Wendy, Becky, Mike, & Christie in Seattle WA March 2000 HiRes
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are ...
[Alfred Tennyson in Ulysses]
Seen from the vantage point of space, our beautiful planet is the Garden of Eden for all of humankind,
both living and yet to be born.
In our time, without realizing it at first, we attained the knowledge and the power to destroy it.
...The issue is whether we have the wisdom and self-restraint needed to avoid that outcome...
The choice is awesome and potentially eternal.
[Al Gore in Our Choice, 2009]
Wendy, Becky, Mike, & Christie in Seattle WA March 2000 HiRes
On this page, I answer the question, "What have we been doing with ourselves since I retired?" (I have discussed how I came to be retired elsewhere.) I am happy to report that I have not been idle, and hope that this and other personal webpages are convincing of this opinion. Sadly, Rebecca McGoodwin passed away in July 2017.
A Short Vacation: My first order of business after involuntary retirement was to get outa Dodge for a while. Becky and I quickly packed up in early June 1994, and headed out to Yellowstone National Park (where we saw the great sights and did several enjoyable short hikes), to Grand Teton NP (where we tried car camping for the first time in several years), and on to visit brother Scott and his growing family in Colorado (we camped with them near Aspen in the spectacular Maroon Bells area). He was in the process of building a lovely new home almost entirely by his own hands and skills. We were very interested in it, were pleased to see its progress, and felt proud of his hard work.
Where to Turn Next? We all too soon and with with mixed feelings returned to Seattle, unsure what to do next. However, I had no intention of laying around or navel gazing, and was eager to find constructive uses of my time.
This is a technical section, probably of limited interest to most of my readers, so feel free to skip past it to the next section. However, I describe here a major part of my quasi-professional activities in the first 10 years or so of retirement. I have included many details including links to and names of important computer software, books, magazines, and other information technology ("IT") resources, because these items occupied much of the thoughts and attention of working IT professionals including myself during that time.
As I surveyed my limited options for doing useful work after "retirement", it seemed that my best option was to try to focus on and enhance my skills in computer and information technologies, particularly those with potential for biomedical applications. My goal was to be able to work from home, on my own timetable and at my own pace when symptoms permitted. I had long felt a latent interest in this field, and had explored a number of good uses of computer technologies already (see MOBUS for example). A concise summary of my training and activities in my strange new computer career can be found here.
Computer Programming and Software Development as a Creative Process: Though often somewhat lacking in the human touch, computer programming and Software Development can be inherently stimulating and genuinely satisfying at its best, because it is a creative process not unlike writing, composing, or painting. If computer science had existed as a promising field of study when I was in college, I might have considered it as an alternative major to physics. Even though I can feel excitement and enthusiasm about computer technologies and programming, however, I wish to emphasize that if I had had any choice in the matter, I would have vastly preferred to continue in the practice of medicine and radiology beyond 1994.
A Lonely Business: Given the isolation caused by my illness, and the intense effort and energy needed to make something more viable out of my computer skills, I probably seemed to some friends to have become a somewhat reclusive computer nerd during my early retirement. However, I liked to think that "though this be madness, yet there is method in 't." I wish to offer special thanks to my neighbor, friend, and computer guru David White for his sage guidance and insights, especially during the early years of this new and challenging phase in my life. I did not intentionally seek isolation—it just seemed to come with the territory.
C Computer Programming: My first computer efforts as a retired physician were aimed at learning more about serious computer programming. I already was a good DOS-based BASIC programmer (and was familiar with a fair amount of underlying computer theory and hardware, aided by the entertaining and informative magazine Byte). But though BASIC is a great and highly productive programming language, it was regarded with disdain by the programming glitterati (who felt it to be too slow, too simple, and too prone to allowing confused "spaghetti code"). Therefore, I took my first University of Washington (UW) course in the hard-core programming language, "C" (in autumn 1994), taught by the knowledgeable and excellent teacher named Dr. James "Jim" Peckol. The C Programming Language is a sparsely elegant language which executes lightning-fast. (It is analogous to a temperamental Italian sports car, exceeded in speed and risk only by Assembly Language, which could be likened more to a Top Fuel dragster. BASIC in this analogy would be a Lincoln Town Car, safe but not particularly glamorous.)
"C" was first developed (note 1) in the Bell Labs in the early 1970s as a successor to "B", in parallel with the early development of the Unix operating system. The original full description for "C" is the 1978 text, The C Programming Language, by Kernighan and Ritchie, and the definitive grammar book for me was Harbison's 1991 arcane text, C: A Reference Manual, Third Edition, both of which I read as best I could. However, we used a more human-friendly text as a tutorial for the class, the 1993 second edition of The Joy of C. (For serious programmers, it seems that programming is as exciting as sex.) I enjoyed learning from and working with the instructor. There were times when I felt too ill to keep going in this evening class, but I stuck it out as best I could, and made an A. He expressed interest in helping me find programming employment, but I did not feel well enough to go to work on a regular basis.
I still (as of 2012) make occasional use of a complex software tool I developed initially as a project for this class, a so-called Windows Dynamic Link Library ("DLL") that I named VG32.DLL. I developed and compiled it in several Microsoft (MS) versions of Visual C++ culminating in version 6. This DLL has gone through several of its own versions, and contains a number of useful canned procedures (subroutines and functions) that can be called or invoked from other programs written in MS Visual Basic or MS Access Visual Basic for Applications. However, in general I found the C programming language fascinating but too difficult to work with in my one-man shop, low in productivity with respect to developing free-standing applications, and too likely to lead to buggy crash-prone software compared to what I was used to with BASIC. (At the time I was learning this language, there were no Web-based help resources available to quickly look up C syntax, etc., such as are now readily available.)
C++ Computer Programming: In the winter of 1995, I took another serious programming course also at the UW, this one in the evolutionary successor language to C, namely C++. (This clever self-referential name, which uses the syntax of the language, derives from the incremental improvement of C by the addition of "classes", etc.) The teacher was the very capable Dr. Madhu Murthy. This even more complex and arcane language remains in widespread industrial use in 2012—it is the language in which software such as MS Word and MS Excel were written. It was designed to make use of so-called "object-oriented programming" (in which software modules, such as classes, are developed that can be reused over and over again, etc.) My tutorial text was Osborne's Teach Yourself C++. However, the texts defining the intricacies of the language—particularly Stroustrop's The C++ Programming Language, Second Edition, and the five-volume Microsoft set describing their own commercial C++ implementation—were extraordinarily abstruse. I struggled through this course, but made an A ultimately. However, I was coming up against a practical barrier: I finally came to realize that this language was so overloaded with complexity, and my available technical resources as a lone-wolf programmer so limited (again, this was prior to the Web-based help era), that I had little chance of ever becoming a successful and competitive C++ programmer. Moreover, it was just too hard to be productive in this programming environment—in fact, I never did write any substantial program in C++ beyond the class assignments.
I was gratified however to have run briefly with the big boys, and to have learned the basics of C++ syntax. C++ syntax is often encountered in software that communicates with the underlying Microsoft Windows operating system through the so-called Windows Applications Programming Interface ("Windows API"). To better understand how the programmer and Windows talk to each other, I found helpful Petzold's seminal textbook, Programming Windows, 3rd edition (published in 1992). But I came to view this intense C++ effort as mostly a disappointing waste of limited personal resources. I eventually decided in about 1995 that I would concentrate on creating programs written either for MS Visual Basic ("VB") or Visual Basic for Applications ("VBA") within MS Access, though making use of "calls" to the C++ based routines found in the Windows API. These two VB programming "environments" appeared to allow me to be the most productive for rapid solo development of useful real-world computer applications, and also made it the easiest to upgrade and improve previously written programs when the inevitable need for revisions arose.
The Internet and Unix: By 1994, the Internet was emerging for me as an IT phenomenon worthy of serious attention. I obtained a second phone line and my first phone modem in 1994, and subscribed to Compuserve for its technical forums and manufacturer's support resources also in that year. (At that time, one dialed up Compuserve directly rather than reaching it via the Internet, but it could also provide Internet access.) I was also fortunate to have access to the Internet through the UW via dialup access. Remote access to the UW computer system ("Saul") via telnet gave me useful exposure to working with the Unix operating system, which was a new experience to me. I began in 1994 to learn about Unix shells, programming Unix shell scripts, and the various programs and utilities written to run in Unix (including ftp, pico, sort, find, etc.)
Email and Other Early Internet Applications: I began using the UW's own Pine email system in about 1994, took a brief introductory practical course on the Internet and Unix (possibly summer 1994), and began reading extensively around this time to learn more about the various services offered on the Internet. The Internet technologies in use prior to the advent of the Web (such as Gopher) were rather clumsy and inelegant.
Discovering the World Wide Web: The World Wide Web (the WWW or Web) first went online (note 2) in primordial form in 1991 at CERN. The inventor of HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, developed the first Internet Web browser, named WorldWideWeb or later named Nexus, which was capable of interpreting and displaying hyperlinked webpages written in HTML. But the Web really took off only in 1993 and 1994 with the release of the graphics-rich Mosaic browser by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. I tried out the text-only Web browser Lynx in 1994—it had been developed in 1993—and began to appreciate the potential power and value of networked and hyperlinked information, especially when it was made available for free on the Web (as opposed to the proprietary Compuserve service). Mosaic was the forerunner to Netscape Navigator, which was first released in late 1994, and I soon tried it out in the PC version. Netscape and its successors, Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox, have been my browsers of choice.
Vitrine Gardens: I needed a name for my evolving if modest IT enterprise. I called it Virtual Gardens for several years while writing software—Virtual because computers deal so much with an imaginary or non-concrete world, and Gardens to tie into and honor my wife's love of gardening and all the creativity and nurturing that it involves. (I have often kidded her that she heads outside to tend her flowers while I head upstairs to tend my bytes.) Thus the names of almost all of the software I have created—such as VG Archive Directory, which has VGArchDir.exe as its executable file—start with "VG". Unfortunately, when it came time to order a Web domain name of my own, I found that Virtual Gardens was already taken, but as I already had used VG as my company acronym for several years, I settled on Vitrine Gardens as our company name. (A vitrine is a glass-fronted cabinet or showcase used to display china, silver, or objets d'art—thus analogous to a computer monitor, which is used to display a variety of interesting virtual objects.) I was not entirely pleased with this word, which is obscure and sounds a little musty, but it was the best word I could come up with that started with a "V" and that made sense in this context.
Domains and Websites: By 1995 and as an early adopter of the Web, I established my own Web site through my clinical faculty connection at the UW. It was hosted at u.washington.edu, and represented an exciting and potentially innovative resource to me.
My first personal registered domain name was VGard.net, which I established in 1998—this allowed me to stop sponging off the UW and instead use a commercial hosting service for my website and email. In May 2001, I replaced VGard.net with my current domain, McGoodwin.net (though as noted, most of my downloadable software still begins with the letters VG).
Since 1995, I have used my personal websites—initially the one hosted at the UW and subsequently those hosted for a fee by commercial vendors—to offer free downloadable software products. My websites have also offered information on a hodgepodge of topics that I have found of interest since about 1990 in a kind of show-and-tell. It is my hope that my family, especially those with McGoodwin in their names, will continue to keep McGoodwin.net and its website alive long after I am no longer available to maintain them.
Database Development and Resources of the National Library of Medicine: I was familiar with using stopgap technologies such as MS Excel tables and MS Word tables for storing database-like information, but first became interested in genuine database development in about 1993. My interest was initially in developing a database application (Medrefs) for storing and retrieving medical references (such as those I was accumulating on CFS and related conditions). To accomplish this, I learned some of the theory behind relational databases and taught myself how to use MS Access 1.1 (released in 1992) and its successor versions.
I took the opportunity to work with the librarian Cheryl Goodwin at Providence Medical Center (PMC), trying to optimize Medrefs's ability to utilize the rapidly evolving Medline medical resources offered by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Initially these resources were available to me through the Grateful Med computer program and through a proprietary subscription program, OVID, paid for by PMC. Eventually the same information became available directly to the public through Web access to PubMed and the National Center for Biotechnology Information. (The NCBI incorporates the various NLM biomedical databases, including PubMed, GenBank, and other biotechnology informational resources.)
The successor to MS Access 1.1, Access 2.0 (released in 1993, purchased in 1994), was much improved and was a superb program, enjoyable to use. It had the marked virtue that Microsoft provided seemingly unlimited phone help for programming this version—a service that Microsoft abandoned in subsequent software to my great displeasure. (They claimed everything you needed to know was all in the manual, and then they stopped providing printed manuals and claimed it was all in the help file—but it wasn't!) I subsequently went on to make heavy use of Access 97 (beginning in 1997, the year in which this version 8 was released), and to some extent Access 2000 (released in 1999 as version 9, but tried by me first in 2001) for database development. In 2012, I was still using Access 2007 and have used Access 2010 up to this writing (2022).
