News and Views

(So I chose this topic first…?) The area around Mount Whitney gets so much hiker traffic that it could not withstand the usual human solid waste disposal method of burying 6 inches deep. There would be trenches everywhere and up in the higher elevations the number of rocks make digging a trench almost impossible. So […]

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Dale and I are preparing to hike the John Muir Trail in the California Sierra. It starts at Yosemite Valley, passes through Kings Canyon and Sequoia, and ends at the top of Mt. Whitney, 210 miles away. We will have to climb over several 11,000 and 12,000 foot passes on the way. Dale left this […]

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My mother just had surgery today for a detached retina. I was at her house on Friday last week when she mentioned to me that she couldn’t see out of one side of her eye. There seemed to be a curtain over it. That sounded like the classic symptom of a detaching retina, and I […]

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We arrived back in Phoenix last night around 6:00pm. The pilot announced that it was 111 degrees as we were approaching the airport. What a shock after three weeks of temperatures in the 60s! It was a great trip. We met a lot of friendly and helpful French people, who don’t deserve their reputation of […]

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After the other women returned to the US yesterday, Gisele and I drove to the small town of Bayeux in Normandy. Today we went to Omaha Beach, the first landing point on D-Day, June 6, 1944. We first went to the American Cemetery near the beach. I didn’t expect to be as moved as I […]

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Yesterday we went to the house where Leonardo da Vinci spent the last three years of his life, in a little town called Clos Luce. I stood in the bedroom where he died. There were many models of his inventions, some of them full size and working, that we could touch and move. Here is […]

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Derek graduated with a BS in Mathematics in December, but even before he graduated he had set his sights on becoming an actuary. This past Monday he began working as an intern at an actuarial consulting firm in Scottsdale (Optumas). It’s a 6-month internship with a probable full-time job offer at some time during that […]

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National Geographic has a project called The Genographic Project. They are collecting DNA from people all over the world to “help answer fundamental questions about where humans originated and how we came to populate the Earth.” So far over a half million people have contributed DNA. Gisele and I are also participating in this project. […]

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In my last post I described how Gisele had surgery on her finger to remove a cyst. One result of the cyst was frequent infection under the nail. Since surgery more infection has set in. The doctor had her on oral Keflex for three weeks and it has been improving, but slowly. This week he […]

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Derek went to the orthopedic surgeon for a followup to his shoulder surgery of 6 weeks ago, and was told he no longer needs to wear the sling. He is celebrating. He is progressing well, has full range of motion and feels pretty comfortable. Now he just has to continue to heal and strengthen the […]

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