Heading into Round 2: 3/8

The time has passed really fast over the past two weeks and tomorrow finds young Jeff and me making the trip to Riverside for Round 2.  

Thanks to all of you for continued support and good thoughts.  Through cards, emails, phone calls, and visits, I have gotten so much attention that it is easy to forget the big fight that I am in and that is a good thing.   Larry Frank, my colleague at UCSD who does MRI, came over to get me for lunch on Tuesday.  We had a good visit at DZ Akins and then at KnB Wine Cellars, a local draft house near Windmill Farms, for a cold one.  Larry is a micro-brewery aficionado and really was taken with the selection of some 24+ beers on tap and I enjoyed riding in his Porsche.  He left last Friday for two weeks in Thailand and Hong Kong….so, as a cautionary tale for a younger faculty colleague, I imparted to him the Secrets of the Orient as these have radically altered the life of Lamont Cranston and many of us who spent time there.

Wednesday found Rosemarie and I back at DZ Akin’s with Howard and Lynn Robbins who came by the house to help design the rebuild of our back yard trellis support.  Howard the engineer had the key innovative solution which was to attach a long flat steel plate to “I” beam and build off of that.   We made drawings and refined these later in the week… the next steps await the second or so week after Round 2.

DZ Akins is important as pickles and pickle brine and olives and olive brine proved rather important food items discovered over the past week….. I think I crave the salt and my taste buds are activated by salt and this activation seems to rule over the other general gustatory sense I have had… which that everything tastes like steel.   So, spicy stuff became appetizing.   Also, Howard taught me that, even though there is a barrel of pickles on each table in the restaurant, ask the server for a dish of green pickles.    

In retrospect this last week has been pretty full and much in contrast to the previous week when I could do very little.  It wasn’t until about 8 days after Round 1 that I felt like doing very much including thinking about things long enough to make a list of tasks that had to be done.  Then it took me another day to remember and write down the list which included getting papers back to the lawyer, getting the tax computations done and to the accountant, making a few repairs around the house, and working in the laboratory.  The latter and working on a portrait of Melanie are the only things I didn’t get enough of.  

I received special visits from two long time friends.  My mentor for the Master’s at San Diego State in the mid-sixties was Roger Carpenter. In fact I was his first graduate student.  We have remained good friends since that time.  Also in the mix since then and over the years was Bob Rubin, also a Carpenter student with me.  Roger was a graduate student of George Bartholomew at UCLA.   He retired from SDSU about 17 years ago and moved to Tucson where he spent his youth.  Bob received his PhD at UC Irvine has lived for a long time in Santa Rosa where he is just now retiring from Santa Rosa Junior College (the last JC in California).   

Over the years the three of us, often joined by our spouses, have assembled for generally good times and this last Thursday saw Bob and Roger flying in to SD to hang out with me and we had a great time.   There were discussions ranging from biology to philosophy to updates on mutual acquaintances …all over  beers and dinners and lunches….(thanks for the treats guys).   My two very good friends traveled not trivial distances (enduring air travel but taking advantage of the free baggage on Southwest, which Roger swears by) to be with and support me reveals a lot about the depth of our bond and it was uplifting to have them here for a few days.   

Roger preceded his visit with a package containing the book “Closing Circles” a portrait of the disappearing wildlife of the Sonoran Desert Region.   Contained in the book are one and sometimes two page vignettes about different species as well as habitats that are under pressure and threatened by human expansion and resource dominance in the area.  I am taking this book to Round 2. 

Accompanying the gift book was a long personal letter from Roger in which he recounted some of the details of our early work together when I became his student as well as an analysis of how he thought things had turned out for me.  Included with this was copy of a letter I had written to him in 1967 thanking him for being my Master’s advisor.  I and my family were deeply touched by Roger’s kind words and he was appreciative of receiving my letter.  (In those days I had penmanship.)  All this points to the deep friendship that Roger, Bob, and I share.

Bob and Roger both hung out in my lab on Friday, which was a busy place.  Also, my former student Chugey Sepulveda gave the Friday noon Marine Biology talk at Scripps and we attended …me with much pride… as Chugey held-forth on swordfish ecology and physiology.  Also there was former student Diego Bernal who had flown out from U Massachusetts to do work with Chugey and with folks up at NMFS.  As of this time, at least four of my former students, Chugey, Kathy Dickson, Heidi Dewar, Karen Martin, have been invited to give the Friday noon talk which is a 50 year tradition at SIO.

Saturday saw Roger’s return to Tucson; however, Bob stayed on.   The occasion of Diego’s presence for the weekend and the proximity across Southern California of nearly a dozen of my other former students prompted organization, on Saturday night, of a dinner in the Scholander Hall Conference Room.  Rosemarie and I along with Bob were hosted by (in approximate starting year of their student days with me)  Fred Koehrn (1976), Bill Lowell (1977), Kathy Dickson (1979), Karen Martin (UCLA  student, mid 80’s), N Chin Lai (1985) and his son, Heidi Dewar (1990), Nancy Aguilar (1998), Diego Bernal (1997), Chugey Sepulveda (2000), Dan Cartamil (2002), and Nick Wegner (2004).    Also attending was a new SIO faculty member, Martin Tresguerres, whom I mentor (this includes showing him classy former students and how to party).   

It is not at all difficult to describe this wonderful get together.  The food was great but special was the friendship, love, and support that permeated everything that evening.  Once we were moderately full and had gotten out Diego’s tequila, we started a dialog laced with memories, history, and research.  Every student had something to say and there were many questions about what things were like at SIO when and before I was a student.  It was an outpouring of regard for me from a group of people that I trained.  It was exceedingly gratifying to hear all the nice things that were said to me.  Many of the comments repeated things about me said by others, however, there were specific memories of things that particular students and I had done together.   This is exactly the memories I have of my mentors, Roger, Dick Rosenblatt, Bill Hazen, Richard Etheridge, and a few others about whom I think whenever I hear a specific word or when I write something reminiscent of a discussion I had had with one of my own teachers.  

Thanks to all my students and here is to my mentors about which I would and have said the same things over the years…

Let’s get Round 2 over with.   jbg

Back row (left to right): Chugey Sepulveda, Diego Bernal, Heidi Dewar, Karen Martin, Nancy Aguilar-Roca, Martin Tresguerres, Rosemarie, Bob Rubin, Fred Koehrn, Nick Wegner.
Front Row: Dan Cartamil, N. Chin Lai (and son), Jeff, Kathy Dickson, Bill Lowell