I have been generally pleased with VBA programming in MS Access, as this "integrated development environment" or IDE provides a combination of convenient database storage and retrieval plus general purpose programming capability using MS Visual Basic for Applications (which resembles MS Visual Basic). From my point of view, programming in the MS Access Visual Basic IDE provided me with an especially productive environment for developing and maintaining useful applications, and I have made a number of these now-aging applications available for free downloading: (1) a Computers Database (for storing computer configuration data); (2) Medrefs & the CFS / FM Database; (3) the McGoodwin Music Database (a quasi-scholarly compilation mostly listing classical music); and (4) the VG Quotes Database (favorite poems and quotations, etc. which can be used in my VGScreensaver). In addition to publicly published databases, I have developed a number of private databases which I use to keep notes on books read, trips taken, correspondence, vegetables and ornamental plants raised, website development, etc.
In a preliminary effort at computer work for hire, I learned in 1996 that—just like an architect making a pitch on a preliminary design—one can spend a great deal of time preparing a medical database analysis and proposal for a clinic, only to have the project turned down. Thus I got a taste of defeat in my newly chosen part-time career of database development. However, I ventured forth again into the world of for-profit IT business in May to October 2001, providing custom databases using MS Access 2000 (plus contributing some nuclear medicine wisdom) for a medical startup company called MedOrder, Inc. I was a neophyte in the go-go world of dotcom startups, but at least I had the foresight to insist on being paid in old-fashioned cash rather than in stock options. I also developed a number of databases for medical organizations as an unpaid volunteer in 1995 to c. 1998, and later for pay in 2001 – 2004 (all described below).
Initial Volunteer Clinic Computer Work and Website Programming: Beginning in June 1995, I volunteered with a medical enterprise in Seattle, the Center for Comprehensive Care (CCC). (It mostly provided physical therapy, vocational counseling, and acupuncture, the first two services of which I had personally utilized, since they dealt with many persons with CFS and fibromyalgia.) The CCC was affiliated with my rheumatologist Dr. Philip Mease and the clinical office building where he worked. I fell into this line of volunteer work more or less out of desperation and at Dr. Mease's kind suggestion, after I indicated to him that I was trying to find something honorable to do with my time that might be even remotely connected to clinical medicine, even if far removed from radiology. (I was disappointed that the adverse experiences of the early 1990s made it effectively impossible for me to return to serve in any volunteer capacity at PMC radiology—I might have made some useful contributions there under more hospitable circumstances.) Though Dr. Mease was my primary caregiver for CFS and the physician who supported my disability claim, there was never any quid pro quo relating to my disability. I attended the CCC's weekly planning conferences for a number of months, and developed several Web pages and some clinical databases for them in 1996.
Web Software: I began using the software MS FrontPage to assist in webpage design and website administration in 1997, and continued using this tool in its more recent versions until I switched to Macromedia's Dreamweaver in 2006. (It is now an Adobe product and continues to be my webpage development tool as of 2022.)
Visual Basic Programming and Windows: Other than VBA as incorporated into MS Access, freestanding MS Visual Basic has been my favorite programming environment in which to be productive. I started with version 3 (released in 1993 and purchased in 1994), also used version 4 (released and used in 1995) and version 5 (released and used in 1997), and culminated with version 6 (released and used in 1998).
Complex computer programming is best done in a stable and robust computer environment. This can ensure that the crash of a buggy program under development does not cause the entire operating system to crash (which was unfortunately the case in Windows 3.1, 95, and 98). To attain this desired stability, I began to use the Windows NT operating system well before it gained wide popularity—initially version 3.5 in January 1995, and version 4 in 1996. These were complex programs and not fully compatible with previous Windows software and existing hardware, but they were rock-solid in not crashing unexpectedly. I subscribed to Windows NT Magazine (now Windows IT Pro) probably in 1995 to keep up with this challenging technology. Windows NT 4.0 evolved into Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) in 2000, though I never installed it, and Windows XP (NT 5.1) came out in 2001. I adopted XP in early 2004, and abandoned it in 2014 when Microsoft withdrew support for it. I took up Windows 7 in 2011 on a new machine, and continue to use it (as of 2014). Windows XP and 7 have proven to be reliable programs, although I remain somewhat dissatisfied with the complex behavior of Windows 7. (See here for my convictions and suggestions regarding the impact of Microsoft on computer systems reliability and national productivity.)
I subscribed to the Visual Basic Programming Journal for many years beginning in about 1994, and found it helpful, along with my longstanding subscriptions to PC Magazine and PC World. Visual Basic offers a great deal of power, especially when combined with "calls" to the underlying Windows API. (For learning about how to make these calls, I turned to the indispensable 1996 tome by Daniel Appleman, Visual Basic Programmer’s Guide to the Win32 API.) During 1996, I took a downtown course at the UW (winter 1996) on the newly-introduced "Object Oriented Programming" features of MS Visual Basic 4, specifically to learn more about creating efficient reusable software components. I also made use of reusable program modules I created, such as VG32.DLL (written in C), and VGRegistry.DLL and VGSelFil.DLL (written in VB), and to some extent outside commercial and freeware add-on component products to facilitate programming in VB. Publicly available software that I have created in freestanding Visual Basic has included my "literate screen saver" VGScreensaver, as well as some potentially useful utility programs (such as VG Archive Directory, VG Clean [obsolete], VGShowFQFS, and VGXCopy [obsolete]), but I have also created a number of non-public utility programs for personal use.
Keyboarding: In winter quarter 1999, and only about 40 years late, I finally got around to learning how to touch-type by taking a good course at North Seattle Community College (NSCC). I had regretted since my earliest college days that I lacked this skill, but my new quasi-career in computer technologies and the relentless rise of email, forced me to try to better myself. Though I am still not great at it, and continue to make many mistakes, I can now type faster than in the old hunt-and-peck days and have gained the non-trivial advantage of being able to keep my eyes on my subject matter and the screen rather than on the keyboard. (NSCC proved to be a valuable source for Becky and me of excellent and relatively low-cost courses, mostly in technical and artistic subjects.)
Digital Imaging and Art: Although as a radiologist I had long made use of digital imaging techniques, I became interested, like just about everyone else on the planet, in digital imaging for personal uses in about 1999. This was the year I purchased Adobe Photoshop version 5, took a summer course on Photoshop at NSCC, and purchased an Epson digital film scanner. One of the first tasks I took on was to create a digital family photo archive. To do this, I scanned selected prints and slides from our personal photograph collection, and incorporated these into local webpages stored on CDRs which I subsequently distributed to my relatives.
Of course, I have put these gradually improving photo skills to other uses, including preparing the images used on my website and in these memoirs. We bought a small Nikon Coolpix digital camera in spring 2004, and Becky and I used this in a beginner's course, Digital Photography I (Art 114), taken at NSCC. It was taught by the highly animated and entertaining professional photographer, Kenji Tachibana. Since taking up digital photography, we have not taken any new film or slide photographs. I subsequently replaced the Coolpix with a Nikon single-lens-reflex (SLR) camera.
By 2004, I was using Adobe Photoshop CS, and put this program to use, along with Adobe Illustrator CS, in a more advanced NSCC course, Digital Art (Art 210), in fall quarter 2004. This was taught by another very knowledgeable professional, Mark Meyer. (Unfortunately I was not able to complete this course, as the result of a sudden hospitalization for lymphoma.) Although I don't have much artistic talent, it has been very satisfying to try to make the most I can with digital images, using such standard techniques as cropping, color balance and level adjusting, touching up, modifying with gradients, collaging, filtering, outright synthesizing, etc. (See here for some of my primitive efforts at digital art—perhaps I will find time someday to do more with creating digital images that go beyond the mere capturing of digital real-world photographs.)
De-emphasizing Programming: By the time I was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2004, my concentration on and fascination with learning new programming skills had waned. I am currently much more interested in putting to practical use my existing IT skills—improving and maintaining my website and photographs, writing quasi-scholarly summaries and these memoirs, and expanding various databases such as the music and plants databases I have already created, etc.)—rather than investing large new blocks of precious time to learn and implement some of the ever-evolving programming environments de jour (such as Java, PHP, ASP.NET, C#, IDL, and Python, etc.).
This is also a section of limited interest, and readers may wish to skip it. Although I experienced CFS / UAS for ten years before I retired, I had not taken the time to attend meetings or patient support groups on these conditions prior to mid-1994. (There are many persons who are therefore far more familiar than I am with support groups and the benefits gained from them. I tended to focus on intensively studying the conventional peer-reviewed sources of scientific medical information such as medical journals and PubMed, and generally had to content myself with whatever solace could be gleaned from such sources.)
Joining AACFS 1994: I joined the professional organization, The American Association for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (AACFS) in about 1994. During my period of active involvement, the AACFS stated their purpose as follows: "The AACFS is a non-profit organization of research scientists, physicians, licensed medical healthcare professionals, and other individuals and institutions interested in promoting the stimulation, coordination, and exchange of ideas for CFS and Fibromyalgia (CFS / FM) research and patient care as well as periodic reviews of current clinical, research and treatment ideas on CFS / FM for the benefit of CFS / FM patients and others." Although I was a licensed physician, my primary credential for joining the AACFS was that I was also a patient, and could not claim to be an active researcher or clinician as most of the professional members were. It had been founded in 1990 by the research virologist Dharam V. Ablashi, DVM, MS, Dip. Bact. and others, and had held its first major conference in 1992 in Albany NY.
AACFS Conference 1994: In October 1994, a few months after losing my job, I attended the second major conference of the AACFS, held in Ft. Lauderdale. Wendy (who had not yet decided to become a physician) and Becky attended many of the presentations as well—a much appreciated show of support for me. (They also took some time out to enjoy excursions to the Butterfly World, Flamingo Gardens, and Sawgrass Mills mall. I played hooky only once, to join them for swimming in the Atlantic at Deerfield Beach.) This was the first time I was privileged to hear many of the leading individuals who were actively researching the condition, including representatives from the Centers for Disease Control, and was probably also the first time I encountered other patients with CFS or FM. It was an interesting meeting for me, but also inevitably disappointing in view of the relatively early and limited state of CFS research and knowledge.
Dr. Dedra Buchwald's CFS / FM Sphere of Influence: Through Donald Uslan at the Center for Comprehensive Care, I was introduced to Dedra S. Buchwald, MD in July 1995. She ran the UW's Chronic Fatigue Clinic at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, and was one of the most active and well regarded researchers in the field of CFS. She had been selected to head up one of the three designated research centers in the United States devoted to CFS—at the time, her center was called the UW Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Cooperative Research Center. (By 2009, it had morphed into the UW Center for Clinical and Epidemiological Research.) It was a great privilege to meet and work with this distinguished and extraordinarily hard-working clinical and research physician—she took me up on my offer to provide various volunteer services for her, initially undefined. I was of course largely out of my element in a General Internal Medicine clinic setting, but I wanted to be somehow useful and involved in this worthwhile effort.
Volunteer Professional Work: Beginning in 1996, I initially helped Dedra as a volunteer by developing a website promoting her CFS research (especially one having to do with her important research on twins). I also helped her in certain aspects of her transition into the presidency of the AACFS by putting together a membership database in MS Access for that organization, helping her office research staff with other technical computer issues (as a sort of "computer guy"), helping her compile a list of selected and annotated CFS articles, and, beginning in January 1996, by developing the first website for the AACFS. (I took pride in the fact that, as far as I was aware, this website I created substantially preceded in time the websites of such major health organizations as the NIH and the CDC.) I continued to serve as the volunteer webmaster for the AACFS from 1996 to 1999.)
AACFS Conference 1996: While serving as webmaster, I attended the next biennial conference of the AACFS, held in San Francisco in October 1996. I gave a short presentation at the plenary session describing features of the Website. As I recall, few attendees at that time had much understanding about the remarkable potential that our website offered for conveying information—the Web and our website were probably generally regarded as techie novelties of little general value. By this time, I was becoming more hooked into and familiar with the professional world of CFS researchers and clinicians, including for instance, the epidemiologist Paul Levine MD. This pleased me, though unfortunately I gleaned little from my labors that personally benefited me medically.
Personal Case Presentations: At Dedra's request, I presented my case history in September 1995 to her clinic staff and other interested health professionals—I entitled the talk "Sporadic Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Case Report With Autoimmune And Neurological Features Of 11 Years Duration" (because I still thought of myself primarily as a CFS patient). At Dr. Mease's urging, and incorporating his suggestion to place greater emphasis on the autoimmune aspects of my case, I presented a revised case history in November 1995, now entitled "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome With Fibromyalgia Evolving To Undifferentiated Autoimmune Syndrome: Personal Case Report", to a gathering of medical professionals at a conference at Providence Medical Center. It caused considerable anguish for me to recount this tale in the very institution where my radiology career had so painfully come to an end.
