It would not be Christmas without Jeanine’s popovers and despite the new setting, they remained on the menu for our traditional breakfast. I was in charge of preparing grapefruits and bacon, tasks that require little proficiency in actual cooking. Missing from the table and days festivities was Nicolai who is still under quarantine. We are hoping his Covid test tomorrow morning will be negative in which case he will be able to join us.
The family is celebrating Christmas this year at an old farmhouse in Vermont. Jeanine reserved the AirBnB rental property while we were still living in the River House and had insufficient space to entertain the entire crew (because I had already gutted 2/3 of the structure). At the moment, Nico has yet to join us. A teacher at his school tested positive for Covid last week and he is self-quarantining at home until the incubation period expires and will drive up on Sunday if he continues to test negative. We are sharing the farmhouse with Jeanine’s sister, Susan. Wood-burning stoves are the primary source of heat and very welcome after long strolls in the frigid air. Pictured below in the foreground on the left is the farmhouse.
In August, I returned to Iceland for the third time, part of a larger travel adventure that included the Faroe Islands and Copenhagen. I had hoped to see the Fagradalsfjall volcano erupting but had to settle for a barren lava field. Still, no trip to Iceland goes unrewarded and I got many great photographs of my favorite locations.
The Faroe Islands were spectacular and I was able to visit 7 of the 18 islands in a rented camper van with pop-up roof. I was graced with unusually good weather and pressed my drone into constant service, the only way to capture the full grandeur of the islands.
The final leg of my journey was spent in Copenhagen where I met up with my soccer team from the US to compete in an international tournament. The perfect end to a wonderful vacation.
With Covid risk continuing to decline, I started to do more short-range car travel including trips to New York, Connecticut (to watch the US Women’s Soccer Team play Mexico), and New Jersey (to watch Nico’s New England Amputee Soccer Team play New York).
On the Fourth of July, I visited Fort Independence on Castle Island to watch the USS Constitution, the world’s oldest floating ship, as members of the crew performed a 21-gun salute to celebrate the holiday.
By June, the threat of Covid was ebbing and both Jeanine and I had received two doses of the vaccine. We traveled to Minnesota to see my mother, brother, and his family. The visit was all too short but immensely enjoyable. Later in the month, we celebrated with Kyle who purchase his first home in Medford, MA. The real estate market since the onset of Covid has been nothing short of insane. Kyle spent months of diligent research, countless home visits, and several unsuccessful bids before landing a gem.
Matt Baird has volunteered with Open Table since he was in high school demonstrating much greater responsibility and caring than most teenagers earning him the respect and admiration of the entire staff. When he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, members of the Open Table staff and volunteers were there for him. When asked by the Make-A-Wish foundation what wish they could fulfill for him, he asked for a donation to Open Table. Rarely does one encounter such selflessness and generosity in a person so young and with his own challenges to overcome. This morning, Jeanine accepted his donation in a small ceremony at the Open Table pantry which she asked me to photograph. The money received will be used to buy an additional freezer which will be playfully named in his honor, the Matt “Brrrd” Freezer.
May is an excellent time of year for birding. Many species migrate back from their winter homes, it is warm enough to enjoy being outdoors, and trees have not yet leafed out making it much easier to spot and photograph subjects. I was fortunate to discover an owl’s nest which I visited often over the course of the month and got to watch as a pair of owlets grew up and eventually fledged. Equally exciting was learning about a bald eagle nest located less than a mile from our new house. It fills me with great joy that these majestic once-endangered birds have made such a strong recovery. A powerful reminder of our ability as humans to harm our natural world as well as our capacity to help it heal.
May was also the month in which Nicolai graduated with a Master’s Degree in Education and he now teaches history at the Concord Middle School.
During April, outdoor socializing became the norm to reduce the risk of Covid transmission. Our fire pit, fashioned from a large copper cauldron once used by the Roselyn Bakery of Indianapolis to make caramel corn, was pressed into service on a routine basis. We welcomed Jeanine’s sister Lauren and her husband Bob to our new home, I hosted my soccer team for one of our post-match parties, and the kids joined us for dinner on most Sunday nights.
