The Queen is 90

Arthur and I on the water metro pass by the Tower Bridge as the Queen goes by in her row boat. I'm not kidding. Canons rumble. Fighter jets fly overhead then other military vehicles and finally the Blue Eagles (I think) who cover the sky in blue, red and white. It's Her Majesty's 90th.

The country celebrates with block parties and BBQs and a million people show up at the Pall Mall. A celebration and a touch of rain ? Carry on.

Arthur Returns

Arthur and I re-union at Track 18, Waterloo Station, to begin a four hour walk along the Thames Path ending up beyond the Isle of Dogs/ Canary Wharf.  It is always extraordinary to uncover different neighbourhoods and small plaques presenting history long forgotten.

Last we saw Arthur, he was retiring from TRW following 30 years of service. His last project : working on an anti-missile defence program targeting ICBMs in Iran, a project employing over 500 engineers from Fairfax to Irvine, California. In my mind's eye, I picture a bunch of bearded software geniuses arriving at a warehouse with an enormous rocket in the middle, allowing them to tinker. Instead, Arthur informs, it is one of the most sterile environments he has ever worked : silent rows of cubicles and offices bathed in unnatural light. His job to ensure the pieces operate together, also known as 'systems engineering.' This leads to a discussion the Wright Brothers and so on and so forth.

Author in California keeping busy rebuilding his house.

Guggenheim

I wake up early Sunday in Manhattan and, feeling disoriented from jet lag and lack of sleep, do what I always do in these circumstances: put on my running shoes and hit the road. In this case, it is a short hop from the Four Seasons to Central Park where I am greeted by 1000s of runners completing a half-marathon. I love the company which inspires me to go for a full loop, which passes in a New York minute. This is my second favourites place to run after Tilden Park.

From the Guggenheim website (abbreviated):
In June 1943, Frank Lloyd Wright received a letter from Hilla Rebay, the art advisor to Solomon R. Guggenheim, asking the architect to design a new building to house Guggenheim's four-year-old Museum of Non-Objective Painting. The project evolved into a complex struggle pitting the architect against his clients, city officials, the art world, and public opinion. Both Guggenheim and Wright would die before the building's 1959 completion.

Wright made no secret of his disenchantment with Guggenheim's choice of New York for his museum: "I can think of several more desirable places in the world to build his great museum," Wright wrote in 1949 to Arthur Holden, "but we will have to try New York." To Wright, the city was overbuilt, overpopulated, and lacked architectural merit.

Still, he proceeded with his client's wishes, considering locations on 36th Street, 54th Street, and Park Avenue (all in Manhattan), as well as in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, before settling on the present site on Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Streets. Its proximity to Central Park was key: the museum is an embodiment of Wright's attempts to render the inherent plasticity of organic forms in architecture.

Kansas City Missouri

A boy in transition

We pull in to Kansas City and decamp at the hotel, which means clothes and debris everywhere.

Sonnet meets her ancient dear friend Kevin, who drives to us from St Louis.  Kevin and Sonnet worked together at I. Magnin in San Francisco in those post college days when life was but a goof. These are the best friendships.

I have the Shakespeares solo so we go for a bike ride along the Missouri River, swim at the hotel pool then, treat-of-treats, Arthur Bryant's BBQ for dinner, the best in Kansas City and anywhere (says Calvin Trillin : "the single best restaurant in the world"). Barak Obama lunched here three days ago. Sonnet and I at Bryant's in 1997 when driving across the country and not much has changed - it has cleaned up a bit perhaps but the pulled pork as good as it ever was. The kids share a full rack of ribs and a plate of fries, washed down with lemonade. It's a restaurant without pretencion , where everybody enjoying themselves, and beats any of London's Michelin stars, hands down.

Arthur - Stage Next

Arthur and I re connect at Waterloo Station, Platform 17, to walk across London via Euston Station, the Strand, Fleet Street then the City and Shoreditch and finally Bethnal Green, where we catch a train to Richmond. On the way we find a pub.

