Friends

Hatshepsut and Destani Wolf

Chris Jefferies — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 00:35:00 GMT

Today, Aurora and I had a great day full of art and history (and food).

This morning we drove into the city and went to the New De Young museum (http://www.deyoungmuseum.org) to see the Hatshepsut exhibit. When we got there, the lines were long so we toured the sections of the museum on Art in America from colonial times through the twentieth century. We also browsed through the textiles.

Hatshepsut was an Egyptian queen who became a Pharaoh around 1473 BC when the Pyramids at Giza were already 1000 years old. The exibit had numerous artifacts from her reign. Read about her on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatshepsut

Before we left the city we stopped at the Zuni cafe and had a late lunch.

Later we went to the Berkeley Jazz School to see Destani Wolf, a friend of Elena's from Berkeley High school days. She performed 2 great sets with a Jazz Band. It's a small venue and it felt very intimate and with all her old friends there, it felt like we were hanging in her living room.

You can keep up with Destani at her MySpace site: www.myspace.com/destaniwolf

Año Nuevo State Reserve

Chris Jefferies — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 23:46:00 GMT

On Sunday, Aurora and I connected with our friends Nancy, Lydia, Jeanette, and John. It was a spectacular day full of the low winter sun in a clear, cloudless sky.

Nancy had organized a day to visit to Año Nuevo State Reserve to see the annual gathering of elephant seals. We got to the reserve at around 10:30 and arranged for tickets for the 12:15 walk with the docents. Before we left, Nancy treated us to a wonderful lunch with drinks provided by Jeanette and John.

At 12:15 we walked out to a staging area where we met up with our docent guide. Her name was Liz and she is a geologist by trade, but she's been guiding elephant seal tours for about 10 years and knew her subjects well.

We were able to see elephant seals in various social strata, from the young lonely guys, to female harems and their pups, to the highly Territorial bulls who weigh in at up to 5000 pounds. We stood sometimes as close as 25 feet from the seals.

After the elephant seal tour we drove further down Highway 1 to a winery, Bonny Doon. We tasted a variety of the wines, mostly very sweet, which is not my style, but it was fun anyway.

We drove home at sunset time and the countryside was beautiful.

Hurricane Rita

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 22:30:00 GMT

I went to Houston last week. While many families were trying to leave town but instead were stuck in traffic on one of the freeways, I was flying into the path of, at the time, a category 5 hurricane. Felt like Major Kong riding the bomb down...

Me as weatherman at the Museum of Natural Science

I had agonized over going to Houston for a day or so and by Wednesday I was sure I should go. I had spoken to Mother a few times that day and she was adamant about not leaving her home and was discouraging me from coming to “rescue“ her. Annalee was in Hartford performing in a play so she was unable to get away without disrupting the show.

On Wednesday afternoon around 4 PM I decided I must go and help Mother evacuate, if it came to that, and all indications were that it would be necessary. By 7:30 that evening I was at the airport checking in a big duffel bag full of rescue things I've collected from my days with a search and rescue group, the Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit ("a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff...")

I called Derek and Lisa from Las Vegas and arranged to catch up with them early in the morning for some good coffee. I also called Bob Webb to let him know I would be in town and he admonished me for coming into town in the face of a dangerous hurricane. I suppose I didn't really get a sense of danger and Katrina "panic" until, as my airplane flew over the north bound highway 45, I saw the endless trail of red tail lights heading out of town for as far as I could see. I called it the trail of tears.

I landed about 3:30 in the morning and picked up a rent car that Aurora had arranged for me and then headed south to Bellaire where Mother lives and nearby, Derek and Lisa live. On the way I stopped at a Walmart, the only store I could find that was open, and bought some supplies. They were rationing bottled water and only 2 cases per person were allowed. I wanted to buy some wine to calm our nerves, but in Houston you can't buy alcohol before 7 AM. Had to put that back. In general, the food shelves were trashed and mostly empty.

When I arrived at Derek and Lisa's house, Beth was in her truck getting ready to head farther North and Derek met me with a great cup of coffee. Beth was in a state of despair as her house is in Galveston about 6 blocks from the gulf. She had, in her truck, some of her prized art pieces and 4 cats. The rest of her treasure was left behind and it's fate was now in the hands/winds of Rita. I gave her a hug and she pulled out of the driveway and off into the dark, muggy, Houston morning.

