tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-139573332024-03-13T06:23:01.132-07:00Adiabatic InvariantsPhysics and life fight it out. Grenoble. California. New York. Iowa. Colorado.Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.comBlogger368125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-5093470937023528422023-12-31T13:46:00.000-08:002023-12-31T13:46:51.394-08:00My dad's life<p> </p><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Peter Nash was born in Astoria, New York in 1938. His parents Dorothy and Akos (both of Jewish heritage though not particularly religious) and his brother Larry moved to LA around 1942, (4 years old) living in Los Feliz on Myra Avenue. His father, a <span><a tabindex="-1"></a></span>medical doctor from Hungary (born in a town called Poklostelek, near what is today Oradea, Romania), met his mom, Dorothy in 1929 in Tours, France.</div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">In 1957, (age 19) he went to Reed College for 2 years, (along with two good friends from LA, Jon Appleton and Tommy Rosin) planning to be a doctor, but he ended up really enjoying and thriving in his humanities courses and having a harder time in his science and math classes. He went to Europe for a year to figure out what he wanted, trying to be a writer in Marseille and traveling around other parts of France, and taking a trip from London to Israel by bus with his then girlfriend, Gail Rosin Wread. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Back in the US, he went to San Francisco State U. and got better grades in science classes so that he could attend medical school at USC. He did an internship in San Francisco and lived in Berkeley and Oakland at the time, meeting my mom at folk dancing in Berkeley.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">He participated in the civil rights movement in 1965, (age 27) attending rallies in Selma, Alabama and Bogalusa, Louisiana, and had a gun pulled on him. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">He was a conscientious objector for the Vietnam war and went to jail for 3 days for this.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">He married my mom around 1968 and Andrew (River) was born in 1971. They traveled to Yap in 1972 and then returned to Santa Cruz to live in Bonny Doon. I was born in 1976 and Rocky (Elijah) was born in 1977. They divorced in 1979 and my Dad married Judy, a nurse practitioner of Armenian heritage that same year. He and Judy ran Cedar Medical Clinic together for 25 years or so before leaving Santa Cruz to move to Petrolia. He continued some work as a doctor in Garberville, but transitioned to retirement and to writing of poetry. Peter and Judy lived in Petrolia until around 2017 when they moved to Mendocino and Aptos, where they have lived since.</div></div>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-1511670501913264512023-12-25T20:21:00.000-08:002023-12-25T20:21:31.892-08:00Liminal time<p> <span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"></span></p><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I was feeling pretty out of it this morning. Getting back to Colorado in the midst of saying goodbye to my dad and after 2+ weeks off work and recovering from Covid, I just felt like nothing fit.</div></div><p></p><div><div class="" dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":rk7:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Yesterday I had a talk with a neighbor at Nyland, Bob, who often has insightful things to say about the community. He said that Nyland was designed to exist in a kind of liminal realm between disconnection and total unified following of an ideology. Some find it frustrating because <span></span>they want to convince the others to follow the same approach.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Whether or not that is an accurate description of Nyland, the word "liminal" stuck with me, and after spending the morning sleeping longer than usual, watching "The Iron Giant" and generally feeling frustrated with my life, I let that word sink in. I'm in a kind of liminal time. And perhaps this is where the world is as well. I feel like we've entered the anthropocene era where we need to be responsible in a larger sense for the world. We can no longer have the luxury of imagining an "out there" where we can throw garbage to, where can leave people(s) behind to, etc. We need to have more comprehensive approaches to both nature and culture.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">One of the last things my Dad said to me was an encouragement to find an entirely different kind of work. It's understandable, since I've often complained to him and others. I've often found the world of particle accelerators to be too small, too disconnected from the real problems of the world. And it can be too big at the same time: so many facilities, so many research problems to work on. And my company spreads itself thin at times and I can get put on projects I'm not so interested in and feel little sense of coherence. So this morning, I was again feeling the need to leave it all behind.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I'm sitting in my art studio again and feeling better about everything. I'm not going to leave it all behind. I like applying relativity theory to charged particles. I like understanding partial coherence of x-rays. I like finding humanistic approaches to integrate new methods of neural networks and Bayesian optimization to improve beamline functioning. And I like learning about x-ray and neutron scattering experiments that map out the tiny structures of our world. I can read about philosophy and climate in my spare time and perhaps at some point these will become bigger parts of my life.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I've gotten to where I am today by not leaving things behind. I've sat in liminal spaces and worked with them until they became more concrete. I can help build my community at Nyland as well as connect with Fairfield, Iowa and the TM movement. I can keep a good relationship with my younger brother even if he needs to separate himself from some of the family and I can keep trying to find an authentic relationship with my step-mom even if I expect to never fully succeed. And I can love my Dad while also not taking his advice.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I'm not sure this all hangs together except that accepting that one is in an in-between time does feel helpful. I've tried to not throw people or parts of myself away and to develop artistic and analytical tools to work with what I've been given. It sometimes feels like an impossible place to live, but it's also the place that a lot of the world finds itself in now. Trying to adjust our systems to prevent climate change, species loss and pollution. Israel and Palestine working off of completely different assumptions with poor leaders trying to impose overly simplistic solutions through violence. So we need to keep finding ways to work with what we actually have and find a peaceful attitude towards ourselves and the world from which to move forward.</div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-15566881005769944012023-11-20T06:12:00.000-08:002023-11-20T06:12:55.744-08:00thoughts on Israel/Palestine<p> </p><div><div class="" dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":rj:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I still don't really know what's going on in Israel/Palestine, but I do take these concerns that there is genocidal intent against the Palestinians seriously.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span><a class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x6umtig x1b1mbwd xaqea5y xav7gou x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz xt0b8zv x1fey0fg" href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/11/gaza-un-experts-call-international-community-prevent-genocide-against?fbclid=IwAR3CbgYvCKO_VfKnw6l2IE9gXK32LBIDXv5GnItGdqeFktMnb9KclGTnzmY" rel="nofollow noreferrer" role="link" tabindex="0" target="_blank">https://www.ohchr.org/.../gaza-un-experts-call...</a></span></div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span> </span></div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">In this thorny situation with a long history of conflict there is bound to be anger and frustration on both sides. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">It's <span><a tabindex="-1"></a></span>obviously a very incendiary charge against the Israeli government and some of the Israelis, who were formed out of a long history of attempted genocide against the Jewish people. And indeed, there is now growing anti-semitism which raises the specter of that genocidal intent against the Jewish people that has resurfaced so many times through history generally based on prejudices and false stories about a people that often have had to live in diaspora on the boundaries of other societies.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">But growing up with the daughter of survivors of the Armenian genocide and having some of my father's family killed in the holocaust in Hungary, I have some idea of what inter-generational trauma looks like. And my mom's family also were formed out of pogroms and anti-semitism in Bessarabia and then Canada.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">So I feel an obligation to prevent this from happening again, wherever and to whomever it happens. My obligation is to look for truth and not look through the lens of prejudice and call out misinformation when I see it.</div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-28343839173661911612023-11-12T03:51:00.000-08:002023-11-12T03:51:46.820-08:00Balloons<p> </p><div><div class="" dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":rg:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Today started out (8am) with the second installment of the Week (<span><a class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x6umtig x1b1mbwd xaqea5y xav7gou x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz xt0b8zv x1fey0fg" href="https://www.theweek.ooo/?fbclid=IwAR0_KkHzW7dOhqwig5vx6boHQDHKtIQlOMiwNrfybVy2ITDjl_Gim_OLMgc" rel="nofollow noreferrer" role="link" tabindex="0" target="_blank">https://www.theweek.ooo/</a></span>) discussion about the state of the world. We saw the video which talked about the capitalistic attitude (More is Always Better) that got us to these disasters: massive species loss, out of control pollution and global warming.