Arthur, age 59, retired this year following 35 years at TRW and then Northrop Grumman, which acquired TRW, a satellites business, where Arthur one of the lead engineers. He informs me a big challenge, working on a satellite, is the "realisation uncertainty" or knowing what is actually being built. This not so obvious when there are 100s of PhD technicians modifying and tinkering a highly complex objet. 

Arthur is now working through his reading list and working on a house in Los Angeles while he retains his penthouse flat in London NW1.  Over dinner we discuss Plato's reading of Socrates which became, many believe, the foundation of the Bible.

Meanwhile, a badger-cull aiming to kill 70% of the countryside badgers kills only 65% or 940 badgers. This is the lead BBC story, 11AM.

Tax admin: "Do you know what nationality you are?"
Me: "I'm British."
Tax admin: "That's OK, absolutely fine."
Me: "Well thank you."

“Run with the painters. I always did."
--Kurt Vonnegut

Red House

The Red House, on the corner of York Ave, designed by architect Arthur Young and built in 1904 when there was surely nothing else around.  Since we are on a hilltop, the views of the river (now not visible) would have been superb. It remains a convenient several hundred yards into Richmond Park. Yours for £7M.

Hell

John Martin's Arthur and Aegle in the Happy Valley based on an Arthurian legend of Aegle’s last night on earth. Pictured, from the Tate Britain collection.

Today is one of those collectives bummers shared by commuters. I am late from the house and it starts raining  (me, in suit, no umbrella). The train over-crowded and humid so I stand perspiring , jammed against a woman reading Farsi on her phone app, wishing the sweat down my back would go away. Wishing I was anywhere else. Each stop brings more people who implore us to "move in!" or "Move to the middle!" As, if.  I make eye contact with the blond and we are both equally uncomfortable when this happens for the fifth time. No pick-up scene, this. I have seen people yell at each other in similar circumstances.

By Clapham Jnct I consider ditching my first meeting. Vauxhall, where I finally exit , finds a 50-foot line to enter the Underground.  I see not one smiling face. Buying an umbrella at Victoria, I am told that I must spend ten-pounds to use my debit card. The purchase price : $9.75.  We actually discuss this. I add some shoelaces to my purchase. It is not 9AM.

Madeleine: "Did you know that it takes seven red ants to kill a butterfly?"
Me: "That's nice, Dear."

Mt Equinox And A Bit Of The Revolutionary War

Sonnet, Katie, Eitan and I go for a "gentle walk" and end up climbing 3,800 ft Equinox Mountain instead. Equinox the highest peak of the Taconic Range. Starting from Manchester, it is straight up followed by straight down , leaving us perspired, exhausted and achy - the downward trek taxes muscles I knew not of. The peak marked by an ancient hotel which, Larry tells me, closed 15 years ago. On a winter's day it might be the Overlook Hotel. Me, I follow up with a three-hour nap (not 30 anymore dude) and go to bed at 9PM which vexes Sonnet at 4AM as I wake her to discuss house-design. Instead of fighting me, we go for a sunrise walk.

A signage at the trail head in Manchester:

"The Revolutionary War. Ethan Allen crossed Lake Champlain to capture Fort Ticonderoga on May 10, 1775 for "America's First Victory." Allen's expedition passed through here on May 5, 1775. Nathan Beman from Manchester guided the expedition into the fort: John Roberts of Manchester was the head of the expedition's largest immediate family. In 1777, after evacuating Ft. Ti and Mount Independence, Gen. Arthur St Claire traveled to the Saratoga area via Manchester. The first meeting of the council of Safety (Vermont's initial government) were at the original Marsh Tavern (on site of the south wing of the Equinox). In Manchester, Gen. John Stark declined orders from Gen. Benjamin Lincoln and opted to go to Bennington. Stark's NH troops and Seth Warner's "Green Mountain Boys" camped in Manchester prior to the battle of Bennington victory on August 16, 1777.

--Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, 2011

Wedding Post

Sophie, in the backseat and our neighbor Helen's (pictured, center) daughter, gets hitched. I grab my camera and join the neighborhood who line up to wish her well and good luck. Helen herself married to Martin who was born in the house pictured - Martin 80 or so and his mum a Wimbledon champion so he is a member of the club. Not too many people may claim that convenience. Martin knows more about stuff than most people I know and maybe as much as Arthur - on occasion Martin and I have discussed tree-pruning, WWII bombing strategies and gas lamps, which were across London until '64 when replaced by electrics. Helen has become our go-to in case of emergency : like several weeks ago when Aneta and I got our languages mixed up and Madeleine at home, solo, for the afternoon. After a while she marched herself across the yard, knocked on Helen's door, and announced she had been "Forgotten." Inside a moment I get a text on my mobile and a call at work. Madeleine very cool about the whole thing - no tears - but I know she was pretty upset especially since she has seen "Home Alone" and "Home Alone II."

I do five-hours of outside work which I heartily enjoy but today freezing and my hands numb by the end. Since it may snow yet I wanted to get the piles bagged.

On Wireless Charging

PowerKiss, a Finnish company, recently launched a line of products with small receivers that plug into handheld devices (the Ring) and an electrical transmitter built into a piece of furniture (the Heart), pictured. When a device is placed on the table it charges wirelessly by using a resonating field induction that creates an electromagnetic field around the Heart transmitter. The Ring receiver adapts the current produced by the field to the requirements of the mobile device. Induction of this kind has a short range so the transmitter and receiver must be close together.

Arthur and I, on a long London walk, once discussed whether a wireless charge would one day be possible. He noted this impossible since a charge must be transferred via a conducting path of some sort. Here is what he says about PowerKiss:

"This is a clever idea and I wonder if it will really take off. You have to convince people to buy the receiver thingie. And you have to convince furniture manufacturers to build the wires into the furniture! I think when we talked about this previously, the idea was whether you could "beam" energy around across distances and that turns out to be very difficult. Radar dishes and lasers do indeed beam energy from one place to another, but it's hard to recover the energy and use it at the other end. And a person who gets in the way suffers bad side effects like cancer or just getting burned.

What they're doing here is putting you and your electronics inside a big electric field. Maybe a little bit analogous with those wires they bury in the asphalt at intersections to detect when cars are stopped at the lights, or your electric toothbrush which charges when you put it in the stand. I'm surprised they can get enough energy into the little receiver to charge a phone. Maybe over a long period of time you can charge it.

We're not talking about a lot of energy to run a phone (as evidenced by the tiny battery).

"

Trampoline

Our neighbours Helen and Martin have a bouncer in their backyard, pictured, which receives a joyous whoop! from the Shakespeares. They are invited to give it a test-run. Eitan says, looking at the photo, "I think it was really fun and big. Uhhhh" (his contented sigh similar, dear reader, to an extra serving of desert and I raise an eyebrow). Martin meanwhile an electrical engineer and I admire the wiring which he did on his own. In the dining room, for instance, a master control connects 16 switches to each ceiling light - or, as Martin says, "to confuse everybody." Me, I think it is genus. It reminds me of Arthur. Their house has all sorts of fun peculiarities like the fold-down stools in the kitchen or the bunson burner like stove. They also have a wonderful border collie, my favorite dog ever, and a pet rat (Madeleine notes that the cage a good one - she should know ). Helen and Martin's daughter engaged yesterday - bravo.

Wiring

Now this is how a skyscraper should look. Powerful. Direct. Pointy. None of the new fangled designs with their space age materials compare. Prince Charles agrees BTW.

I am fascinated by the visible wiring everywhere in the New York subway - I mean, does it serve some purpose? Here is what Arthur says: "This question reminds me of when we were trying to put the police radios down in the tunnels of the London Underground. Somebody important (can't remember who) said the London Underground was a victorian rail system run by a Victorian organization.

