Bob Hendricks' Personal Website

After receiving a bachelor's degree in chemistry in June, 1951, I stayed on in Rochester for a summer technical job at Kodak to save up a few dollars, then married a classmate, Carole Axworthy, at her family church in New Jersey before starting graduate school that September. I went directly on for a Ph.D. in chemistry at Brown University in Providence, R.I., where Carole helped support us by working, first at the Providence YWCA and later at Brown University's main John Hay Library.  Starting on September 1, 1955, I held technical positions at several Du Pont locations in Delaware, Ohio, and New Jersey before being transferred back to Rochester in 1977, as noted above.  Along the way, we raised three children and of course managed to “age somewhat” in the process.  After thirteen years working in Rochester, I was offered a great opportunity for early retirement in late 1990, a few months before my 62d birthday, which I accepted, partly because I knew my department was getting into serious financial trouble, and partly because I had begun to doubt that I still had the physical stamina to keep up with the ambitious young hotshots then in charge.  (Within a few short years, major shakeups and plant closings did in fact overtake my portion of Du Pont, confirming my business judgement and demonstrating again that timing is everything!  Within two or three years, all of the “brilliant young tigers” who had been brought in to revolutionize things had been “outplaced,” in the tender vocabulary of 1990s Human Resources, and within five years, the department had ceased to exist and its assets sold off.  Much more on this in a later section.)  We’ve lived in Rochester since I retired for all but occasional travel and a few winter months we spent in Florida in the 1990s.

In this website, I will share an overview of my life and of the Rochester area, with a historical perspective on each.  I will include retrospective writeups on aspects of my life and career, in the spirit of memoirs, as separate sections or "pages." And because my mind has collected so many disparate facts and figures over the years, and I've enjoyed the game of the same name, I considered adopting the subtitle, "A Life of Trivial Pursuits.”  (I once heard a wonderful phrase somewhere to the effect that "my mind is a veritable cesspool of useless information," which I think fits me perfectly.  In the circumstances, you the readers can decide for yourselves to what extent this applies.)

For a cartoonist's view of one problem I faced while creating this website, click here, then use your browser to return to this page.

DISCLAIMER: While my objective has been to remain completely factual in writing this, I should warn you that I probably have fabricated a few details along the way. After so many years, who really knows where their memory stops and wishful imagination begins?  (Also, I’ll admit that I’ve conciously chosen to omit a few experiences which are still too painful to relate – though nothing which might put me in prison!)  As you will soon find, I've included my opinions quite freely throughout, one of the great advantages of being both the author and editor in chief.  Of course, I've rarely been accused of keeping my opinions to myself, so I think I can reasonably claim that I’ve just been consistent in expressing myself freely without worrying too much about whether I have every detail exactly right.  And at least I think I claim that my intentions were basically honorable throughout.

Photos of the Month - Our grandson Eric is four now

(Note: This section is a bit out of date at the moment.  Patience, please!)

For my photos of the month now, I'm posting snapshots of our new grandson, Eric John Porco, born on January 7, 2002 in Maryland. (Some earlier photos of Eric, Jill, Tony, and Carole which I formerly had here have been moved to a family gallery section which may be visited by clicking here. Then use your browser to return here.)

This picture shows Eric in October, 2004, at a party arranged by Tony in honor of Jill's 40th birthday. His hair, originally quite red, has become more of a "sandy blonde" shade as he's developed.

Below is another photo of Eric (taken in June, 2004) listening to music through his dad's earphones. He seems entranced, with an impish look on his face. Since he already enjoys singing as well as listening, we think music may be important in his life.

Here is a great picture of Eric in action on a slide, taken at Ontario Beach State Park in Rochester in June, 2004, when he was about 2-1/2.

And finally, here is Eric eating corn on the cob in June, 2004. Like his mostly German ancestors, Eric is definitely a "serious eater" when there's something he likes.

Why Did the World Need This Website?

By the time they reach my age many people have probably asked themselves, "What does it all mean?" While I don't expect ever to know for sure, I’ve hoped that writing this might get me a bit closer to an understanding. I started work on this in mid-1997, wrote most of it over the next couple of years, and by now I've probably pretty much said most of what I have to say about my life, though I'm still adding bits and pieces which seem to fit, as well as weeding out a few stubborn errors, typos, and the like. Hopefully, I’ll eventually find ways to say what I have to say more clearly and concisely, though the latter has proven to be a genuine challenge.  (Perhaps that reflects the disorderly way my memories are stored in my brain, though who knows.)  I'm also adding a bit more family history and photos as time permits. Reliving what has transpired since 1929, when I was born, has been an interesting trip and has certainly given me additional perspective and many new insights. After retiring in the early 1990's - half a dozen years before I began this website – I had time to work through the question facing all career people: "Who am I, really, now that I've retired?" While I haven't directly addressed that question anywhere, it's been in the back of my mind, and the answer is probably here, at least by inference.

To elaborate a bit on my question above, "What does it all mean?," I've recently learned that this is one of a trio of questions posed by the French postimpressionist painter Paul Gauguin toward the end of his life (1897), in the corner of a mural generally regarded as his career masterpiece: "D'ou venons nous? Que sommes nous? D'ou allons nous?" These can be translated as, "Where Do We Come From? Who Are We? Where Are We Going?" I now realize that attempts to answer these and similar questions about the meaning of life have actually been preoccupations of mine since I was a teenager. And in the spirit of my Unitarian Universalist church, although my personal beliefs at this point perhaps differ significantly from yours, that's all right.  Hopefully we can still agree to dialog with open minds and mutual respect, each gaining in the process.

For additional comments by George Santayana, Lily Tomlin, Albert Einstein, Lucille Ball, and others on the remarkable situation in which we find ourselves – human beings living on this beautiful Planet Earth at the start of the twenty first century – see the end of my last "Memories" section. These may be visited now, if you choose, by clicking here, then following the instruction at the top of the page.

Whatever the cosmic insignificance of a single human life, writing my personal history has at the least given me a much deeper appreciation of how much I have to be thankful for. My earliest memories go back to when I was a young child in the Great Depression, living in an obscure village in southwestern Idaho with a single parent and grandparents, with seemingly no prospects of getting a college education or even moving somewhere else which could provide more opportunity. But bit by bit, great opportunities did present themselves over my lifetime. Thanks to some wonderful scholarships, fellowships, and outstanding family support, after high school I obtained a college education at a first rate eastern university, followed by post graduate work at another fine institution, leading to a Ph.D. in Chemistry and a 35 year career with a world class chemical company. Along the way, I married a very special young woman, and together we raised three children while living and working in several eastern states. (In August, 2006, Carole and I celebrated our 55th anniversary.) As noted above, I retired over a decade ago in my early 60s after a challenging and rewarding career as a scientist and technical manager with Du Pont. Looking back, the chain of interrelated events and opportunities which took me to where I am now is something my family and I could not possibly have imagined when I started out.

You are cordially invited to share my journey. I hope you will find parts of it, at least, interesting and informative, and perhaps reading what I’ve written will stimulate memories of your own. I hope you will also be reminded of the many profound changes which have taken place in our country and in the world over our lifetimes.

Along the way, I hope you will also take time to consider my reasons for being so deeply concerned about the future of the human race unless we soon begin thinking and acting long term, and quickly and purposefully move to a sustainable world lifestyle. (This occupies the last portion of this section. To go directly to this material, click here.)

Outline of My Website

List of pages, or sections (see immediately below for shortcuts to these sections):

-   My home page (where you are now)
- Rochester's history, culture and climate
- Memories - the stages of my life (six sections)
- People who most influenced my life
- Technology predictions - a fearless forecast, vintage 1961
- Retirement - how it seemed at the time
- Looking back 50 years - a talk I gave at my college class's 50th reunion
- Family history in brief (including notes on my ancestor Henry Kintzi)
- Family Album - selected "historical" family pictures
- Some transcendental experiences
- Cancer in Bob's Neighborhood - a memorial
- Odds and ends - songs, epitaphs and miscellany
- Photo gallery - family snapshots and other photos I enjoy

To go directly to links to these other pages, click here.

My home page, which follows this introduction, includes:

- What's new - recent changes and future plans
- Our family, my special interests and some personal stuff
- The world of 1929
- Some reflections on the past and future
- Acknowledgement
- Links to other pages
- Some favorite websites
- A visitors guestbook
- My e-mail and snail mail addresses

What's New, and Future Plans - I've updated parts of my homepage from the perspective of late 2002/early 2003, especially with respect to what seems to be happening to the stock markets and the economy. I've also added updated photos of our four year old grandson Eric, whom you've already met. Most recently, I've added a short section on my personal beliefs (as part of the section headed "Church Involvement and Some Important Social and Ethical Issues"). And I've recently expanded and updated some thoughts on environmental and energy problems, global warming, and the overriding world population problem. I expect eventually to add more photos and text to my "Family Album" section, which now includes "historical" photos of family members from as far back as the 1870s. And I've enlarged my description of the year 1929, which now seems so long ago and far away. I've also added a talk I gave at my college class's 50th reunion in October, 2001, a look back at my college experience and career from today's perspective.

I've included a photo of the Hakiqi family of refugees from Pristina, Kosovo, who I got to know very well starting in late May, 1999, as head of a resettlement team from our church (see "Gallery" below.) That's a very challenging process I may try to describe in more detail sometime. (See also below.) Dealing with people from another culture is a profoundly educational opportunity for all concerned. Suffice to say now that this family is doing quite well on the whole despite a few seemingly unavoidable "bumps in the road." It now is certain that the entire family will stay here permanently, though the parents clearly miss contacts with family and friends at home. (Three of the older children were recently naturalized.) Working with people from another culture can sometimes be humbling and frustrating, but it's been rewarding to become well acquainted. To read some "key learnings" I wrote up after working with this family for several months, click here.

Because I spent so much of my life writing and editing reports - also because I'm admittedly hard to please - I suspect I may always be updating and adding to what's presented here. I realized while I was writing that one reason I procrastinated so long getting into my Du Pont years (one of the last sections I wrote) was my reluctance to face unresolved issues and conflicts from my career, which after all did occupy more than 35 years of my life. In this connection it's interesting that only recently, more than a decade after retiring, have I finally stopped dreaming from time to time about people I worked with at Du Pont. Presumably these dreams, usually troubled, reflected conflicts and concerns left over from my career. My job absorbed most of my energy while I was working, and I had to overcome many problems along the way. There were many conflicts between my own instincts about how to deal with people and company policies and/or management decrees which I was supposed to follow. And of course there was the constant pressure for quick results, mostly as new products. These struggles presumably left some psychic damage.

Our Family - My Background and Interests

I was born in the obscure village of Mountain Home, Idaho (then having only about 1200 people), on a Sunday evening, June 2, 1929. My father's journal entry that day read: "Baby was born. Cloudy and cool." (I might explain that since daytime temperatures usually reach the 90s in Mountain Home by early June, a "cloudy and cool day" was understandably worth noting.  And of course Dad did mention my arrival before commenting on the weather!) I grew up in Idaho in very modest circumstances during the Great Depression and World War II, graduated from high school in Boise, Idaho in 1947, and after being educated in the east thanks to some wonderful scholarships and other assistance, have lived and worked back here ever since - mostly during the Cold War, with a constant awareness of nuclear weapons.

My father, Otto William Hendricks, who came to this country from Germany in 1883 when only four years old, was a butcher, the traditional family occupation. After spending ten years in Michigan and Indiana, his family settled in Mountain Home in 1893. Dad worked in and eventually became owner of the family meat market there, from about 1900 till 1935, when he moved to Nevada after my parents’ marriage had broken up. My mother, Esther Kinsey Hendricks, born in Kenton, Ohio in 1891, moved to southwestern Idaho with her family in 1911. After working as a sales clerk and in many other jobs, she played professionally for the silent movies for several years before marrying my dad in 1921, also gave piano lessons, played solos, accompanied many singers and instrumental soloists over her lifetime, and was a church pianist or organist for many years.  Before playing regularly for the movies, she travelled with a musical show in the back country of Idaho and Oregon one summer, and played piano and waited table at least one other summer at Geyer Hot Springs, a popular resort near Ketchum, Idaho. Since neither of my parents attended college and my father was forced to quit school to learn the butchering trade after eighth grade (1893), I definitely have a "blue collar" background, though I always had great encouragement in my education. As described elsewhere, my parents separated when I was four years old and were divorced before I began grade school. Since Jimmie, my only sibling and older brother, was sent to live with an aunt and uncle in Oregon just before I started first grade, I grew up in effect as the only child of a struggling single parent. For more on those early years, see the first section of "Memories."