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Then I went to karate, learning how to get out of grabs and holds of all sorts. In the middle of the afternoon, I joined my mom on a Zoom call with some Jewish <span><a tabindex="-1"></a></span>prayers. Finally, this evening was a birthday party at Nyland. Puzzles, costumes, karaoke (I sang a Pogues song) and the start of a conversation with one of the global climate model software engineers at NCAR. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">A little bit of a hodgepodge of a day, but still I suppose it's nice to start filling out my life a bit more. Karate and yoga...climate science and particle accelerators, Jewish prayer and the Pogues. Sometimes life feels like a bunch of balloons all going in different directions, and I need to hold onto them all and I don't feel like there's enough of me to inhabit this center.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Work also feels a bit disconnected. Not much progress on the neutron scattering data analysis. A little progress on getting a Genesis model for the TESSA undulator at the FAST accelerator. This should also help for modeling LCLS and European XFEL. I do need to learn some more about free electron lasers...</div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div><div><div class="x168nmei x13lgxp2 x30kzoy x9jhf4c x6ikm8r x10wlt62" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic"><div><div><div><div class="xq8finb x16n37ib x1fqkajt x1aj7aux x1axty5n x1uuop16"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 x2lah0s x1qughib x1qjc9v5 xozqiw3 x1q0g3np x150jy0e x1e558r4 xjkvuk6 x1iorvi4 xwrv7xz x8182xy x4cne27 xifccgj"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x193iq5w xeuugli x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xg83lxy x1h0ha7o x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x193iq5w xeuugli x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xg83lxy x1h0ha7o x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn"></div><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x193iq5w xeuugli x1r8uery x1iyjqo2 xs83m0k xg83lxy x1h0ha7o x10b6aqq x1yrsyyn"></div><div class="x8cjs6t x1ch86jh x80vd3b xckqwgs x1ejq31n xu3j5b3 x1q0q8m5 x26u7qi x178xt8z xm81vs4 xso031l xy80clv x1d52u69 xktsk01"></div><div class="x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x9f619 x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w x1xmf6yo x1e56ztr"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x1iyjqo2 x2lwn1j"><div class="x9f619 x1n2onr6 x1ja2u2z x78zum5 xdt5ytf x2lah0s x193iq5w x1swvt13 x1pi30zi"><div class=""><div class="x78zum5 x1q0g3np x1a2a7pz"><div class="xqcrz7y x14yjl9h xudhj91 x18nykt9 xww2gxu x1lliihq x1w0mnb xr9ek0c x1n2onr6"></div></div></div></div></div></div><div aria-label="Write a comment…" class="xzsf02u x1a2a7pz x1n2onr6 x14wi4xw notranslate" contenteditable="true" data-lexical-editor="true" role="textbox" spellcheck="true" style="user-select: text; white-space: pre-wrap; word-break: break-word;" tabindex="0"><p class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r"><br /><br /></p></div>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-65275561337923835972023-11-02T06:37:00.005-07:002023-11-02T06:37:53.787-07:00Life's complexity<p> I've been waking up at 4am recently, feeling stressed out. So many different threads in life and the world and it's hard to see how they will turn out. Getting to know people at Nyland and to understand the complex organization. The difficulties in the world- war and climate change and people not getting along with each other. And my complex job, working with a lot of different organizations, trying to do something meaningful, to help with the technology of particle <span></span>accelerators at the same time as to understand the kinds of experiments done with x-rays and neutrons to understand the atomic structure of materials and elementary excitations of matter. Sometimes I feel like I'm pretty good at managing complexity and pulling different pieces together into something that makes sense, and sometimes I feel like it's all too much for me. I suppose painting has always been a kind of practice for this aspect of life. How do we pull together the pieces of this world that seem much more fragmented than any one person can manage?</p><div class="" dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1l90r2v x1swvt13" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r1dp:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">During these times, I often find myself watching the first <a href="https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Image_in_the_Sand_(episode)">few episodes of Season 7 of Deep Space 9</a>, where the Bajoran prophets have been attacked by the Pah Wraiths, Ducat has killed Jadzia and captain Sisko is visiting his father, trying to figure out what to do next. I love these two episodes, because they follow three completely different plot lines, that all end up resolving and weaving together in a beautiful way. Sisko meets Ezri Dax and tries to find the orb of the emissary with his father and son, Worf goes on a mission to fight a battle to get Jadzia into Stovokor, and Kira faces off against the Romulans to protest a military build up on the Bajoran moon of Durna. It gives me inspiration during these complicated times to keep trying to follow what I'm doing with integrity, with the hope that the threads of my life (and other world developments larger than me) may come together in some integrative form.</div></div></span></div></div></div></div>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-18810238231536914952023-10-08T19:50:00.009-07:002023-10-08T19:50:45.566-07:00Being Mortal<p> </p><div><div class="" dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1swvt13 xjkvuk6" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r3m2:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I've been really appreciating listening to an audiobook of "Being Mortal", by Atul Gawande, recommended by a childhood friend, responding to my last post about my dad, growing older, and end of life conditions and choices.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">For a long time, I've not paid a lot of attention to the (western/scientific) medical perspective, thinking religion and spirituality have more to offer us in terms of staying healthy (while at the same time, as a physicist knowing very well <span><a tabindex="-1"></a></span>the power and coherence of scientific tools and perspective). Getting older myself, however, I know that I will have to use medicine more often. With my dad a medical doctor and my mom interested in alternative medicine such as Ayurveda and spiritual techniques such as meditation, I've often wondered how to find common ground between these perspectives and technologies. What I see is that some of the alternative medical approaches and spiritual techniques take the whole person into account more than breaking us down into individual parts or separate systems to be healed. But the Western medical tradition based on modern science has a plethora of powerful tools for staving off catastrophic illness and extending our lives.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">"Being Mortal" is written from the perspective of a surgeon who has dealt with many end of life scenarios and started to question how we think about meaning of life, particular during these dire times. He's not someone who is giving up his profession, but he is doubting whether the medical profession should be the primary force deciding the options we should have, particularly later in life. He writes about his own father's journey with cancer and how the questions the two of them as doctors asked their patients became a lot less abstract when it was Gawande's own father's life at stake.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">This book feels like a bridge for me, encouraging us to take advantage of all the life and health extending technologies medicine has to offer, but also to remember there are deeper aspects of life and meaning than just staying alive for as long as possible. How do we think about the whole arcs of our lives? </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I recently spent a fair amount of time watching youtube videos from a cognitive scientist named John Vervaeke, particularly a 50 part series called "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" that went through all of western history and talks about how we have arrived at what he calls the meaning crisis. It really spoke to me, because he wants to use all the sciences that make up cognitive science to give a more full view of what it is to be human and where religion and spirituality fit in. He also uses the work of a fair number of philosophers, bringing their careful work to bear on the real problems we face as human beings living our complex lives. (Part of his definition of cognitive science involves the use of philsophy to combine the different disciplines by which the mind and human cognition are studied and understood.) Too often when science and humanities are combined, one of them is given a weak, shallow presentation. Vervaeke also uses tools and language of artificial intelligence to talk about intelligence, rationality and wisdom, going back to the Greeks, Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus to ground the discussion using the foundations of the very grammar we use. (Finally my Reed College education where science and humanities were both given equal weights really helps me out.)