"In other words a worn out antiquated system run by worn out antiquated people. The other thing I learned was that LU had very little information about what was actually down in the tunnels. In modern engineering, we call this "configuration control", which is the business of understanding how your equipment is configured. This can be challenging when you have a large system spread out geographically with many people working on it. People have to keep accurate records or you pretty quickly lose control. Apparently, it was not uncommon for crews to go into the tunnels at night (the window of opportunity is very short from about 1:00 to 5:00am) to do installations or repairs and discover that the equipment or layout of the equipment that they went to work on didn't match the drawings and they didn't have the right parts to make the repair or the new equipment wouldn't fit where it was planned.

"So to answer your question, I suspect most of the wiring is associated with signaling, that is, determining where trains are (sensors in the tracks) and controlling the "points" or switches and also the safety control systems that can stop a train that runs a red light. There's probably also various communication links between the stations.

"But it's also possible that as new systems are installed, which probably use far less wires, the old stuff is just left in place. Maybe you could reach out of the window and snip a wire to see what happens?

"And one last thing which I thought was a pretty neat piece of trivia. When the fiber-optic boom hit, entrepreneurs were looking for ways to run major fiber trunk lines across the UK and somebody realized that just about the only pieces of land that provided continuous access over long distances were the rail lines. So they all leased space along the sides of the rail lines. "

God bless.

Dinner And A Trumpet

Arthur, fiance Ruth, me, Anthony and Sonnet the other night. Photo from Arthur.

So today, my "to do" list something like this: 1. fix garbage disposer (which stopped working one month after the warranty); 2. dismount television monitor and remove hamster-chewed cable; 3. insulate outside pipes (that exploded in the night); 4. Install wireless electricity monitor (because the other brand did not work) and assemble tool-kit. On the last one you can see why. I am learning trial-by-fire where the water "cockstop" located or how to turn off the gas (but this another story). While I diddle, Madeleine at swimming then drama class while Eitan mills about - no football since the arctic weather continues. He knows to stay away from me, too.

Madeleine, who has been campaigning for a trumpet, attends a school lesson and comes home even more jazzed. We have experienced instruments before. The thought of Madeleine playing a trumpet in our house disruptive and I told her so last year probably a bit too directly. Both she and Sonnet pouted but, for Pete's sake, this is not a tool that requires finesse. Besides Sonnet once with me me and not with the terrorists. Better Madeleine play something thoughtful - like a recorder or something. But no, Madeleine has her mind set and so Sonnet takes her to the music store in Richmond to pick one up. She walks in the door just now ... and she is armed.

Madeleine, with her trumpet: "Dad, it seems amazing, but in my first lesson I learned two notes. And I know how to play them." She starts blasting.

Me: "Sonnet, are you out of your mind?"

Sonnet: "Madeleine, don't pay your father any mind."

Madeleine:

Sonnet: "Tell Dad to just go jump in the lake."

Madeleine: "Dad, just go jump in the lake."

W'Loo

Update: My mobile-phone photo the the top of the 226 stair knoll (I counted) on the site of the battle, and the famous La Butte du Lion. Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington said of it "They have spoiled my Battlefield." But it offers a panoramic view and puts one in the mind of past actions.

I am in Waterloo this morning and ask a receptionist for advise on things to see before the airport. She advises the battlefield and I thank her for her good idea, which is kind of like being told to see the Golden Gate Bridge when in San Francisco. Or Big Ben in London. So there we go to the or about eight miles Southeast of Brussels .

Waterloo marks to the defeat of Napoleon to the Seventh Coalition, including an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington and a Prussian Army under Gebhard von Blucher. It was a decisive ass kicking and ended Napoleon's rule as the French emperor, and the end of his Hundred Days post exile. I was reading about this only last week in Patrick O'Brien's 19th book of his Master and Commander series (Captain Jack ecstatic that Napoleon returns giving him his raison d'etre, even if only for a short while).

