The Family Christmas Letter, 2017

Welcome again to my annual (ha!) Family Christmas Letter, your best way of keeping up with us, short of any other means at all.  As with previous year, we'll take it person by person, but begin now with a quick summary of the last 12 months:  WTF?

TALIA:

Talia joined the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater where she premiered "Dances-with-Tents," for which she won the Nobel Peace Prize. No, not really, but almost as improbably she took a contract with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she encountered software that actually discourages you from working too hard (this explains why visa processes take as long as they do, were you wondering). In spare moments, Talia made VW buy back our cheatermobile, got the whole family to be strictly vegetarian for a week, and more than once slept in the barn.

GIDEON:

Yes, well, that happened, nor was this day, camping near Bodega Bay, the only such. As Gideon's pants attest, he continues to live life to the fullest, and then some. A second grader, he is knife self-certified and uses the word "hypocrite" correctly in conversation with my mother. When not disrespecting his elders, Gideon likes to ignore them. He's friends with a fish, a remarkably good rock climber (Gideon, not the fish), and wears glasses despite having perfect vision. Make of it what you will.

FELIX:

Felix, now in 5th grade, has discovered role playing games (shown here in character as a twelfth-level bouquet). This means he's happily entertained for a couple of hours each Friday night, and the rest of us get to hear about it in excruciating detail for twenty or thirty hours thereafter. A star student during the week, he continues to bring home worksheets with one, two, or even three gold stars on them. Having not paid much attention to his sports doings, I was surprised to find myself watching his team in finals, from which they emerged Champions of the World (or the part of it that calls the sport "soccer" anyway). Even more thrilling, he stood up on a surfboard for several seconds a couple of months ago.

ALEC:

This year Alec just gave up and let himself sink into it without further struggle. It's a relief. When not enmired, Alec is busy hunting pirates on the virtual seas and making infrastructure uncomfortable. For some reason he found himself floating down rivers repeatedly this year, which is a nice break from struggling against the tide.

THE HOUSE:

Speaking of sinking, our aged property likewise reached new depths, from which we are still trying to extricate it. Shown here, Talia attempting to levitate new drywall into place, just one of the many incidents that finally convinced us to get a roof. Also on our To Do list: doors, windows, insulation, and right angles. But first we must save the barn and the land upon which it sits from washing away downstream--there is a limit to how many rivers I wish to float down.

THE VACATIONS:

Faithful as always to the Christmas letter tradition, some pictures from this year's travel, of which there was a great deal. More to come in 2018, too. A crazy year for we inhabitants of planet Earth, but a wonderful one for us and, we hope, for you as well.

Hamual

Every year they get bigger, the hams and the boys alike.

The best in town

It's been a while since my family has won a "best in Fairfax" award (2010 Halloween "Best Family" to be exact), but the combination of Talia and her skills plus Gideon and his cute is still unbeatable. Go team!

Ash

A colleague of mine lives in Santa Rosa, or did before the fires came (that's his neighborhood, just chimneys and ash now, above). Now he, his wife, and two baby girls are in a rental they were lucky to get in another town in Marin, happy to be alive, but faced with the colossal task of rebuilding their lives. One of the many challenges they face is documenting their insurance claim, and one of the ways you do that, it seems, is to sift through the wreckage for evidence of the possessions that were destroyed. That's something I can do as well as the next person, so I joined him and a few others at his former house last weekend.

The destruction in the area is unbelievable, as these photos attest:

But that's just the economic destruction--houses, vineyards, orchards. There is the social damage--Santa Rosa alone has lost something like 5% of all its housing, and that in primarily (though by no means exclusively) lower income neighborhoods that will never reform as they were. Then there's the impact on the watershed of the heavy metals and other toxins created and released in the fire; the rains which will bring those pollutants into the waterways are just beginning and the impact is much feared. We wore our N95 masks and gloves for work in the ash--a full Tyvek suit would have been even better--and I was there for only a few hours, but the crews and homeowners who face weeks and months of work in these places will surely suffer for it.

And the work, what a heartbreak it is. There's no question of salvaging anything, all you can do is look for fragments of metal or ceramic--absolutely nothing else has survived--in the hopes that it will provide evidence of what once was. Here's an example, see if you can guess what this is:

The answer, believe it or not, is "a motorcycle." And most of what you see there is actually roofing tiles. When the hammer of the gods falls, it comes down hard.

Fire!

This is the multi-day story of how we reacted to the recent wildfire disasters in the North Bay. Let's start with Thursday, 12 October 2017:

Live Fire Web App (pjdohertygis), Sonoma and Napa County fires, 12 October 2017

As this map shows, large areas near our home (which is just south of the bottom of the map) are on fire. These fires, which started last Sunday during a windstorm, are by no means under control, nor are they the only fires in the region. The winds have recently picked up again, and with fire fighting personnel already stretched to their limits we are taking the current "red flag warning" very seriously. Should fires start in Marin itself, we were prepared to decamp for Oakland where a large, empty house always awaits us. We are in that regard and many others much luckier than most of our neighbors to the north.

