It has been a memorable summer for the kids but all great things must come to an end. Today is the first day back to school for Maya (entering 8th grade) and Nicolai (now a high school senior). Meanwhile, Kyle has another two weeks or so before he returns to Santa Clara which starts much later than most other colleges. It has been a great summer for me as well but I always look forward to the fall, my favorite season, which I can now feel in the air.
After a wonderful sourdough French toast breakfast prepared by Maya we returned to Concord. These portraits, taken yesterday, include my mother, the 2-year-old daughter of Edward’s girlfriend, and my Uncle Bob.
City Island, made famous by the movie of the same name, is approximately 1.5 mi long by a half mile wide and has a population of 4,400. Vinny took Jeanine, Kyle, Bob and I on a tour of the island after we made the transit across Long Island Sound in his motor boat. Jeanine, not a fan of adrenaline producing activities, will long remember the ride. Pictured above is the Harlem Yacht Club one of the oldest in the United States, relocated here from Harlem in 1899.
During the afternoon I took the kids on a little outing. We hiked the nature trails of the Alley Pond Park encountering a Great Egret and a massive windmill relocated here from Douglaston under the supervision of my uncle. We then stopped at the historic Saddle Rock Grist Mill which was in continuous operation from 1700 until 1940 producing flour made from corn. Our final destination was the United States Merchant Marine Academy (also know as King’s Point) where Kyle and I toured the grounds while Maya decided to sleep in the car.
During the evening we were joined by my cousins Anita, Jackie and Edward and their spouses/significant others for a family reunion. Bob cooked salmon steaks on the grill. Yummy!
The 9/11 Memorial at ground zero was opened to the public a year ago and we were privileged to be given a tour of the beautiful pools and park by a close friend of the family, Vinny, a former firefighter who escaped with his life on that fateful day some eleven years ago. It was a very moving experience, greatly amplified by the perspective of someone who grew up with and worked alongside many of the victims, who witnessed people jumping to their deaths to escape the inferno, who narrowly escaped the collapsing towers himself, who toiled through unimaginable conditions to search for survivors in the days that followed and who played Taps on the bugle at many of the funerals of his fallen brothers. This is a day I will not soon forget and am so thankful to Vinny for sharing his story with us. His account of the day and details of the tragedy are now burned into my consciousness as vividly as the images I witnessed on the day of the attack.
Our group which included my mother, Maruja, Bob, Kyle, Maya, Jenaine, Vinny and I next toured the Trinity Church and Churchyard, located at Wall Street and Broadway where Elizabeth Coddington, a relative of Bob’s is entombed. She shares her resting place with many historical figures including Alexander Hamilton (a founding father), William Bradford (Plymouth governor), Franklin Wharton (third Commandant of the United States Marine Corps), Robert Fulton (inventor of the steamboat), Captain James Lawrence (commander of the USS Chesapeake during the War of 1812) and Albert Gallatin (the longest-serving United States Secretary of the Treasury).
After enjoying lunch at a phenomenal Indian restaurant (thanks to Jeanine’s keen sense for good food) our family hopped the subway for Times Square while the older folks returned to Douglaston. It was the first time visiting for Kyle and we all enjoyed taking in the chaos at the heart of NYC.
Bob treated us to dinner at the historic Douglaston Club of which he is a member and former Commodore of the Douglaston Yacht Squadron which is headquartered there. The meal was outstanding and capped a day steeped in history and fine dining.
I worked for a half day today before Jeanine, Kyle, Maya, and I departed for NYC to visit my mother who is living with her sister and brother-in-law in Douglaston. Nicolai has a soccer match tomorrow and is not able to join us. We made the journey in less than four hours encountering very little traffic considering the holiday weekend. My aunt and uncle have a magnificent home which overlooks Little Neck Bay and is just steps away from the dock from which we are shuttled to their sailboat. Not long after arriving my Uncle Bob had us on the water with Kyle at the helm and Maya helping with the jib lines. A constant strong breeze, ideal temperatures, and a full moon provided the perfect ingredients for an evening sail. Pictured below is the Throgs Neck Bridge with the Whitestone Bridge in the background. When we returned, my mother and her sister, Maruja, had prepared a lovely dinner over which we had an opportunity to catch up on family news.
