Artist Statement

I had to create an artist's statement along with a portfolio on : https://www.callforentry.org/
So here it is:

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

Across the Ocean

    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. 

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    

Finding the big picture

 

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.  Resistance to Christianity and tenacious survival via consistency of literature and practice.

Likewise, the Ottoman empire, growing then collapsing and forming Turkey. Armenians caught in between.

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.

Resolutions 1922, Herman Bernstein

 

This is the day of new resolutions. I promise myself to jot down a few lines in this book daily. Impressions, incidents, thoughts.

 

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.

 

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.  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.

Responsible private behavior in a viral pandemic

I’m trying to figure out how to apply Kant’s categorical imperative 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 concern. (Of course, If I get very sick, this attitude would change quickly.)

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).

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 R_0, (the average number of persons infected per infected individual) is less than 1?

Talk at my thesis advisor's retirement

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.

Alex was my PhD supervisor from 2000 to 2006.  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.  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.

I had taken a year off after graduating from Reed, because initially, I didn’t get into the physics programs I applied to:  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.”

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.

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.  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.  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.

I was at Reed from 1994 to 1998, and I found it highly stimulating intellectually, although a bit unbalanced socially.  I enjoyed the universal humanities requirements, covering Greek and Roman history, literature, and philosophy.  And I took some more modern philosophy and literature courses as well.

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.  I took electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, and particle physics from David Griffiths, a wonderful teacher and expositor.

As a senior, all Reed students are required to conduct original research in terms of a senior thesis.  All of the theses are then collected and displayed in a “thesis tower” in a actual tower atop the Reed College library.  I worked with Drs. Nicholas Wheeler of the physics department and Thomas Wieting of the math department.  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).  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.  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.  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.

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.

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.  As mentioned, however, after a year working with Dr Crandall, I was ready to start at Stanford.

At Stanford, one has a full year to find a research group and I started in my first quarter in experimental particle physics.  I was not very satisfied with this work and continued to explore my options.  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.  I spoke with someone at this event and described my undergraduate research.  They suggested that I talk to Ron Ruth at SLAC and consider accelerator physics.  I had little idea what that might involve, but I followed up on this.  I talked to Ron and he arranged that I give a talk on my undergraduate work in the ARDA BIG (Beam Instability Group) meeting.  Alex was there at this meeting and we started to talk about working together after that.

The first problem that Alex gave me was a two macroparticle model for the head-tail instability.  I like that it was something I could get to work on immediately and feel like I might make a contribution to the field.  He showed me data about the so-called “sawtooth instability” and suggested a simple model may be able to explain it.

I worked on a number of such “small” problems with Alex before finding a larger thesis project to develop.  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.  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.

I remember the day that Alex had an idea that was to form the foundation for my thesis work.  He drew a simple diagram on his white board with two particles performing Coulomb scattering.  Given the initial positions and momenta of the particles, one could compute the change in momentum resulting from the scattering.  Now apply this to al the particle pairs in the beam distribution, and one has a new way to analyze intrabeam scattering.  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.

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.  I was even able to reduce the 12-D integral to a 2-D bounded integral in the case of a Gaussian distribution.  So the result could be computed without too much difficulty!  I showed how this formulation could be reduced to all other IBS formulations that I knew of.  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.

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.  Piece by piece, and conversation by conversation with Alex, the work came together.  [PAC PAPER]

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.  These distributions arise by equilibrium between diffusion and damping from synchrotron radiation.

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 “.

I tried to formulate the problem using perturbation theory, considering the coupling term as small.  It toom me some time to realize that working near a resonance means that one needs to do degenerate perturbation theory.  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.  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.  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.

Of course, everyone has heard of Alex’s so-called SLIM formalism.  My contribution was to find analytic expressions near resonances.

The last piece was to add on the effect of IBS to get a theory that included coupling and IBS together.  I wrote all this up in my thesis. 

I want to take a moment to acknowledge some of the other people besides Alex who helped me with my PhD thesis.  First, and foremost, I’d like to acknowledge Juhao Wu.  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. 