Derek, boarding up the windows

How to weather a storm

As daybreak approached, Derek and Lisa proceeded to prepare their house for the worst. I helped Derek put some plywood up on the front windows while Lisa gathered plants into the garage and collected important papers in case the house and all belongings were lost in the storm. Around 8:30 AM the phone rang and I answered because Derek and Lisa were busy. It was Beth calling in a panic and even though she had taken a path out of Houston that should have been relatively clear, she was at a standstill in traffic near Sugarland. The weight of everything she was experiencing had caught up with her and she was in an awful state of mind. I talked to her for a while and she seemed to calm down. A little later, after I left, she returned and decided to stay and weather the oncoming storm at Derek and Lisa's house.

By 9 AM I called Mother and announced that I was in town for a “visit“ and while she was happy to hear my voice, I could sense tension in her voice. I waited a little while and then went over to “visit“ her. We talked for a while and I told her of my overnight adventure and then I started discussing the possibility of a necessary evacuation. She finally, although reluctantly, admitted that she would be willing but doubted that it would be required. At that point, Thursday morning, Rita was still a category 5 hurricane and still projected to come ashore somewhere near Galveston with winds of 165 miles an hour.

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around...

I spent Thursday afternoon, prepping Mother's house. Gathering potted plants, removing items that might become projectiles in a high wind. I also went to some of the neighbors who were not leaving and checked on their status and collected their information. One of the neighbors mentioned a nearby church which was going to act as a backup shelter and I took note about that; just in case.

My general approach was to hold until we could no longer stay safe and to make sure that at any point, we might have enough lead time to evacuate. The storm was due on Saturday morning and on the news programs we heard story after story of people trying to leave, getting nowhere only to finally turn around and head back home (one of the “jokes“ about the evacuations was to wonder about the asshole at the beginning of the line that was slowing everybody down). Ben and Judy Rice took back roads to Austin and it took them, I think he said, about 9 or 10 hours (update: 14-15 hours). Gasoline was also a huge problem and I had an almost full tank of gas (maybe 250 miles worth) but with delays that was doubtful. Those that persisted seemed to average about 12 to 15 hours to get out of harms way. I figured we should watch the news and leave no later than Friday, mid-day.

Friday morning's “cone of uncertainty”, which was what they called the range of possible trajectories that the hurricane might take, revealed a slight drift to the East and a weakening of the storm's eye and that trend continued throughout the day, so we never had to make the decision to leave, but it was always a tenuous situation.

As Rita drew near it's path turned more and more to the East and finally came ashore about 3 AM around Port Arthur. At about 2 AM we started feeling the winds and around 3 AM the power went out in our neighborhood. I sipped whiskey, watched the trees get thrashed by huge gusts of wind. Finally around 3:30 I settled into a restless sleep in a house in Houston, Texas with no power AND no air-conditioning...

Saturday morning I woke up to the sound of a house alarm going off because the power was out and the batteries were dying. One of the neighbors had contacted us the day before from out of town and had asked that I disarm it if it started up; gave me detailed instructions and codes and hints about how to disconnect the batteries. I'd had perhaps a bit too much bourbon the night before so the alarm was a bit painful; my face was greasy from the lack of air-conditioning and my eyes were puffy from dog allergies so with a startled heart, I got up and dressed quickly to do my part and save the neighbors from this intrusion. As I approached the front door, the alarm went off and I was in a state of confusion... windblown and confused. We finally got power back on after about 28 hours in the post hurricane Texas heat. What a pleasure to get air-conditioning back on in Houston.

The next 3 days were spent cleaning up the debris from around the house and replacing all the things I had put away. I also took the opportunity to fix up some things in Mother's house and to visit friends. One afternoon I spent with Elena and Tyler, Leila and Carter at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. After the normal tour through the main museum, we went through the Cockrel Butterfly Exhibit, and saw an IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon. What fun.

Elena, Tyler, Leila, Carter at the Museum of Natural Science

Mother and I had a lot of time to reminisce about our family adventures in Laredo and Australia and she told many stories about her childhood memories.

A few nights I had dinner with friends. Derek was “frying chickens in the barnyard!“ or was it turkey burgers? Derek and I played some music to fend off the hurricane spirits and one night we watched the first episode of Martin Scorsese's Dylan documentary.

On Sunday night I visited Bob Webb and saw how he was going to weather the storm. He had created a sheltered zone in the middle of his house and because plywood was in short supply he had to use piece of art he had painted onto a sheet of plywood.

Bob and his art shelter.

On Tuesday evening I flew back to the cool of the Bay Area, glad to be back and glad that the hurricane was not as devastating to Houston as it might have been. My heart goes out to those in and around Port Arthur as Rita was indeed still at category 3 when it made landfall there.

The way I hear it, there are perhaps more hurricanes due this season... I suspect "We'll Meet Again".