</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Being a physicist, I had a hard time answering such questions about meaning in life, yet at the same time, a lot of new age spirituality centers around physics, (often somewhat fringe/borderline stuff such as the multiverse and extra dimensions as well as the more obscure aspects of quantum mechanics such as the EPR experiment) and I've long struggled to find some kind of perspective that is true to the science but doesn't disregard human meaning and gives a richer account of life and our inner worlds.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I've also been reading "Religion in an age of Science" by Ian Barbour who gives a framework for how science and religion relate to each other. This helps me integrate the thread I've been following about my Jewish heritage, history of Judaism, and how Jewish religion and spirituality can be relevant to us today. On this line, I've really enjoyed a youtube channel called "Seekers of Unity" that try to find commonality in all the traditions while being well grounded in the Jewish tradition.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Overall, these pieces start to fit together: how we can take the medical perspective and technologies and allow them to do what they are good at, but also keep them in their place and not allow them to answer questions about meaning in life and even a lot of aspects of quality of life. The book by Gawande supplies an important piece of this for me. </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I've felt for awhile that I haven't had a very coherent picture of what a complete life is about, and this can lead to existential dread and depression. Bringing some of our different traditions together starts to feel like it forms a more solid base. We also need such a base to work together as a people politically and to think about the future of the planet, confronting climate change, species loss and other hugely difficult issues of the Anthropocene era we are entering.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I still have plenty of questions, but it seems like an important time to rethink some foundations while not throwing away the bulk of our traditions and systems of knowledge. Finding a middle path here will probably be something I continue to engage in for the rest of my life.</div></div></span></div></div></div></div></div>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-85121824293397005492023-10-03T18:56:00.006-07:002023-10-03T18:56:42.734-07:00Growing older<p> <span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"></span></p><div class="xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto">My dad's been in and out of the hospital recently with some issue with his immune system and blood I have a hard time understanding called Thrombocytopenia. This means he has low platelet count.</span></div></div><p></p><div dir="auto"><div class="x1iorvi4 x1pi30zi x1l90r2v x1swvt13" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id=":r36:"><div class="x78zum5 xdt5ytf xz62fqu x16ldp7u"><div class="xu06os2 x1ok221b"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x xudqn12 x3x7a5m x6prxxf xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">My step-mom Judy has been managing all of his medical care and I know this is a really big job for her. Being someone's sole caretaker must be a huge amount of work. My mom did this for my step-father, Bill.</div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I'd like to contribute in some way, but haven't had a very close relationship with my dad and not always the easiest relationship with my step-mom. So I mostly learn about it second hand and talk with my dad when I have a chance.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">I've really enjoyed over the years learning about my family history, collecting documents and being a sort of family historian. I've thought of trying to put together some kind of life history document for my dad, since his memory has also been getting worse in recent years. He feels like his memory is worse, but mostly what I notice is that he finds it harder to put sentences together. Words don't come to him very easily. This must be particularly challenging for him, since he is an empathetic person, able to relate to many people, which served him well as a much beloved doctor. And following his retirement from medicine he became a poet, publishing several small books of poetry and winning a number of awards. So losing his language ability must be very frustrating for him.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Getting older isn't easy and our society is not well set up for it. Our families are spread out and so the caretaking often ends up falling on just one person, such as a spouse, or having to put elders into residence homes of varying quality of care. And when it comes to death and dying, we hide it away, pretend it doesn't exist until the tragedy is upon us and small amounts of resources such as hospice are available to help us with this part of life that happens to each and every one of us.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div></div><div class="x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r x1vvkbs xtlvy1s x126k92a"><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">Just thinking this through out loud. I don't know how much time my father has left to live. He's often told me he could die any time, partly due to some men in our family dying young, and also no doubt due to his experience as a family practitioner, where one deals with sickness and death regularly. So I internalized this about my dad, in some ways grieving for him years ago. But now the more imminent possibility is upon me, and I wonder how to work with it while maintaining my sometimes stressful busy life as a physicist and just taking care of myself. I think I will get back to some of my art work and some of my family history projects. It feels like this is the best way I can contribute to the collective process of living and dying and making meaning in our world that sometimes moves so fast and changes so quickly that if we're not careful, everything we care about may have disappeared.</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"> </div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXYCvwEORhzu6fSOJH44uwPu7JsL_6Mt_c2M9kPLoO82bhoGJhg5VX3DPHr7A_yek2Q3bdaF-7hsFR5wQOi09d91KUKcMSsI2zroaVya7DJ4cSMPWozZzx22AbYnwcx5KDBeyz0tbV74uXQO_ebgZdi7HjeBNVpVuQ5xb8f9CoTAsJcw4yLJnFUA/s1300/DadAndIGrenobleCentreVille.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1300" data-original-width="1060" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXYCvwEORhzu6fSOJH44uwPu7JsL_6Mt_c2M9kPLoO82bhoGJhg5VX3DPHr7A_yek2Q3bdaF-7hsFR5wQOi09d91KUKcMSsI2zroaVya7DJ4cSMPWozZzx22AbYnwcx5KDBeyz0tbV74uXQO_ebgZdi7HjeBNVpVuQ5xb8f9CoTAsJcw4yLJnFUA/s320/DadAndIGrenobleCentreVille.png" width="261" /></a></div></div></div></span></div></div></div></div>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-9795557244371854252023-04-26T11:13:00.001-07:002023-04-26T11:13:50.294-07:00My talk at NSLS-II user meeting<p> I gave a talk yesterday about my work on online models and control of x-ray beamlines at the NSLS-II user's meeting.</p><p><br /></p><p>https://www.dropbox.com/s/3qgdn3zja4bvgcl/blicon_NSLSII_UM_presentation2.pdf?dl=0<br /></p>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-26731704627159367752023-01-12T20:59:00.000-08:002023-01-12T20:59:06.927-08:00Family story<div class="status__content status__content--with-action" tabindex="0"><div class="status__content__text status__content__text--visible translate" lang="en"><p>I read journals written by my father 25 years ago and I get to know a little more about someone I never really knew. Someone who was never available to me.</p><p>I continue to try to piece together a complex story and my self that would need to be the glue, just isn't strong enough. The pieces clank together, unwieldy and not fitting. A failed marriage. A death. And perhaps my father as well was not up to the task to put the pieces together and so left it to me.</p></div></div><p></p>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-37848942290701929362022-12-27T08:58:00.003-08:002022-12-27T08:58:33.794-08:00Tools for physics and art<p> <span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Trying to get back to being able to calculate stuff in physics, I remember how important discipline and organization are. Where do you write things? Where do you put the paper when completed? If you write on a white board, how do you record it or collect the results going ahead?</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">And there's similar discipline associated with digital work. How to store Mathematica notebooks? At what stage to write up an argument in LaTeX? How to make a good bibliography in bibtex that you can reuse? How to store and access pdfs of reference material?</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> How to store and access books? Does one have a home library where one knows easily where to find Griffiths and Jackson and books on physical chemistry and non-linear dynamics? Does one have a pattern of going to the nearby library and knowing how to find books on the shelf there?</span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">And back to digital, how to organize Jupyter notebooks? And what github repositories does one depend on? What regular habits of computer maintenance and upgrade must one have to ensure access and consistency of one's digital tools?</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">I feel like I moved forward haphazardly regarding all these tools and I've been left without consistent practice. On all fronts, it's more difficult to use these tools.
Discipline is about making choices and following through on them.</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">But one needs a clear goal in order for that discipline to not be arbitrary.
This vacation time is a good chance to consider both the goals and associated practice of working well with ideas and calculations.</span></p><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">I've also been focusing on art and painting recently. And there's also an associated set of disciplines there, that I've been slipping on. Cleaning brushes. Organizing space. Caring for materials.