Seeing, Interviewing, and Researching CFS/FM Patients: I was also privileged to accompany Dedra as she interviewed and examined some of her CFS / FM patients, which was very educational though sometimes truly heart-rending in view of the suffering and losses they also had experienced.
Research on Stress and CFS / FM: Dedra also worked with me to design a low-tech clinical research project which would evaluate the role of stress in CFS / FM patients by use of a retrospective interview. We drew up a questionnaire which I administered to a number of her clinic patients during August 1996 to July 1997. For part of this effort, we were assisted by a capable intern, Tim McCoy. This was the closest I have come to resuming any kind of quasi-clinical medical role since my retirement, and was the first time I really had the chance to hear in depth and up close the tragic stories of other CFS / FM patients. Unfortunately, I found the logistics and strain of doing even this modest downtown interview work quite difficult (and came to better appreciate how challenging it can be to do clinical research). Patients would often cancel on short notice from illness, or I would sometimes feel too ill and weak to deal properly with sick patients, or the patients would sometimes be delayed and ask to come in later in the day (when I would be experiencing worse symptoms and no longer able to function adequately at the task). Moreover, some of the staff regarded the project as adding needless inefficiency or otherwise interfering with normal clinic operations, and I felt chagrined to be participating so diligently in a project that carried this negative perception. After interviewing perhaps 30 patients, I faded from this project, which was taken up by others working in Dedra's sphere. I have not seen the results published per se, though Dedra did subsequently publish a study of post-traumatic stress disorder among patients with chronic pain and chronic fatigue (note 3).
Registry of Physicians with CFS: In 1996 and with Dedra's sponsorship and collaboration, I also conceived of and began to implement a registry of physicians or health professionals with CFS / FM. I reasoned that these medically knowledgeable and presumably credible patients might serve a valuable role in helping to educate skeptical medical professionals about CFS / FM. In spring 1996, I invested a substantial amount of time learning more about CGI programming in PERL in order to create an interactive webpage for facilitate applying to this registry. (I also used these techniques on the AACFS website.) However, I was disappointed to learn eventually that gathering even such voluntarily submitted patient information over non-secure Internet channels was disapproved of by the Human Subjects committee of the UW. They were understandably concerned that it could lead to an unintended breach of privacy (and at the time, I did not have the capability of implementing a Secure Socket Layer system that would have provided better guarantees of privacy). As time went by, it became more apparent to me that the skeptics who most needed convincing were unlikely to be swayed by the anecdotal evidence that the registry might provide, and in about 1998 I abandoned my participation in this project as well. (However, this project, plus my participation in an Internet based CFS forum for physicians called "CFS-DOC", did give me the chance to get to know, usually only briefly, some of the other physicians who either had CFS or who had taken a special interest in it.)
Planning Sessions for Major CFS Research: Dedra graciously allowed me to sit in on some of the periodic planning meetings of her research advisory group for the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Cooperative Research Center, the members of which flew in from around the US and Great Britain. There was virtually nothing I could realistically contribute to this group, and I only attended two meetings (in May 1996 and April 1997). At the latter, I made a short presentation about our CFS / FM Stress project. I enjoyed meeting some of the big names in CFS research—not all of whom I could agree with (such as the highly controversial Dr. Simon Wessely, a British psychiatrist who contended that CFS / ME was primarily due to psychological factors). I found it especially interesting to see how modern complex medical research was planned, conducted, reassessed, and redirected behind the scenes. Perhaps the most intriguing of her projects was the recruiting and evaluation of a cohort of identical twins having a connection to CFS. If one identical twin had CFS and the other did not, this combination provided the ideal setting in which to search for environmental (as opposed to genetic) factors such as immune disturbances or infections that might have played a role in precipitating CFS. I came to appreciate just how extraordinarily valuable such "discordant" identical twins are to human medical research, and how their participation should be encouraged and nurtured to the greatest degree possible. (One of her many CFS papers resulting from this twins research is cited below.)
Although I am no longer active with her CFS activities or any other CSF research, and am not in a position to assess the merits of her many publications, I again wish to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Dedra Buchwald for allowing me to join in peripherally with some of her clinical and research work.
AACFS 2001 – 2004: I missed the 1998 AACFS biennial conference in Boston—I could not get the leadership to sponsor my attendance there despite my extensive volunteer work, and resigned as their webmaster in 1999. I attended the Seattle biennial conference of the AACFS in January 2001, but have not personally attended their meetings subsequently. Their president twisted my arm in 2001 to resume serving as webmaster, which I did during March 2001 - December 2003, though by then as a modestly paid IT consultant rather than as an unpaid volunteer. During this new phase as webmaster (in spring 2001), I took a useful and instructive course on Web Scripting using JavaScript and ASP at NSCC, taught by Kim Jensen.
Serving with Becky as Administrator of the AACFS 2003 – 2004: When the AACFS subsequently lost their administrator (who was based in Seattle), I was concerned that the organization might collapse, and proposed that they hire Becky as Administrator, with me providing technical support and backup, to perform the administrative duties on an interim basis, which the AACFS board agreed to in March 2003. She and I worked diligently and closely together—at times driving each other nuts—to rapidly overcome the disarray we initially found the organization in. Our work required us to: meet the needs and requests of the president, Dr. Dharam Ablashi; process the membership data and fees (using an improved database I quickly developed in MS Access); organize, prepare, and publish the newsletters (a satisfying task which forced me to quickly learn about desktop publishing using MS Publisher); keep up with the membership correspondence; assist in the planning and coordination for several upcoming meetings (especially the Chicago meeting in October 2003, which Becky attended, and the Madison meeting in October 2004, which she did not attend); and many other tasks. Becky took a course, Using Computers in Business (NSCC's Business 169), in fall 2003 to help with this job. She and I had concerns about liability insurance, which was not provided, and about some other conflicts with the leadership which could not be readily resolved. We eventually parted ways amicably when, to our immense relief, a commercial firm took over the administration and webmastering of the AACFS in January 2004. We packed up 15 boxes constituting the "AACFS office" and happily shipped them all to Chicago. This had been a hard but important job, interesting in some ways, but ultimately difficult to perform to the full satisfaction of the diverse and scattered board members, most of whom were located thousands of miles away, and it left me feeling somewhat undervalued.
Newer Incarnations of the AACFS: In late 2005, this already international organization renamed itself the International Association for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or IACFS. On their website, last accessed in 2022, I note that they have again renamed themselves, now the International Association for CFS/ME. (The ME stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis.) Their current 2022 stated mission is essentially unchanged: "IACFS/ME is an international, non-profit organization of clinicians, scientists, professionals, patients, and advocates dedicated to the care and research of people affected by myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia, and other related conditions. We publish a peer-reviewed medical journal (Fatigue: Biomedicine, Health, and Behavior), organize international conferences, educate professionals and the public about ME/CFS, and promote science-based care, research, and public health policies."
Ending Professional CFS Involvement: After receiving a diagnosis of lymphoma in 2004, I have taken on no further active professional or patient roles relating to CFS or the IACFS/ME, and have also ceased maintaining my CFS bibliographic database. I wish there were more that I could have done to aid those afflicted with CFS-like illnesses—there remains a huge unmet need. As of 2022, I, like others, suspect CFS/ME is closely related to Long-COVID—only time will tell.
 Becky & Mike in Yellowstone NP September 2010 |
 Becky in Porcelain Basin of Yellowstone NP September 2010 |
Following retirement, I was no longer trying to preserve my stamina on the job above all other considerations, and could more easily put up with the temporary exacerbations of CFS-like symptoms caused by exercise. During the final years of radiology work, I had been forced to almost completely give up exercising, and had become somewhat deconditioned, so I had to start out small, initially by using a bicycle exerciser (1994), and then by joining the year-round swim club Aqua Dive (October 1995 to December 1998). I started there with lap swimming, but also engaged an excellent personal trainer, Cheryl Love (in 1996 – 1997), who helped me develop an optimal program of stretching and resistance training. Becky and I also tried initially to do more walking, including walking for dinner to nearby restaurants—it felt good to leave the car behind and to enjoy the often brisk Seattle air especially in the winter. In summer 1997, I switched to the Pro-Robics Conditioning Club (renamed to The Seattle Gym in 2012), which Becky had belonged to for some years for aerobics. This no-frills facility was also a good place to do stretching and resistance training on a wide variety of machines.
Beginning in 2013, we moved to another gym, this time to the Magnuson Athletic Club (MAC), a larger and better equipped facility. We worked out there around twice a week. Becky enjoyed aerobics, a more intensive form of cardiovascular activity which I no longer find feasible, but because of knee and shoulder injuries, in 2012 she stopped aerobics and focused on resistance training. However, I am convinced that regular exercise, carefully calibrated to be within the limits of toleration, is often helpful for persons with CFS / FM, including its beneficial effects on general mood and overall health. (For what it's worth, here are the details of my specific conditioning program, as of 2014. Any CFS / FM patient will want to customize her or her own program with the aid of a professional.) I discontinued the MAC membership soon after Becky died, there were simply too many demands on my time.
Swim and Tennis Club: Our View Ridge Swim and Tennis Club, after undergoing years of gradual decline, approved a major pool remodel and infrastructure upgrade in 2007 – 2008, and the pool is again a first class facility. I use it primarily for swimming laps, formerly only in the summer, but as of 2022 have begun "off-season" lap swimming in fall, winter, and spring.
We made a short XC ski outing with our kids in the Cabin Creek area near Snoqualmie Pass WA (December 1996, making good use on the snowy highways of our new all-wheel-drive 1996 white Subaru Legacy wagon, purchased in May). We returned to XC ski with our kids in the Cabin Creek area (December 1997). We XC skied with our kids on the Kendall Lake Trail (January 1999 and again January 2000). Becky and I snowshoed to the base of Panorama Point at Mt. Rainier NP (March 1999—we stayed overnight at the Longmire Inn). We have not downhill skied since the 1980s, and as of 2022 have not returned to XC skiing in a number of years.
We passed our 1990 blue Subaru down to Wendy when we bought a 1996 white Subaru Legacy station wagon, a compact workhorse which we passed on to Christie in March 2011 when we bought yet another white Subaru wagon (a 2011 Outback). In 2008, we reluctantly sold our 22 year-old Suburban. We were by then driving this comfortable and useful utility vehicle only 1000 to 2000 miles a year, due to its relatively poor miles per gallon, and we wanted to further reduce our consumption of and dependence on (mostly foreign) petroleum. We traded it in for a 2008 Toyota Sienna, which gets much better gas mileage but does not have the interior spaciousness or the 4WD sure-footedness that we enjoyed in the Suburban. In about 2015 and based on her needs, we gave Christie our 2011 Subaru Outback and bought a new 2015 Subaru Outback. She got the 2015 when I subsequently bought a 2020 Outback.
On the following trips and outings, Becky and I went by ourselves unless otherwise noted. Sadly, we have not backpacked since the 1980s. Considering how much we enjoyed hiking and XC skiing in earlier decades, I have regretted how seldom we have been able to do them in recent years.
Mazama Trip 1994: We had a nice trip in July 1994 with our kids to Mazama, where we rented a cabin and made some enjoyable hikes to Windy Pass and Rainy Lake. (It was good to have the family reunited temporarily—Wendy was living at the time in Boston.)
Mt. Rainier NP Trip 1994: We did some car-camping in Mt. Rainier NP (MRNP) in September 1994, sleeping in our Suburban, and making the Tolmie Peak hike from the Mowich Lake area.
Mt. Baker and Mt. Rainier NP Trips 1995: In August 1995, we went with our kids to the Mt. Baker area, and tried to make the hike skirting Table Mountain—the Chain Lakes Trail—but were turned back by fog. In September 1995, we car-camped in MRNP at Cougar Rock and made the hike to Panorama Point.
Snow Lake 1996: Becky and I made an old favorite hike in the Snoqualmie Pass area, to Snow Lake, in July 1996. (This is not the same Snow Lake as the one on the way to the Enchantments.)
Olympic NP Trip 1996: We hiked on the Grand Ridge trail to Deer Park in Olympic NP with our kids in August 1996, at which time we camped one night at Deer Park.