Upon Napoleon's return to power in 1815, many states that had opposed him formed the Seventh Coalition and began to mobilise armies. Two large forces under Wellington and von Blücher assembled close to the northeastern border of France. Napoleon chose to attack in the hope of destroying them before they could join in a coordinated invasion of France with other members of the Coalition. And so: Waterloo. According to Wellington, the battle was "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life."

Napoleon delayed giving battle until noon to allow the ground to dry. Wellington's army, positioned across the Brussels road on the Mont St Jean escarpment, withstood repeated attacks by the French, until, in the evening, the Prussians arrived in force and broke through Napoleon's right flank. At that moment, Wellington's Anglo-allied army counter-attacked and drove the French army in disorder from the field. Pursuing Coalition forces entered France and restored Louis XVIII to the French throne. Napoleon abdicated, surrendered to the British, and was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821.

"All I want to know is where I am going to die so I will never go there."

--Warren Buffet

Shooting Fish In A ..

Madeleine wants a fish and is relentless about it. Her persistence a fine quality. Usually.

Along with everything else, US corporations have been slashing internal, long-term research and development spending, and, most recently, investments in venture backed start-ups and venture funds (my photo from the local pet shop). Where our nation once at the forefront of global innovation, we are being surpassed by places like Korea or China. Consider GM. Those blowhards should own the electric or hybrid market; instead they fought Washington to keep their SUVs while failing entirely to commit anything to the next, next thing. Now they are a fraction of their size and might. GM an easy example, but not alone: AT&T's Bell Labs, IBM's Watson Labs, and XEROX PARC were turbines of innovation and the envy of the world. They were also cool. Imagine being some super-educated geeko with computer science or engineering degrees (sorry Roger on both counts) working in the salt mines - here was the way out. And more: perhaps the closest thing to rock-stardom as these tighty-whities might get. Today, no more.

The data shows: in 1981, US companies with more than 25,000 employees represented approx. 70% of the investment in industrial innovation, according the the National Science Foundation. By 2006, it was 36%. The slack during this time picked up by small companies who absorbed investment: from 10% of US R&D in '81 to 40% today. No surprise. Further, public companies originally venture capital-backed today are 17.5% of the US GDP and have created more than 12 million high-paying jobs over the last 30 years (source: Venturebeat). Without venture capital, we would be Germany. Or Bulgaria. High growth tech businesses re-employed the redundent during America's 1980s downsizing - remember all that m&a and Gordon Geco stuff?

I learned in MBA school that the first thing to shutter, when looking for "efficiencies" to justify a merger or"unlocking value" after the deed done, is the research department. The reason, other than conserving or freeing cashflow, the market - which can do things better than an individual (company). In short, better to buy, or have the option to buy, technology developed on somebody else's risk. It also eliminates the problem of "project creep" which, as Arthur has told me, is what happens when 100 engineers given a free hand. They do what smart people do - explore, test, waste shareholder money.

Today's increasing problem stems from corporate isolation, some arrogance plus a dose of complacency and a pinch of corruption. From the 1980s, substantial R&D cost savings transferred back to venture innovation via m&a and investment partnerships, where a General Partner (GP) managed commitments in return for a share - 20% - of the take. This kept the brain muscle working, gave corporates access to best-of-breed entrepreneurs and universities and made a lot of people rich. All good in our capitalism. Today, I often must argue that venture an asset class given the miserable returns these last ten years but this silly: of course it is, only the best investments not looking for IPOs or mega-exits. Base-hits, ie, smaller deals in capital efficient companies, have always been the industry's bread-and-butter before large cap funds arrived circa 1999 (a large-cap fund making a $50MM investment in one company, for instance, looks for a $1B exit to get its multiple). Smaller, specific deals exactly what buyers want or need. So today, without corporate dollars and tax incentives, we lose the ability to innovate and lead having squandered resources in larger, value destroying funds. Britain has suffered this fate (who recalls the de Havilland? Neither do I but it was the first commercial airline and British). By failing venture, our companies are a fish in a barrel.