Yet, again, discipline without goals is sterile. A fruitful mess can be better.</span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></p>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-15004269496815254022022-06-26T04:28:00.002-07:002022-06-26T04:28:40.395-07:00Changing Context (August 5, 2013)<p>
</p><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;">My trip from Grenoble to San
Francisco approaches, and as usual, I find conflicting feelings about planning
for such a trip. On the one hand I want to make sure I plan enough so
that I have a place to stay, and don't get stranded somewhere. On the
other, I want to keep open possibilities and allow things to unfold organically
and give me some freedom to act on possibilities.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;">
<br />
This captures part of the dynamic that freezes me in my planning, but not all
of it. There is a part of me that refuses to plan, refuses to imagine
myself in another place, refuses to believe that this other place exists, and
refuses to believe that I have much understanding of how things will work in
this other place. I try to understand whether it is truly a refusal, or more
a lack of ability. Why does my otherwise creative, highly visual, often
quite organized mind fail me in this basic act of imagination?<br />
<br />
I know that this dynamic has at least some basis in the way I grew up in Santa
Cruz, California. My parents were divorced when I was three, and they had
joint custody over me and my brothers. Until the age of 18, I never spent
more than one week at a time at one house. I went between my mom's and
dad's houses either once or twice a week. The difference between the two
houses was substantial enough that I would have the sense that the rules I know
at one house do not apply at the other. The day of transition became a
kind of event horizon. Not that I so much dreaded it, but that I just
couldn't think past it in certain ways.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I've likened the experience of going back and forth between houses to
diving into a swimming pool. One stands above the swimming pool looking
down into the shimmering depths. Its a hot day, and so one imagines it
might be nice to cool down a bit. However, one knows that the transition
will involve a shock. What one thinks now will be changed. One's
concerns, ideas, feelings in this moment will be interrupted. There is a
shock during that period while the water covers your skin. Its as if you
fall asleep for a moment and wake up in a new watery world. There may be
a brief moment of discomfort, but you quickly adjust, and get used to the new
viscoscity of your environment. You move your body in new ways. The
water supports you in new ways and impedes you in new ways. <br />
<br />
At my dad's house, we were cooked and cleaned for. My step-mother Judy
was a never resting house-keeper, always offering, always doing, always
giving. We were always to be aware of her constant motion and constant
doing. Lying on the couch in the living room, one could be interrupted
with the vacuum cleaner, or mopping, or sweeping, perhaps a suggestion to
go outside and play. One would return home from school to find beds made,
closet rearranged, toys moved. Dinner was regular, an enthusiastic call
to join around the table. Always cooked by Judy. Always comments
about how much work it was and how fast it was gone. Not enough to call
it bitterness, but enough to induce a steady undertoe of guilty conscience and
awareness of the sacrafice and toils of another. What have I done to
deserve this steady flow of hard work and meals directed towards me?<br />
<br />
This sense of induced guilt was supported by a foundation of the story of
Judy's family history. She grew up in Fresno, the child of Armenian
immigrants who had come to the US following escape from the Turkish government
and military intent on wiping out the entire Armenian population. Her
parents had walked across a desert in Syria and Lebanon. Her father had
lived in an orphanage, her mother with a Turkish family. The story of the
Armenian genocide was often present at my Dad's house, and provided a cultural
background, but also a sense of unimpeachability to the value of Judy's hard
work. Both her and my father were working hard. They ran a medical
clinic together, doctor and nurse practitioner. Judy came home and did
double time keeping up a large house for five kids.<br />
<br />
My father was born in New York, and grew up in Los Angeles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was the son of a Hungarian father
and American mother who met in France.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He spent his life continuing the travelling momentum that had carried
his father across the globe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
sought out far away places, particularly liking the islands in the South
Pacific, living with my mother on the island of Yap for a year while my older
brother was a small child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was
in college in the 60’s and was animated by the spirit of that time, going to
the south to fight for civil rights<sup> </sup>(</span><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">1954 to 1968)</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt;">, and spending a few nights in jail for being a
conscientious objector to the Vietnam war (1955 to 1975).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was married to my mom for ten or so
years and after three kids, and a feeling of inadequacy in the marriage,
divorced my mom and married Judy, the nurse practitioner working in his medical
office with two children of her own.<br />
<br />
Like my dad, my mom was also a child of the 60's. She also grew up in Los
Angeles, with Jewish immigrant parents, and later spent time at UC Berkeley
studying literature and dance before her father pushed her into the more practical
career of teaching. She had her wild years as a younger woman, but was
shy and delicate in some ways, suffering from asthma and lacking self
confidence. I don't know whether she was introduced to Transcendental
Meditation before or after marrying my dad, but it became a fixture and a point
of stability in her life. She says that it cured her asthma and gave her
a confidence and a calm that she had lacked before.<br />
<br />
My mom's meditations were a steady element of our life at her house many years
later, as well. For one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening,
she would stay in her room meditating. Besides an occasional reminder to
be a little quieter during these times, my mom's meditation was not much of an
imposition on our life. Although we learned the technique of
Transcendental Meditation and did occasionally meditate separately or together,
there was never any pressure to practice this technique or to get involved in
the heavier side of this Hindu derived new religious movement (which, during
less generous moments, I might classify as a cult). I did struggle to
understand some of the philosophy and basis for the wilder claims such as the
yogic flying and the Maharishi effect, but this was mainly out of an interest
in finding common ground and to be able to be enthusiastic about some of what
my mother believed and what grounded her.<br />
<br />
At my mom's house, we usually all helped out with the cooking, and usually went
grocery shopping together. Having some digestive problems, my mother ate
very bland foods. Although she would offer her own food to us (rice and
lentils or a soup of ground green vegetables she called "green soup")
she knew that we enjoyed a broader set of foods and so would encourage us to
cook these ourselves. So we would shop together at a few local Organic
markets in preparation for our meals. I remember particularly enjoying
cooking burritos and lasagna.<br />
<br />
Thinking back on these years, the odd thing is that life at each house feels so
self contained. I feel like I had two separate childhoods. I don't
feel particularly negative about either house, but I just can't seem to
visualize the whole thing as one piece. I was either at mom's house, or I
was at dad's house. I adjusted myself after the transition. But the
sense of the worlds not mixing remained, and still remains today.<br />
<br />
Today I find myself living in a different culture from the US, in a different
country from the US, on the other side of a large ocean. I adjust.
I find myself pretty easilly fitting into new surroundings. I slowly but
surely learn a new language. But these questions about separation vs.
integration remain.<br />
<br />
I am brought to these contemplations as my trip to the US approaches. I
try to understand why I plan so little. Why do I leave things so
open? Why am I so slow in responding to emails that ask me to articulate
my plans? My feeling is that its like diving into the swimming
pool. New rules will apply on the other side. Once I'm there, I
will find my way. </span></p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-73884730508625299302021-07-11T19:09:00.011-07:002021-07-12T05:33:57.845-07:00Artist Statement<p>I had to create an artist's statement along with a portfolio on <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">: </span><a href="https://www.callforentry.org/" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">https://www.callforentry.org/</a><br />So here it is:<br /><br />
</p><p class="MsoNormal">I have been doing abstract painting for over 30 years. I am
largely self taught, although I have attended several courses throughout my life. I am a physicist by training and profession and the
painting has complemented this work throughout my education and career. <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">To me, painting is a playground where conflicts and
disparate elements may be resolved visually. I draw a lot from the natural
world, having grown up spending a lot of time in redwood forests of California,
and since then in the Alps and now the Rocky Mountains.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">My painting process is interactive. I start with certain
shapes or colors and then I seek to integrate them into a coherent whole,
iterating periodically, reevaluating as the work develops. Growing up in a divorced
family, going between two different homes, painting provided a way to play with
integration of elements that seemed to come from completely different worlds.
Painting became a practice for me to find a vision of integration, or to at
least practice with dissonance. I have mainly worked with acrylic paints which dry quickly and allow for multiple layers as well as blending. <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">My profession as a particle accelerator physicist leads me
down long and narrow paths in my mind to understand subtle dynamics of
relativistic particle motion and creation and evolution of radiation resulting
from these high energy particles. I have recently been experimenting with
integrating some of the equations from my work into the abstract forms in my
paintings, attempting to find peace between the technical mind and the mind
engaged in the human or natural world. I hope that my artistic work may have a
broad resonance in the world today where humanity depends on highly technical
systems that for many are inscrutable. Bringing some of the concepts and
artifacts underlying our technical infrastructure into the human and natural
world feels integrating for myself, and I hope could have a similar effect on