What we all share, however, is the air. Fires of this size spread a haze of particulate pollution across a wide area (here's one animation of that) and according to my BreezoMeter app the air where I live has been not recommended for breathing for days now. Moving to Oakland will not solve that problem, so for the weekend we're going further afield, to the aptly named "Fire Escape Cabin" near Yosemite.

And what if the fires do come? As I said, we would leave and have our bug-out bags packed accordingly. The packing of those bags, that is to say the selection of the few items you'd really want to take with you, is an interesting exercise. There's hardly a thing here we would be unable to replace or, if irreplaceable, we would actually miss. A few pieces of art (we won't transport those, they're as likely to be damaged in the rush as they are to be burnt if it comes to that), my digital data (which is backed up remotely and locally in a variety of ways), my not-yet-digitized data (the total destruction of which would be a relief to me as, I suspect, to most of us). Lubbuh is in the bag and our passports and permanent records live in a little metal box, ready to travel. Basic emergency supplies are stored in the car on a full-time basis. Let's hope it never comes to that, but if it ever does, I think we're ready.

Friday, 13 October:

Yosemite is amazing, a great inspiration, but, as the photo shows, even here the air ain't great. This is not due to the fires we've fled but rather to issues that Yosemite routinely faces (Central Valley agricultural pollution, smog from cities to the West).

Saturday, 14 October:

Whatever the air, evidence of fire on the ground is everywhere. Yosemite, as much as any part of California, has suffered from drought and drought's BFF, wildfire.

Sunday 15 October:

The smoke from the North Bay has now caught up to us, and air quality where we are (in the mountains at the top of the poisonous peach area, below) is by some measurements--wood smoke--as bad as where we were. There's no way to know, but I'm hoping that at least in other respects--burning insulation, say--it's not quite as bad.

And soon it will be much worse:  Monday night the wind is predicted to move the smoke away from Marin and to the west, so it's time to get back to the ocean side of those fires.

Monday, 16 October:

Back in the Bay Area. The fires are largely contained, some of the evacuation orders have been lifted, but the air is still bad and, for those returning to the burned zones, the ground is worse. Santa Rosa has reportedly lost 5% of its housing stock, and this in an already overheated, so to speak, market. I don't think this disaster is of unprecedented magnitude, but it's definitely up there.

Still, we have escaped unscathed and, though the fire season is not yet over nor these fires yet out, it's time for us to go back to worrying about our other great enemy, flood. More about that another time, and in the meanwhile, some pictures from Yosemite.

Seeing Voices

From the source: Helen Keller speaking to a large crowd in Fukuoka, Japan in 1948. Keller is on the far right with Takeo Iwahashi and Polly Thomson beside her.

I wrote in a previous post about the summer of 2017, and what a beautiful and challenging experience it was. I might have added that just about every preconception I had about that long-anticipated summer was mistaken. What I'd thought would be hard proved easy, and vice versa. The high points I anticipated didn't fall flat, but were not the standouts I'd expected. The people I thought I'd show things mostly showed things to me instead. And, most startling, Dácil.

I knew about Dácil, of course. I'd met her, indeed, I'd been around for her birth and for the harrowing experiences that followed thereafter. I'd read about her development since then (and you can too). But really, I had no idea, or rather the ideas I did have were mostly misconceptions. Meeting her in person and the reading I've done since...well, I'm fascinated, and changed.

For those who didn't bounce out to the first hotlink, Dácil is an eight-year-old girl, daughter of dear friends, who is deaf and blind and in other ways developmentally different. Stunted in some ways, certainly, but turns out that's an overly simplistic summary and one that quite misses the point. I had assumed Dácil would be a burden to her and my family as we traveled up and down the state, visiting beaches and mountains alike impassable to someone who can barely walk. California is a land of stunning views; Dácil can only just perceive the difference between dark and light. She cannot ride a bicycle, she cannot be reassured that a long car ride will be worth it. As a parent who often bemoans the loss of freedom my two fully functional children impose, and who takes his opportunities to leave them behind now and then, well, to me the obvious thing for our visitors to have done was to leave Dácil at home.

I'm so glad they didn't, because Dácil, I suspect, appreciated what we had to share at least as much as any of our many other visitors. The sublime view of Mt. Tam from our local pool was invisible to her, but it was likewise ignored by every other child and most adults, where Dácil enjoyed the water at least as much as anyone else. I gave a boombox to both visiting families; Dácil, though almost entirely deaf, was the one who made most use of this gift, and who most appreciated my excellent electronica. Robbed of distance senses, Dácil, I believe, tasted California more vividly even than her pizza and ice cream loving sibling; certainly she lingered longer over her meals.

Dácil was a presence, mostly off in her own world, pursuing her own pleasures, but her enjoyment was shared by all and added a lot to an already special summer. A reminder for me: other isn't necessarily less.

