Kyle begins a new job today as a Portfolio Analyst with City National Rochdale. This 30-year-old wealth management firm is a subsidiary of City National Bank which is owned by the Royal Bank of Canada. They provide personalized portfolio management for high-net-worth individuals, families, and institutions with over $31 billion under management and a client retention rate of over 90%. Kyle will be working in their San Francisco office located on the 20th floor of 455 Market Street, pictured above.  Kyle turned down a position with Symphony Asset Management in favor of CNR which offered a move from the back office (internal operations) to the front office (client-facing) and a better work-life balance. We could not be prouder of or happier for Kyle and wish him all the best on his first day.

Our nephew, John, created another wonderful Sunday dinner for us. Pictured above is the early stages of a sauce he prepared. Chopped onions simmering in a bath of olive oil gradually turning from white to a rich yellow. We were joined for dinner by Maya’s moot court co-counsel as they took a brief break from preparations for their next trial. The spring season opener for my over-50 soccer league was canceled due to lingering snow on our home field. I expect to be back in action later this week with a makeup game or scrimmage. 

Maya has been accepted at a total of 8 colleges. She has already ruled out three, all in California. Her analytical approach to decision-making is evident in the whiteboard she prepared this morning to help her decide among the remaining five. We are so proud of her and look forward to learning of her decision.

It seemed fitting that we should have a winter storm on the evening of Maya’s nordic ski team end-of-the-season banquet. Maya was co-captain of the women’s team which placed 4th in the state this year. Her coach had wonderful things to say about her and she was just as eloquent in her praise of him on behalf of the team.

We have experienced an inordinate amount of rain over the past few days. Given last year’s drought and water use ban, we are happy to have it. The Sudbury River looked more like a lake this morning and I am looking forward to getting out for some kayaking when the temperatures ease upwards a bit.

The Fruitlands Museum, founded in 1914 by Clara Endicott Sears, takes its name from an experimental utopian community led by Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane which took place on this site in 1843. The campus is home to five collections on 210 acres of meadows and woods including:

• The Fruitlands Farmhouse, the site of the experiment in communal living led by Alcott and Lane in 1843
• The Shaker Museum, the first Shaker museum in the country and home to the largest archive of Harvard Shaker documents in the world, housed in an historic building moved here from the Harvard Shaker community.
• The Native American Museum, which houses a significant collection of artifacts that honor the spiritual presence and cultural history of the first Americans.
• The Art Museum, including a collection of over 100 Hudson River School landscape paintings and over 230 nineteenth century vernacular portraits.
• The Wayside Visitor Center, exhibiting information on Fruitlands’ landscape and environment.

I happened upon it today while scouting locations for our next home. It is situated on high ground with a great view of Mount Wachusett.

After my brother’s recent sudden cardiac arrest, I have invested in a full cardiac work up to identify possible risks I might be facing.  I have had one treadmill EKG, one static echocardiogram, one treadmill echocardiogram, and one treadmill nuclear imaging test. I wore a loop recorder for 24 hours, have been measuring my blood pressure every day for two months (charted above), and have had my blood work done twice. Today I met with my cardiologist for the results. Drum roll, please….. I have a healthy heart with no detected anomalies in structure or electrical function and good blood profusion to the heart muscles.  My average blood pressure is in an acceptable range (136/82) and my ejection fraction is 65%.  I do have high cholesterol which I will attempt to regulate with more exercise and a better diet before considering other alternatives.

More good news on the college front as Maya learned she is in at Carnegie Mellon University which has a 13% acceptance rate for the School of Engineering.  We are expecting to hear from the remaining schools to which she applied by the end of the week.  Fingers crossed.

On a totally unrelated subject, I thought I would document a goal I scored yesterday during pre-season soccer practice. There are no photos or video to memorialize the event so I am writing about it as a future reminder to myself. We were playing 8v8 on a short field. My team earned a corner kick. The kick was an in-swinger which was dead flush with the end line by the time I reached it as it sailed past the far post. From this position it is geometrically impossible to score without “bending” the ball (hitting it with spin thus causing it to travel in an arc). Good soccer players can do this easily when striking the ball with their foot.  I managed to score from this position with a header. I do not claim to have made any plans to bend the ball in the fraction of a second I had to reach it, but I will tell you that the ball wound up in the net and I have 15 witnesses who were just as stunned as I was when it did. It is highly unlikely I will ever score a more seemingly impossible goal in my life and I hope to hold this memory for that duration.