others.</p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-73576387588536505882021-04-10T23:38:00.005-07:002021-04-10T23:47:27.752-07:00Across the Ocean<p><span> </span>Hungary, Moldova, Ukraine, Lithuania, These modern day countries during the 1800's up until 1917 were part of the Pale of Settlement. There were Jewish communities in each of them, still surviving from the original Exodus, not so much from Egypt to the Sinai Peninsula as from Judah and Israel to Babylon. A common thread held these communities together that slid back into time through the Talmud to the Mishnah to the Torah. </p><p><span> </span>And there was another thread would connect the Jewish communities in these four cities. This thread would wind its way around the leaves, branches and trunk that would become my own family tree, leading to my being born in Santa Cruz, California, America in 1976.<br /></p><p><span> </span>The Nasch family lived in the Hungarian city of Nagyvárad, which later became the Romanian city of Oradea following the treaty of Trianon in 1920. Akos Nasch was born in a smaller town of Poklostelek (later known as Poclusa de Barcau), 40 km northwest of Oradea. The Bernsteins came from Lithuania, my great grandfather Herman from Vladislavov, then on the border of Russia and Germany. At the turn of the century, the Finegoods and Silberts lived in Bessarabian Shtetls in Ananyev, Kherson, and Odessa. They would soon be driven out by the anti-Semitism fueled blood libel leading to the Khishinev massacre.</p><p><span> </span>Nasch, Bernstein, Finegood, Silbert, these surnames for my grandparents form the trunk and primary branches of my family tree, leading eventually to my parents Patricia and Peter who would grow up in Los Angeles, California, America.</p><p><span> </span>The Silberts and Finegoods leave the hatred of Bessarabia in the early 1900's and resettle in only somewhat more hospitable lands of central Canada, arriving in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where my grandma Mary would be born in the city of Winnipeg.</p><p><span> </span>Akos grew up and became a medical student, the first in his town to leave, having earned a scholarship at the university of Tours in the Loire region of western France. There he met Dorothy Bernstein at a Purim party a cold February afternoon. A spark was lit that day as they wrote each other letters, from initial furtive visits to growing love. The letter continued as Dorothy and Violet left Tours to Grenoble, and eventually traveled through Europe and then back to America with their famous father, the journalist and patriarch, Herman Bernstein.</p><p><span> </span>Meanwhile, the Finegoods and Silberts have started a store they manage during the cold Canadian winters. Mary Finegood meets Joe Silbert. She admires his piano playing and soon they are married. The families together encompassed close to 30 siblings. The Jewish thread now having crossed the Atlantic and spinning out new threads pushing forward into time through their three children, John, Andy and Patty.</p><p><span> </span>In New York, 1929, Herman's connections to Herbert Hoover have earned him the position of the US ambassador to Albania and the family sets sail back across the Atlantic to take up the post in Tirana, meanwhile leading Dorothy and Akos back together again having continued their courtship by letter in secret. Dorothy had come to call Akos by the name Nicky, and these letters, primarily in French became known later by Dorothy, as the Dorothy-Nicky correspondence, a joke echoing the Willy-Nicky correspondence, uncovered and published by Herman a decade earlier, encompassing secret letters between the Czar of Russia and the Kaiser of Germany. Whereas the Willy-Nicky correspondence led to war, the Dorothy-Nicky correspondence led to marriage.</p><p><span> </span><br /></p>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-9614396842852408062020-12-08T16:48:00.005-08:002020-12-08T16:48:40.117-08:00Finding the big picture<p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">Regarding conflicts, often times the problem is that there's
just not enough space and resources for all involved. When I think of old
conflicts, such as the messy divorce and trajectory of my parents and
step-parents, I try to imagine a larger space in which they exist.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I try to create enough space in my mind that each person can
have their own cohesive existence. Each one of them has a story and is part of
a family. I trace those families back to Los Angeles, Canada, Hungary, Armenia,
Bessarabia and more. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is immigration that is a new start, but there is also
continuity in religions: Judaism and Christianity, artistic continuity of
architecture, cultural traditions of cooking and languages.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are tragedies both personal and on larger scales. The
Jews and the Armenians. Pogroms and genocide. But drawing out even further,
there are empires and nations collapsing and forming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Judea and Israel, Canaan. The Assyrian empire and the
Seleucid empire. Biblical narratives of judges, then kings: first temple, then
second temple, then collapse and diaspora. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Resistance to Christianity and tenacious survival via
consistency of literature and practice.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Likewise, the Ottoman empire, growing then collapsing and
forming Turkey. Armenians caught in between. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Drawing back this far, one sees a bigger picture, and
perhaps some actions, while locally selfish and inscrutable at times, sit
within a larger context that holds them and provides a certain kind of
explanation.</p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-82812689238350203982020-11-16T08:45:00.010-08:002020-11-16T11:09:37.934-08:00Resolutions 1922, Herman Bernstein<p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">This is the day of new resolutions. I promise myself to jot
down a few lines in this book daily. Impressions, incidents, thoughts.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I have just returned from Europe to Sheffield. Europe- the
madhouse of slaughter a few years ago- is now a madhouse of speculation and
profiteering. Everybody is speculating there- old and young, rich and poor –
from abject minister to cook – irrespective of race or creed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">The visa for America is the most coveted thing in Europe.
People struggle and starve for it – people fight and lie – and sometimes die
for it. “Self determination of nations” has created the need for a multitude of
visas to the traveler in Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>People stand in line for days – paying high prices, maintaining large
staffs of visa officials – people are happy when they get the stamp upon their
passports – and then they are searched and scrutinized at the frontiers – they
are roused at night, examined and cross-examined. But the experienced traveller
quickly discovers that the whole affair is but a new source of graft for the
underpaid petty officials, for conductor and frontier guards. Children often
are heard crying that they and their parents can’t get visas. All Europe is
visa-ridden. To return home- to Sheffield- to the peaceful, beautiful
Berkshires now covered with snow- the golden sunbeams playing upon the bluish
white mountains- what a joy! What a relief! Away from the turmoil of the
profiteers from the plunders of the statesmen – from the artificial glamor of
the “antics” and eruption of the conference, “movements” or reforms, and the
clap-trap of world saviors.</p>
<p><style>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-4030538690309890162020-05-03T21:51:00.002-07:002020-05-03T21:57:17.599-07:00Responsible private behavior in a viral pandemicI’m trying to figure out how to apply Kant’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative" target="_blank">categorical imperative</a> to
the present situation of viral pandemic. How should I behave such that I
would be ok if everyone behaved in the same way as I do? I should also
specify that although I hope that I won’t personally get covid-19, I
think of myself as in the low risk group, so my own health is not my
primary <span class="text_exposed_show">concern. (Of course, If I get very sick, this attitude would change quickly.)</span><br />
<br />
<div class="text_exposed_show">
To make it simple, I’d like to allow two types of behavior regarding
care in minimizing spread of the virus. With the public (large numbers
of people), I am very careful. I don’t go to a large gathering without a
mask, shaking many people’s hands, hugging them, and generally sneezing
and touching many surfaces over an extended period of time. When I go
to the grocery store, I wear a mask and keep my distance. I wash my
hands before and after (or wear gloves).<br />
<br />
Next, there are a small
number of people that I do not practice such a careful approach with.
If I were quarantined with my family, that would be the model, but as I
am by myself, I should be allowed a certain number of people to see that
I have a higher chance of spreading or recieving the virus from. I want
to behave in such a way that if everyone followed similar principles,
the virus would stay contained and the number of cases would go to zero.
Suppose we know the probability of spreading the virus publicly (p_pub)
and the number of people I interact with in the public (n_pub). And
likewise we know the probability of spreading the virus privately
(p_priv) and the nunber of people we interact with privately. From our
assumptions, n_pub >> n_priv and p_pub << p_priv. Suppose
that for everyone, these numbers were the same (clearly not true, but
fits with the Kantian thought experiment). If we know n_pub and p_pub
and p_priv what is n_priv so that the global <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number" target="_blank">R_0</a>, (the average number of
persons infected per infected individual) is less than 1?</div>
Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-56381040319660818572019-10-25T20:49:00.002-07:002019-10-28T23:58:11.643-07:00Talk at my thesis advisor's retirement<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thank you to the organizers, Zhirong Huang, Tor
Raubenheimer, Yunhai Cai, and Naomi Nagahashi, for inviting me to participate
in this symposium honoring the career of Alex Chao.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Alex was my PhD supervisor from 2000 to 2006.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I first joined the PhD program in
physics at Stanford in 1999, I had never heard of accelerator physics as a
discipline and had not imagined that this would be my path.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had studied math and physics at Reed
College (a small liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon), and, in starting
the PhD program at Stanford, thought that I might pursue condensed matter
physics or possibly particle physics.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had taken a year off after graduating from Reed, because
initially, I didn’t get into the physics programs I applied to:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Princeton, Harvard, and Cal Tech, if I recall
correctly…. I spent a year in Portland, working for Dr. Richard Crandall in a
basement of a small house above Reed College called “The Center for Advanced
Computation.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This year, I learned how to program computers more
rigorously for the first time, worked on some interesting algorithmic problems
relating to (among other things), data compression for Pixar movies, and
studied and improved my physics GRE scores, such that I now had a more
respectable application, and was accepted to Stanford, along with Columbia
University, and UC Santa Cruz.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To say a little more about my undergraduate experience, I
initially heard about Reed because my father, Peter Nash, went there in the
1950’s planning to study medicine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like
Steve Jobs, however, he didn’t finish at Reed. Instead, he took a year
traveling around Europe, trying to be a writer and find his direction in life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He finally returned to the US, finishing
undergraduate education at San Francisco State University and going on to earn
his MD at University of Southern California.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was at Reed from 1994 to 1998, and I found it highly
stimulating intellectually, although a bit unbalanced socially.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I enjoyed the universal humanities
requirements, covering Greek and Roman history, literature, and
philosophy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I took some more modern
philosophy and literature courses as well.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I started at Reed as a biology major, thinking I would
ultimately study mathematical biology, but the physics department was more
flexible, and allowed me to take advanced courses earlier on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I took electrodynamics, quantum mechanics,
and particle physics from David Griffiths, a wonderful teacher and expositor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a senior, all Reed students are required to conduct
original research in terms of a senior thesis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All of the theses are then collected and displayed in a “thesis tower”
in a actual tower atop the Reed College library.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I worked with Drs. Nicholas Wheeler of the
physics department and Thomas Wieting of the math department.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was Nick Wheeler who first gave me my
thesis problem, asking the rather general question of what it means to move a
physics system around in the world (a problem that would have many echoes with
my later career in accelerator physics).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As a kid who grew up with divorced parents moving between houses twice a