Wackydoodle...

Montana 3

Chris Jefferies — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 00:47:00 GMT

So the days in Montana were mostly cloudy. The image of the dome shows what it looked like. The temperatures rarely got out of the 60s in the daytime and dropped as low as the 30s at night. Usually we're trying to stay cool in 80 degree days.

As a result we fished a lot. Here are some fish we caught in the front pond. Most we threw back, but we decided to keep a couple of the big ones for dinner. They were good tasting.

The last night was good for stargazing through the telescope so Dan and I stayed up until about midnight and saw about a dozen Messier objects (The Messier objects are a set of astronomical objects cataloged by Charles Messier in his catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters first published in 1774. The original motivation behind the catalog was that Messier was a comet hunter, and was frustrated by objects which resembled but were not comets. He therefore compiled a list of these objects).

On the last day, our departure day, Dan had an 8am flight so we got up at 5am and drove to Bozeman. Dan got to his flight in good time and I had time to kill while I waited for my 1pm flight. I decided to check out the Museum of the Rockies at the University in Bozemen (Home of the Bobcats). It is an excellent museum. I recommend it if anyone gets up there.

Triceratops as big as an elephant.

Montana 2

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 22:39:00 GMT

Today we woke up to heavily overcast skies. It started raining about mid-day and let up around 8. Dan and I decided to drive down to Yellowstone.

We headed South to Mammoth Hot Springs and then headed east to Tower Falls, and then up to the highest place we could drive which was the Mount Washburn trail head. We hiked up the trail a bit and decided that being on top of an exposed mountain top was probably not the best idea in a rain storm. So we hiked back down and stopped at Tower Falls and the Calcite Springs overlook and headed back to Dennis'. The cloud cover was too heavy so there was no opportunity for stargazing or even watching foe Perseid meteors so we called it an early evening. Hopefully this weather will blow through and tomorrow will be a better day for fishing and stargazing.

Tower Falls

Calcite Springs

Montana

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 01:18:00 GMT

Dan Fishing in 6 Mile Creek behind the main house.

Yesterday I flew to Montana to stay at Dennis'. I woke up late at 5am (after a 3 hour nap) and raced through the house gathering all the items I thought I had together and tried to make the 6am flight. Aurora and I finally made it to the airport at 5:45, but the lady at the ticket counter said, "Too Late". So she fixed me up with a 7:15 flight that made my connection in Seattle and all was well so I went and got in line at the security check and got over my heart attack.

Arrived in Bozeman and met up with Dan and we drove to Livingston and shopped for liquor, groceries, and fishing flies. Drove on out to Dennis' and by then it was cocktail hour. After a couple of stout Martinis we prepped up some seafood (crab legs) and brocoli and as we were finishing dinner the "day" caught up with me and I went to lay down for a rest.

At midnight I woke up in total darkness wondering where the hell I was. After a few moments I realized that I was in bed in Montana with all my clothes on. So I stumbled downstairs and made my way outside to see a few early Persied meteors then went back to bed.

This morning, after breakfast, Dan and I went fishing in the creek behind the cabin and I had a few stikes and had not caught anything. Dan and I were leapfrogging each other up the creek and as I moved up about 30 yards beyong the main house, I saw a bear in the brush across the creek. It was black and had the biggest square head I've ever seen on a bear. Based on its color I suppose it was a black bear, but because this is Grizzly country, I decided not to take any chances and backed down the creek.

This bear sighting shook me up, so I want over to the front lake and fished there, in the open, where I could see any approaching bear. Caught 2 nice cutthroat trout.

This eveing Dan and I looked out for Persieds, but didn't see very many. The sky is fairly hazy and seeing isn't very good. It is about 2am Friday morning and sky looks like it is closing in...

Ah well, we'll try again tomorrow.

One of the Cutthroat trout I caught today.

Skype Me!

Chris Jefferies — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 18:22:00 GMT

OK, I've been using Skype for a while now and I see only one downside (mentioned later) to using it as a telephone replacement. I'm eager for all my friends to get on board so I can talk for free.

If you have a computer and an Internet connection, you can upload Skype onto your computer and we can talk for free. You may need to hook up speakers or a microphone, if you haven't already, but that's pretty easy to do.

I went to Radio Shack and bought a really inexpensive headset with a microphone for less than $3. I see that there is an online version for about $15, but look for the $3 version.

