2023

Happy New Year, 2023!

2022 was a pretty good year in many respects, unless you caught COVID-19 or were living in Ukraine or drafted into the Russian army.

Here are some snapshots from our 2022. First Diane and Alan under the Moon one night in San Diego by the beach.

That was our one airplane trip of the year, to San Diego to have a vacation with Alan's brother Dan and his family. It was a great trip with family visits and the only traumatic element being at the horrendously crowded San Diego airport terminal where almost noone was masked. Of course we tested ourselves before and after the trip and all's well. We keep up on our vaccinations scrupulously.

This photo is Dan (left) and Alan on a tandem bike. What's unusual about this is that the original photo had the faces in dark shadow from the helmet visors. Alan was able to use a trick he learned in our Osher Lifelong Learning Institute course "iPhoneography" by Yoni Mayeri. There is an iPhone app, Snapseed, that is great for touchups. Alan used the app's tools Brush > Exposure and Dodge & Burn to lighten the faces. Pretty cool, even with the sloppy finger strokes by Alan.

Diane was struck (amused) by Alan hanging pots, pans, and their covers in a room away from the kitchen to save space. These are "induction-ready" pots and pans that we can use with a little single "burner" electric induction cook-top.

On Halloween, Alan made his best jack-o-lantern ever.

Alan led a Winter Solstice community gathering at Cesar Chavez Solar Calendar in Berkeley. You can see him in back towards the left holding a round device that is a "Solar Motion Demonstrator" to help explain how the Sun behaves in different seasons. Joe Snider invented the Solar Motion Demonstrator when he was a professor at Oberlin College. Alan made a webpage with frequently asked questions for this event, including links to instructions for how to make your own solar motion demonstrator.

Diane took a picture of Alan snoring.

Alan got together with a woodwind group April 6 (Marjie, Carol, Alan, Marge, David)
and some folk-rock musicians May 15 (2022; Ron, Sue, Gary, Christa, Alan).

Finally, there are some astronomical images that Alan got with his eVscope. These were in November when he volunteered to help with Eastbay Astonomical Society star parties for Albany High School (Nov 17) and El Cerrito High School (Nov 30). The images are

  • Dumbell Nebula (Nov 15, prep for Albany HS; note the colors captured by the eVscope)

  • M13 The Great Globular Star Cluster in the constellation Hercules
    (Nov 17; may have several hundred thousand stars)

  • M15 The Great Pegasus Globular Star Cluster (Nov 30; over 100,000 stars; ≈12 billion years old)

  • M33 Spiral galaxy in the constellation Triangulum (Nov 30; about 40 billion stars; about 2/3 the diameter of our own Milky Way galaxy)

The eVscope automatically adds labels to images with object name, exposure time, coordinates of the observing location, and the date. Pretty cool.