As if to make up for the harsh storms of February, March ushered in an early spring. The kids visited us most Sundays for a family dinner and helped out when it came time to burn off all the dead limbs that had accumulated in the yard.
Nicolai began organizing an amputee soccer team for the New England region and also competed in his first 5K road race.
February brought massive amounts of snow and I spent a lot of time indoors working on different design concepts for the new house. Each iteration produced a more refined layout and improved model fidelity.
At Digital Alloys, my development team made a monumental breakthrough by printing a thin wall metal part with a 45-degree unsupported overhang. After years of investigation and experimentation, this milestone proved that our proprietary process could be made to work and was the cause for unbridled celebration at the company.
I have decided to devote the next 12 blog entries to a Year in Review series with photos from each month of 2021. In January, Jeanine and I had moved into our new house on the Sudbury River and I was busy preparing it for renovation. Pictured here is the former artist studio stripped down to the framing. I did all of this work before later deciding that it would make the most sense to completely demolish the house and start fresh. In total, I gutted 2/3 of the house before reaching that conclusion.
I hired Maya and her boyfriend to help with filling one of several dumpsters needed to haul away the debris. I think it is safe to say that we packed those dumpsters as efficiently as humanly possible.
Having started consulting work with Amide Technologies this week, I wanted to finish setting up a proper video studio from which I can conduct remote video conference meetings. It will do double duty as my photo studio, the essential difference being whether I use continuous or strobe lighting. I installed a system for supporting standard paper backdrops (107″ in width) from the ceiling. It allows me to easily switch between up to three different color backdrops by rolling them up or down using the plastic chains on the right side. I loaded it with neutral grey and white for the moment. The temporary desk is set at the correct height so that when placed on top, my laptop’s built-in camera is at eye level and the panel light above it is positioned correctly. I know this is overkill for Zoom meetings, but my background in video production makes me sensitive to doing this in an optimal fashion. The uniform backdrop improves isolation when using a virtual background (my favorite is the office I had while living in Indianapolis).
Pictured here with her escort and grandson Rory, my 93-year-old mother was recognized by the Tango Society of Minnesota as a “Tango Treasure” at their year-end gala held at the recently renovated Granada Theater. She has been ballroom dancing since her early twenties. It is how she met my father who was putting himself through college as a ballroom dance instructor at the time. Among the 140 attendees, she was there to dance and had no idea she would be honored in this way. She is an inspiration to our entire family and an example of how pursuing your passion keeps you young at heart.
Jeanine spent the weekend on Martha’s Vineyard with her good friends Irene and Carolyn. Pictured here with the former in front of a one-of-a-kind lobster trap Christmas tree replete with buoys as ornaments. I spent the time alone getting organized for my new work assignment and completing the setup of my new shop.
There is no doubt that Jeanine is the master cook in this family. My contribution in the kitchen is generally relegated to peeling, slicing, and chopping tasks for which I seem adequately proficient. Today, I was promoted to caramelizer and charged with bringing this mixture of water and sugar to the perfect color and texture before introducing cubed chicken and bok choy to complete a recipe for Vietnamese Caramelized Chicken. The head chef seemed pleased with my work.
I spent time curating my collection of photos today with the goal of getting the total to under 100,000. If I spent only 1 second viewing each image, it would take more than a day just to look at them all, hence the ongoing effort to purge. While doing so, I came across the photo of Maya above taken in early 2008. Below is a photo of the same child nearly 14 years later. Despite the amount of work to catalog and index the collection, it is all worthwhile when I find memories like this. I wonder if Maya has any recollection of her early climbing exploits.
Today, I entered a consulting agreement with a very early-stage life sciences startup called Amide Technologies. The company has developed a protein printer (depicted above) that can synthesize arbitrary proteins with lengths of up to 250 amino acids. Proteins are large, complex molecules that play many critical roles in the body. They do most of the work in cells and are required for the structure, function, and regulation of the body’s tissues and organs. Proteins are made up of hundreds or thousands of smaller units called amino acids, which are attached to one another in long chains. The sequence of amino acids determines each protein’s unique 3-dimensional structure and its specific function. These are literally the building blocks of life. Sticking to my goal of remaining semi-retired, I have limited my consulting time to 40 hours per month. I will be leading the engineering team with the goal of accelerating the speed of the printer by 100 times. It is a daunting challenge, but I already have thoughts on a new machine architecture that will make this possible. I will continue to work with my existing clients but will not be taking on any new ones for the foreseeable future.