I've had a wonderful life and career, far beyond anything I could possibly have imagined as a child. I retired in Rochester as a Research and Development Laboratory Director in 1991 after more than 35 years with a single company, Du Pont ­– an experience which now seems in danger of extinction, since most younger people expect now to move from company to company several times during their working careers. I always liked school and was attracted to science. But though trained as a physical chemist at the University of Rochester and Brown University, I actually spent most of my career in technical management. Along the way, I found that working with people can be at least as rewarding as studying molecules – even more challenging and frustrating at times! Over the years, I concluded that many, if not most, scientist-managers might have have been happier sticking to science, since dealing with human problems was a necessary evil for them. But for me, combining technology with "people" was ideal, and I enjoyed both sides of my job. I soon found that I preferred working on practical or applied projects which gave tangible results, particularly programs combining several aspects of technology and engineering, such as magnetic tape formulation and design, and photographic product development. Along the way, I picked up a smattering of engineering knowledge, since much of what I did could have been done as well by an engineer. I particularly enjoyed trying to make sense out of complex technical information and facts, which these programs had in abundance. And this was something I found I was actually pretty good at, which helped my career at times. I had some great experiences in Du Pont, mostly enjoyed my work despite some inevitable frustrations of dealing with a cumbersome and ingrown corporate bureaucracy and a few difficult bosses, travelled enough to keep things interesting, was generally paid as much or more than I may have deserved, worked with many capable people, and made many long time friends over my career. But partly because of having had emergency surgery to remove a large perforated ulcer (and part of my stomach) early in 1990, I was ready to retire when the opportunity was offered me later that year, three years before it would have been required by company policy. As events unfolded, I was very fortunate to have left at an ideal time, just before a series of major upheavals and cutbacks hit my department and our Rochester location. For this and other reasons I will note in the following, the moral of this tale might be: "If you have to choose between being lucky and being smart, take 'lucky' every time!"

I am married to the former Carole Axworthy of Montclair, New Jersey, a pleasant commuter suburb several miles northwest of Newark. Her father Harold, son of an English immigrant home builder, came from a large family, and had worked very hard to get his education. After serving in the Army Quartermaster Corps in World War I, he got a bachelors degree in 1923 from New York University while working part time (and despite having been married in 1920), continued on for a masters degree and began teaching in 1924, finally completing his Ph.D. thesis in 1933. Harold had a low key, winning personality and a special interest in and bonding with young people, and became a very popular professor of Sociology and Government and student advisor at New York University from 1924 until his sudden and untimely death from a heart attack in 1941 at age 48. Harold clearly had a first class mind, having completed high school and college in three years each while working part time. He became recognized professionally as an authority on public welfare, and played a significant role in Depression era relief programs at New York University and in the New York City area. Harold's father Trowbridge Axworthy, who immigrated with his older brother Aaron from a village near Plymouth, Devon, England as a teenager in the early 1880s, worked here first as a carpenter, and eventually as a respected homebuilder in suburban New Jersey. (Aaron worked on the street cars, but was injured at work and used his compensation to return to England with his homesick, pregnant young bride.) Harold's mother Eva Mantz Axworthy was a native of New Jersey, and based on her maiden name probably had a German background, apparently in the Baptist church. Trowbridge and Eva migrated to southern California with all but two of their nine children between 1920 and 1923 in an effort to find a climate which would extend Trowbridge's life, as well as offer improved educational and job opportunities for the children. But like several descendants after him, Trowbridge seems to have suffered from progressive heart/arterial problems, and died at age 61, three years after moving to California.

Carole's mother Alice Keary Axworthy, college trained as a teacher and musician, sang in and led church choirs throughout her life, and was employed by the town of Montclair after Harold's premature death. As a young woman Alice worked some summers at Thomas Edison's factory in West Orange, NJ while completing her education. I'm reasonably sure she was the first member of her family to be college educated, receiving a teaching certificate upon graduating from Montclair Normal School (forerunner of today's Montclair State University) in 1916. After graduation she sang professionally in church and on the radio (as part of a quartet), and taught school for several years before starting a family. Later she worked as a part time teaching substitute while becoming "immersed" in volunteer church activities, particularly musical. After Harold died, Alice worked full time for the town of Montclair while raising their three daughters and serving as church choir director. Her father Nathaniel Keary had emigrated to Brooklyn as a young man from Northern Ireland in the 1880s. I have the impression that he may have come to the States by himself, as many immigrants did. As a young man, he apparently liked “the girls” and definitely seems to have enjoyed playing the role of a well dressed "dandy" (as shown in several studio portraits he had taken as a young man). But before being married he was "converted" to religion (Methodist) and became a very strict husband and father.  He was foreman at a medical supply house while Alice was growing up. (As a mature man, he described his early life as one of "dissolution," perhaps referring to sexual misadventures.) He died in 1925 at age 56. Alice's mother Margaret Fulton Keary, a quiet woman who outlived Nathaniel by more than 20 years, was a native of Elizabeth, New Jersey. and had been brought up in the Episcopal Church. She spent the last years of her life with Harold's family, and is the only grandparent Carole remembers.

Carole and I met here in Rochester in 1949, early in our junior year, and counting our four years in college have lived here now for more than 30 years. We enjoy this area very much. My main reason for coming here from high school was that one of my scholarships was specific to the University of Rochester, and I could combine it with another, unrestricted national scholarship, while Carole chose to come here after visiting her sister Suzanne, a music major at the U of R, and liking the campus atmosphere. So as things worked out, Sue's choice of college based on her musical interest, together with my having received a Bausch and Lomb Science Award in high school, leading to a B & L Science Scholarship here for me, ultimately gave Carole and me an opportunity to meet – a most unlikely event considering that we were born and raised more than two thousand miles apart! When I arrived for college, I thought it was probably my one and only chance "to see the east for four years." But actually, it's turned out to be nearly "sixty years and counting." After graduating from the U of R in 1951, Carole and I were married in her family church in Orange, New Jersey late that summer and moved to Providence,  Rhode Island (where I received my Ph.D. in chemistry after four years of study and research), then to Delaware, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey before returning to Rochester in 1977, courtesy of a Du Pont career transfer. I joined Du Pont as a research chemist at the Experimental Station in Wilmington, Delaware in 1955 and retired in Rochester at the end of 1990, continuing in part time consulting work most of the next year.  Carole and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary in August, 2001, and have three grown children, Todd of San Jose, CA; Anne of Drexel Hill, PA; and Jill of Laurel, MD; two grandsons, Justin Hendricks, of Vallejo, CA, and Eric Porco, of Laurel, MD; and a granddaughter, Skye Lopez of Modesto, CA.

Here is a recent photo of Carole and me. I thought you should meet her, too. Marrying Carole may be the best decision I ever made.

Church Involvement and Some Important Social and Ethical Issues

I am a member and past president (1993-4) of the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, which Susan B. Anthony and her younger sister Mary attended for 50 years before joining toward the end of their lives, on January 1, 1893, though they had been brought up as Quakers. (Becoming affiliated with our church as adults after having grown up in another denomination is actually quite common among Unitarian-Universalists.  According to our former minister, Dick Gilbert, "Susan's streak of independence must have been inherited from her father Daniel, who married 'out of meeting' and was read out of the Adams, Massachusetts, meeting. That same spirit was illustrated when the Adams family left the Quaker meeting in Rochester because it was not in sympathy with the anti-slavery movement.") Trained as a schoolteacher, Susan became a superb organizer, political strategist, and public speaker, easily the most visible symbol of the women's movement in the United States for over fifty years, starting in the early 1850s. The Woman Suffrage movement finally did win the right to vote for American women, but not until 1920, years after the original organizers and leaders had left the scene.

All of her public life Susan B. Anthony worked closely with her best friend and "spiritual partner," Elizabeth Cady Stanton of nearby Seneca Falls, the brilliant daughter of a judge and an organizer of the of the first Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention of 1848.  Elizabeth, having an especially clear sense of what she thought women could and should achieve. and being the better writer – though confined to her home for many years to bear and raise seven children – provided Susan with many speeches, ideas and well reasoned arguments.  It’s probably not too much to claim that these two were primarily responsible for a major revolution in American life.  They made an especially formidable team because their strengths were complementary.  It's ironic that the unmarried Susan, who consistently put her public life ahead of possible marriage and family, would find her lifelong closest confidant and most valuable ally in Elizabeth, a married woman who bore seven children while devoting such awesome amounts of intellectual and physical energy to the cause of woman suffrage.  I find it especially ironic that this somewhat unlikely pair actually exemplify the ongoing balancing act between “home vs. career” still faced by women. ­­ To see photos of these two at the peak of their careers, click here.  The successful drive to enfranchise women ultimately led to many other important legal and social advances – such as the right to seek divorce from abusive husbands, to have equal access to their children, to own property and hold bank accounts (and credit cards!) in their names, to write and speak in public, to have careers outside the home, and to enter the professions, politics, and hold management positions.  These opportunities are all pretty much taken for granted by younger American women today.  Although women may not yet quite have attained absolute equality in our society, enormous progress has been made in the past century and a half.

Getting back to my own family and life, it is interesting that women's suffrage was not achieved nationally until just nine years before I was born, when my mother was in her 38th year. (In Idaho, women were actually able vote since the state was founded in 1890, so my mother actually was eligible to vote as soon as she turned 21, in 1912.)  How the world has changed since then!  Many more people and groups have moved into the mainstream of our national life, or have at least become recognized as major ontributors to our society. As one example which affected me personally during my term as church president, in November, 1993, our church declared itself a "Welcoming Congregation," explicitly committed to including gay, lesbian and bisexual people in all our activities, in line with our denomination's tradition of being part of America's social conscience.  My personal knowledge of homosexuality when I was growing up was probably typical of our generation, since I was totally unaware of such matters as a school child.  I recall that I was in college before I first heard the terms "lesbian" and "gay," and didn't think then I knew any such people, though I undoubtedly did without realizing it. I can actually remember looking up the word "lesbian" in my dictionary while in college, ca. 1950.  Carole and I have recently made some wonderful friends - gay and straight - as a result of our church's program, but it's chastening to reflect that many gay people in this country are still routinely deprived of freedoms most of us take for granted, such as the right to earn a living, to find suitable housing, to live in a legally sanctioned relationship with a lifetime partner, to share their partner's work benefits and Social Security pension, and to adopt children. Suicide among gay teenagers is still higher than for straights. And there are dreadful examples of harassment and physical abuse of gays - even deaths - reported somewhere in the press nearly every month, presumably plus other that go unreported. I will admit that declaring our church "Welcoming" was actually a bit of a stretch at the time for some of our older members, but it's universally accepted today. Homophobia can be a very deep seated prejudice for even the most enlightened, and much remains to be done in our society to eliminate it despite the progress which is has been made.

Because most of us are such independent thinkers, there's a wonderful expression around the Unitarian Universalist denomination that "leading UU's is like trying to herd cats." That characteristic, coupled with two or three particularly knotty problems I was forced to deal with as president, influenced my decision to retire in 1994 after a one year term.  Sometimes, it's easier to admire UU's than to love them.

Although I was brought up in traditional Protestant churches which taught a literal interpretation of the Bible, like many others of my generation I've been on a spiritual "journey" over my life which has taken me to quite a different set of beliefs and understanding of mankind's place in the universe.  It seems clear that I was born with a "questioning" mindset and a strong need to think things through for myself.  Looking back, probably the greatest transition in my world view took place in my early teens when I realized I could no longer accept the literal Biblical teachings of creation, which seemed contrary to overwhelming scientific evidence for a vastly different "story of the universe." (And of course this realization also made some other biblical teachings or underlying assumptions, such as "mankind as the center of the universe," seem less compelling.) Since then my understanding of mankind’s situation has deepened as I've learned more about the impressive evidence for the so-called "big bang" origin of the observable universe, the subsequent evolution of the universe through generations of stars, the creation of necessary heavy chemical elements starting with hydrogen and helium, and, eventually, the appearance and evolution of life on earth, all natural processes which presumably will still be playing out for many more billions of years, long after all traces of us humans have disappeared. Based on the incredible number of galaxies which we now know populate the universe, and the likelihood that some form of life will arise whenever the right conditions occur, it seems quite likely to me that other intelligent life forms must exist today (or have existed) elsewhere in the universe.  However, because of the incredible distances and times involved, I seriously doubt that we will ever be able to contact one another.  In this connection, it would certainly be most interesting if even primitive life forms are ever found on Mars or other locations in our solar system. And examples of many planets in other galaxies continue to be found, supporting the idea that there are many, many potential sites for life elsewhere. Hopefully this will gradually be clarified over coming decades.