Overall, I enjoyed interacting with all the members of the Beam Instability group in ARDA at SLAC.  Notably, Karl Bane also helped with the work on IBS and I had many helpful discussions with Sam Heiffets, Ron Ruth, and Gennady Stupakov.

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.  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.

I finally finished my thesis in 2006 and defended it to achieve my doctorate degree!

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.  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. 

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.  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.

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.  I came to appreciate that for machine design work, both approaches have their place.  I later worked under Sam Krinsky, doing both practical simulations and some theoretical work as well.

At the end of my post-doc position at NSLS-II, I found two options for my next position.  The first was in Campinas, Brazil, working on the design for the new Sirius light source.  The other position resulted from a visit from Pascal Elleaume from ESRF in Grenoble, France.  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.  I decided to take the position in France.

I spent 8 years in Grenoble at the ESRF first as a post-doc, and then as a scientist.  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.  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.  In addition, I met experts on x-ray optics and learned about ray tracing and wave front propagation through x-ray beamlines.

I really liked the broad range of science being done on the x-ray beamlines and enjoyed explaining how the electron beam dynamics worked.  I was amazed to find out that very few beamline scientists knew even basics about accelerator physics and beam dynamics.  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.

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.

After 8 years at ESRF, my time in France came to an end, and I decided to return to the US.  I found a position at RadiaSoft in Boulder, Colorado and have been working there for the past 2 years.  My work at RadiaSoft continues several threads that I have followed in my career in accelerator science.  One strong interest I developed throughout my several different positions was in ease of use issues with beam dynamics and x-ray optics codes.  At NSLS-II, I worked with the code Tracy, managed by Dr. Bengtsson.  At ESRF, I worked with Accelerator Toolbox (AT), first developed here at SLAC by Andrei Terebilo.  In both cases, I sought to develop an open source collaboration for the software.  There are so many codes, and each is very challenging in its own way.  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.  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.

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.  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.  Thanks for all this, Alex.  And thanks to all of you today for listening to me tell my story!

What I believe

What do you believe? (by Hana Hammer, undated, circa 2000)
_______________________
In being grounded

in being centered
In the passion of creative fervor
In working hard for that which creates the passion & excitement, the ideas, the love for creation
In belonging
In feeling the sense of belonging of a group & making others feel that they belong
In clear thinking, in down to earthness
In earthiness
In health food, organic farming, & conscientious capitalism
In deep eyes, deep friendship
In the dark of a theatre as the curtain rises or swings back for a show
in gift exchange & reciprocation
in yoga, stretching breathing, slowing down, clearing the Mind of abstraction
in laughter
In dancing madly
In honesty
In honoring my moods
In honoring & respecting my needs

religion of text editors

My colleague has recently been encouraging me to learn vi.  Vi has long been on my list of things to master that I just never quite got around to.

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.

Why 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.

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?

Silberts and Finegoods

Grandma Mary writes:

"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."

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

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/odessa

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/kherson

sociology of high energy physics

   Sharon Traweek, "Beamtimes and Lifetimes", page 78:

    "There is, its seems to me, a cluster of subliminal messages in
    these picture captions; that science is the product of
    individual great men; that this product is independent of all
    social or political contexts; that all knowledge is dependent
    upon or derivative from physics; that only a very few
    physicists will be invited into the community of particle
    physics; and that the boundaries of particle physics are
    rigidly defined."

Hana Memorial

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.

            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.  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.

            We spent days on the Mattole river, swimming, making mudball tracks, skipping rocks.  At this cabin here on Evergreen way, we climbed this great Maple tree in the front yard, played Tiddly Winks, Monopoly, Poker.

            I particularly remember spending time with Hana, those summers.  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.

            Growing up with Hana in Santa Cruz, I was probably the brother who was closest to her.  Her spark and curiosity about people opened up the world of people’s inner lives in such an engaging way.  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.  Many times, when my enthusiasm for physics was flagging, Hana’s engaging interest could remind me of my early and true motivations. 

            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.  Talking to Hana, life felt big and important.

            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.  I worked with complex, ambiguous views of the world and our family, and Hana maintained a more childlike purity and certainty in her convictions.  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.  I was in the process of mending together for myself the disparate pieces from the two sides of my family.  Hana was sympathetic, but following her own path.

