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.