San Francisco, CA
15 December 1987
It has been two years since my last letter; there is much to report. There was no letter last year out of respect for my Dad, who passed away September 1986, after some months of declining health. He continues to be missed; he led an exemplary life.
Life's "big three" are work, home, and personal relationship. To report are a new job (albeit at the old place) and a new home. No new relationship. Well, two out of three ain't bad! (Or four out of five, if money and health are added.)
After nearly two years of agitation, I have put yet another bulwark between me and the military-industrial complex. I am now a group manager for Sterling Software in the Advanced Computer Graphics Research Group at NASA Ames. So although it is only about three hundred yards from my old workplace, I like the work much better, and that's what counts. I have a bright new graduate student working with me, and came up with a good graphics idea just about the time he arrived, that we intend to publish early next year. So it looks like things in the career department are working out for the better.
On October first, I moved to San Francisco, culminating a process that began more than a year and a half, and several kilobucks, earlier, when I decided that Sunnyvale was too lonely an outpost for someone of my socio-political orientation. All Asphalt and Republicans and BMW-worshipping Yuppies, and I never felt at home in seven years there. The move to San Francisco is also a change in that it is a move to a cooperative rental with three other men in a beautiful restored Victorian with 11-1/2 foot ceilings. I have books up to the ceiling on one bedroom wall! There are two fireplaces and even four karyatids (sculpted architectural figures). That's why the "hearths aglow" message on the card, by the way. It is a wonderful place for giving parties, and I hope that many of you who have not visited have a chance to.
There's been quite a bit of travel. Foremost was the trip to China in the summer of 1986. I spent over two weeks in the People's Republic, about half of it in Beijing, where I was at an international Computational Fluid Dynamics conference. It was good going with a group, and I got to see the Chinese Academy of Sciences computer center and Beijing University, along with the usual tourist sights. With one quarter of the world's people, they have a quarter of the world's wonders. The Terra Cotta Army at Xi'an, the Ming tombs and Great Wall near Beijing. The trip of a lifetime. Rest and recuperation in Hawaii en route back.
After that, there were a few domestic trips in '87, a week in New York seeing plays and art, and a long weekend marching on Washington and visiting friends in Baltimore during Columbus Day. Plus some time away from civilization at gatherings in the woods. Hope the travel budget will be fatter in '88. Wanderlust is growing!
All in all, many seeds of positive change have been sown. I await the harvest expectantly. (And a new President is overdue.) Many fond wishes for you and your loved ones this Holiday Season,
from David Kerlick