            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.  I often pictured her here in this cabin on Evergreen way, even years before she moved to Petrolia.  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.

            When Hana actually moved into this cabin, however, a few years back, it was very hard for me to accept.  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.  She claimed this cabin as her own, without giving reasons I could understand, and getting angry if questioned on this.  She needed a home and felt entitled to one.  I decided I would accept her living here, but withdraw my interest.  This would be Hana’s home, and not a home for me: the family concept I was working with: Nash/Hammer/Kamian/Silbert/Bernstein,  I would keep seeking elsewhere for the tenuous sense of extended family I had started to consolidate in my life.

            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.  Hana’s intesity of caring, aesthetic sense, and conviction was compelling and softened my heart.  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.  I read some of her recent journal writing on restorative justice.

            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.  Sadly, though I am now ready to share again on this adventure with Hana, she is no longer here.

            I am grateful to Hana for the years we spent dreaming together.  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.

            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.  His mom, Jancy, was also an amazing creative soul, who descended into dementia at the end of her life.  I can understand this sentiment, but I’ve never been one for rose-colored glasses.  I’m a firm believer in looking into the depths, with its beauty together with its ugliness and challenges.  This is a slow process that takes energy and patience- finding a balanced view within a complex, fraught situation.

            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.  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.

Textual analysis

I'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 communities can stick together and support each other. 

On a somewhat related point, I recently read about this incident 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.

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.

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.

Kaddish, poem by Dorothy Nash 1977

Kaddish

David is dead.

David my brother is dead.

    Yis gadal, v’yis kadash…

I was my brother’s keeper.

For a few short years

I was my brother’s keeper.

But time did change the roles

And he became my strength, my rock.

Now he is dead.

——-

From inherited memories of Russian pogroms,

From the sweatshops of New York,

From the hills of Massachussetts

To the cities of the world,

An urban and an urbane man

Whose clarion voice was ever heard

Against hypocrisy and cant;

He wandered

And stopped awhile

And traveled on again

Until he came to Susqeuhanna country.

Standing at his window,

Looking at the broad lawn sloping to the river:

Susquehanna and Chenango

And, from his childhood,

The Housatonic, too.

What wonderful river names

The old, sweet-sounding Indian names.

What wonderful country

The green and rolling hills,

The wild flowers of this land,

Goldenrod in golden waves,

And Queen Anne’s Lace

And purple mallow.

Now here at last he found his home,

His work, his friends, his people.

Susquehanna country.

——-

Can I say

That he is gone?

And must I cry forever?

For this I know

Beyond the tears,

Beyond the thrusting pain:

     All that he was

    Remains as long as memory remains.

—Dorothy Nash, (197?)

Portion of letter from Tel Aviv by my father

October 28, 1959
    
     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 with, not under.  There is no director, no boss.  Each person is an equal individual.

     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.

     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.

Letter from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, 1963

Dear Mom and Dad,
     There are two fights here, and not one: the negro insisting upon his rights often takes second place to the internecine strife between the "Uncle Toms" who want to go slowly and take things easy, and the liberals who push and push-- sometimes so hard that they push themselves out of any Negro backing.  There are resignations and counter charges: the Pine Bluff Youth Movement becomes the Pine Bluff Progressive Movement and a new faction takes over.
     Seven months ago the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee sent a white field representative to Pine Bluff.  Bill Hansen is 24, dedicated, lives and dreams civil liberties.  He has had a very difficult time getting accepted by the Negro community(46% of the total population of Pine Bluff), but now is accepted wholeheartedly by the liberal faction and has been complained about to SNCC headquarters by the conservative Negro faction.  They want him out since one of his ideas is to fill up the jails.  His idea--which I subscribe to entirely-- is that once a kid gets sent to jail for freedom he is more than ever committed to the movement.
     I am living at Freedom House, the headquarters of the Pine Bluff movement.  There is another white boy from California.  What I do is difficult to say.  They won't allow us to picket or demonstrate or sit-in.  White agitators-- "nigger lovers"-- are the quickest means of starting violence.  Therefore, anything that we do must be circumspect.
     This afternoon, Governor Faubus spoke at the dedication of a new building at the Negro College.  Since yesterday, when I got here, I have been making posters for the kids to carry, such as
                                            Governer Faubus--
                                              Would you send Your children
                                                       HERE?
                                       ----------------------------------