I've come to regard the stories of humanity's origins as told in the Bible as legends invented by primitive people who needed plausible explanations of a seemingly hostile, or at best neutral, world. Instead of viewing humans as God's special creation, with the earth the center of all that's important, and an eternal afterlife in Heaven as our eventual reward for an exemplary life, as I was taught in my youth, I now believe that humans have seemingly evolved as the dominant species on earth (so far, at least) through a series of happy accidents, plus our ability and/or good fortune of having adapted successfully to vastly changing circumstances over the eons since we became distinguishable from our chimp-like ancestors.  I believe that what we make of the earth in the future is entirely up to us, within the constraints of available resources and natural processes.  In a manner of speaking, I feel we have a choice of making the earth either a heaven or a hell, but without divine guidance – quite a responsibility! I've seen a Buddist proverb which seems to capture this thought well: "To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell."

From what I've read and learned since joining the Unitarian Universalist church, my beliefs are pretty much to what I know of ethical humanism.  I believe that we must all make moral choices as we go through life, based on a reverence for life and the universe, a fundamental faith in humanity, a recognition that all people are basically alike, and – most importantly – a belief that we each have an obligation to help one another along the way.  I also feel that we must strive to leave the world in the best possible condition for our children and succeeding generations, ideally better than we found it.  I feel strongly that the viability of the human race over the next millenium depends on our achieving a sustainable, "steady state" level of population, resource use, and life style within about the next hundred years, since we live in a finite world with finite resources and I fear that we are headed now toward total collapse and chaos within the next century.  (There is much more on this topic toward the end of this section, or homepage.)  These beliefs put a huge responsibility on each of us to decide how best to live our lives, without assurance that our “ultimate rewards” will ever be much more than the feeling of having been valued and loved by family and friends over our lives, of having lived (and died) with a clear conscience, and being remembered as good people who tried to make a difference during their lives.

I might mention that my mother and her parents were devout Christians as long as they lived. They found comfort in prayer and in reading the Bible, and I'm convinced that they tried to live their lives as much like ideal Christians as they could. I'm glad for that, but conventional religion simply won't work for me. Hopefully, though, I've turned out to be an ethical person because of their good examples.

I recently came across an eloquent statement by retired New York Governor Mario Cuomo which can serve as an excellent summary of some of my own beliefs. In this, he was reflecting on the aftereffects of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and on what he'd like to see in a faith-based memorial at Ground Zero.

"I would like to see some depiction of all the religions, list them all: atheism, ethical humanism, Catholicism, etc., etc. All of them. And you notice that each of those religions, these value systems, have two principles they share in common. And the two principles started with monotheism and the Jews: Tzedakah and Tikkun Olam. Tzedakah means generally: We must treat one another as brother and sister. We should show one another respect and dignity, because we are like things. We are human beings in a world that has nothing else like us. And we ought to treat one another with love, charity - use your own words. And the second principle is: Well, what do you do with this relationship? Well, we don't know exactly how we got here, why we got here, etc., etc. That's for minds larger than ours. But we know that we are like kinds, and we should work together to make this as good an experience as possible. Tikkun Olam -- let us repair the universe. Now Islam believes that. Buddism that has no god believes it. Every ethical humanist I ever met believes it. Those two principles make the experience better. That's all the religion you need, really, to make a success of this planet. And I'd like to see that in 9/11 somewhere. I'd like to see that captured somehow."

Treating one another as brother and sister. ... Let us repair the universe.

Words to live by.

Current Interests and Status

My current interests include keeping up with family and friends; reading - mostly biography, history, world affairs, and science; enjoying music of all kinds, especially classical; participating in church activities; playing and watching golf; researching our family history; travelling around the country; and using computers as a hobby - not necessarily in that order. I have an optimistic belief that working with - sometimes, struggling with - computers will help keep my braincells functioning. Let's hope these occasional struggles are good for something! In 1996-7, I helped locate and tabulate addresses of classmates around the country for the 50th reunion of the Boise, Idaho, High School class of 1947, held in Boise. Over 150 classmates - more than half the surviving class - came, most with their spouses, and we had a memorable weekend. The reunion was the highlight of a 44 day, 10,000+ mile auto trip in which Carole and I visited numerous relatives and friends around the country. That was exhausting, but also very satisfying. Carole and I worked with other alumni from the University of Rochester on the University's Sesquicentennial celebration and the "Early Fifties Fiftieth Reunion" held here in October, 2000, and were involved the next year in our class's "true Fiftieth Reunion" in October, 2001. It was wonderful to be reunited with old friends. After retiring, I also did some part-time tutoring of first graders at an inner city school, which presented many challenges. And starting in May, 1999, when our family arrived in Rochester, I worked for the next couple of years with a family of Kosovar refugees as part of a resettlement team from our church. These activities cut into my free time, but also provided considerable personal satisfaction. More recently, I've moved on to other activities which I can support and enjoy at this stage of my life.

My life has now covered more than three quarters of a century. Based on family history I feel I may have a realistic shot at twenty more, hopefully in reasonable health. But even as a born optimist I have to agree that I'm on the "down side" of my life cycle now.  I recognize a gradual decline in my energy level along with a “normal” quota of aches and pains.

[Note: For the reader's convenience, I've boldfaced key phrases and sentences in the following section. It is hoped this may help find topics of special interest.]

A Look Back to the World of 1929

I've made a list of some events and features of 1929, which was in many ways quite a different world than today:

-Herbert Hoover, a promising and capable Republican who had made his fortune in the mining industry, had been president for only three months when I was born. When I was conceived nine months earlier, Calvin Coolidge still occupied the White House while Hoover, his widely respected Secretary of Commerce, campaigned for the presidency against a Roman Catholic, Governor Al Smith of New York under the “prosperity” campaign slogan, "a chicken in every pot."

Hoover won by a landslide in November, 1928, thus supposedly "proving for all time" that a Catholic could never be elected President of the United States - which actually only held true until 1960 when John Kennedy upset Richard Nixon. Things seemed rosy for Hoover and the country right after his overwhelming election. But as things developed, Hoover was actually elected at the worst possible time, just before business here and abroad collapsed into a deep and prolonged depression which defied the best efforts of local, state and national governments to resolve it. Eventually, he became a scapegoat for our economic problems - most of which had actually originated many years before he became president - and was soundly defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.

-Business was generally good in the summer of 1929, though there were a few soft spots in the economy such as lagging auto sales, and farm prices had been depressed for several years. But the stock market continued to rise, and reached its pre-World War II peak that August. However, June, 1929, when I was born, was the exact month when the famous financier and long time adviser to presidents, Bernard Baruch - supposedly after receiving a stock tip from his shoeshine man - recognized that the stock market had become grossly overvalued and speculative, and began quietly converting his holdings to cash. The great U.S. stock market crash which began that October sparked a severe worldwide business downturn which persisted more than a decade, actually well into World War II in the U.S., and became known as The Great Depression.

To make things worse, the mid to late 1930s were also a time of severe drought in our plains states, leading to widespread crop failures, unprecedented dust storms, and countless farm bankruptcies. Thousands upon thousands of families from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and neighboring states abandoned their farms and drove west, desperately seeking any kind of work to feed themselves and their children. It is estimated that 2.5 million Americans fled the plains states during the 1930s, one of the largest migrations in our history. Their tragic saga was captured particularly well in John Steinbeck’s novel about a typical “Okie” family, the Jodes, entitled  “The Grapes of Wrath,” made into an Oscar winning movie in 1940.

Among international consequences of The Great Depression, the consensus among historians is that the Nazi rise to power in 1933 might not have happened without the widespread economic misery and unemployment in Germany in the early 1930s. In turn, Hitler's coming to power led step by step, and seemingly inevitably, to the invasion of Poland just six years later, starting World War II, in many ways a resumption of World War I, but destined to become even more violent and widespread than its predecessor. The 1930s and early '40s were a testing time for democracies everywhere, as many countries resorted to authoritarian solutions to their seemingly insoluble economic and social problems. Even in this country, there was widespread doubt that government could solve our many problems, especially whether the American economy would ever again achieve full employment. The underlying questions of whether democracy was still a viable method of government, and whether "the free market" - albeit with some government regulation - was the best way to run an economy, were only decided by World War II and the ensuing fifty year Cold War between the West and the USSR. Resolving these issues, which actually had their roots in World War I and earlier times, occupied most of the twentieth century and transformed the world.

-People now call the 20th century "The American Century," but that was not at all obvious in the 1930s and early 40s, when dictators seemed to be the wave of the future, and many loyal citizens began to lose faith in the American government and the democratic way of life. And for the first two and a half years of World War II, the leading western democracies including France, Great Britain, and the United States seemed powerless to stop the irresistible German-Japanese military juggernaut, which easily rolled from victory to victory. And in the Soviet Union, which was invaded by Hitler in June, 1941, the German army at first was overwhelming, and had occupied many of the most fertile and productive parts of the Soviet Union by the autumn of 1942. It was not until mid to late 1942, with the USSR's heroic stand at Stalingrad, the British victory at El Alamein in Egypt, and the American victories at Midway and Guadalcanal that the military tide gradually began to turn against Germany and Japan, though it took nearly three more years of all-out war to achieve final victory. The eventual rise of the United States from the ashes of The Great Depression and the military debacles of Pearl Harbor and Bataan to the unrivaled world superpower of today - and the opportunities presented for Americans born at the right time to capitalize on our remarkable post-war growth - provides the background and context of my personal story. So although it was “well hidden” at the time, I've now come to recognize that I was actually born at an ideal time for my education and career, perhaps the ultimate form of good luck.

-In 1929 the United States population was about 123 million and the world had 2 billion people. By 1991, the US had grown to 263 million people, a more than two-fold increase; and the world recently passed the 6 billion mark, a three-fold increase. No wonder we must worry now about feeding, housing and clothing everyone, as well as about widespread deforestation, over-exploited world fisheries, loss of habitat for wild animals, pollution of the land, atmosphere, and oceans, global warming, etc. I fear that the world's population may already have grown beyond what is sustainable long term, which if true bodes ill for the future, especially since at least an additional doubling of world population now seems inescapable. See below for much more on this point.

-Some well known people born in 1929 (several of whom are actually still alive and functioning well!) include Roger Bannister, Dick Clark, Anne Frank, Audrey Hepburn, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Arnold Palmer, Christopher Plummer, and Beverly Sills.

-Professional sports began to come into their own in the 1920s. In baseball, Babe Ruth was a star outfielder for the New York Yankees - probably the most famous athlete of his time, arguably of the century - and would hit his 500th career home run in August, 1929. (Ruth broke into major league baseball as an outstanding pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, who to their everlasting regret traded him to New York in 1918. There he was converted to a full time outfielder and soon became the first great home run hitter in baseball history, dramatically increasing fan interest and permanently changing the nature of the game.) The perennial American tennis champion Bill Tilden won his seventh U.S. Open title in 1929. The world's heavyweight boxing championship, which Gene Tunney had won from Jack Dempsey in 1926, was temporarily vacant in 1929 after Tunney's voluntary retirement in 1928, but was captured the next year by the German champion Max Schmeling. As yet, professional football, golf, and basketball were virtually nonexistent in this country as far as the general public was concerned.

-It goes almost without saying that what we now call "people of color" were excluded then from participating in most sports, amateur and professional. The sole exception I am aware of is the black heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, who reigned from 1908 till 1915 before being defeated by the "great white hope," Jess Willard, in a title fight held in Havana, Cuba. (Johnson, undoubtedly one of the great athletes of his time, was the victim of terrible racial discrimination throughout his career, and escaped from the United States in 1913 after having been convicted on a trumped up charge of violating the Mann Act, primarily because the public was scandalized by his having married a white woman.) Willard later lost the title to Dempsey. Although "the American Negro" Joe Louis became the undisputed world heavyweight boxing champion in 1937 and kept his title throughout the war years, the great breakthrough in American sports integration came ten years later - after World War II - when the marvelously gifted black athlete Jackie Robinson was brought into big league baseball by the Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey. Dozens of outstanding black players, previously restricted to the Negro League, soon followed Robinson to the Dodgers and other major league clubs, men like Roy Campanella, Larry Doby, and Willie Mays, who quickly became recognized as star players. Before long there were also many black stars in football and other sports. It's hard now for most people to imagine a time when black players were not predominant in professional baseball, football, basketball, track and field and most other popular sports, though still rarely in golf. (It's an interesting footnote that my mother's older brother, Roy Kinsey, played football at Ohio Wesleyan College under coach Branch Rickey for a year or two, ca. 1909-11. Naturally, Uncle Roy followed Rickey's outstanding career in sports management with great interest throughout his life.)

-The cheap and reliable (but usually black and always ugly) Model T Ford was still the most widely driven passenger car in 1929, although the last Model T had actually been produced two years earlier. The best selling new car in 1929 was Ford's Model A, which had been introduced the year before to stave off the increasingly popular Chevrolet.