Alaska Trip 1996: We also met up with Wendy for a week in September 1996 in Anchorage Alaska—the first time any of us had been back to her city of birth since 1972. We had a nice time, visiting the old Alaska Native Medical Center (new facilities were under construction), and having lunch with my former boss Dr. Gloria Park and her husband Orlo. (We were distressed to learn that both their sons had died since we were there in the early 1970s.) We also stopped by to see our former rental home, now much better landscaped, and visited with neighbors Judy and Jerry, who still lived across the street. In Denali NP, we hiked to the Mt. Healy Overlook as we had in 1971, and lucked into purchasing one of the few lottery tickets that permitted driving the road all the way to Wonder Lake (along which we again saw some fine grizzlies). We also drove down the Kenai Peninsula, hiking to the terminal moraine of Byron Glacier, and visiting Homer. (Alas, Dungeness crabs are apparently no longer available in Kachemak Bay, and have been removed from the menu at the Land's End Resort.)
Mt. Margaret Hike 1997: Becky and I hiked to the Mt. Margaret area near Snoqualmie Pass WA in August 1997.
Canada Trip 1997: We made a mostly rainy and thus somewhat disappointing trip to Canada in September 1997, visiting Revelstoke, Canada's Glacier National Park, the Emerald Lake Lodge (including an enjoyable scenic hike to Emerald Basin), Yoho Valley, Lake Louise, Castle Mountain Village, and Kootenay NP.
Lake Dorothy Hike 1998: We hiked this with our kids in August 1998.
Mt. Baker Trip 1998: Becky and I stayed at Snowline Inn near Mt. Baker, and hiked to Iceberg Lake in the Mt. Baker area on the Chain Lakes Loop, in September 1998.
West Tiger Mountain Hike 1999: We hiked to summit #3 in July 1999.
Tonga Ridge Hike 2000: We hiked this in October 2000.
Olympic NP Trip 2001: We hiked along the Hoh River in Olympic NP with Wendy—she was staying in Forks on a medical elective—and by ourselves to the summit of Hurricane Hill in July 2001.
Boise Area Hiking 2005: We hiked on a warm day at Mt. Mores near Boise Idaho with Wendy and her fellow medical resident Charlotte Yeomans in July 2005.
Mt. Rainier NP Hike 2006: In July 2006, our kids joined us in a return to Mt. Rainier NP to make the Burroughs Mountain Hike at Sunrise. It was an exceptionally beautiful day, and we enjoyed seeing the many alpine flowers such as phlox and sweetly scented lupine, as well as the superb views in all directions Our way was blocked by snow before we could reach the summit of First Burroughs.
Oregon Trip 2006: In September 2006, Becky and I toured in NW Oregon, staying at Astoria (where we enjoyed the Columbia River Maritime Museum) and Cannon Beach. We walked the scenic beach areas and hiked the Clatsop Trail out to an overlook at Hiker's camp toward Tillamook Rock lighthouse in the Cannon Beach area. We were scouting out and photographing suitable subjects for Becky's future watercolor paintings.
Mt. Baker Trip 2007: In September 2007, Becky and I stayed in the Snowater Condos near Mt. Baker. We hiked to Artists Ridge, and the next day along Ptarmigan Ridge—the scenery was exquisite.
Mt. Rainier NP Trip 2008: In September 2008, Becky and I returned to hike the Skyline Trail to Glacier Vista in Mt. Rainier NP. The next day we took photos at Narada Falls and Reflection Lakes and then drove to Sunrise. We made it to the top of First Burroughs Mountain and the saddle just beyond. Both days were gorgeous, and we took it slow and easy in part because Becky had recently had knee surgery. We stayed overnight at the Longmire National Park Inn, which was pleasant.
Southern Utah Trip 2009: Becky flew with Wendy to Salt Lake City in March 2009, and drove to Moab for hiking at Arches NP and Canyonlands NP (the Islands in the Sky area)—a very enjoyable trip for them.
Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge Hike 2009: Becky and I walked this appealing refuge in April 2009 prior to closure of the Brown Farm Dike Trail (intended to restore the Nisqually estuary). We enjoyed birding and seeing the open spaces.
Southern Utah Trip 2009: Becky and I returned by car to Moab UT in early May 2009 when temperatures were warmer, again hiking at Arches NP (Devil’s Garden, Landscape Arch, Delicate Arch, Garden of Eden, Turret Arch, Windows Arches, Park Avenue) and Canyonlands NP (the spectacular Islands in the Sky district), a very interesting and photogenic trip.
Potholes State Park and the Columbia Wildlife Refuge Trip 2009: This was a scenic October 2009 weekend outing Becky spent with Wendy and Christie in Eastern WA, hiking near Moses lake, Blythe and Chukar Lakes area, and also Goose Lake.
Death Valley NP and Owens Valley Trip 2010: In March 2010, Becky and Wendy had a nice early spring trip, flying to Las Vegas NV, and driving to Death Valley NP and to the nearby Owens Valley as far north as Lone Pine. They toured Movie Road (enjoying views to Mt. Whitney nearby), the Furnace Creek area, Mosaic Canyon, Mesquite Dunes, Badwater Basin, etc., and had a very good time.
Mt. Rainier NP Trip 2010: In July 2010, Wendy joined us on a gloriously sunny day for the easy but superb hike to Glacier Vista.
Yellowstone and Grand Teton NP Trip 2010: Becky and I made an enjoyable driving trip back to this favorite area in mid-September. We concentrated on photo reconnaissance for her watercolor painting.
Mt. Rainier NP Hike 2012: In October 2012, Becky and I returned with Wendy to again hike the trail from Sunrise, but this time only made it to Sourdough Ridge.
Mt. Rainier NP Hike 2014: We did no hiking in 2013. Wendy, Becky and I returned once again on 9/6/2014 to Sunrise to hike to Frozen Lake and the flanks of First Burrough Mountain. I especially was feeling my physical limitations but it was great to get back up into this spectacular terrain.
Further trips of this type that included extended family are mentioned below. @@@ RESUME UPDATING HERE @@@
 Becky and Mike cranberry bog on Nantucket Islandm October 1995 |
 Becky and Mike on Maui in Hawaii March 1998 |
 Becky at Portland Chinese Garden May 2007 |
Walla Walla Trips 1994 to 1996: We continued to make trips to Whitman College in Walla Walla while Christie was in college
there, including one in November 1994 to
hear her sing in the Whitman Chorale and to meet some of her friends in the
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship group (in which she had taken an interest). These trips lasted from fall 1992 through May 1996, when she graduated.
Vancouver Trip 1995: Becky and I had a nice overnight trip to Vancouver in May 1995. We toured the UBC Nitobe Japanese gardens and other parts of the Botanical Gardens, the Van Dusen Garden, and the Sun Yat Sen Chinese Garden (where we met up with several of her Seattle garden club friends).
Boston Trip 1995: In October 1995, Becky and I made a very enjoyable trip to visit with Wendy in Boston, at which time we toured the headquarters of her Council for Responsible Genetics, the Harvard campus, and Massachusetts General Hospital. We also walked the streets of Boston extensively (what we have termed urban hiking), visited Walden Pond and Concord, and toured Nantucket Island.
California Trip 1996: On the driving trip to attend the AACFS meeting in San Francisco in October 1996 (mentioned above), Becky and I stopped on the way down in Ashland Oregon to attend some plays. After the meeting, we enjoyed slowly wending our way home, visiting Tiburon, Calistoga and the Napa Valley, Point Reyes National Seashore, Bodega Bay, Albion, Mendocino Botanical Gardens, Trinidad, and the redwoods country.
Maui Hawaii Trip 1998: On trip to Maui in March 1998, Becky and I rented a friend's condo at Papakea Resort on the Kaanapali coast for a week. We enjoyed snorkeling at Kahekili and Kapalua beaches, Olowalu, the Papakea Resort near Kaanapali, and Black Rock.
Skagit Valley Visit 1998: In April 1998, we were guests of the Colbecks at their cabin on Big Lake. We toured the tulip fields of the Skagit Valley and the display beds at Roosengaard Flowers and Bulbs.
Ashland and Crater Lake NP 1999: In October 1999, Becky and I returned for the fifth time to Ashland for some plays: Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan, a fine Othello, and Henry IV Part 2—the latter two were made even more interesting by the course on Shakespeare that I was taking at the time. We also visited Crater Lake NP, making the hike on the Cleetwood trail to the water's edge at the north end, enjoying the Rim Drive, but we were unable to find accommodations in the park, and had to drive on to Roseburg.
San Francisco and Northern California Trip 2000: In June 2000, we drove to San Francisco to attend a disappointing Parsifal. We enjoyed visiting the René Magritte exhibit at the SF Museum of Modern Art, the Strybing Arboretum, the wonderfully decaying Palace of Fine Arts, Bolinas Bay, Inverness, Point Reyes (where we saw tule elk at Tomales Point and walked to the lighthouse), Mendocino and Mendocino Botanical Gardens, and Patrick Point SP.
Portland Trip 2005: Becky traveled by train with several members of her garden club to Portland in April 2005, in order to tour Leach Botanical Garden and several nurseries.
Boise Trip 2005: Becky and I decided to drive in July 2005 to Boise Idaho to visit with Wendy and her roommate Charlotte, soon after they had started their second years of UW internal medicine residency there. We enjoyed touring the downtown area, going to the very popular Farmer's Market, hiking a short trail near the Bogus Basin area, and dining at some very satisfying restaurants. It was 102 when we arrived in Boise and a record high of 107 had occurred the previous day.
Sea Kayaking 1996 to 2011: In 1996, we bought a second sea kayak, a graceful white Eddyline Raven, so that more than one family member could go out on our modest outings (often with Christie, who purchased a used kayak of her own). These outings have included a "circumnavigation" of Hood's Head (May 1997, just Christie and me); Port Gamble Bay (April 1998); Mats Mats Bay to Klas and Colvos Rocks (April 1998, at which time Becky and I learned the joys of hauling kayaks back across an endless mudflat when the tide has gone out after we launched); Point-No-Point (August 1998); and Marrowstone Island and Sequim Bay area (May 2000). Kayaking as we have recently done it can be quite tame—we have made additional short outings in 2001, 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011.
Portland Trip 2007: She and I made our first leisure trip centered around Portland OR in May 2007. She had come with her garden club friends, and I joined her for a few more days of touring this attractive city. We went to Pittock Mansion, the International Rose Test Garden, the Portland Japanese Garden, the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden, the impressive Portland Chinese Suzhou Garden, and Cistus Nursery. This was a very relaxed and enjoyable trip.
Bainbridge Island Day Trip 2012: Rebecca, Wendy, and Christie 8/20/2012 visited the Bainbridge Gardens nursery (established by Junkoh Harui, who landscaped our cabin in 1983-4 who and died Oct. 19, 2008). Also strolled on Fort Ward Park beach and lunched at Treehouse Cafe restaurant.
Olympic Peninsula 2012: Becky and I took a local vacation to Port Townsend, Port Angeles, Hurricane Ridge (hiking to Hurricane Hill), Forks, and the Quileute Oceanside Resort at La Push in September 2012.
Day Trip to Cave B Estate Winery near Quincy WA 2013: A pleasant outing 10/25/2013 with Becky, Wendy, Christie and Emily.
Whidbey Island Day Trip 2014: Becky and I had an enjoyable visit with David W. and Victoria S. at their new home near Clinton.
Further trips of various types that included extended family are mentioned to follow.
 Scott with family and Mike in Colorado May 1995 |
 Robert and Judy Waite in Santa Fe May 1995 |
 Becky with parents and Christie May 1996 |
 Becky with parents on a Washington ferry May 1996 |
See here and the individual webpages of Wendy and Christie for brief summaries of the activities of my children during my retirement years. As previously mentioned, a fuller recounting must await the writing of their own memoirs.
Visits by My Mother in Seattle 1994 to 1997: We had occasional visits by my mother in Seattle after my retirement until she could no longer travel. In December 1994, she was accompanied on a Seattle visit by her new husband Milo. They returned to Seattle in June 1996 and August 1997, and were also understandably drawn to other destinations in order to see his own three children.
Texas Trips 1994 to 1996: We continued to visit our families in Texas at least once a year after my retirement (and Becky tried to go more often, especially while her father was ill and after he died): Becky alone (September 1994); Becky and I (March 1995); Becky alone (October 1995); Becky and I (March 1996, a visit during which I led a discussion on Herodotus at my mother's book group); and Becky alone (November 1996).
Colorado and Santa Fe Trip 1995: Becky and I drove in May 1995 to visit Scott and his family in Colorado, and Robert and Judy Waite in Santa Fe (at which time we toured Bandelier National Monument), and picked up Christie from college in Walla Walla on the way home.
Visit by Becky's Parents in Seattle 1996: After their visit to Seattle in June 1992, Becky's parents did not return until May 1996. Becky and I drove with her parents to Walla Walla to attend Christie's Whitman College graduation. This visit proved for Becky and me to be the last visit we had with her father. We were pleased at last to be finished with paying to educate our kids (or so we thought!) Christie subsequently went on an extended trip to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico in May and June 1995.