                                        New Buildings Don't Teach--
                                        They only salve consciences.
                                       ----------------------------------

     Who carries these signs?  Who has sat in or lain in or stopped buying at certain stores?  Who has gone to jail repeatedly?  A bunch of negro kids whose average age is 15!  Many 13 and 14 year old girls.  There are a few older boys of 17 or 18.
     There is a terrific spirit here in the 15-year-olds.  Unfortunately, this age group is the only communication with SNCC though they have tried the high school and "college" ages with little success.
     Yesterday we arrived an hour or so before 25 kids were released after 3 days in jail for sitting in the public library and demanding that they be issued library cards.  It was amazing to see how sophisticated in the ways of non-violence they were and also how backwards they were in most of their education.  Adamant about civil rights and ambitions no higher than the army or being a bootlegger.  But to hear them talk!  How they walked into the paddy wagon with their heads up and singing freedom songs; how they insisted that their names be spelled correctly when booked-- that their parent's name have a Mrs. or a Mr. in front of it.  How they sang for 3 days in jail with only 1 meal all that time, with very little water in cells that were 120-130 Fahrenheit.  (It is 2 in the morning now and the temperature in this cool house with a big fan is about 85 degrees.)  How they had no mattresses and slept on the stinking, filthy floors, eaten by roaches and fleas.  How they sang until they were hoarse.  Many of these were kids who had just finished taking part in a sit-in where they were locked in a part of a restaurant, hundreds of whites were jeering outside and the owner threw in large Dixie cups of ammonia and acid after thoughtfully turning the heat up full blast in the middle of the day.  When some of the kids got sick and passed out, the other sit-inners panicked and tried to get out.  After someone was knocked through a plate glass window the rest got out and by some miracle only a few were hurt by the white mob outside.
     So these were many of the same kids who just got out of jail and yet they all picketed Faubus.  We couldn't go because we would be white agitators.  Therefore we strolled up to the college which was swarming with police and troopers.  We passed the first cordon of them-- just going to hear Faubus and nowhere in sight of a picket line--when a policeman stopped us and motioned us into his car because we "looked funny".  After all, not too many whites ever step on the premises of a negro college.  Then we were driven downtown and locked safely up in the city jail.  A short time later we were released.
     This evening we went to a mass meeting where there were spirituals sung, and the preachers exhorted the negroes to stand up, to fight, to register, to vote.

     All this in two days.  How much I can do is doubtful.  But we are working on some sort of education plan that perhaps can be of some service in.

     Do not worry.  We do not want to get into any violence or go to jail since we are told this only hurts the civil rights movement.
                                                       Love,
                                                       Peter

My dad travels to Iceland

August 1, 1965
Reykjavik, Iceland

Dear Dad,
     It is cold here in Iceland and the wind blows at almost all times, but always in the back of the wind.  Surrounding one wherever one goes is the silence of an island somehow removed from the rest of the world in time and space.  I walk along deserted roads that lead nowhere, through meadows filled with flowers blowing furiously in the wind and shining in the clear northern light that only goes out for about one hour every 24.
     After the South, with its hot, humid violent days, Iceland is just the place to be.  Nothing to do, few people to talk to and a chance to get to know myself as well as nature.  I walk a great deal: 7,8,9,10 hours a day along the great, deep fjords, from one tiny village to another, through the streets of Reykjavik.  My body feels hard and healthy.  I can respond well to the quiet beauty of Iceland.  It is eerie here the wild ponies running through the green meadows, the forbidding clouds, the ruins of a 1000 year old civilization, the days that never end, the nights that never come, the boiling springs, the glaciers.  Iceland is a place that exists in dreams, in old books.  I feel that I have stepped into another age.
     This is all vague -- no facts, just musings, just wanderings.  But for this month I shall continue to lead a vague wandering life that has no relation to my life at home or in school but maybe closer to me that my usual life.
     In the evenings, I read French poetry -- by day I walk.  Now-- this is all that I desire.
                                               Love,
                                               Peter

Letter from my father to his parents during the civil rights movement in 1965

                        Tuesday morning, July 12  (1965, Bogalusa, Louisiana)

Dear Mom and Dad,

            As usual, no one in the Civil Rights movement knows what will happen in advance.  You may have heard that the Voter’s League rejected the 30 day moratorium on marches and demonstrations suggested by the Governor.  Therefore we will probably march this afternoon without a permit, probably cross the river to the court house and there may be mass arrests.  I will march at the end as usual in my white coat but I will not get arrested if I can help it.  I’m more useful now out of jail.