-Cellophane, destined to grow into a major product line as protective food wrapping, and the basis of the DuPont operating department which hired me in 1955, was still known primarily as a fancy wrapping for expensive boxes of candy and perfume.

-Although an estimated 350 million cloth handkerchiefs were sold in this country in 1929, that year was also the beginning of the end for that accessory, since 1929 was the year Kimberly-Clark introduced Kleenex tissues in the POP-UP BOX, as well as in various colors. Kleenex was introduced in 1924 as a convenient, disposable subtitute for the face towels used then by women and stage and screen actors to remove cold cream, but had only enjoyed modest sales, which was presumably why the pop-up box and colors were developed to increase the market. The manufacturers were astonished, however, when Kleenex sales unexpectedly soared in 1930 and kept right on climbing throughout the Depression years. Customer surveys soon revealed that most of the new customers were using them as a disposable substitute for pocket handkerchiefs, a major end use which had not been anticipated. Today, Americans buy 190 billion Kleenex every year, nearly all of which are used as disposable handkerchiefs, while cloth handkerchiefs are a speciality item used mostly by men as decorative accessories in their jacket breast pockets, or sometimes in their trouser pockets for functional use. Although almost no American women carry cloth handkerchiefs today, at one time women considered frilly handkerchiefs a fashion statement as well as a necessity. (In the 19th Century, young women even used them as a subtle means of communicating with their suitors. Putting a little hankie to the right cheek meant "yes," while holding it to the left cheek meant "no." Drawing a hankie across the forehead meant that someone was watching. And if the woman was so bold as to drop her hankie, it was a signal to "follow me.") My family was rather slow to follow the trend toward Kleenex, however, since I can remember that the last thing my mother used to ask me whenever I left for school in the 1940s was "Do you have a hankie?" And as long as I can remember Mom carried her own handkerchief tucked in her bosom or up one sleeve of her dress.

-Although network radio was only a few years old when I was born, Amos and Andy, Rudy Vallee, and Will Rogers starred in popular national radio shows heard regularly across the nation. (The first U.S. commercial radio stations went on the air in 1921, and by 1929, only forty percent of American homes had even one radio. But the people who did get radios quickly found them playing an increasingly important role in their lives.) Amos and Andy, a couple of rather lazy but happy, stereotypical black men from Harlem, New York, in what we'd call a "sitcom" format today, were played by two white men affecting a comical "Negro" accent, something which would be hooted off the airwaves now, but which was enormously popular - at least among white people - throughout the 1930s. Today's critics might say its popularity was based on white people's shallow stereotype of "Negroes" as child-like, happy-go-lucky souls. Rudy Vallee was a popular jazz singer of the 1920s and 30s, and Will Rogers - who was proud of his part-Cherokee Indian ancestry - was a cowboy humorist-philosopher-columnist with broad and lasting appeal. His son, Will Rogers, Jr., later served as a Congressman from Oklahoma.

-When I was growing up, relatively few professions were open to women. Teaching and nursing, both requiring significant training beyond high school, were about the only true professional opportunities (though salaries in both were low vs. those in comparable male-dominated professions). The great majority of young women then expected to marry soon after high school, retire from the working world and spend the rest of their lives as full time mothers and homemakers. For this reason, home economics (cooking) and sewing courses were very popular in high schools. Yet because of the harsh economic climate, most girls actually needed to start working soon after graduation to help their families, and to try to fill up their "hope chest" with towels, blankets, and other dry goods for marriage. So a common preoccupation of young women in school was how to earn some money after graduation before they "got married and settled down," and secretarial work presented one such opportunity. (It also gave young women a chance to meet eligible single men.) Since most young women did quit work soon after marrying - see also below - there were continual openings for young new secretaries and stenographer/clerks in business and professional offices. "Commercial" courses in typing, shorthand and related subjects such as filing and bookkeeping were therefore very popular for girls in high school and post-graduation business colleges. To see a picture of a typical high school typing class (from my high school year book of 1946-47), click here. Note that these girls all seem to be typing from shorthand notebooks, presumably transcribing dictation.

As an aside, when I took a year of typing in my senior year, as preparation for college, tbe great majority of my classmates were girls, presumably because they regarded typing as an important work skill later on. But I believe that taking that high school typing course was one of the smartest things I ever did. In the beginning it helped me write themes, etc., in high school and college, not to mention legible letters home. But a most important and unexpected benefit many years later was that since I could type reasonably well I was able to become comfortable with computers much more quickly than most of my peers in management. Some Du Pont managers never learned even to read or send their own e-mail messages, For example, one 1980s Rochester plant manager routinely had his secretary print out his e-mail messages every morning before he glanced at them, then dictated or wrote replies by hand for her to enter into terminal -- which did not contribute very much toward the goal of efficient in-house communication! A Wilmington research manager whom I knew quite well but will mercifully not name, actually spent many hours at work in the 1980s learning touch typing so he could compose and send his own e-mail. While praiseworthy on one level, this little story is also a sad commentary on how "underemployed" many middle level Wilmington managers were for many years. At the plant sites, our problem was NEVER how to fill our days, rather it was how to find enough time to cover the most pressing things we had to accomplish at the office on a typical day. As a result, much of my own best work as a lab director was done off-hours at home, using a terminal or home computer connected to work by a modem.

Women who remained unmarried for whatever reasons past the age of 25 or 30 were looked down on by society, and commonly referred to as "old maids." The inference was that since they hadn't found a husband by then they must be somehow deficient. However, since most unmarried women desperately needed a job in order to make ends meet, they had little choice but to go on working - while hoping for a "prince charming" to appear someday. Many older single working women lived at home and took care of their aging parents on the side. Others moved in with married siblings and helped there with the housework and child care.

Because birth control was not universally available, and illegal and not always reliable when it was, "how far to go" in dating was a constant preoccupation of unmarried young people. In the first place, most young people then had at best a minimal knowledge of sexual matters, since adults generally considered these subjects embarrassing and unsuitable to discuss with children. Kissing and hugging (then called "petting") was about as far as many couples got before marriage -- at least until they were engaged. And if a single woman was unlucky enough to become pregnant and unable to convince the father to marry her, her pregnancy was often hushed up, since out of wedlock births were considered a great disgrace to the woman and her family -- though not always to the father, who was frequently not identified. On the other hand, some so-called "shotgun" marriages were forced by angry parents when they learned their daughters were pregnant and found out who was responsible. Occasionally, angry parents actually threw pregnant daughters out of their homes. (That actually happened to the mother of a college friend of mine, who ended up having her baby in a county hospital and immediately putting him up for adoption. As a result, my friend never knew his biological mother.) Many desperate girls resorted to illegal abortions, often without the knowledge or consent of their parents. Also, many married women with large families and already living in poverty, were desperate to avoid having more children, yet were unable to avoid becoming pregnant. So although abortion was illegal everywhere in the United States, large numbers of American women resorted to dangerous abortions by medically untrained people, and as a result tens of thousands of women, both married and single, died every year, usually by bleeding to death. Others suffered permanent damage to their bodies. An option for some unmarried women were homes for unwed mothers, operated by churches or the Salvation Army in many cities, where "girls who needed a friend" could stay during the obvious last months of pregnancy. Most such "love children" were offered up for adoption, though some were raised by their mothers and grandparents, sometimes under the fiction that they were younger children of the grandparents or had even been adopted from strangers. (The latter happened to one of my classmates in elementary school, who didn't discover the truth till many years later, when her elderly mother confessed what had happened.) Many unwanted - or unclaimed - children spent their entire childhoods in state operated orphanage asylums, which stigmatized them for life.

There was also a question of "respectability" to be considered in choosing a woman's career, even for the hopefully brief period before marriage. In addition to "prestige professional jobs" in teaching and nursing, there were also secretarial, waitress, clerking, piano teaching, dressmaking, librarian, telephone operator, and beautician jobs which were generally considered "respectable," while light production line manufacturing jobs, though less desirable, were tolerable as temporary employment for poor girls whose income was badly needed by their parents, though only until the young ladies could find suitable husbands. Of course, these attitudes began to change when women were encouraged to go into defense work during World War II. Some kept right on working after the war, and others returned to work as soon as their postwar children were all in school. But working wives were a definite minority throughout the 1950s, when there was a general return to the pre- war ideal of wives who devoted their lives to their husbands and families, leaving breadwinning entirely to their husbands. But by the mid-1960s, many low to middle income wives found they had to work just to help their husbands pay the monthly family bills for a variety of reasons (including their desire for a higher standard of living, and the growth of inflation during the Viet Nam war), and this trend has continued to the present. In addition, most of today's women feel entitled to compete with men in nearly every profession and field of employment, a drastic change from their mothers' and grandmothers' situation 70+ years ago!

For those women who were fortunate enough to be able to attend college and become certified as teachers in 1929, there were nevertheless other career-related problems to face. In most communities, only unmarried women - or widows - would even be considered as schoolteacher applicants, and contracts were voided if teachers got married. (It was assumed that their husbands should be able to take care of them after marriage, and their proper role thenceforth was to stay home and raise a family. If a wife nevertheless continued working, it reflected badly on the husband's ability to provide for her. Also, there was a general belief then that by staying in the work force, working mothers made it harder for men, who everyone expected to work, to find jobs.) So women teachers faced a genuine dilemma if they met someone they wanted to marry. They knew if they married they would probably be forced to give up the profession many of them were very good at and found intensely satisfying, or at most they would be limited to occasional substitute teaching. As a result, most woman teachers who taught me throughout elementary and high school never married. This was also true for telephone operators, because of their concern for job security and the scarcity of jobs. I believe nurses must also have faced this dilemma, though that's hard to believe in this era of chronic nursing shortages.

As mentioned above, most young women then worked for only a few years before retiring to raise a family. As a result there was a constant turnover in most "women's occupations," with young ladies clamoring for jobs at starting wages or salaries. This arrangement (mostly short term employment, and a chronic shortage of suitable job openings) served to keep women's pay low, something most "bosses" automatically approved of -- if they ever thought about it at all. Sadly, the question of pay equity for women is an issue which has not yet disappeared, though I think we've at least made a start on it in recent years, though perhaps more by opening up alternate career pathways for women than by raising pay in traditional women's jobs.

-Business letters were prepared then by secretaries - nearly always women - who first took down the letter in shorthand as the writer spoke the words, then prepared a typewritten version on a mechanical typewriter, which actually was quite similar to the first commercial typewriters, as used by Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) to write Tom Sawyer in the mid-1870s. When it was developed, the typewriter was considered a major improvement over handwriting for letters or manuscripts because of its greater speed and superior legibility, and the advent of typewriters was largely responsible for the growth of office jobs for young women in the late 19th Century. (Previously, secretaries were mostly young men who were presumably paid extra for their legible handwriting.) "Touch typing" - based on memorizing the keyboard - required considerable training, though skilled typists could produce error- free copy at upwards of 120 words per minute -- especially if only one original was required. (Learning to type accurately and rapidly took considerable practice for even a skilled pianist like my mother. As a part of her training for office work after her divorce, she bought a used typewriter and practiced typing at home, using phonograph music to achieve an even typing rhythm.) But if one or more file copies were also needed, as was often the case, the unlucky secretary was forced to use carbon paper under the original to make the required copies. One sheet of carbon paper was placed face down under the original and above each blank sheet. It was essential for the resulting stack of papers to remain in perfect register during the typing, though several legible copies could be made if everything went just right. But the biggest problem was correcting errors. "Typos" due to mis-struck keys, which everyone made at least occasionally, could often be neatly corrected on the original by carefully erasing the offending character and retyping it, but any carbon copies also had to be erased one by one and they usually ended up looking smudged despite precautions. Often, letters had to be retyped several times before an error-free original and the required number of good copies were produced. Carbon paper was messy to work with as well, often leaving the secretary with unsightly smudges on her hands and sometimes her clothes.

-This state of affairs continued into the mid-20th century, and the need for a better way to make copies was quite obvious. When I joined Du Pont in 1955, Eastman Kodak had just introduced a "semi-dry" photographic copying process called Verifax which enabled one or two copies to be made from an original, but print quality was only fair (and aged poorly) and the process involved peeling wet, smelly sheets apart. However, the first commercial Xerox copier, called the 914 because it could make copies up to 9 x 14 inches, was soon introduced, in 1959. It was an instant hit with secretaries and bosses across the country (and before long around the world). This machine used "Xerography" (a coined word for dry imaging) in which a dry toner was deposited imagewise on a charged sheet of plain paper which had been rolled over a charged semiconductor upon which the image was recorded by light, then heat fused to form a permanent image. The 914 could produce seven dry, sharp copies per minute. Best of all, Xerox copies could hardly be distinguished from originals. This revolutionized office work and greatly improved secretarial productivity, though since it was so easy run off multiple copies of almost everything, a blizzard of paper was unleashed which is still expanding. I recently read that the fires which raged inside the Twin Tower buildings in New York City after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, which ultimately weakened their steel frameworks to the point of collapse, were largely fueled by the tons and tons of paper stored in all those offices. Without all that paper, the jet fuel-started flames would probably have burned out and the buildings would be standing today.