week, this problem had a certain emotional and psychological appeal to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I simplified the problem to be a single
particle moving in a potential energy function and asked what happened to that
particle as the system was moved from point A to point B.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This problem led me to issues such as
adiabatic invariance and pushed me to read VI Arnold’s classical mechanics text
that defined action-angle variables for a variety of physical systems.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In my Reed thesis, I treated the Foucault pendulum, a clock
on a rocket ship, and transport of a central Coulomb potential such as a
hydrogen atom.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although I was satisfied with what I accomplished in this
thesis, I was so focused on this work that I failed to get into graduate
school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As mentioned, however, after a
year working with Dr Crandall, I was ready to start at Stanford.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At Stanford, one has a full year to find a research group
and I started in my first quarter in experimental particle physics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was not very satisfied with this work and
continued to explore my options.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sometime during that quarter, there was an event where all the different
research groups were represented, and one could ask questions and find an appropriate
group.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I spoke with someone at this
event and described my undergraduate research.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They suggested that I talk to Ron Ruth at SLAC and consider accelerator
physics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had little idea what that
might involve, but I followed up on this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I talked to Ron and he arranged that I give a talk on my undergraduate
work in the ARDA BIG (Beam Instability Group) meeting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alex was there at this meeting and we started
to talk about working together after that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first problem that Alex gave me was a two macroparticle
model for the head-tail instability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
like that it was something I could get to work on immediately and feel like I
might make a contribution to the field.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He showed me data about the so-called “sawtooth instability” and
suggested a simple model may be able to explain it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I worked on a number of such “small” problems with Alex
before finding a larger thesis project to develop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I worked out analytic expressions for fringe
fields for a solenoid, and though about whether one could observe quantum
effects in beam dynamics by analyzing the evolution of the Wigner
function.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These problems all planted
seeds that I would later return to, with other instability problems, and use of
the Wigner function to describe partially coherent synchrotron radiation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remember the day that Alex had an idea that was to form
the foundation for my thesis work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
drew a simple diagram on his white board with two particles performing Coulomb
scattering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given the initial positions
and momenta of the particles, one could compute the change in momentum
resulting from the scattering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now apply
this to al the particle pairs in the beam distribution, and one has a new way
to analyze intrabeam scattering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By
forgoing the use of cross sections, and just computing classical orbits
directly, there was a hope that we might be able to formulate the IBS growth
rates in a way that avoided the logarithmic divergences of the usual
approaches.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By considering the time to the distance of closest approach
t_min and limiting the scatterers in a time Delta t to t_min < Delta t, I
was able to derive expressions for IBS diffusion and damping coefficients that
did not have the logarithmic divergence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was even able to reduce the 12-D integral to a 2-D bounded integral in
the case of a Gaussian distribution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
the result could be computed without too much difficulty!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I showed how this formulation could be
reduced to all other IBS formulations that I knew of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By comparing to results such as those of
Piwinski and Bjorken-Mtingwa, one could “derive” the Coulomb logarithm rather
than have to put it in by hand with an ill-defined b_min and b_max cut-off.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Through the whole process, Alex was always available and
always able to give just enough feedback to encourage me to continue and
occasionally to discourage me from following unpromising lines of
research.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Piece by piece, and conversation
by conversation with Alex, the work came together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[PAC PAPER]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now that we had a general approach for deriving the
diffusion and damping in IBS, I needed to better understand the Gaussian beam
distributions in electron storage rings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These distributions arise by equilibrium between diffusion and damping
from synchrotron radiation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Alex proposed that I look at what happens near a
synchro-betatron coupling resonance, particularly when the coupling term came
from dispersion at an RF cavity, or due to a crab cavity, which is a topic of
interest in colliders, creating so called “crabbed collisions “.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I tried to formulate the problem using perturbation theory,
considering the coupling term as small.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It toom me some time to realize that working near a resonance means that
one needs to do degenerate perturbation theory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>On resonance, two eigenvalues are equal, and on needs to find the right
way to break this degeneracy and find the “good” linear combinations of
eigenvectors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Using the tools of
degenerate perturbation theory in quantum mechanics that I had learned from
David Griffiths at Reed but applied to symplectic matrices instead of Hermitian
operators from QM, I could solve this problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After finding the expressions for the eigenvalues an eigenvectors near
resonance, I included the damping and diffusion from synchrotron radiation to
find equilibrium eigen-emmitance and beam second moments.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, everyone has heard of Alex’s so-called SLIM
formalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My contribution was to find
analytic expressions near resonances.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The last piece was to add on the effect of IBS to get a
theory that included coupling and IBS together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I wrote all this up in my thesis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I want to take a moment to acknowledge some of the other people
besides Alex who helped me with my PhD thesis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>First, and foremost, I’d like to acknowledge Juhao Wu.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was really a pleasure to work with him,
and he helped a lot both with talking through the concepts, and with
implementation of the equations to get concrete numerical results out of
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Overall, I enjoyed interacting with all the members of the
Beam Instability group in ARDA at SLAC.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Notably, Karl Bane also helped with the work on IBS and I had many
helpful discussions with Sam Heiffets, Ron Ruth, and Gennady Stupakov.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another memory I have of this time is a period of at least 6
weeks when my main activity was trying to track down a factor of 2 in the
overall normalization of the IBS formulas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m appreciative to Alex for letting me move along at my own slow pace,
with confidence that I would finally solve the given issue in a finite amount
of time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I finally finished my thesis in 2006 and defended it to
achieve my doctorate degree!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I applied for post-doctoral positions at this time and I recall
that I was debating between working with Alex Dragt at University of Maryland
on abstract beam dynamics and other mathematical topics, and a position in the
design team for the NSLS-II at Brookhaven National Lab.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although Alex Chao has the highest respect
for Alex Dragt, he encouraged me to get involved with the more practical beam
dynamics work at NSLS-II, and after some reflection, I followed this
advice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At NSLS-II, I worked under the direction of Johan Bengtsson,
moving from linear dynamics to non-linear dynamics, computing dynamics aperture
and Touschek lifetime with errors for the NSLS-II lattice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although I ended up disagreeing with Johan on
many things, I’m very thankful for how he pushed me to include so many
realistic effects in my beam dynamics calculations.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In a way, this approach I learned from Johan was the
opposite approach I had used during my PhD work with Alex, in which one seeks
simple mechanisms underlying complex dynamics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I came to appreciate that for machine design work, both approaches have
their place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I later worked under Sam
Krinsky, doing both practical simulations and some theoretical work as well.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the end of my post-doc position at NSLS-II, I found two
options for my next position.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first
was in Campinas, Brazil, working on the design for the new Sirius light
source.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other position resulted from
a visit from Pascal Elleaume from ESRF in Grenoble, France.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I emailed him asking about a position, and
they opened one up, and I had an offer to work there with him and Laurent
Farvacque.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I decided to take the
position in France.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I spent 8 years in Grenoble at the ESRF first as a post-doc,
and then as a scientist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had an
opportunity to work on many electron beam dynamics topics, from collective
effects to non-linear dynamics, and even spin dynamics via resonant
depolarization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition, one of my
main interests while at ESRF was working with beamline scientists to understand
their experiments and the relation to the electron beam dynamics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition, I met experts on x-ray optics
and learned about ray tracing and wave front propagation through x-ray
beamlines.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I really liked the broad range of science being done on the
x-ray beamlines and enjoyed explaining how the electron beam dynamics
worked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was amazed to find out that very
few beamline scientists knew even basics about accelerator physics and beam
dynamics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I prepared a series of
lectures at ESRF with the help and encouragement of Luigi Paolasini, and
explained to beamline scientists and other technicians at ESRF how radiation
damping and diffusion works, about betatron and synchrotron motion and about
