I was a high school student intern at Hewlett-Packard when it was a pretty small company. I was totally excited because from my electronic hobbies I knew they made the best professional test equipment. I was assigned to various flunky jobs, but one I liked was mounting an ‘example part’ on each drawer in their supply room. I got to use a power drill to mount little knobs and switches.   I was glad not to be working in the scary room with the poisonous bath they used to de-grease parts.

On my own time I was ‘inventing’ in my mind a cool instrument that would display voltages digitally. I used an oscilloscope there to test that the voltage on a charging capacitor would increase smoothly with time, at least at first. That meant I could count the time to reach the incoming voltage to produce a digital value. This led me to apply to a Westinghouse contest with my digital meter project design. I passed their written test, but lost interest while I was trying to build the device — too many problems cropped up.

The best thing that happened at HP was their yearly sale of surplus stuff. I saw a coveted oscilloscope in the pile, secretly tested it, and bought it for a few dollars. Of course the device didn’t initially work, but I loved tracing and fixing problems so this became a new exciting project. There were hundreds of wires and parts to evaluate, but finally I found a power supply wire that was pinched between two parts, shorting it out. Eureka!

Fixing that gave me an excellent visual tool for years to monitor my other circuit projects. Finally it blew out its main transformer and truly died. What fun it had been.

Several years later I would return to HP, working as a paid research assistant in the development lab with my own assigned project, exploring the just-invented light-sensitive diode. Exciting!

5/5/15

I love our shower faucet.   When I set it to ’80’ it always gives just the right temperature water, no matter what time of year. I suppose as the son of an engineer this respect for accuracy was a given. I can picture my dad tapping a meter to make sure it wasn’t stuck. I loved his multi-meter with the mirror behind the needle so you were always reading it straight-on.

In high school I worked at HP, then the leading provider of precision instruments, so I felt I was doing respectable work. In my graduate thesis I came up with a pretty reliable way to judge the emotional content s in speech, a notoriously subjective thing.   In my photographic work, I often like sharp precise images, and enjoy composing and framing so everything is just right to my eye.

Hopefully, I’m not a total accuracy nut,  annoying other people.  I keep it to myself.

The California drought has focused our attention on the importance of water here. In my dad’s family, drilling for water was one of the first things they did. When grandfather moved to San Jose, he planned acres of nut trees, motivating well-digging. My day, as soon has he was old enough, helped with the maintenance. I remember photographs of their giant water pump, motor, and feeder pipes.

When my family moved to San Carlos in 1941, dad drilled his own backyard well. It helped irrigate their victory garden, and later, lawns.   I remember the giant post-hold digger and the hole in the shed roof that went with it. I could hear from my bedroom the well motor cycling on.

In Berkeley in the 60’s I was surprised to discover a backyard well behind the Victorian house I was managing. Probably every big house of that vintage had one. Hiding under some big plywood sheets, it was several feet in diameter and brick-lined. I had the water tested, and it was still potable. You could just dip your bucket in. I decided not to.

I can only imagine what it must feel like to live in the Central Valley and have the well that is your only water supply run dry. The house becomes unlivable and un-saleable.

6/18/15

Ballet was considered spiritual by the Russian dancer/choreographer Balanchine.   I loved joyously floating in a fast waltz around an open dance floor.   Dancing around the living room with young Allegra and Jeremy was always wonderful too.

I never could do the Sufi spins that supposedly lead to ecstasy, since nausea usually ensued. Once I went to a spinning class that I quickly found too dizzying — the effect lasted for more than 24 hours. I’ve folk danced my whole life starting at 10, even helping teach it for a couple of years. Not so much any more, and I miss it.

It’s been a lot of fun

1/2/2012

I’ve been perusing old cassettes and videos with enjoyment. Pride has a tarnished name, but there’s no denying the wonderful feeling I have as our son asks amazing questions at age four. It’s the same when I listen back to our daughter at the same age singing pitch-perfect and rhythm-perfect songs and made up ditties. Or watching my oldest daughter dance through the thistles expressing joy and unfettered movement.

I feel strongly connected to them at these moments. Jeremy’s mind seems at that instant to be so much like mine, where curiosity, pattern-seeking, and imagination meet. Five-year old Heida’s dancing echoed my joy leaping around the dance floor folk dancing.   Allegra’s love of music echoes mine, and her clear notes remind me of something I thought I had lost. I used to sing a cappella songs on pitch, and later I noticed my fingers would produce on a flute any note I heard as long as I didn’t think about it. Perhaps I can bring that back with practice.

My pride in them connects to pride in myself. This sounds very self-centered. Do all parents face this issue? Fortunately, our children have a healthy humility that keeps them well-grounded.   They’ve gone miles beyond us in so many ways that they’ve created their own reasons for self-respect.

So I can enjoy the feelings of proud connection to them pretty much without guilt.

After bringing our art work to the History Museum, we drove around some of my old haunts in Los Altos.   Los Altos started as a bedroom community for airline pilots and other upward-mobile families. Although most houses we saw were 50+ year old ranch-style, they were well-kept.  Our house in the apricot orchards on Avalon Drive was wonderful to see, spinning out warm memories with each glance. The home looked remarkably wide, like the old Cinerama movies, situated on flat lawn-fronted land. I pointed out the bathroom window where I created my first darkroom. Also the wide 2-car garage where I built and wired the workbench and electronics.   There was the kitchen window where Mom staged a welcome-home dinner when we came back from backpacking to a newly-moved-in house.  Our second house, on Giralda, looked different than I remember, largely due to the giant redwood trees that had grown up in front.