-Eventually, purely mechanical typewriters were replaced by electromechanical models (e.g., the IBM "Selectric") which gave improved image quality. The final part of the "twentieth century revolution" in office work took place in the 1980s with the advent of personal computers and high quality printers which within a few years bypassed even the need for secretarial involvement in preparing many routine letters and reports, since most professionals and eventually a sprinkling of managers soon learned to use computers to do their own word processing. (A few especially fortunate managers like myself had taken typing in high school, greatly facilitating the conversion to computers. The computer greatly reduced my own dependence on my secretary, and also made it relatively easy to identify and correct my inevitable typing errors.) Ultimately, fewer secretaries were needed, and those who remained often became "administrative assistants" with broadened job responsibilties. (The attendant unhappiness among many long-time secretaries who liked their jobs just the way they'd always been is another story, for another time!)

-As an aside, when Carole's late sister Suzanne came to spend her final months with us in 2001, she still used an electric typewriter to prepare her many letters to insurance companies, health providers, and others, and insisted on making a carbon file copy of each. But her few sheets of carbon paper were nearing the end of their usefulness. When I confidently went out to buy more, I soon found that carbon paper had totally disappeared from local stationery supply houses. I ultimately located an Internet supplier who still sold carbon paper, but only by the ream (500 sheets!). Eventually, I managed to convince Sue to let me do her letters on my trusty Macintosh, and it was a simple matter then to run off as many copies as she wanted.

-In 1929 it was technically illegal for physicians anywhere in America to prescribe birth control measures or even to send birth control information through the mails under the federal Comstock Law of 1873, which remained in effect until overturned in the courts in the decade following 1965. (Despite this, reasonably effective - though inconvenient - birth control methods were widely available well before World War II, and I recall that my wife Carole got a doctor's prescription for a diaphragm before we were married in New Jersey in 1951, though it must still have been technically illegal to do so.)

-It was also illegal to manufacture, sell, or consume alcoholic beverages in the United States in 1929 under the 18th amendment, which had been adopted in 1919. However, throughout Prohibition liquor remained widely available at "speakeasy" nightclubs and from bootleggers. (My own father and his friends often made beer at a friend's cabin on the Snake River some miles from town, and my Uncle Chris Hendricks once had to hurriedly remove a still from my grandparents' cellar when he learned that the "Prohibs" had been tipped off and were about to seize it.) Criminals took over the profitable liquor trade in many cities, leading to much violence. For example, gangsters working for Al Capone killed seven rivals in Chicago on February 14, 1929 in the so-called "St. Valentine's Day Massacre." The 18th amendment was repealed in 1933 after people concluded it was unenforceable.

-A decade earlier, from 1917 to 1923, a terrible wave of violence against blacks swept the south and several northern cities due to widespread fears about war-related black prosperity and empowerment and the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan, resulting in several hundred deaths and widespread burning and looting of black-owned property. (One of the worst such events took place in the boom town of Tulsa, Oklahoma, where several hundred blacks were killed and the entire black district was burned to the ground by a white mob on June 1, 1921, in reprisal for the alleged assault of a white elevator operator by a black shoeshine boy who was arrested. The root causes apparently included envy of newly-found black business success.) In 1929, sporadic lynching of blacks (then called "Negros," or all too often "niggers" in derision) still continued in southern states, all of whom had fully segregated schools and public accommodations. Virtually no blacks could vote in the south until well after World War II, due to the poll tax, literacy tests, and intimidation by election officials. (According to statistics compiled by Tuskegee Institute, lynching of one or more blacks took place in this country every year from at least 1882 until 1951, three blacks were lynched in 1955, and one each in 1959, 1960, 1963 and 1964. As far as I know, there have been no additional lynchings of blacks since 1964 in this country, though some unfortunate blacks have "disappeared" under mysterious circumstances or were killed outright, like Emmett Till and Martin Luther King. Interestingly, according to the same source, there were also lynchings of one or more white persons almost every year until 1935, with occasional lynchings reported as late as 1964. It's "interesting" that this subject was never even hinted at in any American History course I ever took!)

-Nationally, the life expectancy of newborn white babies was 61.4 years in 1929 while that of "blacks and others" was only 48.1 years, almost exactly the same as it had been for the entire U.S. population in 1900. (By 1996, these figures had increased to 76.8 and 72.6, respectively, mostly due mostly to better medical care for pregnant women, infants and young children.)

-Doctors routinely made house calls on request in 1929, but had no antibiotics for infections, though penicillin had been discovered in the laboratory a year earlier. Bed rest with tender loving care was often the only treatment for disease and infection. People often died then from ruptured appendixes and generalized infections (so-called "blood poisoning") initiated by breaks in the skin, sometimes from mere scratches which became infected. (A poignant example of this was teenager Calvin Coolidge, Jr., who died in 1924 after developing an infected blister on his toe while playing tennis - supposedly without socks - with his brother on the White House grounds. His parents were devastated, and his father later wrote that "...the power and the glory of the presidency went with him.") The only painkiller most people had in their homes in 1929 was aspirin, common baking soda the only antacid, and explosive ether was still the primary hospital anesthetic for operations. Cancer was a dreaded killer, and surgery its only treatment. Although doctors charged $1 to $3 - or less - for visits, often at home, and hospitals were proportionally inexpensive, there were no health insurance plans and, because of the cost, most people we knew avoided medical or dental care except in true emergencies. Also, most people went to the dentist then only for extractions or for false teeth because they couldn't afford routine dental care. And since the fillings most dentists installed then in even well to do mouths were only temporary fixes because of inadequate removal of decayed tooth material before filling, repeated toothaches, gold capped teeth and false teeth were the norm for most adults.

-Government sponsored Social Security didn't exist in the United States until 1935, and few private companies offered significant retirement benefits. Most people purchased life insurance only in small amounts as needed to cover burial expenses. Older citizens who could no longer work either had to live on their savings (and perhaps raise a vegetable garden and keep a cow and a few chickens, as my Hendricks grandparents did for many years) or move in with relatives for support. As a last resort, some old people retired to live on "poor farms" provided by many rural counties to keep them from actually starving.

-Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans and other immigrant groups (including German-Americans like my Hendricks grandparents!) were still striving to gain social recognition and starting to move into mainstream occupations, despite widespread prejudice against them. Jewish people seemingly always had special obstacles to overcome. Although many Jews had become successful in business by 1929, particularly in movie-making, finance, and retailing, they were nevertheless still excluded from most country clubs and social organizations, and were barred from owning homes in many neighborhoods until well after the Second World War. (See also the discussion of fraternities and undergraduate demographics at the University of Rochester in the post-war period, in my second Memories section.) But the former flood of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe had been reduced to a trickle by restrictive quotas adopted in the early 1920s, reflecting widespread concern among the native born about "losing our American identity" to the tide of immigrants. Until the late 1960s, virtually no immigration was allowed from Asian countries, including China and Japan. There was widespread prejudice when I grew up, especially in western states, against "the yellow peril," since it was thought that oriental laborers were willing to work for substandard wages, much less than Americans needed to marry and raise families.

-There was a well known saying in 1929 that "the sun never sets on the British Empire." The British Empire and Commonwealth encircled the globe, governing about a quarter of the world's population, and despite its severe losses during World War I many people still considered Great Britain the leading world power, as it had been for over a century.

-People took trains or ocean liners to travel any distance, needing almost a week to cross the United States by train, or the Atlantic Ocean by water. The record for an Atlantic crossing was held in 1929 by the British liner Mauretania, which had raced from Cherbourg to New York in 5 days, 1 hour and 49 minutes in August, 1924.

-A beautiful new skyscraper, the Chrysler Building, tallest in the world at the time, reached its ultimate height (77 stories, 1046 feet) in New York City in early 1929. But in a final, defiant expression of the "Roaring Twenties," ground was broken in early November, 1929 - only two weeks after the great stock market collapse of late October - for an even taller structure (102 stories, 1250 ft.) called the Empire State Building. (To make it seem even taller, this building was capped with a several story tower, said to be for mooring dirigibles - or Zeppelins - though it was never actually used this way and was eventually converted to radio/TV broadcasting.) Completed in 1931, this supreme symbol of "in your face" American optimism remained largely unoccupied until the eve of World War II. For the first few years, the owners are said to have paid their property taxes largely from fees charged visitors to its 86th floor observation level, and it was often referred to in New York City as the "Empty State Building."

-Just twenty five months before I was born, Charles Lindbergh had flown solo for the first time across the Atlantic, needing 33-1/2 hours (and good luck with the weather) to get to Paris from New York non-stop. Trans-oceanic airline passenger service by amphibian Pan American clippers didn't begin till the eve of World War II. In 1929, the Germans were still experimenting with intercontinental Zeppelin passenger service, which came to a halt with the explosion of the "Hindenburg" in 1937. (The airship Graf Zeppelin completed its first around the world flight in 1929.)

-It cost only two cents to mail a first class letter anywhere in the country in 1929 and mail was delivered to the door by foot twice daily to private homes and offices in cities and larger towns. But express packages and special delivery mail were all sent by train since there were no scheduled airlines in much of the country. Although there was limited air mail service in places (and the post office had issued premium priced airmail stamps as early as 1918), air service was quite unreliable because of interruptions by the weather, and letters sent by air mail often went much of the way by train.

-Telephones had been widely adopted by business for local calls early in the 20th Century, though the first American president to have a phone actually installed on his desk was Herbert Hoover in 1929. To transmit urgent out of town messages, people depended mostly on telegrams or special delivery letters instead of the long distance telephone, which was considered much too expensive as well as unreliable and hard to hear over.

-When I was a boy, ordinary people used the telephone routinely to call friends in town or on nearby farms, order groceries, etc., though in Mountain Home and other outlying areas with older phone systems it was still necessary to hand crank the phone before each call. This got you the operator (also called "Central"), who answered "Number please?" and then connected you to your party by hand after saying "Thank you." In Mountain Home, the same woman also took payments for phone service at the downtown office between calls. (As a boy, I often took my grandparents' monthly payments to the telephone office, presumably to avoid the extra expense of envelopes and postage.) As I recall, we didn't have dial phones (bypassing human operators for all local calls) until Mom and I moved to Boise during World War II, and I think Carole and I got our first digital pushbutton phones in Pennsylvania in the 1970s. To see a drawing of an oldfashioned wall phone like my Kinsey grandparents had in their home in Mountain Home in the early 1930s, click here. And to see two women telephone operators seated at a manual switchboard like the one presided over in Mountain Home by "Central" in those days, click here.

-Although an entire printing plant had been air conditioned - presumably for functional reasons, i.e., to prevent paper tears in hot, humid weather - by Willis Carrier as early as 1902, "artificial cooling" of buildings was still very much a novelty in the 1920s. As far as I know, the only air conditioned buildings open to the public in Idaho during the 1930s and early 1940s were some big city movie houses and department stores, and these probably seemed like expensive luxuries at the time, though the intent was undoubtedly to attract customers, and increase sales, during hot weather. My father's butcher shop used electrically powered air conditioning in the display case and meat storage room, but this was to preserve the meat, not to cool the butcher or his customers. The idea of air conditioning even single bedrooms in private homes, not to mention entire homes or automobiles, would no doubt have been inconceivable then to the general public. I'm reasonably sure that residents of Mountain Home had to travel to Boise, the state capital, to experience air conditioning until after World War II. (My own earliest recollection of air conditioning was in the downtown movie theatres after we moved to Boise in 1942, though I think that none of our relatives or friends had even bedroom or living room air conditioners until at least 1960. (My Aunt Marian and Uncle Clyde Makinson got a living room air conditioner after Clyde's first operation for brain cancer, at the doctor's suggestion, shortly before his death in 1961.) We got our first bedroom air conditioner the summer of 1964, when Carole was uncomfortably pregnant with Jill, who was born that October. I told people then that Carole disappeared into our bedroom then and didn't re-emerge until Jill was born!) The United States Senate and House of Representatives chambers were first air conditioned in 1928, justified at the time as a necessity since it allowed Congress to hold summer sessions in the overpowering heat and humidity of Washington, D.C. Before then, Congress always took the summers off, and the presidents usually left town for cooler spots in July and August. Some astute political observers date the beginning of "big government" to this introduction of air conditioning to Washington!