            Marching is an amazing experience; one is reminded of the Roman prisoners being paraded back in Rome.  Shouts and curses by the onlookers, there are confederate flags waving everywhere and gangs of teen age boys walk along taunting us.  As a white and as an obviously medical personnel I am often singled out: white trash, they jeer and their favorite epithet: Nigger Ben Casey!

            Along side of us and separating us from the white Bogalusa populace are long lines of blue shirted state troopers carrying pistols, rifles, machine guns, billy clubs.  We are followed by a bevy of police cars, some canine corps filled with barking German shepherds and a school bus (to pick up the demonstrators and take them to jail) flying a confederate flag.  With all the police we are presumably safe.  So far, only one shooting incident has occurred.

            The Medical Committee is housed with a Negro family- the Smiths.  He works in the Crown-Zellerback corporation, is a deacon and carries a gun wherever he goes.  His wife is a deaconess.  When the Klan rides at night, all lights go out in the Negro community and men and women sit up on their rocking chairs talking and cradling their shot guns.

            The spirit here in Bogalusa among the Negros is very high.  Mass meetings are well attended.  Last night I heard Lomax speak: poetry, as well as a gift of $15,000 for the Bogalusa Voter’s league.

            It seems like a very long time that I have been down here in the South!  I suppose this is partly because each moment is made important by the fact that one cannot take anything for granted.  At night we are not supposed to drive except with an armed armed deacon.  Like the front lines of a war, there are things we can do, things we cannot.  We do not know what to expect.  Therefore the present becomes of much greater import.

            Dad—I am looking forward to your description of your trip, especially when you were in Hungary.  Mother, you should be leaving soon and therefore Bon Voyage.  Don’t worry—things are fine.  I’m looking forward to my trip to Iceland.

                                                            Love,

                                                            Peter

Stereotypes

     I was shopping at Trader Joe's this evening and as I finished putting my purchases on the counter, the cashier asked me in an oh so casual way how my day was going.   It took me aback.  I didn’t know how to answer.  He was approaching me like an old friend with good understanding of me, as if asking me how the whole scenario of US relocation was going.  But he had only known me for 30 seconds.

     As I sit at my computer, reflecting on this, the first frame that comes to mind is reverse culture shock.  I start to write from this perspective.  I start to contrast this experience in Trader Joe's to how I felt shopping in France, following a familiar storyline based around a simple binary between public warmth in the US and public coldness in France.

     On reflection, two thoughts emerge that complicate this story.  The first is that if I think back in more detail to my French shopping interactions, it is not a sense of rudeness that comes to mind (at least not in the majority of cases).  I actually remember how sweet the employees at Franprix were that I shopped at weekly in Grenoble.  No, they didn't ask me a lot of questions and get to know me personally, but they were certainly warm and welcoming to me.   It strikes me that they would not deign to intrude on my private life.  They would not assume familiarity with someone they have spent such a small time getting to know.  While it is certainly a more formal approach, it also leaves a lot of room for mutual respect, and a sense that one can navigate substantial personal difference within the frame of this respect. How do we deal with real difference if we start with this assumption that everyone is just like us?

     The second thought that occurs to me is that the way I felt taken aback by the employee at Trader Joes and other businesses in America is similar to the feeling I experienced with respect to the homeless people on the street in Grenoble.  They were sharp and impeccably friendly and polite and invasive of personal space.  These encounters actually really disturbed me because I felt like this person shouldn’t be on the street if they have the psychological accuity to peg me and my mood in 10 seconds and try to draw me in to a friendly conversation.  Why don’t they use these reserves of mental health and psychological strength to earn money in a more productive fashion? In contrast to many American beggars who often strike me as truly destitute and on the edge of health and sanity, I was not motivated to give money to many of the French beggars.