I have set up the SkypeOut service which allows me to call out from my computer to people who don't yet have Skype so I can talk to them on their regular phones. It costs me 2.3 cents a minute to use this service to anywhere in the continental US (land lines and mobile phones) and I have to pay in advance (in chunks of 10 Euros, or 25 Euros). I think that's still a better deal than most folks get on their home phone service. Overseas calls cost more. For example, calls to our friend, Zsuzsa, in Hungary, cost about 4.6 cents a minute. Still a good deal. Click here to look at the rates.

Downside: Outgoing (SkypeOut) long distance international calls to cell phones cost substantially more. A call to Pace's cell phone in Italy cost 33.5 cents a minute. Not such a good deal.

I have also set up a SkypeIn account. My number is: 415.578.3309

Notice I now have a 415 area code . The SkypeIn account allows my friends to call me at my computer. And as I AM very often at my computer, you'll be likely to catch me there. It includes an answering service as well so you can leave me a message that I can hear on my computer. The SkypeIn service costs me 30 Euros per year or 10 Euros for 3 months (including the voice mail service). It will cost my friends the same amount they would pay to call my house phone.

I may eventually disconnect my home service and settle on a mobile phone and Skype. If most of my friends get Skype, then most of my calls will be free.

I recommend that you check it out: www.skype.com

Talk to me at my computer for free; Skype to Skype: chrisjefferies
Talk to me at my computer via telephone: 415.578.3309

One O'Clock Boys at the Stork Club

Chris Jefferies — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 20:18:00 GMT

Last Tuesday, I sang backup harmonies with Jimmy and the One O'Clock Boys at the Stork Club in Oakland. We were the opening act for a group called Jug Free America. One of the One O'Clock Boys, Jacob Groopman, is a member of Jug Free America. The Stork Club was kind of a dive, but a few folks showed up and we had a good time.

You can see a few other images here.

The One O'Clock Boys are:

Jimmy Bruno - Guitar
Jacob Groopman - Mandolin
Adrian Bagale - Guitar
Rich Ferris - Stand up Bass
Chris Jefferies (honorary One O'Clock Boy) - Vocals & Percussion

I recorded our performance and you can find the tunes below. They are in MP3 format; about 6 to 7MB each. I recommend that you download each tune and then listen to them after they are saved locally.

The recordings were made with a Minidisc recorder with the automatic gain control set on. This unfortunately creates a pumping sound whenever the volume changes quickly so it is a reasonable overview of our performance; just not too clear sometimes.

It was fun...

Who's Looking Down On You?

Chris Jefferies — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 14:55:00 GMT

My friend, Ray Lear, sent me an image of Berkeley from space and I recalled that there is a web server called www.terraserver-usa.com. Click on the image to see an image I downloaded from the web of our house on Stanford Avenue in Kensington just North of Berkeley. You can zoom out and see the surrounding area on this page.

Here are some other locations you might want to visit. See if you can guess where they are.

Location	Longitude (E/W)	Latitude (N/S)
Bellaire	-95.46322	29.71955
California	-122.88421	38.47927
Brenham	-96.46366	30.14890
An Observatory	-110.77179	45.27747
Sixmile Creek	-110.74392	45.23781
Big Mesquite	-102.83257	29.40853
New Jersey	-74.30104	40.70246
Houston	-95.53934	29.78756
La Posada Hotel (more...)	-110.69637	35.02268
Soldier Meadow Hot Springs	-119.22488	41.36079
Black Rock Mystery	-119.19528	40.76147
Lake Catherine & Banner Peak (m ore...)	-119.19128	37.69640

Mardi Gras & the Architecture of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition

Chris Jefferies — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 23:36:00 GMT

Last night we had a gathering of the Yerba Buena Social Club. It was Fat Tuesday and so we met at Nancy's for some New Orleans styled fare, which included sausage, Louisiana beer (Abita Purple Haze Raspberry & Abita Turbodog), and dry fried chicken and salad. It was finished off with some home made pralines and sherbet ice cream.

After dinner, with our Mardi Gras beads jingling, we went down the street to a lecture presented by the SF Historical Society about the Architecture of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. It started a little late and began a bit slow, but once the presenter, David Parry, picked up the pace with slides from his extensive collection of post cards it was fascinating. One of the interesting images depicted the "Aeroscope", a ride that consisted of a small two-story structure mounted on the end of a 280 foot swing-arm. It was designed and built by Joseph Strauss, the designer and builder of the Golden Gate Bridge. It had a unique method of counter-balancing the people on the ride by displacing the weight of each rider by sensing the weight and then dumping an equivalent weight in water.

Yet another fun evening. Here are some pictures I took.

Map of the Exposition:
http://www.sanfranciscomemories.com/ppie/map/map-biggest.gif

San Francisco Museum and Historical Society