-In the 1920s, families of the well to do around the country escaped to the mountains or the seashore to avoid the heat in summer months, while ordinary people drank lemonade, ate ice cream or went swimming to cool off, and used sprinklers, open windows, and electric fans to try to beat the heat in the daytime. Unless their jobs required outdoor work, most people tended to stay indoors or sit under shade trees or on outdoor porches during the warmest parts of the day. Canvas awnings were used then to shade porches and windows during the day, in homes as well as businesses. (Interestingly, my Hendricks grandparents and several German relatives in Mountain Home built what they called "summer kitchens" in separate little buildings back of their houses where the mothers cooked in hot weather. This was to keep the main house as cool as possible. I'd always assumed this was a German invention, but have recently read that summer kitchens were actually fairly common in this country in the 19th Century, especially on farms, the idea having apparently come here from several European countries.) In the years before home air conditioning, American people tended to go for walks or sit on porches in the evenings, leaving windows open to cool their homes as much as possible before retiring. Some people did use electric fans to make indoor rooms more comfortable. Residents of inner city apartments often resorted to sleeping on fire escapes on the hottest nights, and many homes had screened in sleeping porches.

-In homes, artificial air cooling (i.e., powered by electricity) was essentially limited to kitchen refrigerators (and later, food freezers) until well after World War II. Before then many city people had insulated wooden ice boxes in their kitchens which were kept supplied with ice by delivery men who came every day or two with a big block of ice. (Commercial ice making plants using large electric freezing systems had become common by the early 20th Century, and these lowered the price of delivered ice so many people could afford it. Before then, well to do people depended on ice which was harvested in the winter from frozen northern ponds and stored under sawdust until needed in summer.) The gradual introduction, first of room air conditioners, then of whole house air conditioning and air conditioned autos in the decades after World War II changed American life profoundly. Among other things, air conditioning enabled the explosive growth of the southern and southwestern states in the so-called "Sun Belt," with enormous economic and political implications for the country at large.

As noted above, Carole and I got our own first room air conditioner - for our bedroom - in the hot summer of 1964, when Carole was pregnant with our youngest child, Jill, but we had room air conditioners only in portions of our home until we moved to New Jersey in 1972 and bought a fully air conditioned house. By then, nearly every hospital, business and restaurant was air conditioned, as well as most autos. But it was not till several years later, in about 1980, that we bought our first air conditioned car. Now, like most people we know, we'd feel deprived not to have air conditioning both at home and in our cars, though interestingly enough our church in Rochester, built in the early 1960s, is still air conditioned only in offices and one large meeting room, but not in the main sanctuary. (Of course, many Unitarian Universalists take the summers off anyhow!)

-Snapshots and movies came only in black and white in 1929, though studio portraits could be hand tinted at extra cost. Research was underway to develop color films, but black and white was the standard everyone expected, and most snapshots were quite small like the cameras themselves, being printed as contacts from the negatives. I believe the first color movie I myself saw was Walt Disney's "Snow White" in about 1938, and the first color photos (as projected slides) in about 1942. Most movies were shot in black and white until the 1960s, though color has become almost universal since then, partly because of the pervasive influence of color television.

-Sound movies were becoming increasingly popular in the country at large, having been introduced in 1927, but had probably not yet reached Mountain Home by 1929. (By the end of that year, less than half of the 20,000+ movie theatres in the country were equipped for sound. But within another year or two, nearly all movies were being made with sound.) It's interesting to note that sound movies quickly eliminated my mother's pre-marriage occupation, that of playing piano for the silent pictures. And of course many popular movie actors and actresses whose voices proved unsuitable for sound films were left without acting jobs after about 1930.

-Both my Kinsey and Hendricks grandparents had had radios in their homes for only a year or so in 1929. An engineer friend recently told me that 1927 was when the first home radios were introduced which could operate on regular household AC current instead of batteries, making them much more convenient. My mother bought a dome-shaped Philco "cathedral" style radio for the Kinseys in the summer of 1928 (at the considerable price of $100), when they were out of town visiting the Roy Kinseys in Albany, Oregon.  It was still so new to them that fall that they forgot that they could get early returns on the radio the night of the presidential election! But like most other people in 1929, I suspect that my parents and grandparents still regarded The Idaho Daily Statesman from Boise as their primary daily window on the outside world, and the weekly Mountain Home Republican as the best way to keep up with local events. Seeing stories in print gave them more credibility then than just hearing reports over the air.

-A company was founded in Chicago in 1929 to produce radios for use in cars, a novel idea at the time. This company - whose idea quickly caught on - was called "Motorola," a combination of "motor" with the last part of "Victrola," the trade name of RCA's popular phonographs. Motorola no longer makes radios, instead has become one a leading supplier of portable and cellular telephones.

-Edwin P. Hubble, a young astronomer at Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, announced in 1929 that he had good evidence that galaxies all over the universe are rapidly receding from one another, the possibility of which had been predicted a dozen years earlier by Einstein's general theory of relativity. Although considered quite controversial at the time, these and many subsequent observations, together with theoretical considerations, eventually led to the realization that the cosmos is actually an evolving, expanding system, and that our universe apparently originated about twelve to thirteen billion years ago in an incredible event now usually referred to as "the big bang." It was many years before average people heard of such matters. When I was born, Americans overwhelmingly believed explicitly in the Biblical story of creation in six days, as a remarkably large number of American fundamentalists and "Creationists" still do.

Some Thoughts About the Present and Future

A lot of water has gone over the dam since 1929, and the world has changed in many ways. It's no wonder my body is showing signs of wear and tear, although I still feel more or less middle aged "inside my head." But as a local newspaper columnist, Dick Dougherty, wrote some time back, it's when you STOP aging that you have a serious problem! Actually, I'm not complaining, since Carole and I still enjoy reasonably good health and enjoy life.

The Economy, and Stock Market "Corrections" Then and Now

Though many "externals" have changed since I was born, I think most of the fundamentals of life have not. Now as then, most people would like to believe that the stock market should only go "up" (and preferably, at least 15-20 percent a year!). Actually, stock prices can just as easily go down - and stay down - with a deadening effect on the world economy for many years, as happened in the 1930s and after the "oil shock" of 1973. (Stock market averages dropped about 90 percent between 1929 and 1932, and 50 percent in 1973-4. And the Dow-Jones average didn't get back to its 1929 peak again until 1954!) No one knows exactly what the future holds, but stock prices generally reached remarkably high levels relative to earnings in early 2000, and a correction was badly overdue after the long bull market of the 1990s. In the last two years, the American people have learned again that investing in the market is still a risky proposition in the short run, and that a declining stock market can still have a depressing effect on the economy and upset plans people may have, such as retiring early on their stock portfolios. According to the New York Times of July 21, 2002, the aggregate value of the U.S. stock market fell from $17.45 trillion dollars on March 24, 2000, to $10.03 trillion dollars on July 18, 2002. Unfortunately, revelations of illegal earnings manipulations by management during this period, starting in the summer of 2001 with the since-bankrupt Enron Corporation, and now including Tyco International, Qwest Communications, Xerox, Worldcom and several others, have dealt additional blows to investor confidence and apparently delayed the next business recovery and depressed stock prices. If company earnings reports cannot be trusted, how can investors decide where to put their money? At this point, "smart money" worldwide seems to be looking for greater safety than American stocks can provide, and a serious and persistent "Bear Market" has seemingly developed on Wall Street.

Rochester companies have not been immune to the drop in stock prices. Eastman Kodak and Bausch and Lomb are down considerably more than market averages, reflecting their depressed earnings. Xerox stock has lost over ninety percent of its value since its peak in January, 2000, reflecting actual earnings losses during 2001. And Global Crossing, the international communications company which purchased the local telephone company, Frontier, a few years ago, is now in banktuptcy and its stock is virtually worthless. Employees and retirees unfortunate enough to have their funds mostly tied up in these last two stocks have had their dreams shattered.

The Nasdaq market, which includes many high tech and "Dot Com" stocks, was particularly hard hit, with overall losses averaging nearly 70 percent after the market peaked. People now refer to the "bursting of the Dot Com bubble" over the past couple of years as the end of an era of unbridled optimism for Internet-based businesses. Investment advisers were soon again actually discussing Nasdaq stock prices in relation to their demonstrated earnings - a remarkable "return to basics" compared with their previous advocacy of these stocks based solely on potential future sales.

History has a remarkable way of repeating itself. In late 1999 I read in the New York Times that it was thought by some in mid-1929 that radio was a "recession proof" engine which would drive the economy and the market inexorably onward regardless of what else happened. Seventy years later, some people wanted to believe it was the Internet and so-called "Dot com" on-line businesses which would play exactly the same role. The Times article also pointed out that warnings had appeared in the press about "speculative mania" as early as 1925, but that most people of 1929 - as in the year 2000 - assumed instead that the Federal Reserve Board would be able to keep the economy on track regardless of what happened in the stock market. (The Times' use of the phrase "speculative mania" reminds me of Alan Greenspan's 1996 warning of "irrational exuberance," which was an unsuccessful verbal attempt to slow down the recent overpriced Bull Market long before it reached its peak.) And because of excesses and abuses in stock trading in the 1920s, reforms were viewed as necessary in the 1930s, leading to formation of the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission). In 2002 Congress was again considering what new safeguards might be needed to protect the public, though little of consequence seemed to have resulted when this section was written. And President Bush organized meetings to discuss what could be done to stimulate the economy, and made public various statements about how our economy is basically quite strong, that it's just a matter of time until prosperity returns. Curiously, Herbert Hoover said and did virtually the same things after the stock market crash of 1929. And as of early 2004, it appeared that George W. Bush would be the first president since Hoover to preside over a net loss of nationwide employment during his first term in office. The parallels between then and now are striking.

It is now generally agreed that the country has been in a business slowdown since mid-2000, and in an actual recession since mid- 2001, though there have been signs of a slow recovery starting in 2002. In early 2001, the U. S. government was running a surplus and still projecting healthy budget surpluses as far as the eye could see, and based on this optimistic outlook President Bush was able to push through a series of tax cuts soon after taking office. But because of the business slowdown, coupled with Bush's tax cuts and unforecast costs of the war on terrorism, by the end of 2001 the government was again running a huge deficit and the projected surpluses were officially replaced by substantial projected deficits for the next several years. By the start of fiscal 2004, the U.S. government was running a deficit of over $475 billion dollars a year, the largest in history. It seems apparent that our ability to forecast government revenues and expenses is actually quite limited. (To read a letter I wrote to the editor of our local newspaper on this subject in March, 2001, while we were still running a surplus, click here.)

Income Disparity

No matter what happens to the economy in the short term, I fear the growing disparity in incomes between rich and poor in this country (and, for that matter, between company executives and ordinary workers) cannot continue indefinitely, anyhow, without some very serious social consequences. (Actually, the same can be said with even greater intensity about the massive difference in standards of living between people living in leading industrial countries and those in the Third World, many of whom must somehow get by on as little as $100 a year.) We seem be trending toward a permanent division between "haves" and "have nots," in the world and in this country, further squeezing the American middle class and undermining the promise this country has offered for so long, that anyone with brains and ambition can get ahead through education and hard work. Now it takes the combined incomes of husbands and wives just to stay even with expenses in most middle to low income families, and most poor people seem to be losing ground despite their best efforts. Perhaps the political and social pendulum will start to swing the other way before long, though I sincerely hope a prolonged recession with widespread social unrest will not be required for this to take place, as happened in the 1930s.

Some Fundamentals

I believe that additional money and material goods can't really buy happiness once necessities and a few luxuries have been provided. Human nature has not changed, and rewarding work, family life, and good friendships are still what make the world go round for most of us. And good health is still essential for a satisfying life.

Although women and most minorities would probably argue that they are significantly better off now than their grandparents were in many respects, I suspect that Americans as a whole are actually not much happier now than they were in the 1920's. This is so despite our incredible technology, the global economy, and the worldwide transportation system, which provide so many of us with an amazing array of "things" like good housing with more space and conveniences than were ever dreamed of before World War II, electricity and telephones in almost every home, television and other home entertainments nearly everywhere, automatic heating and air conditioning systems (instead of smoky, dirty, ash and soot producing, coal-eating stoves and furnaces), an array of antibiotics and other "wonder drugs" as well as remarkable medical devices and tests resulting in a longer lifespan and greatly improved health care for most, well-stocked food stores with an incredible assortment of products (such as a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables in the dead of winter which would stagger a Rip Van Winkle from 1929), home computers with rapidly increasing capabilities, ready access to almost the entire world via jet airliners, reliable automobiles and a fine highway system, and essentially instantaneous world-wide communications including the Internet. Like many others, I can't wait to see what comes next. But people adjust to physical improvements rather quickly, and perhaps having time to savor life from day to day at a slower pace counted for something, too.

