Wednesday 01/05/2025
As I was planning a walk later, I took a shorter walk in the morning, a mile around to have breakfast at a nice coffee shop. Later I processed the video of the Shakespeare group and put it on my public dropbox and emailed the director. Who hasn’t replied yet. Played some music and then it was time for early lunch.
At 12:30 I met with Joanne for the walk she was coordinating, normally several people but today only me, her, and Martha. We walked a couple of miles around the Baylands. The Baylands are a large area, maybe a couple of miles on a side? of sloughs and banks on the edge of the Bay. For decades up until about 1990, Palo Alto had a garbage landfill there, building up quite a hill of trash that was sealed with layers of clay and soil. Eventually, not sure what year, it was converted to a public park. The hill, or series of mounds of sealed trash, covers many acres, twice the size of our Old Ranch at least, and has the local name of Mount Trashmore. And there are paths over and around it and public art works and stuff. So that was nice, and I ended up with 13K steps and 4.8 miles for the day.
On the drive back, Martha and I were trading memories of IBM — she was a systems engineer out of the San Francisco office a few years after I was a customer engineer there. (Her last name is Claypool, in case that rings any bells with Scott?)
After supper I set up the auditorium for a talk. This was by Anton Eremin, a 21-year-old immigrant from the Soviet Union, where he was imprisoned for protesting the Ukraine war. He got away to Mexico and came into the USA for political asylum. Quite an impressive, articulate guy. He arrived two years ago with no English; he now speaks it very well with little accent. He continues to be an activist, supporting protest groups inside Russia, and also agitating for better treatment of refugees here. To a question from the audience, did the USA meet your expectations when you finally got here? He noted that yes we have political freedom and the police don’t arrest and torture you for saying what you think. On the other hand, in the streets of Vladivostok there are no homeless, no graffiti, no fentanyl. So, you know, pros and cons.
Codgerville 