Las Vegas Trip 1997: In mid-January 1997, Becky met up with her mother and brother David to see David's daughter Holly compete in gymnastics and to tour the glitz in Las Vegas Nevada, but her father did not go on this trip.
Becky's Father Dies 1997: Becky's father died suddenly on January 24, 1997, at the age of 78, presumably from coronary disease, while lopping tree branches at his mother's old home. Our whole family attended the funeral in Katy Texas on January 28, 1997, and we were deeply moved by the extraordinary outpouring of affection and fond remembrance by so many people whose lives he had touched.
Texas Trips 1997: Becky returned to Texas in March 1997 and May 1997 to help out her mother further, and she and I both returned to Texas in October 1997 to celebrate her mother's 75th birthday.
Visit by Becky's Brother David in Seattle 1997: David and his family visited us in June 1997. Becky, Christie, and I accompanied them to a Seattle Mariners game in the Kingdome (now torn down)—the only time I have ever attended a Major League baseball game, or for that matter any professional sporting event.
Robert Waite Dies 1997: My relative Robert Waite (a second cousin once removed) died November 12, 1997. I hated to lose him, as I had appreciated his gracious wit and intellect, and we had become good friends who enjoyed sharing ideas and interests. His widow Judy came with a friend to visit us in Seattle in September 1998.
My Uncle Bill McGoodwin Dies 1997: We also lost my uncle William S. McGoodwin in 1997—we had long enjoyed a nice Christmas correspondence with him and his gracious wife Dorothy (whom we continue in 2011 to call at least every Christmas). Their son Patrick died in 1998.
My Aunt Kathryn Ehlers Dies 1998: My aunt "Sis", my mother's older sister, died in 1998. Her husband Bill Ehlers died in 1997.
Visit by Becky's Mother in Seattle 1998: Becky's mother came to visit us in July 1998—we all had a nice visit at our beach cabin.
Texas Trips 1998 to 1999: In October 1998, Becky and I attended a Katy High School 100th anniversary celebration honoring such distinguished former valedictorians as Becky and her mother. We visited with Jeannie Gonzalez, the 2nd wife and widow of Richard Gonzalez (b. August 17, 1912, d. August 15, 1998), and also with my mother and Milo Jordan. Becky returned to Texas in April 1999.
England Trip 1999: Becky went to southwest England with her mother in May 1999, attending the Chelsea Flower Show in London, touring the Royal Horticultural Society's Wisley Garden, Barnsley House and gardens in the Cotswolds, Hampton Court Palace and gardens, and Great Dixter and Sissinghurst in Kent. This satisfied a yearning they both had to make a garden-oriented trip to Europe together.
Family of Chaz Cardiff 1999 to 2010: Becky's nephew Charles C. Cardiff, III (Chaz) and Holli Walton married at the end of 1999. Becky's grandniece Chaise Leigh Cardiff (the first of this generation for us) was born to them in spring 2000, and their daughter Olivia Joyce Cardiff was born in spring 2004. Chaz and Holli were subsequently divorced, and Chaz married Samantha Jones in April 2007. They had their first child together, Madison R., in July 2010.
Visit by My Brother Scott in Seattle 1999: Scott, a rare bird indeed, came to visit with Tracy and their children James and Kate in August 1999, their first and his only trip to the Pacific Northwest. We gave them a good tour of Seattle including Gasworks Park, our Fremont Troll, and REI where Christie worked, and also took them to our beach cabin, where Scott and his kids enjoyed a canoe outing.
Becky's Mother Moves 2000: Becky's mother elected to sell the family home and move to a smaller home in Katy. I was sorry to see the comfortable home sold that I had enjoyed so much visiting in since 1964, but it had become too much for Becky's mother to maintain. Becky returned to Texas in February 2000 to help with this move.
Texas and Louisiana Trip 2000: In March 2000, Becky and I visited our families in Texas and also made a pilgrimage to Lafayette Louisiana to visit with my uncle Jack Wait and his wife Aline—it was very good to see them again after so many years. Christie joined us for 5 days in Texas on this trip. Scott and his family arrived in San Antonio in time to help us meet with my cousin John Thomas "Tom" Wait (Jack and Aline's son) and his wife Patricia at my mother's home in San Antonio, after a lapse of too many years. (We hosted Tom, Patricia, and her son Micah for dinner in Seattle in 2009. As of 2012, I am still hoping to cross paths with my other cousins—including Harold V. "Jack" Wait, Jr. and Ann, the other children of Jack and Aline whom I have not seen since childhood.)
Milo Jordan Dies 2000: On June 9, 2000, Tina's second husband Milo died—Scott attended the funeral in San Antonio.
My Mother Moves in San Antonio 2000: My mother was no longer able to manage a house on her own, and elected to move in July 2000 to a lovely retirement facility, the Inn at Los Patios. Yashka, Russ's wife, helped her pack and prepare for the move, and Becky flew down to help her get unpacked after the move. (The Los Patios complex, across Salado Creek from the Inn at Los Patios, was one of our favorite San Antonio destinations for lunching, strolling in the spring air, enjoying the balmy ambience, and checking out the shops.)
My Aunt Aline Dies 2000, Uncle Jack Dies 2001: We were saddened at their deaths following so soon after our timely visit with them in Lafayette: Aline in August 2000 and Jack in January 2001.
Texas Trips in 2001: We returned in March 2001 with Christie to see Becky's mother and relatives in Katy, as well as to visit my mother in her new place at Los Patios. I met with her CPA, attorney, and broker, as she was having a harder time managing her affairs and needed help with various arrangements.
Travel Limitations: With the terrorist events of September 11, 2001 and my increasingly limiting medical situation and other factors, I have become much less enthusiastic about flying. As of early 2015, I have not returned to the air nor flown to Texas since 2001. Although my ability and willingness to travel have regrettably diminished as a result, we continue to make enjoyable driving vacations.
Visit by Cayla Cardiff to Seattle 2001: Becky's niece Cayla came to see us in August 2001, and we enjoyed taking her around.
Visit by My Mother to Seattle 2001: After Milo's death, my mother was able to travel to Seattle only once, for several blustery rainy days in November 2001, at which time blindness and other limitations were becoming major problems for her. Becky escorted her from Texas to Seattle for this trip. She clearly needed to be somewhere closer to family, and we were exploring the option of her moving to Seattle. We looked at several possible retirement facilities in Seattle with her, and put down deposits at two. To help us prepare for helping with her emerging needs, Becky subsequently took an excellent course in eldercare given for UW faculty by Liz Taylor in April 2002. (Ms. Taylor is a nationally recognized columnist on this subject for the Seattle Times, and I greatly appreciated her insights, expertise, and advice on such difficult topics as the impact an elder can have on family and professionals providing assistance, the value of geriatric care managers, the issue of gifting an elder's assets, nursing home placement, etc.)
Visits by David's Family Members to Seattle 2002 to 2005: Mary Cardiff has come on several business trips to Seattle (including 2002 and April 2003), and we have appreciated her working us into her busy schedule. David's family returned to Seattle in July 2005 to attend the wedding of Mary's nephew Jonathan, and stayed with us.
Texas Trip 2002: Becky returned to Texas in June 2002 to visit our mothers and family in Katy and San Antonio.
My Mother Moves To Denver 2002: Facing a difficult decision, my mother ultimately chose Colorado over Seattle for her next place to live, probably because there were more sons and four young grandchildren in Colorado, it was closer to Texas, and it had a sunnier climate than Seattle. Scott moved her to Colorado in September 2002, for which I was very grateful, and by early October she arrived at a very fine retirement facility in Denver which Scott had found and which provided her much needed assistance (to our great relief). Becky and I did all that we could to continue to help my mother after she moved to Colorado.
Additional Texas Trips 2002 to 2003: Becky returned to see her mother in Katy Texas in November 2002 and March 2003.
Colorado Trip 2003: In May – June 2003, Becky and I made the 3000 mile round trip drive to Denver to see my mother and help her with further adjusting to her new environment, meeting with staff at her new retirement facility and with her physicians. We also stopped on the way to visit with Scott and his family. Wendy visited my mother in Denver separately probably in the fall of 2003 when she was interviewing for possible internships.
Texas Trip 2003: Becky flew to visit her family in Texas in October 2003 after attending the AACFS meeting in Chicago (as its administrator).
Denver Trip 2004: Christie visited my mother in Denver in March 2004.
Texas and Denver Trip 2004: Becky went to see her mother in Texas in April 2004. In July 2004, she went with Wendy and Christie to Texas to attend the wedding of her niece Cayla Cardiff and Steven Hendrickson on July 3, 2004. Becky also stopped over in Denver on the way back to again visit with my mother.
Visits by Becky's Mother in Seattle 2004 and 2005: Becky's mother came to visit us in Seattle in October 2004—we were happy to see her return after a six year absence. Becky lined up a full slate of artistic experiences for them to enjoy, and we all celebrated her birthday and some other nice occasions. She returned to visit us in Seattle in September 2005. We were pleased that her health still allowed her to travel, and we all had a very enjoyable time. (As of 2012, this was her last visit to Seattle, as she was even in 2005 experiencing significant health limitations.)
Texas and Denver Trips 2005 to 2007: In fall 2005, Becky visited her mother in Katy and my mother in Denver. She returned to see her mother in spring 2006 and both of our mothers in the fall of 2006. She traveled to Texas in May 2007 (in part for her 45th high school reunion) and again in June 2007 (to help her mother move into a new facility). She enjoyed attending a large family reunion of Cardiffs on that visit. In November 2007, she again flew to Texas, and attended Jared Cardiff's law school graduation.
Colorado Trip 2008: In late May, Becky and I again drove to Colorado, visiting my mother in Denver. She was by then quite frail and this visit proved to be my last visit in person with her (and with Scott). We enjoyed seeing my brother Russ in Boulder (meeting his daughter Megan and son Nat for the first time), and Scott and his family in their home town. Scott's son James had just graduated from high school and was deciding where to attend college (he eventually chose Colorado State University). It was 3,562 miles of driving but the spring new growth was very pretty, including in southern Wyoming where we saw many pronghorns. We had a nice visit to the Denver Botanic Gardens and a fine outing with Russ to Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mtn NP, which was still quite snowy. We also enjoyed getting to know the Boulder area better, seeing Russ's professorial office at University of Colorado Dept. of Anthropology, and driving up to Flagstaff Park overlooking Boulder, etc.
Beach Cabin: We have continued to enjoy many visits to our beach cabin during 1994 to 2016, and beyond after Rebecca's passing.
Texas Trip 2009: In June 2009, Becky, Wendy, and Christie joined the extended Cardiff family in Texas for the wedding of Jared Cardiff and Melanie Kurtz.
My Mother Dies 2009: My mother died at her Parkplace residence in Denver Colorado August 30, 2009 after a long period of gradual multi-system health decline. It was a peaceful death and she had indicated that she felt ready to go. Becky, Wendy, and Christie attended an informal celebration of her life in September 2009 in Denver. It was a good opportunity for members of the families to catch up with nephews and nieces, cousins, brothers-in-law, etc. Her ashes were eventually scattered (by Russ) as she requested, on a scenic stretch of the Guadalupe River near San Antonio.
Texas Trips 2010 to 2012: Becky made trips to Texas to visit with her family in April 2010, November 2010, June 2011, November 2011 (attending also her Rice University class of 1966 45th reunion), and June 2012 (at which time she also attended her Katy HS class of 1962 50th reunion).
Visit by James T. McGoodwin to Seattle 2010: My nephew James and his friend and future wife Rebeckah came for an enjoyable stay with us in May 2010.
Catherine Cardiff wedding 2011: Becky's niece Catherine, newly married to N. B. in January 2011, moved immediately to our area, probably the first of our extended family to live so close to us in the Pacific Northwest. This has given us numerous nice opportunities to visit.
Visit by Russ McGoodwin to Seattle 2011: My brother Russ and his friend Becky June E. S. came to Seattle in May for him to give an invited anthropology presentation at an interesting PICES/ESSAS scientific meeting entitled "Comparative Studies of Climate Effects on Polar and Sub-Polar Ecosystem". His visit allowed him to become reacquainted with our Seattle maritime scene, and we all had a nice time visiting and touring.
Visit by Kong Cheung's parents to Seattle July 2011: Kong Cheung's parents Chow and Mabel Cheung visited from Las Vegas, and we enjoyed meeting them for the first time. (Kong and Christie became engaged to marry in May.)