The reason we call the home we are currently living in the Road House is because it is located very near to Route 2 on the side opposite Emerson Hospital. To say we are a stone’s throw from the hospital would be a slight exaggeration, although I am confident I could hit their parking lot from our backyard. We have grown accustomed to the occasional ambulance siren and the very rare helicopter landing. Yesterday, however, while working at my computer, I heard siren after siren arriving at the hospital. I thought it might be some type of mass casualty event and walked outside to investigate. What I saw was the entire Concord Fire Department on scene and people evacuated from the building. Eventually, fire trucks from Lincoln also rolled up. As best I can tell, it was a false alarm but it made for quite an exciting show of fire fighting force.
Jeanine asked me to photograph a number of raffle prizes that are being offered in a fundraiser for the Maynard Business Alliance to promote small store shopping within the community. Although I still have not set up a proper studio at the Road House, I did have access to my lighting equipment for the first time in over a year which helped me get the results I was after.
From the Facebook page of Massachusetts State Senator, Jamie Eldridge.
Always great to stop by the St. Matthew’s Festival of Sharing, a very impressive set-up of tables to support local, regional and international charities, by buying amazing holiday gifts, crafts made in developing countries, and the “Cookies per pound” table that I went a bit overboard on this year! Picked up a stunning straw decoration from Uganda, glazed plate from the West Bank in the Palestinian Authority, and bread heating plates from Bangladesh! Always wonderful to see my friend Dorothy Werst at her Boston Share Network table, Jeanine Calabria at Open Table which is now delivering food to Afghan refugees settling in Lowell, and to support the Toto Club helping children living in poverty in Kenya. The Festival of Sharing is open until 2 pm today, please stop by & give generously!
In early spring, we are planning to demolish our River House to make way for the new one. By then, I hope to have found a new home for or recycled all of the useful building materials. Pictured above, is our oil-fired furnace and air conditioner loaded onto a truck destined for a second life. Pictured below, from a few weeks ago is our water heater and dishwasher on their way to a new family. Over the weekend, I also removed all of the copper and bronze pipes from the house. They will soon find their way to a metal recycler. It is very satisfying to see all these items repurposed rather than winding up in a landfill somewhere.
When we purchased the Road House, the seller asked if we would like her to leave an artificial Christmas tree behind. I assumed it was too large for her new Boston apartment. When I assembled it today, I discovered the real reason. About a quarter of the pre-hung lighting strings were not working. Other than this, the tree is very nice so I decided to fix the lights. After replacing 98 burned-out bulbs and only restoring function to half the lights, I decided to call it quits after two hours with only two replacement bulbs left. Making the job most tedious was the fact that I had to swap the base on each bulb since the replacements were not a good match to the originals.
Late in the day yesterday, I passed another kidney stone. This one measured 5mm by 3mm. I have been feeling a little under the weather for the last few days but did not make the connection. Back in April, a CAT scan revealed that I had about a dozen stones in my kidney. By my count, that leaves another 8 or so to go. With encouragement from Jeanine and a new Soda Stream machine, I have been drinking considerably more water than in the past. On a positive note, the lower back pain from which I have been suffering for the last year seems to be abating. That, or my brain has rewired itself to ignore those nerves. Either way, I am grateful.
Today, I completed the remaining work to decommission the heating oil tank from the River House. I cut the middle section of the tank off and then proceeded to muck out the sludge (about 2 gallons worth) from the bottom of the tank. The work was time-consuming but not difficult. I cut the bottom off a plastic milk jug which served admirably as a mucking scoop. Kitty litter worked perfectly to absorb the small amount of remaining oil in the tank. Finally, I used an eco-friendly degreaser to remove all remaining residue from the tank.