Our Current Situation, and Some Growing Storm Clouds Just Over the Horizon

We Americans live at a blessed time in a great country, for which we should all be truly grateful. But though our country has many legitimate concerns immediately ahead as the world enters the twenty first century, such as how to achieve a harmonious multicultural and multiracial American society, how to contain or eliminate terrorism throughout the world, how to extend to all Americans the benefits of a seemingly ever more affluent society, how to pay for good medical care for everyone, and what to do about the inevitable crises in Social Security and health care as the American population ages, I suspect that these concerns are actually rather parochial and local in nature. I fear that much larger global problems, almost certain to develop inexorably into acute crises for everyone - especially for our children and grandchildren - are looming just over the time horizon. These may soon make us forget our "local" problems. These imminent problems nearly all go beyond the ability of individual nations to solve, yet I am not at all optimistic about humanity's ability to solve them in time to prevent serious world upheavals over the next century. Unfortunately, our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren seem fated to wrestle with these intractable problems. I wish them well, though I strongly believe we need to start taking them more seriously NOW.

Population Pressures on Resources

Already, world resources and the environment are being stressed as never before as world population continues to grow, and more and more countries aspire to material prosperity like ours in the United States. We can already predict with considerable confidence that world population will at least double in the next fifty years, and this is on top of its having more than tripled in just the past 75-plus years since I was born. Beyond the next half century, the crystal ball is cloudy, since so much depends on overcoming cultural and religious barriers against birth control, not the least of which is the widespread prejudice against educating women in many developing countries with strongly conservative religious and cultural traditions.

A local columnist, Dick Dougherty, wrote a piece some time ago with an excellent outline of the basics of world population growth, plus an easy to understand statement of how much of the world's wealth is owned now by "we fortunate six percent" who happen to live in the United States. To read this column, click here, then use your browser to return to this page.

I feel sure that unlimited world economic and population growth cannot continue indefinitely without very serious consequences for the quality of life of everyone on earth. As one fundamental example, the need for a ready supply of pure drinking water is already becoming a pressing worldwide concern. A recent World Health Organization study stated that nearly a billion people worldwide, mostly in underdeveloped countries, lack access to pure drinking water, which exposes them to cholera, dysentery, typhus and a variety of viral infections. And our country is not immune to this shortage. A few years ago I read that Tampa, Florida, was actively investigating the use of desalination to supply its growing water needs. And due to drought conditions the past few years, stringent restrictions on lawn sprinkling, auto washing and other "outside" uses of drinking water have been invoked in several American states. California has recently been forced to sign a compact calling for more equitable sharing of scarce Colorado River water with neighboring states, which will soon result in some irrigated land been taken out of cultivation, e.g., in the Imperial Valley where many of our winter vegetables are grown. Serious inquiries have been made about the possibility of shipping Great Lakes water overseas via tankers, and Turkey has offered to sell some of its abundant fresh water to its drier neighbors like Syria, Israel and Egypt. Turkey is also building new dams on the upper Euphrates River, which Iraqi and Syrian farmers have historically depended on for irrigation. Israel is also in a severe water crisis because of recent drought conditions, though even in good years there is not enough water in the Jordan valley to supply the growing demands of both Israel and Jordan, threatening the long term stability of an already unstable region. Future population growth in the American Southwest - as well as the viability of its irrigation-based agriculture, which the whole country depends on, especially for winter fruits and vegetables - will undoubtedly be limited soon by water, since the Colorado River is already "overcommitted" in the rapidly growing states of Arizona, Nevada, and California. (As of late August, 2002, California was actively seeking to reduce its consumption of this water by 20 percent.) Also, aquifiers used for decades to irrigate crops in midwestern and plains states are being steadily depleted, with particular implications for irrigation-based agriculture in the Great Plains region - part of what is known now as the "Bread Basket of the World." The same is true in many other countries, notably China, where deserts are spreading from Mongolia toward Peking. The problem of "creeping desertification" - due to a seemingly unstoppable combination of slash-and-burn agriculture, sloppy conservation of soil and water, overgrazing of grasslands, overcutting of trees for firewood and other uses, overtaxed water supplies and soaring populations - is steadily turning arable farmland the size of Rhode Island into desert wasteland EVERY YEAR around the world, and threatens one third of the Earth's surface in the next twenty years, according to a United Nations study released in mid-2004. Perhaps in time, the northeastern United States' abundant supply of rainfall and fresh water will seem as strategic as Middle Eastern oil is today.

Global Warming and Climate Change

The growing world economy, with its constantly increasing use of, and dependence on, fossil fuels, has almost certainly already caused an ominous increase of global temperatures due to the "greenhouse effect," with largely unknown - but probably largely undesirable - consequences. (The greenhouse effect is caused mainly by atmospheric carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and other combustion products of fossil fuels, which trap the sun's heat in the atmosphere. This is not a recent concern. I first heard the topic discussed by a scientist from the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, at a spectroscopy conference in Columbus, Ohio, in 1955. He was attempting to estimate the size of the greenhouse effect from what was already known about atmospheric heat absorption and the recognized increase in world carbon dioxide due to combustion of fossil fuels.) An international panel of 400 leading climate scientists recently concluded that the rise of world temperatures by 1-2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past fifty years is almost certainly due to human activities, and that world temperatures will no doubt continue to rise by as much as five times more over the next century, with drastic consequences unless stern countermeasures begin immediately. It's possible that we're already seeing unexpected side effects of such warming as droughts and generally severe weather have increased around the world in the last few years. Also, there has been a significant reduction in the Arctic ice cap and a general melting of glaciers worldwide in the last few years. The possibility of a sudden and irreversible change in world climate - which seems to have happened several times in the past for poorly understood reasons - is a particularly alarming consideration, yet we are doing little in this country today even to delay this threat. It is noteworthy that global energy consumption - overwhelmingly from burning of fossil fuels - has increased TEN-FOLD since 1930 according to World Watch, State of the World 2004, and is still increasing rapidly, though world population has "only" tripled in the same interval.

The pressing need to develop low-pollution energy sources as alternatives to fossil fuels may easily become humanity's overriding concern by the middle of this century, if not sooner. In addition to climate changes (heat, drought, and severe storms) which will likely disrupt agriculture in many highly populated countries, melting of the polar ice caps (a probable end result of unlimited increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other gases from combustion of fossil fuels) and resulting rising sea levels would have severe consequences in heavily populated areas all around the world. As noted above, there is growing evidence from the "fossil" ice pack record (e.g., in Greenland) that past climate changes have sometimes taken place quite rapidly, for reasons which are not at all yet understood. This is particularly disturbing considering that we do not yet know the detailed effects of continually increasing greenhouse gases. The polar ice caps are known to contain enough water to raise the world's sea level by more than 200 feet. Most of the world's largest cities and much of its most fertile farmlands are located on relatively low lying land. (Consider the seaports of New York, London, Shanghai, Calcutta, and Tokyo just for openers!) In addition to likely widespread damage from flooding, there may well be increased extinctions of animals and plants - in the oceans as well as on land - if temperatures rise quickly, further exacerbating food shortages. Recent studies have also suggested another undesirable side effect of pollution from burning of fossil fuels. There are suggestions that recent droughts in Africa and parts of Asia, as well as "hundred year" floods in Europe and other parts of Eastern Asia, are indirectly caused by disturbances of world weather patterns caused by finely dispersed particles in the atmosphere from combustion of fuels throughout the world. Altogether, these studies do not project a very pretty view of the future, especially if we reflect on how poorly humanity is organized to deal objectively and quickly with world-wide issues requiring cooperative actions of diverse people and nations.

Limited Supply of Cheap Fossil Fuels

Beyond the above-mentioned unfavorable ecological effects of the burning of available fossil fuels, as the world starts to run out of easily recoverable petroleum and natural gas, the resulting energy shortages and escalating fuel costs will eventually also impact the world economy and the quality of life, starting first in poorer countries. The countries which are well off now will presumably still be able to buy needed fuels even at considerably higher prices, but poorer countries will not, at least without outside funding. This growing crisis will undoubtedly cause hunger and widespread suffering, with the likelihood of political upheavals, even future wars, to control increasingly scarce resources. (See below for specific predictions of world petroleum supplies.) While existing liquid and gaseous fuels may be replaced or supplemented to some extent by still-abundant coal reserves, and to some extent by petroleum from western U.S. oil shale deposits and tar sands located in northern Canada, and coal is a particularly "dirty" energy source requiring costly measures to reduce pollution. (Already, the deleterious effects of acid rain in Canada and the American northeast are caused mostly by sulfur dioxide from coal fired electric generating plants in the American midwest. And so far, most U.S. energy companies - with the blessings of the Bush-Cheney administration - have successfully resisted adding costly scrubbers to their exhaust stacks.) Further, oil from shale and tar sands is relatively expensive to recover, since known extraction processes all require heat. Power shortages in rapidly growing California over the past few years, due partly to tight supplies of domestic natural gas and lagging construction of new power plants (and partly by market manipulations by now-defunct Enron Corporation), illustrate how dramatically and quickly energy problems can impact our economy and "the American lifestyle."

We do not yet have widely available non polluting, renewable energy sources, and the ones we do have (such as solar and wind power) are still relatively expensive. Use of hydrogen as a potentially cheap and "near term," non polluting source of convenient energy for autos is currently receiving increased attention. But there are no "hydrogen mines" anywhere on earth (i.e., a supply of elemental hydrogen does not exist), so it will be necessary to invest energy from some outside source to convert natural gas or other starting materials to hydrogen for this purpose. Further, a practical system requires a nationwide production and delivery system, as well as hydrogen-ready autos available on demand. Fuel cells have similar shortcomings, since the starting materials again require outside energy. Such approaches appear to be long term projects, and I am rather skeptical that any will actually be widely used in my lifetime. Recently, there has even been serious discussion of building additional nuclear power plants (based on fission of uranium and other heavy elements) in the United States, despite stubborn – though somewhat irrational – safety concerns as well as the unresolved question of safe disposal of long-lived radioactive byproducts. Controlled hydrogen fusion, which theoretically could supply world power needs for the foreseeable future without radioactive pollution or other “unfriendly” end products, still seems at least several decades in the future despite active government sponsored research in several countries.

A few years ago I became aware of an important new book on the subject of world energy supplies, called "Hubbert's Peak: The a Impending World Oil Shortage," Princeton University Press, 2001, by Kenneth S. Deffeyes. The author, a Princeton professor who worked as a geologist in the petroleum industry for many years, updates a 1957 study by M. King Hubbert, another American geologist who predicted that oil production in the United States would peak in the early 1970s and then start to decline. Since U.S. production was still rising rapidly and petroleum needs were mostly being met domestically, Hubbert was widely regarded as an alarmist and crank at the time. However, U.S. oil production did actually reach its all-time high in 1970, then it began an uninterrupted decline which continues to this day. Since 1970 the United States has become increasingly dependent on imported petroleum, with profound economic and political consequences.

Hubbert's method is based on the observation that oil production in any region invariably follows a bell-shaped curve. As easily recovered oil is used up, the cost of oil increases with increasing difficulty of extraction. Eventually, production declines, reflecting the depletion of readily recoverable reserves. Deffeyes used an updated, more sophisticated version of Hubbert's method to estimate that world production of petroleum will probably peak between the years 2004 to 2008. The only uncertainties affecting this conclusion are the possibility of finding huge new oil deposits (small, except perhaps in the South China Sea), developing more efficient drilling/recovery technology, and a steep rise in oil prices which would make it profitable to access more difficult to recover oil. Because of the already advanced state of oil exploration and drilling technology, Deffeyes believes that the first two possibilities are rather remote, and that even markedly higher prices can only delay the inevitable production falloff by a few years. He feels the only answer is to move as quickly as possible to supplemental alternative fuels, including natural gas and nuclear power, as well as available solar, wind and geothermal energy, to fill the interval until renewable resources are widely available.

It will certainly be "most interesting" to see what actually happens, since the entire world depends heavily on petroleum for transportation and power, not to mention vital chemical feedstocks needed to produce plastics, drugs, and a myriad of other consumer products which we take for granted today. Most people reading this will hopefully live considerably longer than another ten years, hence will be able to judge for themselves if this prediction was at all accurate. [As of mid-2004, world petroleum supplies had become tight enough to cause the price of gasoline at the pump to exceed $2.00 a gallon n the U.S. for the first time, and as of late September, 2004, the price of crude oil had risen to more than $50 a barrel for the first time in history. Although this upsurge in prices has been aggravated by concerns about political instability in the Middle East and elsewhere, it also is true that supplies are very tight and oil exporting countries are having serious difficulty increasing production as needed to meet rising demand from rapidly growing economies like China. So stay tuned!]

