Marion's Blog

Duke and Marion's Big adventure

Duke and I are off on a grand adventure. (490 miles so far) We are driving down into Mexico to do some exploring and to stay a week at a condo in Manzanilla. On Wednesday we left Union City and drove to Escondido down near San Diego to spend a day with my parents helping to instal the new printer they received for Christmas and to visit and hel;p with a few other tasks. Tomorrow we are off to Tucson.

I haven't blogged in a while. Lot's going on. One of the highlights was a trip to the Computer History Museum right before Christmas. My daughter works there but it was my first visit. It felt like going through a museum of my working career. They had pretty much every computer I ever worked on, IBM 360, Univac, PDP 11, Data General Eclipse, early CP/M machines, the Compaq portable that looked like a sewing machine, Sun machines, and of course PCs. The highlight of the visit was when the guys who had renovated the museum's PDP1 computer ran it to lead us in Christmas carols. It was so cool to see them run the paper tape programs through the machine and flip the switches on the front of the computer to play the carols. The man running the PDP 1 was one of the original programers of the machine, Peter Samson. According to his wikipedia article "For the restoration project he reverse-engineered music tapes from the PDP-1 era and built a player for the museum." I highly recommend touring the museum if you get a chance. i plan to go back again soon

The Big Day!

I think it rather ironic that I left Sun after 18 years at least partly because of the possibility of being laid off. Sun does so many lay offs that they can say that lay offs are a core competency.Today I was laid off by a profitable company that is rated one of the very top companies to work for in the country. Of course this isn't the whole story. Had I looked I might have found another job and then I would still be employed. Instead I quite happily chose to retire.

So today is probably the end of my work life. I say probably because I haven't ruled out taking on another job or consulting assignment that really excites me. But for now I have reached that very exciting major milestone, Retirement! I am still sad to see the project I put all my energy into for the last 17 months die and I am sad to be leaving a lot of new friends but mostly I am very  excited about all the possibilities in front of me.

A few updates on activities this week.... My non fiction book club met Wednesday night. we read Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox. In this biography Maddox does a masterful job of describing complex science and of telling Franklin's story. It is a compelling book and I highly recommend it.

Last night we went to Yoshi's and saw Earl Klugh perform. I always enjoy live music at Yoshi's and although I wasn't familiar with Klugh's music I really enjoyed the show.

20th Anniversary of Schoenberg Guitars

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Do you know what a luthier is? I didn't until Friday night. A luthier builds guitars. Friday night we attended a concert to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Schoenberg Guitars. I love guitar music but before Friday night I didn't know what a Schoenberg guitar was. As I understand it, Eric Schoenberg designs and builds these one of a kind guitars and now they are also hand built one at a time for him by 5 other world class luthiers.  Schoenberg is to guitars what Steinway is to pianos and Stradivarius is to violins.

The guitars are masterpieces. The wood, the workmanship,  the curves and the richness make them wonderful just to look at. But the sound is truly breathtaking. In the hands of the artists who played the guitars sang. The concert was in the small 142 Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley. It was easy to imagine I was a guest at a small get together of guitar aficionados just listening to the music.

And the music was beyond description. They invited five of what must be the world's best players. First there was Mike Dowling who writes, records, arranges and performs. Listening to him I knew immediately what a special evening this would be. Next was Laurence Juber. His music was bit more showy but it was stunning. Juber toured and recorded for three years with Paul McCartney's band Wings. Next was Muriel Anderson who played the harp guitar as well as the classic guitar. Finally there was Jorma Kaukonen and Barry Mitterhoff. Jorma use to play with Jefferson Airplane and now he Miteroff and Jack Casady make up the group Hot Tuna. Mitteroff is a mandolinist.

The tickets to this concert were one of my birthday presents from Duke. After the four hour concert which seemed like it lasted one hour, as we walked back to our car I could only smile and relish the memories of what was undoubtedly a once in a life time experience.

Neil Young: Heart of Gold

Duke and I saw Neil Young's concert movie "Neil Young: Heart of Gold" tonight. It really moved me. There was an enormous  truth and honesty. It is just briefly mentioned in the beginning of the movie that Young found out that he had a brain aneurysm not long before the filming of the concert. It was filmed in the Reiman Theater in Nashville. Duke and I saw John Gill there on our honeymoon which probably helped me feel like I was there. Young's wife was one of the backup singers. The obvious love between them was palpable. You could just see the communication that they shared with just a glance. The music was powerful. "Prairie Wind" reminded me of being a little girl in North Dakota. The song about writing a letter to my friends, the song "Harvest Moon", in fact every song entranced me. Music and great lyrics have a way of touching me emotionally that always surprises me. I came away feeling blessed and thankful for today and all I have. I kept reminding myself not to " be anxious about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself." 

Yoshi's

I usually listen to Alisa Clancy on the jazz station, KCSM on my way into work. On Monday morning she was giving away tickets for the 10 o'clock show at Yoshi's Monday night. I called in and won! The question I answered to win the tickets was "Who was our 37th President? Monday would have been his 94th Birthday." (answer at the end of this post)  Duke and I were already planning on going out to dinner with some people from work so after dinner we just drove over to Yoshi's in time for the show. We saw and heard The Moutin Reunion Quartet from Paris.They are exceptional musicians. There were probably only about 40 people in the audience and Yoshi's is a wonderful place for live music. What a great evening.

We had such a good time that we decided to go to the 8:00 show on Thursday nigh to hear E.S.T. Esbjorn Sveneeon Trio. They were wonderful too.  We are very lucky to be able to hear wonderful live music, quite inexpensively in such a wonderful venue so close to home.

I highly recommend Yoshi's. If you live in the San Francisco area and have never been there you are missing out and if you are visiting this area a visit to Yoshi's would be the highlight of your trip.

(Nixon was our 37th president.)