Self Portrait VII

We meet James and Emily in Hyde Park on a brilliant summer's day. This the weather I think of when considering England: warm, with large puffy clouds making the blue sky a friendly canvas. Definitely The Beatles and "Yellow Submarine." Britain looks like a cloud after all. Ben, year-five, and Mia, year-three, offer the perfect companions and the children play football and Frisbee until Madeleine clips a 20 somethings head. I drag her over to mumble "sorry" and when I sternly rebuke her for not being more generous she whines: "but I didn't even know her!" Emily is the Executive Producer at the BBC, whose show The Forum is presented by Bridget Kendall and aims "to discuss and challenge big ideas." Recent shows have teamed Environmentalist Sunita Narain, science historian Arthur I Miller, writer Paolo Giordano. Or Sociologist WJ Wilson, philosopher Roger Scruton, film-maker Clemens von Wedemeyer. Or Political economist Deepak Lal, writer & comic AL Kennedy, Tatar poet Ravil Bukharaev. How cool is this? The Forum is on radio, Internet b'cast or podcast. Emily, like Sonnet, has a unique job and totallly great for it. Before The Forum, she was responsible for the BBC Book Club where I recently met Lionel Shriver. And before that, the World Services Religious programming. She rocks.

Madeleine shows me a pea-pod: "Look, Dad, it's perfect. I am going to take it to show-and-tell."

Madeleine collects all sorts of bugs from the backyard putting them into a tuper-ware, covered with Seran Wrap. She adds a few leaves and a grass or two for their comfort. She leaves the encasement by the back-steps, where I find them this morning.

The car radio chimes the BBC's Big Ben announcement of 6:00PM. I ask Madeleine in the back: "what time is it?"
Long pause.
BBC Announcer: "And the news, at 6PM."
Madeleine: "4PM?"

Simon

I love this kid, here looking into the backyard at a thunder-storm afternoon and thinking: "no s'mores." Everybody in the same boat and sometimes the rain just comes when least wanted. Madeleine asks if we can use the oven but somehow not quite the same. We promise tomorrow, sunshine allowing, and ice cream tonight at Nellie's in Goshen, CT which we have been to before and is a perfect hole in the wall with all kinds of Nestle's Ice cream. It has suitably cheesey decor and friendly hospitality. Madeleine asks if they have s'more ice cream and we shall see. We shall see. When not yelling at the kids about something (a memorable moment has me removing my glasses so I am not responsible for everybody jumping on Simon smooshed between two couch pillows) we enjoy BBQ spare ribs, which takes me back to Kansas City in '97 and Arthur Bryant's. Bryant's a rib joint founded in the 1920s not too far from the Chiefs football stadium and a simple, enormous grill worked by several enormous black men in dirty, white T-shirts. I think Clinton went there once during a tour of the Midwest (or wherever Kansas is). Sonnet and I passed by on our cross-country post MBA and I still have fond memories, ah yes. So Simon - terrific kid, similar to Madeleine a unique character and always something interesting going on in his head. He, too, has a successful older brother who monopolizes attention which must be countered somehow. Simon often gets away with murder but always brought back to earth by Amado, who is not adverse to yelling or fixing a chore or two. Builds character and keeps the boys out of trouble - something we could do ourselves with a bit more discipline - I think this as Eitan ignores me generally when I ask him to do something. I threaten to withhold ManU vs. Barcelona Wednesday and this usually gets it done.

Madeleine enters with Capucino Crunch ice cream.

