Spring 2007
Greetings!
Acknowledging that we are significantly behind in our “year end 2006” note, we thank you for the news of your lives and offer a bit of ours.
Paul, completing his junior year, is an active computer science major. He spent the 2006 summer working in the college Information Technology department on several infrastructure technical projects. He loves programming the innards of computers. Paul is not very communicative to his parents; after several weeks of his ignoring our phone calls, emails, text messages, and instant messages, we submitted “trouble ticket” at the college IT center; that finally generated a return call. Lee loves to ask folks to guess “as a CS major, how many computers does Paul have in his dorm room?” [answer at the bottom of this letter].
Karen is completing her second year of teaching high school physics at a private school in Los Angeles. She is the assistant coach for the girls volleyball team (includes a preseason trip to Hawaii). She has continued her love of travel and staying connected with trips to Boston, New York, Atlanta, and other US cities. To keep her mind fresh, she is completing the first class for an advanced degree in physics – and finding the math almost numbing.
Lee’s company, CellPoint Diagnostics, moved from Boston to La Jolla, a much easier commute. CPD is making good progress on developing a sensitive blood based test of the effectiveness of cancer treatments. He is happily on a trajectory to reduce his hours from 4 days per week to 1-2 by the end of the year. To practice getting ready for retirement, he has been actively scheduling trips including the Galapagos Islands and Olympic Peninsula with Helen, and a photo safari to Tanzania, eastern Africa. You can see more of Lee’s images at
aurich.com
Helen is completing her second year as president of the Oakland League of Women Voters. She has just agreed to another 2-year term; Lee is working to adjust to an essentially full-time working wife. Among her projects has been coordinating a community response to a huge condominium project on the last large waterfront parcel in Oakland – the developer is reducing the open space required in the master plan’s and visually blocking views to the bay. She led the effort last summer to collect 25,000+ signatures to have the city council reconsider the issue. When the city attorney stopped, on a technicality, the counting of the signatures, she then organized a lawsuit against the
city. Her lawsuit raises some significant constitutional questions and may ultimately reach the state supreme court. She also pioneered the League’s Easy Voter Guide for Oakland candidates and issues in three languages. And, she continues to chair our church’s $2 million building renovation project.
On the political front, we are becoming cautiously optimistic after the 2006 elections that the country will emerge from the Bush shadow with a renewed sense of how to provide political, ecological, and moral leadership in a complex world that requires a
sense of understanding and compassion, rather than dominance.
If you are in the San Francisco bay area, please call or stop by. We would love to see you.
Yours in peace,
Lee & Helen
last updated: 7 July 2007