I spent the bulk of the day processing photos I took while in Cuba last week. Today I am posting a random collection which did not find there way into prior posts.

Jeanine and I returned to the US last night after a week of being 100% off the grid to the best possible news. Maya has been offered one of only 81 spots at Olin College. She is pictured above at last month’s Candidate’s Weekend where she was evaluated by staff and students during a team project and in a final interview.  Her acceptance letter included a $100,000, 4-year scholarship.  We could not be more proud of or happier for her.

Located on the top floor of the eclectic early 20th-century Gómez Vila Building, 115 feet off the ground, the Cámara Oscura provides a 360-degree real time panoramic view of much of Old Havana and was our final destination on our last day in Cuba. It is the only one of its kind in Latin America. Camera obscura (from the Latin “camera”: (vaulted) chamber or room, and “obscura”: darkened) is the natural optical phenomenon that occurs when the image of a scene is projected through a pinhole (the first ever “lens”) onto the opposite wall of a darkened chamber. The camera obscura concept was eventually developed into the modern photographic camera in the first half of the 19th century when camera obscura boxes were used to expose light-sensitive materials. The word camera thus originated from the word chamber.

Cuba’s Cámara Oscura uses two lenses and a mirror located on a periscope. The image that is captured by the periscope is projected on a concave platform 6 foot in diameter, located inside a dark room. On a bright day this room sized camera is able to project panoramas or zoom in on people miles away in any direction.

After the demonstration we ventured out onto the rooftop to inspect the periscope and enjoy the spectacular views of the city.  A more perfect way to cap our visit to Cuba we could not have hoped for.  Our ride to the airport in another vintage car was the frosting on the cake.,

 

Cuba is literally a rolling car museum. Everywhere you look is an old-school American brand vehicle, ranging from Oldsmobile to Chevrolet, Buick to Ford and Chrysler’s old Plymouth brand. This stuck-in-time feeling Cuba has generated is the result of a four-decade-long ban on foreign vehicle imports, making it nearly impossible to buy a brand-new, foreign-made vehicle. The highlight of our day was a one hour tour we took in this 1952 Chevrolet, my first ride in a car older than I am.

It remains to be seen how the recent lifting of the ban will affect the classic car scene in Cuba. I sincerely hope it will not. Here is a sampling of some American classics.

Viñales is a town in western Cuba and we made the two hour journey there as part of an organized bus tour. Its main street is lined with colorful colonial-era wooden houses and it serves as a gateway to the Sierra de los Organos mountains and the Viñales Valley pictured above (please click on the image and then click on it again; it is the only way to appreciate the full splendor of the valley). The tall, steep-sided limestone hills, known as mogotes, are extremely photogenic and some contain caves and underground rivers. We stopped at one such cave where we explored the subterranean waterway by small boat.

Our agenda also included stops at a tobacco plantation and drying house, a rum factory, and, in the valley of Dos Hermanas, the Mural de la Prehistoria, an enormous (120 x 160 meters) al fresco painting on the side of a mogote. Created by Leovigildo González Morillo, it depicts the evolution of life in Cuba and was painted by brush over a period of five years.

Rated as one of the top restaurants in Havana, we dined at the Sociedad Asturiana Castropol after returning from Viñales. It is located right on the Malecon and as was to be expected, we enjoyed great live music.  The food was very good, but nothing to write home about.  A bargain by US standards, our meal cost what a policeman in Cuba makes in 2 months, just to put things in perspective. There are many compelling reasons to travel to Cuba but I would not place the culinary experience near the top of that list.

Given our time on the tour bus we got much less exercise today than the last two. Still we slept very well having walked to Old Havana well before dawn and finished the day with a late night stroll along the Malecon.

The most wonderful thing about Cuba is its people. They are very warm and loving, friendly and generous, living in harmony and welcoming to all who visit their island. Many have to struggle in an economy that has failed to deliver on the promises of socialism but this in turn has bred a nation of entrepreneurs and hard workers. Despite the poverty, we never felt unsafe at any time during our stay.

In the afternoon we joined an organized and informative tour of Havana but I could have just as easily spent the entire day shooting portraits. After the people, the thing we admired most about Cuba was the music. In the evening we enjoyed a dinner/concert presented by the Buenavista Social Club featuring  legendary performers and music from the ’50s. Arriving early, we managed to obtain front row seats at the edge of an intimate stage which was simultaneously shared by singers, waiters, and dancers from the audience.