     In any case, I’m not sure what conclusion to draw from these reflections on public formality versus familiarity and similarities between customer service in the US and homeless beggars in France.  But it does remind me to pause and think for a moment before spouting off stereotypes.

Roots

As I prepare to leave Grenoble and start up a new life in Boulder, Colorado, I think about the moving process and also about what it means to have roots.

We often think of having roots in a country or in a region as meaning that we have a history there.  Our parents and grandparents and perhaps even many generations further back may have lived in this region.  This is an important definition of roots, and a powerful basis for a sense of belonging and embeddedness in one's life.

I want to consider a different definition of roots which is more directly related to the biological notion of plant roots.  Roots are a network that allows the plant to be nourished.  From this perspective, we can think of creating new roots in a more directed fashion.  In some ways, this is what I have attempted during my time in France.  For example, learning French is part of developing roots because it leads to such an array of connectedness and ability to communicate for practical needs, emotional connection, and general cultural belonging.  Knowing which grocery stores to go to, how to apply for a carte de sejour, and reading train and bus schedules is also a form of roots.

This line of thought also allows us to think about which kinds of environments may be suitable for us to live.  Some city or region may have many resources available to those who live there, but without the appropriately developed roots, one won't be able to take advantage of them and be nourished by them.

Of course, people aren't plants, but we all need nourishment, in so many different ways.  I think it is a valuable pursuit to start to make our roots in the world more visible!

Community?

Seeking community here.  The fog of language.  The separations.  “Les associations sont très figés,” I offer the group of Baha’i organizers who try to enthuse me about their vision of service and community growth at Achene's house in Fontaine.

            This is offered in response to a statement about how it is difficult to interface with the French associations.

            I try to develop my own sense of what positive work is in the development of community.  I log onto networked social software platforms like Twitter and Facebook, creating casual connections with people spread geographically.  Many I knew from before and I feel closeness and kinship.  But what is the common ground of life now?  An illusion of community is created.  It is illusory because we don’t actually have shared responsibility; or not by default, at least.

            The Baha’i group impresses me with its effectiveness, but as always, I wonder about that which is not said.  Only successes are shown.  They seem to have such a confidence in their rightness of approach.  But that approach is not up for discussion.  The answers lie in the writings of Bahá'u'lláh, their interpretations by Abdul Baha and translations by Shogi Effendi.  Why choose this body of writings to found a new society?  And why the reluctance to attempt to convince via the ideas and coherence and rightness of the vision?  Instead I see the flexibility of a group that wants to govern, and its principles will adjust to the circumstance.

            Wendall Berry writes about the value of community, and its role in protection of some human values.  He always insisted community be tied to a geographical particularity, a piece of land.  Only the ties and care for a particular piece of land is adeauate to create the shared identity and responsibility that fulfills the full sense of the word community.

            The Transcendental Meditation organization also seeks a new government, a new organization of world society, here based on the writings and person of the ellusive guru who called himself the Maharishi.  Here, the outreach is achieved by meditation and a highly unlikely link made to quantum field theory.

            But with TM, the inward turn is encouraged.  Indeed, through this turning inward, the benefits to society are assumed to flow.

            How do we form a local community when so many have origins elsewhere?  I look to my own family history, Jews dispersing from a misty Eastern Europe of my imagination.  Shtetls in Ukraine and Moldova, complex political background in the Lithuanian city of Vladislovov on the German-Russian border.  My step-mother’s Armenian relatives fleeing a hostile Turkey, marching through desserts to Lebanon and Syria.

            And now I’ve gone back across the Atlantic, following abstraction, mathematics and science, trying to settle in a mountain surrounded cuvette of Grenoble.  Does it do my own life justice to imagine there will be a complete stopping of this generational motion?  Will I integrate into an old community, adding my spice and flavor to the mix?

            The loose ties on the digital, social networks can drain meaning from attempts at coherent social organization.  But they also create new possibilities, hinting at new stabilities.