Visits by Cardiff Family Members to Seattle July-August 2011: Cayla Cardiff Hendrickson came through for a brief visit in July on her way to participate (as a soprano) with the Vancouver Early Music Programme and Festival. Our nephew Jared and his wife Melanie, along with her sister Tara and husband Peter Hubner visited us from Texas and Colorado, giving me the first opportunity to meet Melanie. We were also pleased to have Linda Cardiff visit in August, and delighted that she brought our grand-nieces Chaise Leigh and Olivia Joyce Cardiff. I met these lovely children also for the first time, and it was a wonderful visit.
Christie McGoodwin Marries Wai Kong Cheung September 10, 2011: This long hoped-for event greatly pleased Kong's and Christie's parents! The 10:30 AM wedding was held at Alki Beach Bathhouse, a historic building repurposed for such events and located in an exceptionally scenic beach area facing Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. The skies were clear, the weather perfect if perhaps a little warm. (It reached 84 later that day during the record-breaking September heat.) We looked out to sail boats, jet skis, kayakers, and others enjoying themselves in the water and on the beach on this delayed summer day. Many passersby respectfully paused and quietly listened to the ceremony. Pastor Weldon D. Nisly (Lead Pastor of the Seattle Mennonite Church) prepared the wedding script and officiated. He was assisted by Melanie Neufeld, also of SMC—she read excerpts from 1 Corinthians 13, a much-beloved passage also read at our own wedding. Wendy was Maid of Honor (and read from e. e. cummings's "i thank You God for most this amazing day") and Kong's brother Floyd Cheung was Best Man. Floyd & his wife Sheri sang the traditional spiritual, "As I went down to the river to pray", and Kong's friend Laura Vertatschitsch sang "Make you feel my love" (Bob Dylan / Adele), accompanying herself very nicely on the guitar. Kong and Christie expressed their intent to love, comfort, honor and protect each other, and "forsaking all others, be faithful to her/him so long as you both shall live", and then made solemn vows "to have and to hold / from this day forward; / for better, for worse, / for richer, for poorer, / in sickness and in health, / to love and to cherish / for the rest of our lives." The music for the ceremony came from a boom box, and included Bach's Air from the Orchestral Suite #3, Sheep May Safely Graze, and the Arioso from Cantata No. 156, along with Purcell's Sonata in Three Movements for Trumpets, Handel's Air from the Water Music, Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, Stanley's Trumpet Voluntary (for the bride's processional), and of course the Mendelssohn Wedding March from A Midsummer Night's Dream. As encouraged by Kong's parents, a traditional Chinese Tea Ceremony was held to allow the newlyweds to honor and accept gifts from their parents and other close kin present. After photos, we proceeded to a satisfying lunch catered by Herban Feast. The tables were decorated with lovely floral arrangements by LaVassar Florist. (They also provided very attractive larger floral arrangements to frame the wedding party during the ceremony.) We had brief presentations or toasts by myself, Floyd, our friends Gene Brandzel and Erika Michels, Kong, and several of Kong's friends. Mary Cardiff had made the chocolate groom's cake, which was enjoyed by all and fully consumed.
Chow and Mabel had hosted a fine Chinese seafood banquet the night before for all the gathering relatives at the New Star Restaurant. Between this and the wedding reception, we had a good opportunity to make our initial acquaintance with many of Kong's extended family members. The days around the wedding were also a great time to enjoy visits and revisits by Linda Cardiff, N. and Catherine B., David and Mary Cardiff, Jared and Melanie Cardiff, and Holly Cardiff and her friend Luke T. My Colorado McGoodwin relatives were ably represented by nephew James T. McGoodwin with future wife Rebeckah Stough and my niece Kate McGoodwin. On Kong's side of the family, we enjoyed meeting his parents, brother Floyd with wife Sheri and children, and Sheri's kin the Meiers and Hansmeiers. We were also pleased that so many of Mabel's siblings could be present: her sister Irene with husband Henry P., her brother Albert W. with wife Hilda and daughter Lily, her niece Loretta W. (daughter of brother Tony, who could not attend), and her brother Charles W. with daughter Ada. Kong's large family had gathered from Hong Kong, Toronto, and several other distant cities. Sharing the wedding celebration with Kong's and Christie's many friends were our friends Roger D., Ron L., the Brandzels, the Colbecks, the Michels, and the Warrens.
Visit by Cayla and Steven to Seattle 2012: Cayla and Steven Hendrickson came to Seattle in June 2012, my first opportunity to meet him.
Grandnieces Born in 2012: Kimber R. Cardiff was born to Samantha and Chaz C. in early August 2012. Aurelia J. B. was born a little later in August 2012 to Catherine and N. B., who arrived just in time from an assignment abroad. We have enjoyed getting to know this newest grandniece, and have also enjoyed the several visits made by Linda to assist Catherine, as well as the visits of Catherine's husband's parents (Luther and Margaret B.) and his sister Meg. And we were especially pleased to have Catherine's father Charles join Linda in a visit to the Seattle area in October 2012.
Emily R. Cheung Born 2012: Emily, Mike and Becky's first grandchild, was born to Christie and Kong in September 2012. For photos, see here.
Visit by Chow and Mabel 2012: Kong's parents returned to Seattle in November 2012, eager to see their new granddaughter.
Scott Duncan McGoodwin Dies 2012: My younger brother Scott died at the age of only 62 on November 16, 2012, a tragic loss for all of us. I have provided a short biography.
Grandniece Vera Jo Cardiff Born in 2013: Born to Jared and Melanie Cardiff in March 2013.
Texas Trip 2013: Becky made a trip to Texas to visit with her family in November 2013.
Holly Marie Cardiff Wedding 2014: Becky's niece Holly married Luke Wilson Mackenzie Thomas March 22, 2014. Becky, Wendy, and Christie, Kong, and Emily attended this joyous event, which took place at Texas Old Town in Kyle, near Austin TX.
Becky Illness 2014: Becky experienced a cancer condition in April 2014 which led to surgery and chemotherapy.
Catherine A. Cheung Born 2014: Catherine, Mike and Becky's second grandchild, was born to Christie and Kong in July 2014. For photos, see here. Kong Cheung's parents Chow and Mabel visited us in August 2014 to celebrate the 30th day of their new granddaughter. Catherine makes only the second of the great grandchildren of James V. and Tina McGoodwin.
Grandniece Eloise P. B. Born in 2014: Grandniece Eloise P. B. was born in Sept. 2014 to N. and Catherine B.
James Thomas McGoodwin Wedding 2014: Mike's nephew James T. McGoodwin married Rebeckah Jeanne Stough September 20, 2014 in Eagle CO. Unfortunately, none of my Seattle family members were able to attend.
Grandniece Gwyneth Marie Cardiff Born in 2015: This grandniece was born to Jared and Melanie Cardiff in January 2015. She is the 10th of the great grandchildren of Charles and Joyce Cardiff (at the time all granddaughters, 8 of whom were our grandnieces).
Grandnephew Charles Augustus Cardiff Thomas Born in 2015. Charlie was born in December 2015 to Luke and Holly Thomas. He is the 11th of the great grandchildren of Charles and Joyce Cardiff, and the first great grandson.
Visit by Russ McGoodwin to Seattle 2015: My brother Russ came with his friend Marilyn Waldman to Seattle in August, in part for her to attend an Apache Mesos (computer related) conference. We all enjoyed the opportunities for the Seattle McGoodwins and Cheungs to meet or get to know better Russ and Marilyn. We focused again on the marine sites: the Elliot Bay Marina, Discovery Park, Seattle Marine and Fishing Supply Co., Fishermen's Terminal and Chinook's at Salmon Bay, Lake Washington, Alki Beach and Sunfish Seafood, the Locks, and Ray's Café. It was a fine opportunity for family visiting and good eating. Too much smoke in the air, from record setting forest fires, for the planned trip to MRNP.
Joyce Morrison Cardiff Dies May 2, 2017. Rebecca's mother, a strong, gracious, and intelligent woman whom I much loved and respected.
Grandnephew Wylie Samuel Cardiff Thomas WSCT Born in 2017: Wylie was born in August 2017 to Luke and Holly Thomas. He is the 12th of the great grandchildren of Charles and Joyce Cardiff, and the second great grandson.
Rebecca Joyce Cardiff McGoodwin Dies July 13, 2017 from cancer. Words cannot express the devastation or persistence of this grievous loss.
Grandniece Caroline Leigh Cardiff born in 2019: Born to Jared and Melanie Cardiff in June 2019. She is the 13th of the great grandchildren of Charles and Joyce Cardiff.
 Becky, Wendy, Suzanne, and the Michels in Seattle December 1997 |
 Becky, kids, and Mike at our home in Seattle December 1998 |
 Becky and Mike March 2000 |
 Michael April 2004 |
 Esther, Janina, Niko, Olivia, Terence & Kari Cuneo, Mike & Becky Seattle, May 2010 |
 Becky, Wendy, Kong Cheung and Christie, November 2010 |
 Wendy and Mike at our Seattle home, December 2010 |
My kids thought for a while that I might have mellowed since I left medical practice and seemed more philosophical. This was partly true,
although the appearance was probably mainly due to my my picking and choosing battles as carefully as possible, and the re-emergence of my
non-professional inner self.
Movies: Movies we especially enjoyed or found meaningful during 1995 – 2014 include:
Clueless (1995); Shall We Dance? (1996); Men in Black (1997); Kundun (1997); Shakespeare in Love (1998); The Sixth Sense (1999); Pandaemonium (2000); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000); A Beautiful Mind (2001); Whale Rider (2002); Frida (2002); Adaptation (2002); Unfaithful (2002); Solaris (2002); House of Sand and Fog (2003); My Architect: A Son's Journey (2003); Big Fish (2003); Red (Trois couleurs:
Rouge, released 1994); Ray (2004); Grizzly Man (2005); Downfall (Der Untergang, 2004); Pride & Prejudice (Joe Wright's version, 2005); The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (2003); Eight Below (2006); The Snow Walker (2003); The Devil Wears Prada (2006); The Painted Veil (2006); The Illusionist (2006); Dreamgirls (2006); Lady Chatterley (2006); Becoming Jane (2007); The Other Boleyn Girl (2007); WALL-E (2008); Blood Diamond (2006); Avatar (2009); The Last Station (2009); Mao's Last Dancer (2009); Tangled (2010); Midnight in Paris (2011); Hugo (2011); The Iron Lady (2012); and My Week With Marilyn (2012). In 2013, our most enjoyable movies were old musicals and dance films which we watched in conjunction with or inspired by a class on American Musicals—these included Show Boat (1936), Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), and Silk Stockings (1957). In 2014, we liked Still Mine (2012), Philomena (2013), and The Book Thief (2013).
In 2011, we began attending the outstanding Live in HD video presentations in a local theater of the Metropolitan Opera performances. Some of the most notable included Adams's Nixon in China (2011), Wagner's Die Walküre (2011), Götterdämerung (2012), and The Tempest (2012). In 2013, we especially liked Donizetti's Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarda, as well as Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. The 2013 Wagner opera Parsifal was well sung but the staging was ghastly. In 2014, we were very pleased with Mozart's Nozze di Figaro and Il Barbiere di Siviglia, as well as Borodin's Prince Igor. In 2015, Lehar's Die Lustige Witwe was enjoyable and Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle was surprisingly tolerable and effective.
We have also enjoyed other non-live HD video theater offerings, including the musical Memphis (viewed 2011) and the Bolshoi Ballet's Swan Lake (viewed January 2015, suboptimal Grigorovich choreography).
A number of fine delayed Metropolitan Opera HD broadcasts have made it to PBS television for home viewing. Especially notable have been Puccini's Madama Butterfly (filmed in 2009), Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier (filmed c. 2010), and Verdi's Macbeth (filmed 2014).
Television and Media: We have continued to enjoy many of the PBS television Masterpiece series: the various Bramwell Series (1995 – 2001); Persuasion (1996 – 97); Rebecca (1996 – 97); Far From The Madding Crowd (1997 – 98); The Mill On The Floss (1997 – 98); Wuthering Heights (1998 – 99); Great Expectations (1998 – 99); Madame Bovary (1999 – 2000); and Doctor Zhivago (2003 – 04). Becky especially has enjoyed many of the PBS Mystery series, notably the series involving Inspector Morse, Aurelio Zen (2011), Hercule Poirot (with David Suchet 1989 – 2013), Inspector Lewis (2006 – 2014), Endeavour [Morse] (2012 – 2014), Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch (2010 – 2014), various David Tennant vehicles, and Vera. Although we had noted a decline for several years in the number and overall quality of new PBS TV offerings—it seemed the golden era for PBS entertainment that we had taken for granted in the 1970s and 1980s might be fading away—we have been encouraged by the improved quality of such shows as My Boy Jack (2007), South Riding (2011), Wolf Hall (2015) and Quirke (2015). The Downton Abbey series 1 (2011), 2 (2012), 3 (2013), 4 (2014), and 5 (2015) is outstanding. (We also both enjoyed the surprisingly well-done non-PBS favorite, The Closer with Kyra Sedgwick, which ended in 2012.)