On my commute to work this morning I paused for a few photos of a field full of sunflowers about a half mile from our house. I believe these are being grown by Verrill Farm, our local source of fresh vegetables. I need to return with a tall ladder to get the shot I would like to have of this field. I will need to do so before the crop is harvested. I remember last year having a similar idea only to find the entire crop gone in one day.
When I first arrived at iRobot my team was primarily involved with robots used for floor care (fantastic products, but not really all that glamorous). Pictured here, charging her batteries, is a new iRobot product for the tele-medicine market developed in partnership with InTouch Health. This autonomous robot can navigate its way, unassisted, around a hospital, allowing a distant medical specialist to make rounds, meet with, and examine patients from a remote location. It is one of the first products developed entirely on my watch and I am very proud of the team who worked tirelessly to complete this incredibly sophisticated design on an insanely short schedule. Code named Ava, she is certainly one sexy android.
Ava is pictured in front of our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) wall of fame. Employees who support STEM initiatives in the community earn a “gear” with their name on it to celebrate their contribution to building awareness and interest in STEM education among young people. I earned a gear for my work with CCHS but it is outside of the frame.
Nicolai and Sarah Welch have been dating for the last month or so. She joined the family for dinner the night before last and I deemed that enough time had passed to require an official portrait of the two together. The pair were a breeze to pose and I only needed a few attempts to settle on this keeper.
Richard White loved to experience wild and beautiful places. At age 49, he had recently left Ferring Pharmaceuticals after a 12 year career with them, most recently as the Director of Exploratory Pharmacology, and was looking for a new job where he could pursue drug discovery and medical innovation for rare and neglected diseases. White earned his PhD in Zoology/Endocrinology from the University of Texas at Austin and went on to post doctoral research positions at the University of Manchester in London and Stanford University (my alma matter). He was married to German born Silke White, owner of Silke Smiles, a dental arts and technology boutique and was father to 21-month old Mona.
Last week White was making a repeat visit to Denali National Park for a planned 5-day solo back country trek. He enjoyed photography and spent the last 8 minutes of his life capturing 26 images of a 600 pound male grizzly bear on a gravel bar of the Toklat River some three miles south of the rest stop (pictured above) used by park buses to transport visitors into the park’s interior. The first photo was taken from a distance of 75 yards and the last from a distance of 60 yards as White approached the bear. In the last five frames, taken over 13 seconds, the bear stops foraging on berries, takes notice of White, and begins to approach him in what has been described as a non aggressive manner. What happened next has yet to be determined exactly. What is known is that Dr. White was mauled to death by the bear which was killed the next day by a state trouper after confirming its identity from the photos and having discovered it still guarding and feeding on the body. News of this gruesome event certainly caught my attention having stood on the banks of the same river with Jeanine exactly three weeks prior to the incident. Park biologists report that 12 grizzly bears have been living near this section of the Toklat this summer putting the odds at 1 in 12 that the bear pictured below was the killer. I took this photo from a park bus through an open window in the immediate vicinity of the attack.
Did Mr. White run from the bear as it began to approach triggering its chase-prey response? Did the bear feel that it’s feeding area was being encroached upon? Were there other grizzlies in the immediate vicinity heightening the bear’s sense of territoriality? These questions may never be answered. What is clear is that Richard White made a series of decisions that contributed to his death. He entered known grizzly habitat alone and without bear spray. He elected to take photographs for several minutes rather than retreating from the feeding bear as his mandatory back country safety briefing advised. He has become the first bear fatality in the entire recorded history of the Denali National Park and his story will no doubt strike fear in the hearts of millions rather than building respect for one of nature’s magnificent creatures.
My heart aches for his wife and daughter and I find myself deeply saddened by the death of a man I did not know, perhaps because we are of a similar age and shared many interests. While his death was untimely and tragic, I believe he departed this world doing what he loved in a place he loved. When my time comes, I hope the same can be said of me. I would rather die in mortal combat with a bear than in a traffic accident with a drunk driver or in a hospital bed in a state of decrepitude.
For the record, I carry bear spray in a chest harness (aiding rapid deployment) whenever in bear country. Had I been in Richard White’s shoes I would have likely remained to take photos and moved closer as well. Had the bear noticed and begun approaching me, I would have backed away slowly, calmly talking to the bear (“Hey bear, hey bear”) while releasing the safety on my pepper spray and making ready to fire it if required. While I do take some chances in my desire for adventure and compelling photographs, I try to balance this risk with precautionary measures and knowledge of what I am doing.
