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Happy New Year!
Shapshots from 2025
Shapshots from 2025
If you are of the persuasion that it's necessary to have real paper to better appreciate this digital New Years message, you can print this PDF version.
Not being great at selfies, we practiced in front of the Union Station, train & bus hub for the Denver region. We stayed a night in the Crawford Hotel September 5.
Lobby and waiting area in the Union Station is pretty upscale.
Brother Dan was kind enough to take us to the new Buc-ee’s
that opened south of Fort Collins CO.
In one of many Kitchen on Fire cooking classes in Berkeley, we made baked olives.
We went to a No Kings protest march by the UC Berkeley campus on October 18. We thought the big chicken was there to protect us from possible interference from ICE. When there was a chant “What do we want [Democracy]; When do we want it [Now]”, Alan was taken aback, thinking, “Gee, that’s what we have ...democracy. It’s just the wrong kind: gerrymandermocracy.”
A unicorn was at the No Kings march too, presumably to assist the chicken.
October 25 we were on a pilgrimmage to Poston Arizona where Diane’s mom, aunts, and uncles were incarcerated during WWII. The monument in this photo was created to honor those who were incarcerated there.
Ireichō: Book of Names is a huge book listing all 128,000+ incarcerees at the Japanese concentration camps and prisons in the U.S. Diane signed us up to honor her relatives by placing stamp-marks by their names in the book. This photo shows us by that Ireichō book, having completed our designated stamps for over a dozen of her relatives. Very meaningful to both of us.
Alan volunteered to bring his eVscope to Lawrence Hall of Science on August 14 for a Perseid Meteor Shower party. Here he is after having set up the scope and connecting it to a 32 inch TV monitor. Alas the sky was cloudy most of the time, but party was fun anyway.
This photo shows the eVscope system with the iPad controller mounted on the tripod and TV on a homemade wooden stand with hefty battery that lasts about 4 hours.
Image from the eVscope: The Dumbbell Nebula, M27, a planetary nebula, which is basically a huge puff of gas and material being expelled from a dying star.
At a Lawrence Hall of Science Gala November 18, Diane captured the Sunstones sculpture at sunset, with the dinosaurs contemplating who they might grab for a dinner appetizer.
Throughout 2025, we attended many Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) classes:
Fighting Slavery in the US Part 2
Symphonies of Mahler
Textual Politics (book discussions)
Ancient History and Hollywood Film
Contemporary Mexico History
Hybrid Warfare
Law and Popular Culture
War and Peace in the Persian Gulf
Left Behind - Understanding Rightward Drift
Politics of Ice, Beyond Climate Change
Communism in Power
Cryptocurrency
Cheese Class (Alan)
What’s New in Astrophysics 2025
Tom Lehrer
Cybersecurity in the Era of AI
Sweet Harmony (music groups)
Global Hot Spots - Syria, Israel, Korea, USA
Out of Many - People’s HIstory of the US
People’s History of the US 1783-1877
Turn, Turn, Turn - Rock n’ Roll Road Trip, Parts 1 & 2
Anti-Semitism: The Dynamics and History of the “Longest Hatred”
November 20 we visited the Museum on Treasure Island, midway across the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco. It was nearly overcast, but a very nice day otherwise.
An interesting view of the Bay Bridge from Treasure Island.
A view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island, from the pier at Treasure Island.
May your 2026 be better than 2025 and may we all be around to celebrate (or commiserate) on November 4 after midterm election day.
Diane & Alan
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