I have also continued to watch Nova and other science-oriented broadcasts at times, though I sincerely wish that they would cease and desist from jazzing them up (with rapid cuts and mindless sound effects), dragging them out, and dumbing them down. The information density has declined, and some Nova programs are so watered down with "human interest" content that they have become unwatchable. Fortunately, the excellent Frontline and the indispensable PBS NewsHour remain even today of the highest quality. (I was sorry to see Robert MacNeil leave the show in 1995, and was especially sorry to see Jim Lehrer bow out of regular broadcasting in 2011.) I also "one-eye" a lot of How It's Made, How Do They Do It?, and other offerings on the Science Channel, though the background music can be jarring.
We continue to read the Seattle Times, which seems by 2011 to be struggling less after the demise in 2009 of the print version of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. We switched from Time to the less self-important Newsweek for print weekly news for a number of years, then tried out the global perspective and substantially more comprehensive and intelligent reportage of The Economist, but with the diverse profusion by now (2012) of news and information resources, we are omitting all weekly news magazine subscriptions.
Reading for Pleasure: I have tried to read as much as possible in retirement, though sometimes unavoidably lacking in focus. In addition to the occasional scientific work or technical tome such as Pohlmann's Principles of Digital Audio or Rhodes's Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, I have continued to enjoy reading the ancient Greek and Roman classics such as Lucretius's On the Nature of Things. I also enjoyed Dante's Inferno, and Gibbon's magnificent History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (in fact, I seem to emulate his wordy writing style and syntax), Shelley's Frankenstein, Brontë's Jane Eyre, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Eliot's Silas Marner, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, GarcÃa Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, Grahame's Wind in the Willows, and many other classic works, many of which were read for courses (and are therefore mentioned below). Some of these books are summarized on my selected books webpage and many are mentioned elsewhere or in association with courses.
Web Resources: It goes without saying that the Web has opened up vast opportunities for pursuit of scholarly knowledge or sheer entertainment through reading or multimedia experiences, with such superb resources and tools as Google, the many reference tools available through the UW website such as the Oxford English Dictionary, the rapidly expanding Wikipedia, the Library of Congress, financial sites such as Morningstar, and many other resources, some of which are acknowledged on various pages throughout my website. However, I fervently hope that electronic resources and the seductions of multimedia will never fully supplant the use of traditionally printed books, which will always bring a unique pleasure to me.
I have mentioned quasi-professional computer technology courses I took early in retirement above, and earlier courses we took for pleasure here and here. Becky and I resumed one of our favorite activities after I retired, the taking of courses for pleasure (either noncredit courses, or courses offered for credit but which we audited). For the first years of my retirement, we audited mostly literary courses taught at night at the UW and offered through UW Extension. (These were taken by Becky and me jointly unless otherwise noted.):
In the more pragmatic realm, we took a course at the UW on Financial Planning (February 2002), and attended a meeting on Washington native plants (May 1997). We also attended lectures at the UW on astronomy and cosmology (1998), including a fascinating talk given by the polymath Roger Penrose. Here and there we also tried some ad hoc non-university courses taught by individuals, including a Latin course offered by Fred Lachman in fall 1995. (See also here for courses we took through the Northwest Classics Society and related.)
Becky also took a noncredit course entitled "Winter Plant Identification" in fall 1994 at the UW; an introductory course on MS Windows and MS Word (November 1995 at NSCC); and an Internet refresher courses at NSCC (in fall 1998 and again in spring 2001).
We were disappointed that by the 1990s the UW Extension program (formerly Spectrum) had largely abandoned offering noncredit live evening classroom courses that could be taken for sheer pleasure or "enrichment"—such as were plentiful in the golden era of the 70s and 80s—in favor of online courses or highly pragmatic and very expensive certificate courses aimed at career promotion. But soon the remarkable UW Access program became available to us and changed our outlook.
Beginning in 2006, after a hiatus of several years in taking University of Washington (UW) courses, Becky and I resumed UW auditing in a manner that we have found quite rewarding, and that I hope to continue long-term. In their Access program, the UW extends, to persons 60 years of age and older, the privilege of auditing non-credit many of the regular undergraduate daytime credit courses at very low cost (around $50 or less total). This is one of the best bargains in Seattle for persons who qualify, as auditing very many of these credit courses would otherwise for most persons be prohibitively expensive. (For example, in the UW Extension program, the fees for taking a single course of 3 to 5 credit hours in 2009 totalled $735 to $1200.)
We audited the following UW credit courses as Access students beginning on 2006, taken jointly except where otherwise noted (of course before Rebecca's death in 2017), and listed in roughly chronological order. (I discuss the UW Access courses in music and music history that we or I have audited in greater detail on our music page.) Recommendations pertaining to Access auditing are simply my own, and do not provide official descriptions of UW prerequisites:
Observations and Pointers for University of Washington (UW) Access Auditors:
For persons considering auditing courses as UW Access students, I offer the following observations and hopefully helpful advice (written before the COVID pandemic, during which time courses were offered almost entirely online only rather than in classrooms)::
Northwest Classics Society and Related 1999 – 2011: We were pleased to make the acquaintance in 1999 of Alan Rawn PhD, a committed classicist with far-ranging interests. He holds the strong beliefs, very much in concert with my own, that one should focus on reading the original works, in translation where necessary, rather than secondary commentary about them, and that "the Classics do not belong only in the domain of the professionals". We first took an enjoyable course he offered in the UW Experimental College on Virgil's Aeneid (spring 1999), and later a course he taught on Milton's Paradise Lost (October 2000). Alan went on to found, with Marc Bateman and Deborah Knapp, what became called the Northwest Classics Society. Under the spreading umbrella of this organization we took a number of short or more extended courses including: selected readings from the Old Testament (summer 2001); Gilgamesh (October 2001), Beowulf (November 2001); the Koran (winter 2002); Greek and Roman Philosophy (spring 2002); Greece and Byron's Don Juan (May – June 2002); Ovid's love poems (summer 2002); Arrian's The Campaigns of Alexander (fall 2002); Tales from 1001 Nights (winter 2003); reading of excerpts from Aeneid in Latin (fall 2002); Augustine's The Confessions (May 2003); and Hamlet (May 2004). Interested members of this organization also developed a reading group in about 2002 which began to meet regularly and take on hard-core classics that we read such as Apollonius's Argonautica, Caesar's Civil War, Josephus's The Jewish War, Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, Horace's Odes, Tacitus's Annals of Imperial Rome, Petronius's Satyricon, The Song of Roland, Boccaccio's Decameron, and many other great or near-great books. Association with this organization and its many intelligent and stimulating members has also prompted us to attend some interesting lectures, such as: Robert Drews on the End of the Bronze Age (May 1999); Steven Broocks on Preclassical and Classical Greek Pottery (June 1999); Anthony Barrett on Caligula (May 2001); and Lawrence Bliquez on surgical instruments in Greek and Roman times (in June 2002, for which I prepared this summary that was published in the society's July 2002 newsletter).
There were some nice picnics and parties given by several of the hospitable members, and a few movie nights (such as a viewing of Cacoyannis's powerful 1977 interpretation of Euripides' Iphigenia). We even saw the blossoming of love within our society's membership, and were delighted to attend the wedding of classics-lovers Trevor Peterson and Laura Matz in September 2004. The NWCS eventually went into dormancy, though many of the interested members continued to meet in various less structured contexts. As of 2011, I can no longer find a Web link for the NWCS and I am guessing that it is defunct (and I have moved on, to auditing at the UW).
Miscellaneous Courses and Discussion Groups 2005 – 2014: We attended some pleasant ad hoc reading discussion group meetings organized with the generous efforts of literary acquaintances Barbara Miller and Marianne LoGerfo and others. These were on works of Alexander Pushkin (the play Boris Godunov, the verse novel Eugene Onegin, and the short drama Mozart and Salieri, in summer 2007), plays of Friedrich von Schiller (Mary Stuart and Don Carlos, in summer 2008), Tolstoy's War and Peace (summer 2010), Stendahl's The Charterhouse of Parma (summer 2011), The Lais of Marie de France (summer 2012), and works of Novalis and Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower (summer 2014).
Courses with Professor H. D. "Toby" Bradshaw: He is a professor of Basic Biological Sciences at the UW, and has taken an interest in community outreach to improve understanding of biological controversies. (His tree genetic improvement research was one of the targets in the Earth Liberation Front's bombing May 2001 at the Center for Urban Horticulture) To this end, he offered free informal adult courses with lectures and discussion, on Evolution (spring 2008) and on Genetics (spring 2009). This was a truly generous gift of his time, and Becky and I enjoyed and appreciated the chance to learn more about these topics.
Other UW Ad Hoc Lectures 2006 – 2014: Since about 2006, we have begun attending single or miniseries evening presentations on the UW campus given by noteworthy faculty and visiting professors, often in conjunction with the Alumni Association or for the benefit of UW donors. These have been too numerous to fully list, but highlights have included: Bioengineering Replacement Parts (2007, Prof. Buddy Ratner); Global Warming panel discussion (2007); Ocean Observatories Initiative (2007, Prof. John Delaney), Conservation Biology (2008, Dr. Samuel Wasser), Frogs (2008, Dr. Marc Hayes), Extremophiles in the Arctic (2008, Prof. Jody Deming), People and Whales of Greenland (2008, Dr. Kristin Laidre), Arctic Ocean Circulation and Changes (2007, Dr. Rebecca Woodgate), Bach to Einstein (2008, Dr. Vladimir Chaloupka), Darwin's Finches (2008, Professors Peter & Rosemary Grant), Evolution (2008, Dr. Richard Lewontin), Oceanographic Measurements and Remote Sensing (2009, Dr. Miles Logsdon), Underworld Mythology (2009, Dr. James Clauss), Search for Extraterrestrial Life (2009, Dr. David McKay), History of Life on Earth (2009, Dr. Peter Ward), Optics and Art (2010, Dr. Charles Falco), and The Origin of Life (2011, Dr. William Martin). We also enjoyed talks by on Saturn’s moon Titan (by planetary scientist Dr. Ralph Lorenz, May 2011), and Built Ecologies (2013 by Thomas Kittel of the architectural firm HOK). We also enjoyed attending some of the UW's "Future of Ice" lecture series (winter 2014). Certainly these talks have given us the opportunity to be further impressed by the wide array of worthwhile research being pursued by UW faculty, as well as by the scholarly visitors the UW is able to attract. I especially admired the intrepid and dedicated female explorers in the Arctic oceanography lecture series, who put up with major hardship to do their work in the name of science.
UW Faculty Auxiliary Couples Book Club 1999 – 2015: Becky and I have also enjoyed the recurring company of three or four other couples—Marcia and Bob Brown, Janet and Conway Leovy, Sheila and Donald Belcher, and in recent years Liz and Gene Brandzel—in what was conceived as a UW faculty auxiliary book club. Marcia Brown began this club in November 1999, at which time we read our first book, Memoirs of a Geisha, and we have since met every 6 to 12 weeks or so to discuss a book of fiction or nonfiction, great and not-so-great. Our book club is apparently unusual in being comprised of couples, men and women with varying backgrounds and strongly held opinions. Mixed-sex book clubs like this are said to rarely succeed, and we each find ourselves sometimes reading works we would not have otherwise chosen. But being forced to stretch a little on subject matter might be viewed as a desirable feature for a reading group. To view a list of what books this group has read from 1999 through mid-2015, click here. (Of course, some of these books have also ended up on my book summaries page.)
We were saddened by the death of charter book club member Janet Leovy in February 2006, and were very pleased to welcome into the club Con's second wife, Carolyn Moloney Leovy. It was a great loss to all of us that knew him when my much loved friend Conway Barbour Leovy died July 9, 2011. Con was a brilliant and highly respected planetary atmosphere scientist who was noted for his great scientific honesty and integrity, modest manner, and positive outlook. His professional and personal lives provided inspiring role models for us all. Conway, as well as colleague Bob Brown, both have published important works in their fields. In addition to texts on atmospheric physics by each, Con authored two books of poetry while coping with Janet's death, and Bob in 2010 brought out a second edition of his novel.
Landscaping and Gardening: Becky initially tended a P-Patch—i.e., a community or allotment garden—beginning in about 2000. My growing interest in P-Patch vegetable gardening, which arose in 2003, is fully discussed on this webpage. I was pleasantly surprised and honored by the inclusion of extended quotes from our webpage in Michelle Obama's fine and well-purposed new book, American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America (published May 2012). We also have a chapter in a book Sowing Seeds in the City on urban gardening that was published in 2015.