I survived the summer of '17

That was a very full summer. Travel to Amsterdam, Munich, Montreal, Seattle, the Sierras, and the north country. Visitors from Amsterdam, Tenerife, and Seattle in return, and that much understates things. A lot of time at the beach and in the water (usually unrelated activities, not so this summer!). A great deal of camping, some of it while in our own home. And for that home, too, a fair share of changes, with a new performance stage built down below, repainting and projects up above, and many hours of planning, perhaps even preparing, for the rains to come. Challenging, stressful, wonderful, beautiful, a summer none of us will ever forget.  Some photos here.

Betcha all that makes you want to visit, too, but consider what the photos do not show:

• It was not sunny all the time.
• Every one of these photos was separated by a 4-hour drive from every other photo, except where they were separated by a 14-hour plane flight.
• Some people slept in a barn.
• None of the water was really warm.  Often the air was too warm.  Also, sometimes, too cold.
• We ate sand.
• The supply of ice in the ice maker is not infinite and replenishes only slowly.
• There was a fair amount of screaming for a wide variety of reasons.
• Many people were dirty much of the time.
• There were tears.
• The eating of hot dog buns in the absence of hot dogs brought with it derision.
• Things are stupid expensive, including hot dog buns.
• You all got poison oak, even if you didn't know it.
• People fell from heights, though no one got hurt.
• Try as you might, you didn't eat all, or even the best, Scoop flavors.
• In the end, you had to say goodbye.

Whatever the fall brings, I promise to blog more often.

New job, part 4: Pirates

I've written in the past about what I do for work, and no one's been any the wiser. It's hardly your fault: though they value me, my colleagues, my bosses even, often find it difficult to explain what it is I do. Recently, though, I've been given a very concrete and easily explained remit: piracy analytics. People use our software without paying for it. I need to arrange to identify and characterize those "pirates" using data and analytics so that others can reach out to them and, more or less gently, convince them to become proper customers. There, that was easy to explain.

Then there's another question: why does this matter? Because if I succeed in this the value of my Autodesk stock will allow me to save my dear barn. Well, that's what this guy thinks, anyway. He'd better be right and I'd better be successful because things around here are getting...teetery.

Charter

It seems that even on this, the most depressing of days, I have to hear about The War of the Charter, a topic as illustrative of people working against their own self interest as the election of...that. Charter schools and the CA proposition that supports them are important for this, and possibly only this reason: they provide a space to experiment within the confines of a bureaucracy. That bureaucracy--the public school system--will not otherwise do more than cautiously increment and thus can evolve at only a glacial pace. That pace is in no way well matched to the rate of change in the environment--social, business, Earth--for which the school is intended to prepare its students. It is almost certainly the case that the mainstream schooling your child is receiving is inadequate to the challenges we are facing. Change, and the experiments that drive change, is therefore sorely needed.

In business these days the inability of large organizations to innovate successfully is a simmering, sometimes boiling, concern. As one former Yahoo executive mournfully noted, "When you do innovation in a large company, the immune system will come and attack you." When I think of the history of our own long-running MAP educational experiment I observe parental T-cells in action, seeking, with less or more poisonous vigor, to destroy the alien body within. Certainly that accurately describes the narrow-minded response of the Ross Valley School District to the current Charter petition.

Education is an unsolved problem. We should be united in our desire to solve it and supportive of those who seek to explore alternatives that don't cost the student $42,100 per annum, alternatives that, if successful, will influence classrooms throughout the Valley, perhaps throughout the country. We are indeed in the midst of an educational crisis: it's at least part of what's produced the near-majority decision to spit in the face of facts, kick meritocracy in its striving ass, and elect...that. You may, in the overused argot of Facebook progressives, stand with Ross Valley Schools. In doing so, you might preserve a precious few dollars for a gym teacher or library book. Neither will help your child find a role in the coming society. A charter school, on the other hand, just might.

Surveillance self-defense

EFF's SSD logo: https://ssd.eff.org/en

A shout-out to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (I donate, do you?) and to their tireless efforts to get us all to use communications technology more sensibly. EFF provides the total overview for current best practice, but what I'd particularly encourage you to do is:

1. Use two-factor authentication wherever possible.
2. Use a non-default (no 1212!) code on your mobile device, and don't share it.
3. Communicate using using Signal (how to: Android; how to: iPhone), which provides end-to-end encryption, thereby preventing anyone from reading your messages or listening to your calls without possession of (or previous install of malware on) your device. No, your normal texting, Skype, phone, whatever does not do this: though much communications is encrypted in transit it is typically an open channel between your device and the first hop provider, which means that provider (e.g., Comcast, your phone company) has (and can and does share, either upon government request or by whoopsies) access to the content of your messages. (WhatsApp friends: though WhatsApp does provide E2E encryption Facebook now owns that app and you know better than to trust Faceboo, right?)
4. Do most of your surfing via a privacy-protecting browser (right now I use Tor on my personal desktop--how to: Windows; how to: Mac--and Ghostery on my phone; this last is less about avoiding snoops and more about throwing a stick in the spokes of the Attention Economy).

Some of this is security-related, and some of it is for the sake of anonymity. Significantly, it's not just your anonymity that is preserved by your use of encryption, proxying, and the like: the more people who behave this way the harder it becomes to deanonymize anyone. Think of it as protest or protection, as you like, but get on it.