Pictured below is my closest encounter with a grizzly while in Alaska’s Katmai National Park. I would estimate the distance to be about 10 feet, fifteen times closer than White was. The difference is that I was part of a large group (there is no record ever of a grizzly attack on a group of three or more people) led by an experienced guide and the bear was part of a large community of well nourished bears which has been habituated to close human presence over many years, viewing us as neither a threat nor food source.
Nothing tastes better than food you have grown, eaten on the day it was harvested. Jeanine spent several hours tending to her gardens this morning. In addition to removing a mountain of weeds she gathered a bowl full of delicious raspberries, several of which now happily reside in my belly.
I spent the morning on the soccer pitch in the first game of the fall season. Having gained promotion last spring, this was our first match in Division 1 and as luck would have it we faced the first place finishing team from last season. To make matters worse we were missing four of our starting players, two to injuries and two to business travel.With the odds stacked against us the squad was very pleased to produce a 1-1 tie. Despite this positive result, I was very unhappy with my game. I simply felt tired the entire time I was on the field. Fortunately I did not sustain any injuries nor make any mistakes of consequence. With two weeks until our next match I need to up my cardio and drop a few pounds.
Nicolai learned today that he has been selected as a member of the Concord Carlisle Men’s Varsity Soccer Team. It would be fair to say that he has worked toward this goal since he started playing soccer at age five. Under the leadership of Head Coach Ray Pavlik, the team has a record of 148-43-22, winning 4 DCL championships, 5 MIAA Division 2 North Championships, and 3 MIAA Division 2 State Championships (including 2 in the last 3 years). If the coach did not believe that Nico would be competitive with the best players in the state he would not have been invited to join the squad. Due to the significant time commitment, Nicolai tendered his two week notice at Verrill Farm where he has enjoyed working for the summer and has developed great customer interaction skills.
I spent the morning with Kyle as he received a therapeutic sports massage from a guy who has helped me in the past. It has been almost two years since he sustained a severe groin muscle injury while snowboarding and he still has not recovered sufficiently to return to sports. For someone as athletic as Kyle this has been a terrible price to pay and we are exploring new doctors and approaches to treat his injury. During the afternoon Jeanine and I went for a nice 2.5-mile walk, starting from downtown Concord and out to the Old North Bridge. On our return, she showed me a shortcut through a tiny sliver of a park (pictured) that I did not even know existed before. We dined at the Main Street Cafe to conclude our date.
Jeanine purchased a new pair of point shoes for Maya to replace the set she has outgrown/worn out. Maya will enter the fall season studying dance four times a week in addition to playing soccer three times a week.
She was happy to give her new shoes a test drive on the kitchen floor and the family was happy to watch her.
Nicolai feared that he had lost all his photographs from his recent visit to Nicaragua while transferring files to an external hard disk drive. I was able to recover all the photos from his original media card and had a chance to experience his adventure virtually. Many of his shots were of the typical travel variety. He also took a great number of portraits of his friends, many of which were excellent. Today’s journal entry features three of Nicolai’s photos which fall into the artistic category. I am constantly amazed by his innate sense of composition, color, and balance. Click on each image for a higher-resolution version.
Before my return flight to Boston I had an opportunity to take another long walk (4 miles) with a colleague who had a particularly good eye for spotting tiny creatures.
Easily the most exciting insect pictures I have ever taken are of this epic battle between a Praying (Preying would be more appropriate) Mantis and a Yellow-jacket. The mantis appears to attract the bee by presenting its wings in a flower like configuration. As soon as the bee approaches the mantis snatches it with its barbed forearms and begins eating its head. The Yellow-jacket fights back and eventually frees itself. It is hard to tell from the angle of the photo but it appears to me that a portion of the mantis head is missing (click on the third photo and then click again). I am wondering if he is a survivor of a mating encounter in which his mate started to eat him. In laboratory settings, females routinely start eating their delirious partner’s head, presumably to ensure that the sex act is completed and to gain nourishment. Some scientists believe this behavior only occurs when the female is stressed and is not seen in the wild. Either way, I plan to suppress any romantic notions I may have when I reunite with Jeanine later this evening.