beam growth and loss mechanisms such as IBS, Touschek scattering and collective
instabilities driven by impedance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I felt I was carrying on the tradition I had learned from
Alex in which accelerator physics and beam dynamics is seen as a topic of great
interest in its own right, with all the needs for development and academic
rigor of any other physics domain.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After 8 years at ESRF, my time in France came to an end, and
I decided to return to the US.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found a
position at RadiaSoft in Boulder, Colorado and have been working there for the
past 2 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My work at RadiaSoft
continues several threads that I have followed in my career in accelerator
science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One strong interest I developed
throughout my several different positions was in ease of use issues with beam
dynamics and x-ray optics codes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At
NSLS-II, I worked with the code Tracy, managed by Dr. Bengtsson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At ESRF, I worked with Accelerator Toolbox
(AT), first developed here at SLAC by Andrei Terebilo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In both cases, I sought to develop an open
source collaboration for the software.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There are so many codes, and each is very challenging in its own
way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finding ways to develop
collaboration and improve documentation and ease of use of these codes is
something I believe I can continue with through my work at RadiaSoft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time, I continue with some of the
challenging accelerator science, studying topics such as polarization evolution and
preservation in electron ion colliders and magnetic undulator design and x-ray transport in synchrotron beamlines.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I would never have followed this journey through high
energy, short wavelengths, and fantastic complexity manifesting out of simple mechanisms
if I hadn’t had the good fortune to encounter and work with Alex Chao in my
career.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And thus, I add my own story to
all the others we hear today to get a glimpse of the impressive legacy that
Alex has given us and how his may contributions and academic approach to
accelerator science and beam dynamics will continue to bear fruit in future
generations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks for all this,
Alex.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And thanks to all of you today for
listening to me tell my story!</div>
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</style> Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-34412551439510945282019-08-03T08:28:00.002-07:002019-08-03T08:28:54.605-07:00What I believeWhat do you believe? (by Hana Hammer, undated, circa 2000)<br /> _______________________<br />
In being grounded<br />
<div class="text_exposed_show">
in being centered<br />
In the passion of creative fervor<br />
In working hard for that which creates the passion & excitement, the ideas, the love for creation<br />
In belonging<br />
In feeling the sense of belonging of a group & making others feel that they belong<br />
In clear thinking, in down to earthness<br />
In earthiness<br />
In health food, organic farming, & conscientious capitalism<br />
In deep eyes, deep friendship<br />
In the dark of a theatre as the curtain rises or swings back for a show<br />
in gift exchange & reciprocation<br />
in yoga, stretching breathing, slowing down, clearing the Mind of abstraction<br />
in laughter<br />
In dancing madly<br />
In honesty<br />
In honoring my moods<br />
In honoring & respecting my needs</div>
Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-6711496032208509972018-11-29T20:43:00.001-08:002018-11-29T20:43:14.831-08:00religion of text editorsMy colleague has recently been encouraging me to learn <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi" target="_blank">vi</a>. Vi has long been on my list of things to master that I just never quite got around to.<br />
<br />
<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span><span> <span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g"><span><span>I
think this topic also interests me because some
people can be so passionate about it that they end up giving bad advice to others.
There's a kind of religious component to it which is something I keep coming back to in my life. <br /><br />W</span></span><span><span><span>hy
should choice of text editor have a religious component? (But then why should normal form theory in non-linear dynamics in particle accelerators have a religious component?) I think it has something to do with certain people
that have dedicated years of their lives, if not the majority of their
lives to technical development within a very limited domain. In order
to live in such a limited domain, one must make every detail extremely
significant. <br /><br />There is something about life under constraint that pushes the
development of religious perspective. But then someone who doesn't
live under the same constraint interacts with these people, or the tools
they have developed, and the person who lived under constraint assumes
that others will have the same constraints. This might be out of
ignorance, or perhaps subconscious malice, the kind of psychological
process by which trauma recreates itself. Something along these lines
is going on in the VI vs. Emacs religious wars. But in the end, these
are powerful tools which ought to be learned. Can't we find ways to teach these powerful tools
without recreating the old traumas of those forced to work in such
constrained circumstance?</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-47037897049984751722018-08-18T14:06:00.001-07:002018-08-18T14:06:22.734-07:00Silberts and Finegoods<div data-contents="true">
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="38ri5" data-offset-key="4f59k-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4f59k-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="4f59k-0-0"><span data-text="true">Grandma Mary writes:</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="38ri5" data-offset-key="58c6b-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4avmq-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="4avmq-0-0"><span data-text="true">"My parents were Attel or Ethel and Abraham Finegood. They came from Russia - all of them at a time when Jews were being killed and made very unwelcome - and they headed for the new land, America, in the under deck of a ship - I do not remember too much about their passage to the new world. I learned that Joe's parents and mine had known each other in Russia. My father played an instrument like an oboe and was in the tsar's orchestra so he had evaded going into the Russian Army and came out alive. I do not know too much about that time in their lives. I do remember my mother telling me that she loved to swim."<br /><br />I learn from other relatives, that Abraham came from Odessa. Grandpa Joe's parents were Louis and Molly and Louis came from Kherson. Here are entries for Kherson and Odessa from the Jewish virtual library</span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4avmq-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="4avmq-0-0"><span data-text="true"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4avmq-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="4avmq-0-0"><span data-text="true">https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/odessa</span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4avmq-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="4avmq-0-0"><span data-text="true">https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/kherson</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-11671044579176925522018-07-22T11:34:00.003-07:002018-07-22T11:34:46.324-07:00sociology of high energy physics Sharon Traweek, "Beamtimes and Lifetimes", page 78:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"There is, its seems to me, a cluster of subliminal messages in<br /> these picture captions; that science is the product of<br /> individual great men; that this product is independent of all<br /> social or political contexts; that all knowledge is dependent<br /> upon or derivative from physics; that only a very few<br /> physicists will be invited into the community of particle<br /> physics; and that the boundaries of particle physics are<br /> rigidly defined."</blockquote>
Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-35556500136103364322018-05-22T18:35:00.001-07:002018-05-22T20:13:10.573-07:00Hana Memorial<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Nash family came to Petrolia every summer from around
1982 to 1992 to spend two weeks of vacation enjoying our time together as a
family, away from work for Peter and Judy, and school and also our other
parent’s house for the rest of us kids.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We
would load up our huge white suburban van from our house on Granite Creek road in Santa Cruz,
5 bikes attached to the back, and full to the brim with clothes, art supplies
and whatever else we needed for our trip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We spent the night at the White Deer Motel near Willets and finished our
journey the next day, stopping at Murishe’s in Redway to stock up on food for
the lunches and dinners Judy would make, and our sugar cereals for the mornings-
Captain Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We
spent days on the Mattole river, swimming, making mudball tracks, skipping
rocks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this cabin here on
Evergreen way, we climbed this great Maple tree in the front yard, played
Tiddly Winks, Monopoly, Poker.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
particularly remember spending time with Hana, those summers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her creative energy was abundant with
writing and art work, and organizing Rocky (then known as Elijah) and I in
theater productions, which we performed for Petrolia neighbors, here in our
cabin.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Growing
up with Hana in Santa Cruz, I was probably the brother who was closest to
her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her spark and curiosity about
people opened up the world of people’s inner lives in such an engaging
way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I studied math and physics,
and though Hana did not engage in the same technical abstraction as I did, her
questions and interest in my work could bring back my own love for the
subjects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many times, when my
enthusiasm for physics was flagging, Hana’s engaging interest could remind me
of my early and true motivations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Our
conversations about our family were equally stimulating, ranging from how the
trauma of the Armenian genocide had been passed down through the generations to
how the quest of Herman Bernstein (my great grandfather) to understand the
origins of war and honor the Jewish people weighed on us today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Talking to Hana, life felt big and
important.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Hana
and I grew apart over the years as she tried to find her place in the world as
a sensitive artist and I pursued my own views and work in academics and
science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I worked with complex,
ambiguous views of the world and our family, and Hana maintained a more childlike
purity and certainty in her convictions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I searched for a balanced picture where all the various parts of my
family could coexist, and she focussed on the purity of those moments of
togetherness and support where her creativity thrived, and she felt direct
connection to the spirit of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I was in the process of mending together for myself the disparate pieces
from the two sides of my family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hana was sympathetic, but following her own path.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Even
when we hadn’t been in touch for many months, Hana would be on my mind almost every
day for the past ten years or so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I often pictured her here in
this cabin on Evergreen way, even years before she moved to Petrolia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes, when I was off in New York,
