungus. Websites found with Google favor either Vick's Vaporub or tea tree oil, both to be administered daily for 2 months. Started on a treatment with the VR. Tell all in 2 months.
  7. July 16. Getting ready for the hernia operation on July 6 by Dr Lieberman at the Cornell-NY Hospital.
  8. July 19. Arose early yesterday to bustle over to the hospital to have my hernia repaired. You know, the record keeping in the health industry is still stone age. For the fourth time I sat down and repeated my stats for an administrator. Why not a universal data collector? Probably people are unwilling to trust the system. Everything went well. They used the mesh method to close the hernia. I walked into and out of the operating room. Big surprise: they shaved my groin on top of the operating table. Don't they worry about contamination?
  9. Aug 2. Now 15 days after the operation, but am still in NY. Too painful--and hot--to go down to Princeton. Sharp burning sensation when I stand up or sit down. Yesterday, the surgeon said that I was recovering normally. Whatever happened to the story of people going back to work in 3 or 4 days?
  10. Aug 6.  Back in Princeton. Visited the new home of Julie and Burt Toltaro in a new Toll Brothers development near Heightstown. Immaculately clean and tidy. Something for the next world, not this.
  11. Aug 16. The hernia is still sore, but I no longer feel that someone is stabbing me when I walk. Have really begun to believe that there is life after hernia. In a few more weeks I'll be able to escape from my jailer.
  12. Aug 31. Good day yesterday. Worked out on my exercise bike in the basement and walked for a half hour along the lake. No bad effects apparent afterwards.
  13. Sept 27. Listened to Mike Zarnsdorf speak on the NCSX stellarator at PPPL. Great hopes for this complicated toroidal magnetic configuration: it needs no current, should not exhibit violent instability below about 4-6 % Beta. The initial discussions on this device, which should be operating in about 3 years, were carried out while I was still at the laboratory--1993!!
  14. Sept 30. Up to Pottsville to attend the wedding of my niece, Susan to Donald Murphy. A gala event with over 200 people attending the reception.
  15. Oct 13. Triple Treat at the Met Museum: Cocktails at 5:30 in the Patron's Lounge, followed by a lecture on the famous dealer and collector of the Impressionists, Henri Vollard, by Rebecca Rabinow, then at 9 the Beaux Arts Trio played Shostakovich and Schubert. A wonderful evening!
  16. Oct 18. Sad evening at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center: One of the principal actors in Tom Stoppart's Coast of Utopia had a heart attack on stage near the end of the first act. The ambulance men came right onto the stage to treat him. The play was stopped and rescheduled. He apparently is recovering well in hospital. Somber end to a fascinating evening.
  17. Nov 2. Ireland House, NYU. Prof William Mulligan from Murray State U in Kentucky spoke about the Irish in Michigan copper country 1845-1920. In the 19th century this land above Lake Superior was completely isolated in the winter. The Irish were largely Gaelic speaking miners from Co Cork and Limerick. The most famous and wealthy Irishman was named Ed Ryan (shades of Jimmy Ryan in Heckscherville). They left as the century changed for better opportunities elsewhere. Now there are very few Irish left in this land where the copper has played out.
  18. Nov 15. Lecture at the Plasma Lab by Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton U on global warming, with special emphasis on the rise of the carbon dioxide level, now at record levels, and the decline of the ice cover at the poles. The most alarming thing he said was that the polar caps are retreating much faster than predicted by the computer models! He believes that the rapid deterioration, especially in the Greenland and Antartic ice caps results from rapid ice flow in areas where the ice is not tightly held by the terrain. He pointed out that a 5 meter rise in the seal level will destroy many coastal areas, mentioning Florida and Bangladesh, both of which will essentially disappear. I've scoffed at GW for years, but that alarmist community is slowly becoming a science. The 21st century will be a shocker. If terrorism doesn't get us, global warming may. Worrysome, indeed. \
  19. Nov 18. Another great night at Lucy's in New Brunswick. A fine lute player, Daniel Swenberg, regaled us with selections from the 16th to the  18th centuries. Music of Francesco da Milano, John Dowland, and Leopold Weiss. Much discussion and commentary on the lute was offered by the Russian audience. He played 3 lutes: renaissance, baroque, and theorbo, an instrument more than 6 feet long.
  20. Nov 28. Took Marian out to JFK for her flight to London and visit to her sister in Devon. For the first time we went via mass transit. We took the # 1 train to the Long Island RR in Penn Central, then the LIRR to the Jamaica stop, then the AirTrain to JFK. Cost: $9.50 for seniors. On my return I took the Airtrain to Jamaica, then the E Train to the 7th Ave stop, then the B Train to our local stop on 8th Ave and 81st Street. Cost: $ 6. Transit times similar. Cost of taxi now about $ 60 with tolls and tip. Downside? A few stairs to negotiate. Might be a problem for seniors with heavy luggage.
  21. Nov 29. Student recital at Julliard. Winds, guitar and harp play Ibert, Villa-Lobos, Bax, and Berlioz. Fine Wed afternoon at Alice Tulley (1 pm).
  22. Nov 30. Kreutzer Sonata Evening at Taplin. Caryl Emerson explained the strange super Christian esthetic of Tolstoy (Sex is always sinful, even in marriage). This is too much. He fathered 13 children by his wife! Two students read the Kreutzer Symphony written by Tolstoy in 1889 and a pianist and a violinist played Beethoven's Kreutzer Symphony with great gusto. A super evening.
  23. Dec 14. Pat Goldstone invited us to a great evening at the Players Club on Grammercy Park. Met David Colman, an actor and occasional director, who made us feel welcome and showed us around the famous old club. There were portraits and mementoes of Mark Twain, a member, and Edwin Booth, a famous actor in the 1860's and a brother of the infamous John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln. Quite a memorable evening.
  24. Dec 22. Bill Frost has his 80th birthday at the Stony Hill Inn in Hackensack, among an army of friends, relatives, and other well-wishers. We were treated to a sumptious banquet with copious hors d'euvres in the elegant restaurant. How to get there without breaking the wallet: take the NJT bus 182 from the George Washington Bridge bus station to the Hackensack bus terminal. Cost: $1.40 each, ss. Limo to Hackensack--$90 total. Which one do you think we took?

Enter supporting content here