Becky continued to keep up first-class ornamental gardens and landscaping at home and at our cabin until her death, ensuring that we will continue to have blooming plants and attractive contrasting foliage at every time of the year. (To view lists in PDF format of the principal plants at these two locations, click on Plants List 1 or Plants List 2.) She enjoyed the educational programs offered by the Northwest Perennial Alliance, the Northwest Horticultural Society, and especially her garden club (a unit of the Lake Washington Garden Club). When time permitted, attended occasional presentations by the Northwest Orchid Society, the Washington Park Arboretum, and the Washington Native Plant Society. We both attended the entertaining Northwest Flower and Garden Show several times beginning in about 1994, a great way to inject some color and cheer into the doldrums of soggy Seattle in February. As mentioned above, she enjoyed a trip with her garden club to Portland in April 2005, and an earlier garden-oriented tour in England in 1999.
Watercolor Painting: Drawing on latent artistic talents passed down from her mother, Becky took up watercolor painting in spring 1999, and took many enjoyable painting courses during most subsequent years through 2014 to improve her skills. These courses were taught by Sandra Kahler, Louise Robertson, Ellen Andersen, and Molly Hashimoto. The subjects of the courses have been basic techniques, landscapes, flowers, still-life, mountains, water, and trees, plus a drawing course at NSCC emphasizing line, negative space, shadow, and perspective.
Restaurants: Some of our favorite restaurants, in addition to old favorites named on earlier webpages (such as Marlai, Tandoor, and the House of Hong), have included Snappy Dragon (Chinese), Aoki (sushi), Hosoonyi (Korean), and the Cafe Flora (the first exclusively vegetarian restaurant I have genuinely enjoyed, perhaps a sign of the changing times). We also like to frequent many of the ethnic eateries on the "Ave" in the University District (including some joints and mere holes-in-the-wall)—these include Tokyo Garden (closed c. 2013), several of the phở places, the Falafel Corner, Thai 65, Garam Masala, and the more upscale Shalimar Restaurant.
40th Wedding Anniversary: The most satisfying event of 2006 was the celebration Becky and I held in observance of our fortieth wedding anniversary, on August 30, 2006. It was the largest gathering we have ever hosted in our home, and we enjoyed bringing together our diverse friends from our many interests and activities. I wrote the invitation in poetic form. Fortunately, the threatening clouds parted and we were blessed with good weather. As I was still intermittently undergoing chemotherapy, and was ever more aware of the fragility of life, I felt especially fortunate to be blessed by my enduring marriage.
50th Wedding Anniversary: We celebrated our 50th or golden anniversary in the company of our children and grandchildren. This was a warm and pleasing gathering, and I took the opportunity to read aloud to my family a short celebratory review of our first 50 years of joyous marriage. Sadly, we did not quite reach our 51st annivesary.
Our favorite charities and nonprofit organizations to which we have donated in our recent Seattle years have included:
Retirement brought more opportunities for us to do some volunteer work beyond the professional volunteering I have mentioned above—at the school where Christie taught, at our P-Patch, etc. I am not as active as some of my peers at more conventional community volunteering, but I regard some of the materials I offer free on this website as a type of public outreach and volunteer work.
In 1994, President Clinton was still in his first term in office (1993 – 1997). In 2000 I voted for his re-election to a second term (1997 – 2001). I was disappointed that a man of Clinton's brilliance could damage his leadership and stature by randy behavior so badly during his presidency that he left his party significantly weakened and vulnerable to defeat. Although he undoubtedly accomplished some good things during his regime, he did not give environmental protection the emphasis it required.
I had been greatly impressed by the fine 1992 call to action by Sen. Albert A. "Al" Gore, Jr., Earth in the Balance, prior to the first Clinton election. But I gradually became disappointed that such a clear and impassioned voice for much needed environmental action and conservation became lost in the pragmatic Clinton regime, as it engaged in politics as usual (though a significant improvement over Reagan and the Bushmen). And I was disturbed by how Clinton effectively destroyed the chances for Gore to succeed him, as a result of his irresponsible sexual behavior, dishonesty, and impeachment (for which he was acquitted). Fortunately, by 2006 Al Gore had more than redeemed himself with An Inconvenient Truth, and his 2007 Nobel Peace prize assured his place in the Pantheon of environmentalism.
I was deeply dismayed by the legally dubious appointment to presidential office of the disastrous ideologue George W. Bush (2001 – 2009) in 2000. But I was truly ashamed of my country's shortsighted re-election of this incompetent president in 2004. President George W. Bush was an environmental disaster, leaving me wondering in what sense the "conservatives" of the Republican party may be regarded as conserving anything of enduring value. Certainly, he seemed clueless with respect to the looming problems of global warming (and the role played by overconsumption of oil and carbon fuels), the continued degradation of our water supplies and crop lands, the pollution of the very air we breathe, the destruction of habitat and loss of species, and other global environmental crises.
No US president to my knowledge has yet (in 2018) effectively tackled the all-important underlying issue of reducing world population growth—apparently, it is just too hot to handle.
For the record, while I support constructive and vigorous environmental advocacy and activism, I strongly oppose domestic terrorism, violence, or property damage perpetrated in the name of environmental causes.
We were elated to replace President Bush with President Barack Hussein Obama II (who of course began office in 2009). Our hopes and warmest best wishes are extended for his success. His environmental values are undoubtedly still under development, and his effectiveness in dealing with the increasingly severe environmental challenges facing us remain to be established. It is terribly unfortunate that this potentially innovative president had to begin his regime hobbled by the rapidly increasing federal debt piled up in Republican regimes beginning in Reagan's era, arising so it seems from rampant war expenditures, inadequate taxation, corporate welfare, and deregulation. We remained undaunted Obama supporters in the 2012 election, and were relieved at his victory over Mitt Romney. Currently, Trump is making America grate in pain.
Since my retirement in 1994, in addition to the continuing medical education (CME) earned at the AACFS / IACFS meetings described above (in 1994, 1996, and 2001), I have also attended courses and conferences in: Travel and International Medicine given by the UW (June 1995); the Use of the Computer in Biomedical Sciences (November 1995); a CFS/Fibromyalgia conference in Seattle aimed at physicians (February 1996); and various other medically-related lectures (on medical ethics, basic sciences, etc.) I also obtained a number of CME hours specifically in medical ethics to meet my Texas licensure requirements. However, my principle source of CME credits since 1994—earning me considerably more than the minimum requirement for maintaining my Washington State medical licensure—has been the excellent New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) CME program. This is one CME activity I can do while resting, and it has been rewarding to me to reactivate some of my former interest in and knowledge of general medicine as opposed to my greater concentration on radiology during my radiology practice years.
It is painful to contemplate that I rarely engage in or participate in radiology these days—in part because of my limitations and the traumatic associations from my final career years, and also because I have virtually no opportunities to make use of any of my subspecialized radiology knowledge (other than assisting family, friends, and neighbors with their questions, and trying to interpret my own radiology examinations). As of 2018, I have not attended any radiology meeting since I retired.
Due to cost factors and lack of ongoing participation in clinical radiology, I gradually evolved to emeritus or retired status in most of the professional organizations I used to belong to (other than the AOA honorary medical society), and have also gradually allowed my print medical journal subscriptions to lapse (including the NEJM as of 2013, an expensive weekly journal I had taken since 1966). However, I actively utilize Internet and Web medical resources that have supplanted some of my formerly essential paper journal subscriptions. I have been amazed to see the extraordinary explosion of available online medical resources such as PubMed, UpTodate Online, other online medical texts, full-text medical articles from well-regarded journals, etc. It saddened me to see my massive medical and radiology reprint collection, which had previously served me so well on the job, now partly filling and sitting idle in a room in our house. I gave some hardbound journals away, but could not find a suitable recipient for the reprint collection, so Becky and I eventually hauled away 21 of the 24 boxes of the almost 60,000 reprints for recycling in 1997 and in 2007, and finally disposed off the last 3 boxes in 2013.
I tried my best to hang on to one of the last vestiges of my career in clinical practice, namely my Active Staff designation for hospital privileges at Seattle Providence Medical Center (prior to the Swedish takeover). However, the pragmatic and liability-averse administration understandably felt this was something they could not permit on what would be merely sentimental grounds. My conversion to Honorary status became effective in late 1997.
As of 2018, my appointment as Clinical Assistant Professor on the Auxiliary Faculty in the department of radiology at the University of Washington remains in effect, and I have increased support through the establishment of the Endowment named above. Although I have long been out of active clinical practice, my Washington medical license is still in effect in 2018.
My retirement years, like the ten years preceding my retirement, have as mentioned been impacted by personal medical concerns—CFS / ME / UAS and more recently lymphoma. However, it has been my desire and goal to remain as active and diverse in my pursuits as possible, and to focus on what remains possible rather than on increasing limitations. I used to think of myself as a romantic idealist, and I still retain a deeply sentimental streak, but the practical consequences of being a physician, a married man and homeowner, a parent, a patient, and now a widower have caused me to seem more pragmatic about what can and must be done in life. Nevertheless, the old ideals are still there and have not been extinguished. Someday, when I have passed on to the Great Beyond and my ashes scattered on the nearby salt waters that I have loved so much, perhaps the epitaph on my virtual tombstone (like for the old Alaskan sourdoughs) might read: "He come out West / an' done his best". Hopefully, that day remains a ways off. Meanwhile, as Ulysses exhorts his grizzled mariners, "Some work of noble note, may yet be done, / Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods". Enough then—let's "follow knowledge like a sinking star, / beyond the utmost bound of human thought."
(1) Dennis M Ritchie, "The Development of the C Language", http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/chist.html,
accessed October 4, 2005 and 18 April 2009.
(2) W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), "A Little History of the World
Wide Web", http://www.w3.org/History.html, accessed October 4, 2005 and 2 June 2011.
(3) P Roy-Byrne, WR Smith, J Goldberg, N Afari, D Buchwald, "Post-traumatic stress disorder among patients with chronic pain and chronic fatigue", Psychological Medicine, 2004
(4) DE Sabath, S Barcy, DM Koelle, J Zeh, S Ashton, D Buchwald. "Cellular immunity in monozygotic twins discordant
for chronic fatigue syndrome", J Infect Dis 2002 Mar 15;185(6):828-32
(5) Editorial regarding Software, Productivity, Microsoft, and a Medical Model for Reliability: I avoided taking up the complex Visual Basic .NET environment, which succeeded MS VB version 6, a major leap. Microsoft markedly and I believe unwisely expanded complexity, often dealing poorly with its average- or moderate-proficiency users, who can ill afford to take the massive time hit needed for retraining with each new version of these tools released, or with each new pointlessly-altered user interface. Moreover, there are major time commitments required to simply "migrate" existing VB6 programs to the .NET version, in order to deal with the extensive incompatible language changes, even though there may be little or no intrinsic value added from making this conversion. Microsoft has an army of thousands working with massive available time on their hands to create all this new complexity, which they use to give their new software an appearance of progress and freshness. MS has always strived to maintain market dominance and de facto monopolies by marketing new proprietary versions of software regardless of costs incurred by the user. I have often mused about what colossal losses of world productivity and impairment of operations reliability have occurred as a result of Microsoft's approach to software development:
(a) pointless interface changes and complexification in applications software and operating systems;
(b) inadequate emphasis on old-fashioned dependability; and
(c) intentionally planned incompatibility with respect to outside openly defined software standards. It is my humble opinion that many of these problems would be solved by adhering to a medical model for important and critical software (including operating systems, database development environments, word processors, etc.) My medical model would require that:
(a) to the extent feasible, authoritative open non-proprietary standards bodies would govern software development issues, especially pertaining to the Windows operating system and other critical applications in common use; and (b) changes would be allowed to operating system and critical application interfaces only when it could be reasonably assured that, if we assume that lives depended on the understandability of these changes and the underlying reliability of the software, then loss of these lives would likely be prevented. Such strongly expressed requirements would be satisfied only by assuring the software's high reliability, high compatibility, and high comprehensibility (including definitive and well-organized documentation of the user interface, which often remains lacking or incomplete). Lives and livelihoods do in fact depend on such software.
(6) Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses, 1833. Admittedly,
Ulysses and his men were incomparably
more heroic than myself, and though I have always loved this great poem, the
parallel with my own life is further strained in that I don't seem to be ready to sail off for anywhere
(except through armchair travels), nor would I wish to leave my dear and nurturing
wife behind, even if I could reach the Happy Isles.
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Last update to this page: 29 October 2022