My cynical high school friends always tried to distance themselves from the bourgeois wealth of the town, but we still enjoyed the minor luxuries that living there provided.   The history museum had nicely portrayed the agricultural roots here, with apricots the most valued crop.   I felt good about the summer crop jobs my sisters and I had. Some of the old equipment in the museum reminded me of grandfather’s gentleman walnut farm and his tall slender ladders. When they moved to Los Altos Hills, dad was probably the only electronics worker there who hosted bee hives in the orchards. I moved away from such scenes, but I wish I had brought with me a love of gardening

Avalon Drive House

Giralda Drive House on fathers day 1961, taken by JC Gordon

When your propeller breaks, you can die quickly if you don’t remember one thing. My Dad’s training took immediately took over as he cut the engine of his little blue Cessna airplane.   If he hadn’t swiftly acted, the unbalanced remains of the propeller would have shook the motor loose causing the now fatally unbalanced plane to fall directly to earth.

That was the first rule.   The second, more obvious one, was to find a place to land within gliding distance. You don’t need a working engine in order to glide. He took a moment to think. On the positive side, he had bought himself some time. On the negative, he was not in a friendly landing area – he was over the San Francisco Bay – and his plane was not equipped for a water landing. Also, he had two passengers who were his responsibility – that made things a little more critical.

He did what was necessary, and landed on a empty dirt roadway on Mare Island near Vallejo. He landed safely except his wing tip hit a small trailer at the side of the road and spun around. His beloved 06Xray was totaled.

Laura got the call in Berkeley, and we were initially confused. What happened? He was a little shook up himself. I believe I drove up and picked up the three of them.

Later, Ron found a Cessna similar to the one he lost, but it was never the same.

[Recently I found an report from a Naval flight trainer who witnessed the landing: “the pilot handled this emergency commendably .. his quick analysis and prompt corrective action probably prevented this from becoming a fatal accident”]

I had it in my blood, but it only manifested briefly.  My dad was a radio ham in the early days when Morse code was the only means of communicating by amateur radio. Moreover, I later learned that my maternal grandfather Charlie was a telegraph dispatcher/operator when he first came to California.

Dad encouraged interest in amateur radio by plunking down a heavy all-band radio (with no cabinet) on my desk when I was in grade school. I never was interested in listening to the radio chatter, but learning ‘code’ appealed to me as a cryptographic puzzle. Since I loved building electrical projects, I convinced my best friend Jim Anderson to try out house-to-house communication. I ran a wire pair along back fences to his house, which was just around the block. Then I put a big battery under my desk and used one of my dad’s sending key and clicker to communicate (see below). Unfortunately, it was never used because Jimmy didn’t want to learn Morse code.   Oh, well.

This didn’t interfere with my mission to build a code-sending machine, using cotton thread spools turned by a handle, with bent copper wire to sense the dit’s and da’s.   Holes punched in a long tape were supposed to contain the codes. I was happy to build something that sort of worked. After testing I never used it — that wasn’t the important part.

4/9/15

[note missing bakelite nob on keyer]  ouch!

I woke up today singing in my head ‘steal away’, an old spiritual.  We used to sing this around the campfire at Methodist Youth camp. Beautiful harmonies from our young voices.  I knew that “I have to go to camp ground” was about dying.  Paul Robeson’s “Deep River” was about the same theme.  Other songs included ‘if you get to heaven before I do, just bore a hole and pull me through’.  In some way, these songs are comforting. What relevance did they have to me, this budding rationalist skeptic teenager?  Of course, I also loved songs were more relevant to my life, like in Cindy Cindy: “every time she kissed me she stole my bubble gum”.

As I age, the mortality theme seems more relevant. When I saw the trailer for ‘Still Julia’ about Alzheimer’s and I felt very disturbed and decided not to see that movie yet.   The film The Imitation Game showed a lonely, beaten down genius turning the lights out on his beloved machine and probably himself.  These are emotional, relevant topics for us as we age.  Teenagers often are accused of acting as if they were immortal. Still, death has been a teen cultural meme for a long time, and there’s probably a reason.

So I will keep enjoying old camp songs as long as they linger in my head.

1/29/15

I heard a Fresh Air interview today with a man who lived in an extended care home while middle-aged. He realized that the new residents would come in without bringing a context of their previous life He decided to do video interviews, letting them talk about anything.   It turned out to be a good thing to do, and their families benefited.

This idea appeals to me — interviewing seniors who have little support systems, perhaps give them something to pass down. Cousin Lois has been doing something like this for many years.

These days I think of many questions I wish I had asked.   Mom, how did your mother/aunt relate to you when you were young, and when you were older? Was she cold or warm? Dad, what led you to each big decision to do something new, like starting psychiatry or buying an airplane? I was always surprised by each new adventure. Grandpa JC, how did your father get into taking pictures?   Did you try to interest me in your darkroom?

I have enjoyed it when I took the time to videotape relatives — Albert, Henry, Mildred, Mom, Dad.   It’s not easy to ask questions to take things deeper.   I think I would enjoy being ‘video interviewed’ at some point by my children or grand-kids, like Allegra’s taping of Fran or all 3 interviewing Albert. I ‘m such a self-documenter, but still we might learn something.

9/19/2012