Maya will graduate from Olin in the spring with a degree in robotic engineering. Two of the companies with which she interned have been actively recruiting her for full-time work after she graduates. The first, Rivian, is an electric car (adventure vehicle) company headquartered in Irvine, CA. The second is Formlabs, a 3D printer company located in Somerville, MA. It will surprise no one that her mother and I (and her brothers) would really prefer to see her remain in the area. At the same time, we want most for her to be happy. It has been clear that she was most excited by the mission of Rivian but earlier today she concluded that the actual day-to-day work at Formlabs would be more in line with what she wants to do long term. We could not have been more thrilled when she informed us this evening that she had accepted the Formlabs offer. A burrito celebration is being planned.
Fall color has lasted longer than ever before this year. This photo was taken ten days ago across the street from the River House. One of the last remaining stands of color in the area, the leaves were incredibly vibrant in the morning sun.
Among other projects I tackled today was the decommissioning of our 300-gallon fuel oil tank in preparation for demolition. Step one was disconnecting the filler and vent pipes as well as the supply lines feeding two furnaces. Step two was cutting off the top third of the tank which took about thirty minutes to make the circumferential cut in the 1/8 inch thick steel. Step three, shown above, was draining the remaining oil from the tank by lifting the side opposite the drain valve. Later this week, I will return to cut off the middle third which will make it possible to muck out the sludge at the bottom of the tank. I will filter the remaining heating oil (about 6 gallons) and pour it into the tank at Kyle’s house or find a neighbor who would like a couple of days of free heat. Once the inside of the tank has been cleaned, I will dispatch the metal to a scrap yard for recycling.
For some time now, I have been searching for a better way to keep the bits I most commonly use with my drill/driver close at hand. After trying a number of different ideas, I finally settled on the use of cup magnets. Each 3/4″ magnet is attached to the tool where the belt hook is normally secured. The four bits I most often use are a #2 Phillips, #2 Square Drive, #8 Flat, and a T25 Torx. I am very pleased with this solution and have now similarly fitted my two other drill/drivers. Odd, what simple things can give me such joy.
Maya was not pleased with the dinner rolls she baked for Thanksgiving and decided to make a new batch today. Apparently, the dough did not properly rise last time and there was much discussion between mother and daughter as to the best approach to proofing. Jeanine and I were treated to the improved rolls, hot from the oven, as we binge-watched Ted Lasso with Maya who has not seen it yet.
Yesterday’s Thanksgiving Day bocce tournament gave me an opportunity to photograph the kids without the normal pushback I get when pointing a camera in their direction. Our family has a long tradition of playing this multi-generational game when we gather for the holidays. My father, who introduced my siblings and me to bocce, would be very happy to see that his grandchildren have embraced the game as well. If there is an afterlife, I am sure my dad was smiling yesterday.
We had a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Everyone in the family is healthy and pursuing their passions. We have a green light to proceed with our new house plans and found a great place to live during construction. Kyle is enjoying his new home as we work together on renovating his basement. Nicolai is just back from Costa Rica where he scored 6 goals for the US National Amputee Soccer team during three matches with the host country. Maya has one term remaining before graduating with a degree in robotic engineering and is already fielding job offers. Jeanine continues with her important work at Open Table finding new ways to meet the ever-increasing need for food relief. I am enjoying semi-retirement and am about to start a substantial consulting project with a fourth client. Maya, Jeanine, and I started the day with a 5K Turkey Trot. Jeanine and I walked the course while Maya ran it. Later in the day, the boys joined us for a bocce tournament in the backyard (Maya won MVP honors for some very impressive, if very lucky tosses). We were joined by one of Nico’s roommates, a close friend of Jeanine’s, and her mother for Thanksgiving diner which featured contributions from all participants. I was the designated potato peeler and masher. We normally go around the table before beginning diner to share that for which we are most thankful. With so many guests joining us this year we opted to bypass the tradition so we could enjoy the meal while it was hot. Therefore, I will record my thoughts here; I am most thankful that my cousin Edward appears to be on the road to recovery after suffering a serious stroke. He is an amazingly fit, highly competitive triathlete and the news of his situation came as a great shock. I am not one who believes prayers are answered but I am praying for him every day nonetheless.