or in France, and my origins seemed so far away, I would picture returning to
this cabin , where Hana would be there to offer me something that would be the
key to reclaiming some lost part of myself.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
Hana actually moved into this cabin, however, a few years back, it was very
hard for me to accept.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew she
was struggling, not finding the collaboration and respect she yearned for, and
some slow process of mental illness was taking its course through her in both
hidden and overt ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She claimed
this cabin as her own, without giving reasons I could understand, and getting
angry if questioned on this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She
needed a home and felt entitled to one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I decided I would accept her living here, but withdraw my interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This would be Hana’s home, and not a
home for me: the family concept I was working with: Nash/Hammer/Kamian/Silbert/Bernstein,
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would keep seeking elsewhere for
the tenuous sense of extended family I had started to consolidate in my life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Spending
time here in this cabin, a few months ago after Hana had disappeared, however,
I felt that I rediscovered Hana’s perspective and her spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hana’s intesity of caring, aesthetic
sense, and conviction was compelling and softened my heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I discovered the tape in the player
next to her bed with her interview of her grandparents, Pares and Seto, looked
through her books on Armenian culture and history, and other causes of social
justice such as justice for the native Americans and African Americans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I read some of her recent journal
writing on restorative justice.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
found the sense that the world is big enough for many different stories, and I
finally felt ready to start exploring the meaning of our stories, mine and
Hana’s with their points of commonality and their divergences, that of the Jews
and the Armenians, American stories of immigration, settling in a new world,
and being given the permission and encouragement to dream of a new world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sadly, though I am now ready to share
again on this adventure with Hana, she is no longer here.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
am grateful to Hana for the years we spent dreaming together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now that she is gone, I can only
attempt to respect and love her spirit and her dreams and use that inspiration
to help work for the creation of a more just world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
was talking with an old friend of mine, Josh Chang recently about his mom’s
death, and he said that its sometimes appropriate to don rose-colored glasses in
remembering loved ones who have died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His mom, Jancy, was also an amazing creative soul, who descended into
dementia at the end of her life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
I can understand this sentiment, but </span>I’ve never been one for rose-colored glasses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m a firm believer in looking into the depths, with its
beauty together with its ugliness and challenges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a slow process that takes energy and patience-
finding a balanced view within a complex, fraught situation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Finding
this balance in perspective and emotion with respect to Hana, who played such a
large role in my life, will be an ongoing task for the rest of my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For today, I am grateful to gather
together with family and friends from Petrolia to start this process together,
as sad and confusing as it may be for all of us.</div>
Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-2284389504175393222018-04-14T14:41:00.002-07:002018-04-14T14:46:19.611-07:00Textual analysisI've been going to Saturday morning Shabbat services, and one of the
many aspects I appreciate is the respect given to text- particularly the
Torah and the Siddur (prayer service). There was a long time when I
thought that the bible was not very interesting and problematic in many
ways, and the focus on this particular text is a bit arbitrary. But the
traditions and interpretations that build up around texts are valuable
and represent important loci of knowledge of how comm<span class="text_exposed_show">unities can stick together and support each other. </span><br />
<br />
<div class="text_exposed_show">
On a somewhat related point, I recently read about <a href="http://joshblackman.com/blog/2018/04/12/students-at-cuny-law-protested-and-heckled-my-lecture-about-free-speech-on-campus/" target="_blank">this incident</a> where
law professor Josh Blackman was invited to give a talk on the legal
side of free speech at CUNY law school. A protest was organized and he
was heckled and called a racist and oppressor and students attempted to
intimidate him and prevent him from speaking. In the end, he stayed and
engaged with the few students who wanted to hear him speak. He
maintains an "originalist" interpretation of the US constitution, and is
a member of the federalist society.<br />
<br />
Now, both the Torah and US
constitution have material that one may object to, but I'm getting more
sympathetic to the view that one should take the original documents very
seriously, and then work with how they have been interpreted over the
years. Its too easy to just throw the whole thing away and think you
can do a better job. Is this viewpoint making me a conservative?
Perhaps. I like to think this is the basic perspective of an
intellectual- someone who takes texts and ideas seriously and has some
respect for traditions of interpretation.<br />
<br />
Of course, some of the
most repressive regimes arise out of taking texts to be immutable and
implementing a rigid interpretation of their strictures. The important
point to not lose is that there are different traditions of
interpretation, and this is where one can push towards different
outcomes. Tying these discussions to texts and referencing past
interpretations gives one the wisdom of time to see how different
textual interpretations have coexisted within communities or societies
and what kinds of outcomes resulted.</div>
Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-22052455562358457762018-03-10T20:35:00.002-08:002018-03-10T20:36:18.749-08:00Kaddish, poem by Dorothy Nash 1977<style>
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</style> Kaddish<br />
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<br /></div>
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David
is dead.</div>
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David
my brother is dead.</div>
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Yis gadal, v’yis kadash…</div>
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I
was my brother’s keeper.</div>
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For
a few short years</div>
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I
was my brother’s keeper.</div>
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But
time did change the roles</div>
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And
he became my strength, my rock.</div>
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Now
he is dead.</div>
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——-</div>
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From
inherited memories of Russian pogroms,</div>
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From
the sweatshops of New York,</div>
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From
the hills of Massachussetts</div>
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To
the cities of the world,</div>
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An
urban and an urbane man</div>
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Whose
clarion voice was ever heard</div>
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Against
hypocrisy and cant;</div>
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He
wandered</div>
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And
stopped awhile</div>
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And
traveled on again</div>
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Until
he came to Susqeuhanna country.</div>
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Standing
at his window,</div>
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Looking
at the broad lawn sloping to the river:</div>
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Susquehanna
and Chenango</div>
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And,
from his childhood,</div>
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The
Housatonic, too.</div>
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What
wonderful river names</div>
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The
old, sweet-sounding Indian names.</div>
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What
wonderful country</div>
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The
green and rolling hills,</div>
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The
wild flowers of this land,</div>
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Goldenrod
in golden waves,</div>
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And
Queen Anne’s Lace</div>
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And
purple mallow.</div>
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Now
here at last he found his home,</div>
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His
work, his friends, his people.</div>
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Susquehanna
country.</div>
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<br />
——-</div>
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Can
I say</div>
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That
he is gone?</div>
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And
must I cry forever?</div>
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For
this I know</div>
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Beyond
the tears,</div>
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Beyond
the thrusting pain:</div>
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All that he was</div>
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Remains as long as memory remains.</div>
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—Dorothy
Nash, (197?)</div>
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Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13957333.post-10072778768941290082018-02-09T22:02:00.001-08:002018-02-09T22:02:14.623-08:00Portion of letter from Tel Aviv by my fatherOctober 28, 1959<br />
<br />
Life on a kubbutz is a wondrous thing. I could gladly spend my life here. The people... every single one of them an idealist. They are strong, they are smiling, they are beautiful. There is much laughter and song here. There is much togetherness: as a community we eat and work, sing and play. But often we can be alone to read, to listen to music, to wander along the beach. There is complete freedom here. One works <u>with,</u> not <u>under</u>. There is no director, no boss. Each person is an equal individual.<br />
<br />
Today as I was standing, pitch fork in hand, on a huge pile of green silage, I was exultant. I was exultant looking first upon the many bales of golden hay, the neat houses with well-trimmed lawns, the barns, the cattle, the white waving wheat, the dark citrus groves, the deep blue sea, and then, all around us, grinning in defeat, the dry waterless desert. There are still jackals on the sands, howling at night. Here is something one can truly feel for.<br />
<br />
From nothing was this land conceived. It is one of the driest, most sterile, rockiest places I have ever seen. But Israel blooms. There are green fields and cool orchards, gleaming white cities, immense irrigation projects. And there are people! People who have been persecuted for five thousand years. Jews from Iraq and Morocco, Jews from Germany and Yemen. And on their faces is not only the dream of a hundred generations, but the spirit of Israel today. I have never felt so alive and aware as I am now. I have never been so proud as I am now. And I have never believed in anything so strongly as I believe in Israel. Boazhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06155550486435568853noreply@blogger.com0