Christmas Cheek

The perfect bottom we all work so hard for. This one greets visitors (actually the more interesting side greets visitors). Today is Christmas Eve so not surprsingly the kids barge into our room at around 6AM, which is unfortunate because I "indulged" last night at Dukes. Tony had never been and the hotel in St James's offers the best martini in town. Of course the only one to order is vodka and we had several. Did I mention that Tony spent five years in the Navy before business school? Hmmm never wise to find this out at a cocktail lounge. Before, I spend the day with Arthur at the sciences museum- the perfect date place with him (Arthur is a Senior Engineer working on the Pentagon's missile defense shield). He's in town for some chores and his apartment, which otherwise he rents out as he lives in VA. Normally I tear through the exhibitions on my way to the planes or rocket displays but Arthur is fascinated by the early technology like lathes, steam pressures and telescopes. He ponders each joint wondering why it is useful? and this forces me along for the contemplation. I absorb (mostly) what he says, including an explanation of the first computer and a description of his fathers who had a "calculator press" before Sony took over the world. We also discuss other stuff including the necessity of a large military and techy weapons when the most threatful thing could be a van packed with fertiliser. He agrees, but also our government cannot find itself exposed to a strike without any sort of available defense. Hence Star Wars. Unfortunately for him, he finds himself retooling his program based on timing and budgets and sub-contractor budgets which change at the whim of Congress and especially this and next year. We're talking billions of dollars here. All Arthur wants to do is build or fix things, poor fellow.

From Arthur I join Erik at The Woolsley and we catch each other up before he flies to Southern California for the holidays. Unknown to me before recently, his family (Dad's side) bought up the orange groves in of Orange County starting around 1911 and today they have diversified into many areas and funded a university. From SoCal he will ride his motorcycle to Arizona which sounds pretty cool to me. And then Dukes, oh boy.

Obelisk

I find a strange black obelisk in the V&A courtyard at the center of the museum, which immediately brings Arthur C. Clarke to mind. In this instance, it shines various shapes, patterns and lines and draws a hypnotised audience who watch the colors dance off the wading pool. Cool. Eitan, meanwhile, could care less and in a flash has his shoes off and runs sprints on the lawn - he's been inside the museum for 20 minutes, you see. Any ways the sculpture presents no information on itself, nor am I able to find anything on the V&A's website- maybe Sonnet can help us?

The Victoria & Albert Museum really is fabulous - not your typical showing painting and antiquities, no sir. It is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects. Named after Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, it was founded in 1852, and has since grown to now cover some 12.5 acres and 145 galleries. Its collection spans 5000 years of art, from ancient times to the present day, in virtually every medium, from Europe, North America, Asia and North Africa. Sonnet has her place too and it gives me great pride to walk around the Fashion Gallery with the kids who ask questions about her displays: "Why did you pick that one, mom?" asks Madeleine looking at a pink track suit. Eitan runs past the fancy lingerie when I ask him his favorite pair of pants. Otherwise there is the "Magnificence of the Tsars" described as "the grandeur of Imperial Russia is captured in this display of the dress and uniforms of Emperors and officials of the Russian court. Starting in the 1720s with the lavishly embroidered coats and elaborately patterned silk banyans from the wardrobe of Tsar Peter II, the display spans a period of almost two centuries." I hear a lot of Russian spoken.

Look Up!

Tonight's full moon, assuming no clouds, is the biggest and brightest to be seen for 15 years. As Arthur recounts, each month the moon makes a full orbit around the earth in a slightly oval-shaped path, and tonight it will swing by at its closest distance, or perigee, passing 221,595 miles away - 17,400 miles closer than average. What's unusual tonight is that the perigee coincides with a full moon making it appear 14% bigger and 30% brighter than most full-moons (the next closest encounter BTW is November 14, 2016 but it won't be a full-moon). Tonight's moon is also notable for rising to its greatest height in the night sky, lying almost overhead at midnight. This is due to the approaching winter solstice on December 21 and, thanks to the tilt of the earth, the moon appears at its highest as the sun is at its lowest. Were that not enough, tonight and for the next several nights is the Geminid meteor shower, one of the year's best displays of shooting stars - up to 100 meteors an hour can fly across the sky. Cool!
Moon photo from National Geographic.