[Deffeyes' conclusion was reinforced by a conference of petroleum specialists meeting in Uppsala, Sweden, in May, 2002. After a similiar analysis, this group predicted that world oil production will peak in about the year 2010, at least 26 years sooner than the rollover point predicted in an "official" U.S. government study released in 2000. Of course, much depends on how optimistic one is about the possibility of finding gigantic new oil fields or of developing significantly more efficient recovery methods. These specialists regard each of these as quite unlikely, however, and warn that it is in the short term interests of politicians and energy-producing companies alike to DENY that worldwide energy shortages will begin much sooner than earlier predicted.]

The Underlying Environmental Crunch - Too Many People in a Finite World?

I feel that all of these so-called "environmental" problems are being driven and aggravated by the seemingly unstoppable growth of world population. In essence, they are all different manifestations of the underlying population/resource problem. In the relatively near future, the growth of human population – if unchecked – must inevitably run headlong into inherent limits caused by finite earthly space and resources. Specifically, I feel there are probably already too many people for sustained use of world resources using current or easily imagined technology, and at least twice the existing world population is already “in the pipeline,” assuming only that children already born marry and raise families. Many responsible people share my conviction that natural resources will eventually prove inadequate to feed and house more people on an ongoing, long term basis.

Unless the people of the world collectively - and soon - develop the will to limit population growth and adopt a much more "environmentally friendly" lifestyle, it's hard to see how the current quality of life – even inadequate as it is today in many underdeveloped countries - can be sustained much past the next mid-century (i.e., about 2050). Even granting that this breakdown of the world economy can perhaps be postponed a few years - or possibly as much as a few decades – by undiscovered new technology, the “ultimate crisis” cannot be altogether avoided, since we live in a finite world with finite resources. And for at least the next century or two, humans seem pretty much restricted to this planet, so we’re all in this together. So by the second half of this present century, I fear we will be in a state of world crisis and upheaval unlike anything seen before.

I believe that a good argument can be made that the recent growth of world terrorism is ultimately rooted in the deepseated and widespread antagonism already existing between affluent peoples of the major industrial powers, on the one hand, and poorer people of underprivileged and more rapidly growing "third world" countries, on the other, driven in essence by a competition for world resources. If I'm right, terrorism is actually an early precursor of the seemingly unavoidable future crisis predicted above. The growth of terrorism seems driven largely by declining job opportunities for young people, especially in rapidly growing Middle Eastern countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. And almost everywhere, violent hatred of "the others" is being inflamed by the growing power of religious extremists. Unfortunately, the threat from religious extremists is by no means limited to Muslims. For example, Jewish settlers claiming their "God given right" to live in illegal West Bank communities, in the face of a rapidly growing Palestinian population, are a serious current obstacle to world peace. And despite many decades of peacemaking efforts by British and Irish governments, the economically dominant (and still slightly more numerous) Protestants in Northern Ireland fear and distrust the rapidly growing Catholic "underclass" historically championed by the Irish Republican Army. There seem to no easy solutions to such problems, which have their ultimate origins in unchecked population growth, limited resources, and religious extremism - unfortunately coupled with easy access to deadly weapons of all types around the world.

For much more factual background on world overpopulation and its relation to resource depletion and environmental degradation, the Population Connection website, http://www.popconnect.org/ is well worth a visit. It's perhaps worth pointing out again that world population has more than TRIPLED in the 70+ years since I was born, from two billion in in 1930 to more than 6.2 billion in 2004. If population doubles again, as seems quite possible over the coming century, it's hard to see how worldwide turmoil can be avoided. I actually doubt that we can maintain present standards of living for many more years with our CURRENT world population, since everywhere you look we're running short of critical resources.

The Overriding Challenge We And Our Children Face

Overall, I believe that we must either achieve a sustainable balance between the demands of humanity on the world's space and resources (and a more equitable distribution of wealth) or accept that civilization as we know it has peaked and is fated to slip into an irreversible and tragic decline, with much suffering, strife, and bloodshed along the way as people compete for ever-scarcer resources. I suspect that we in America may be living now at a particularly blessed time and place in mankind's history, which our grandchildren and succeeding generations may one day look back to as a lost paradise, if records survive!

I sincerely hope these gloomy thoughts are seriously flawed, but my reading of history suggests that humanity will probably never agree to deal effectively with such large scale, gradually increasing problems until catastrophe is actually upon us. In democracies like ours (and most other western countries), it's hard to imagine anyone being elected to Congress or the White House after suggesting that worldwide problems like population growth and the environment should receive higher priority than the growth of our own economy - especially when those problems may not become acute crises for another decade or two. Ineffectual international efforts thus far to reduce emissions of "greenhouse gases" such as carbon dioxide to slow the growth of global warming are a good illustration of what I mean. They have failed thus far partly because of stalemate between the developing countries and well developed countries like the United States who already use most of the world's fossil fuels, i.e., the "have nots" who want more vs. the "haves" who want to keep what they've got, and partly because the "haves" can't agree among themselves on how to divvy up responsibility for taking corrective actions. Worse, some leading politicians, like President George W. Bush, have stated that we need more study to decide if there's really a problem. (Since this was first written, Bush announced that he would not support the so-called Kyoto Treaty with its modest targets for reduced carbon dioxide emissions, since meeting these would threaten our national economy. This was a reversal of his year 2000 campaign pledges to tighten up on atmospheric emissions from power plants and other industrial sources. Also, he elected not to attend a followup conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, unlike nearly all other world leaders.) Finally, international efforts to educate women about birth control - which I consider an essential part of any solution - are still seriously hampered by religious and cultural objections at home and abroad. Again, President Bush is casting his lot with religious conservatives who oppose birth controls, presumably in large part for political reasons. The way these issues play out in the coming century will be crucial for humanity's longterm future.

I'm frankly rather glad, from a purely personal, selfish standpoint, that I probably won't be here to experience most of the coming "environmenal turmoil" first hand, though I feel quite certain that our children and grandchildren will not be able to escape the consequences of the growing "resource/population crunch." They must inevitably pay the price of humanity's past and current neglect of the environment and our cheerful willingness to assume that there will always be plenty of space and resources for everyone in a growing, ever-developing world with a constantly expanding economy and population, as has been true for essentially all of recorded history. In short, I believe the time is coming - and soon - when humanity will be forced to come of age and learn to live in harmony with a finite world. Can mankind get its act together soon enough to avoid widespread turmoil and death? Only time will tell.

A Blessed Time And Place

Whatever eventually happens, our generation of Americans has had a great run and we've certainly arrived at the "top of the heap" in the world today. And despite its unsolved problems, the United States is still a great place in which to live, and we should be truly grateful for what we have. I have the feeling that I was actually born in the right country at a perfect time in its history - young enough to escape World War II, but old enough to take advantage of the growth and ascendancy of the United States during my career in the second half of the last century. And of course I got some wonderful breaks and help along the way.

My Own Situation

Getting back to my own life - in a much more personal and parochial vein - while I've adjusted to many changes in my lifetime, I'm still not yet completely used to getting the senior citizen discount without asking. (Do I really look so old?) In my mind, I'm still much younger than the calendar says, despite the occasional aches and pains. As someone has aptly written, "Old age is not for wimps."

The nearest thing I've found to a reasonable formula for aging is the following, which I copied down several years ago:

"The thing of it is, you have to decide pretty much now what sort of old man you're going to be. And then hope to be lucky enough to get there." - Robert Waller, American writer and teacher.

I've got a rough idea of who I'd like to be as an old man, though I'm still working on a few details. On the second part, about all I can say is "so far, so good." (And by the way, according to the U.S. Social Security Administration, my current life expectancy is still about a dozen years, though I fully intend to beat that by a wide margin!)

Special Acknowledgement

I'd first like to thank Ms. Lehua Marjorie Wells, who I met several years ago on Compuserve's Cancer Forum, for the personalized help she gave me in launching this website. She is creative, multi-faceted, highly talented, and a beautiful person to work with and know. Carole and I later met Lehua in person near her home in Pacifica, California, just south of San Francisco, during 1997's cross-country trip, which was fun. (To see a photo of Lehua and me in front of what she calls the "OPB" (Old Peoples Bar), click here - and then use your browser to get back to this page.) Of course, any flaws in my website are mine, not hers! To see how websites can really be done, visit hers at http://www.lehuanet.com /lehua/. Lehua also has a user-friendly online tutorial on constructing websites, at http://www.lehuanet.c om/webclass.

Links To My Other Pages

You are cordially invited to browse my other sections, which are in danger of being revised without notice.

To learn about Rochester's history, culture and climate, click here.

To visit my "Memories I - Formative Years" page, which covers my life through high school: click here. I've appended a writeup on my personal memories of life on the home front in World War II, 1941-45. This can be accessed directly by clicking here. These sections include memories of Mountain Home, New Plymouth and Boise, Idaho, from the early 1930s to about 1950.

To visit my "Memories II - College and Graduate School" page, which covers my education beyond high school at the University of Rochester and Brown University, ca. 1947 - 1955: click here.

To visit my "Memories III- Early Du Pont Years" page, which covers my Du Pont career, mostly in Wilmington, Delaware, from 1955 - 1961: click here.

To visit my "Memories IV - Du Pont Years, 1961-1972" page, which extends my career story in Ohio and Delaware: click here.

To visit my "Memories V - Du Pont Years, 1972-1977" page, which covers my years at Parlin, NJ and transfer to Rochester, NY: click here.

To visit my "Memories VI - Du Pont Years, 1977-1991 and Retirement" page, which completes the story of my Du Pont years in Rochester (and retirement thus far), and also has a "bonus section" of selected quotes on life and human existence: click here.

To visit my "People" page, which discusses the people I consider most influential in my life: click here.

To visit a section dealing specifically with my parents Esther Kinsey Hendricks and Otto William Hendricks, their marriage and divorce, influences on my life, etc., click here.

To visit my "Technology Predictions" page, featuring a talk I gave to the Circleville, Ohio, Rotary Club in early 1961 on the topic, "The impact science will have on our lives in the future," click here. As a brash young supervisor, I made a number of predictions which are interesting in retrospect.

To visit my "Retirement" page, which looks at work and retirement as they appeared at the time (early 1991), click here.

To read a talk I gave at my college class's 50th reunion in October, 2001, a retrospective look back at my college experience and career, click here.

To visit my "Family History" page, which gives an overview of my family's history, click here. I have included biographical notes on one ancestor, Henry Kintzi (1742-1828), of Frederick County, Maryland after 1795, which can be reached through this page. I have also recently added an account of my grandfather James Kinsey's two older brothers' service in the Civil War, which can also be reached through this page.

To visit my "Family Album" page (still being added to), which includes "historical" photos of my family, starting with my grandparents' generation, click here.

To visit my "Transcendent Experiences" page, which summarizes a few particularly meaningful or "peak" experiences I've had, click here.

To visit my "Cancer in Bob's Neighborhood" section, a memorial to several family members and special friends who have had cancer: click here.

To visit my "Odds and Ends" page, which contains an assortment of curiosities I've collected or written over the years, click here.

To visit my "Photo Gallery" page, featuring a collection of pictures of our family, our surroundings, and other selected places and people (plus a collection of "family sayings", ca. 1967), click here.

To return to the top of this page: click here.

Bob's Favorite Sites

Here are some other sites I can recommend:

Ms. Susan Sharp has a beautiful website which includes "What Not to Put on a Web Page" (some of which suggestions I've no doubt violated) and "10 Reasons to create a web page." She also includes a section on "Spinal Cord Injury" which reflects her special perspective on the world. It is at http: //www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/1666/

Our church's website, which describes the First Unitarian Church of Rochester and its programs and also includes a general introduction to the Unitarian Universalist denomination, is at http://www.rochesterunitarian.org/ It contains a line drawing of our church, designed by Philadelphia's young architect Louis Kahn in the early 1960s, now generally considered an architectural masterpiece. The sanctuary is a prime example of "lean, hungry" modern design, causing some lay visitors to ask when they see the sanctuary, "When are you going to finish it?" Despite this, we are frequently visited by architects and architectural students from around the world.

A high school classmate and mutual friend living in Tempe, AZ, Beverly Nelson Baker, introduced me to the website of Ms. Susan Anderson, a remarkable woman who has survived carcinoid cancer with a great zest for living. Her website, which not only contains a wealth of references on cancer, cancer support and treatments, but also has links to numerous interesting sites on bluegrass music, astronomy, government, world/national issues, the Wild, Wild West, genealogy, humor and others. Highly recommended! Susan's website is at http://www.carcinoidinfo.i nfo/

Our son-in-law, Tony Porco, of Laurel, Maryland (a Washington, DC, suburb), has a relatively new site which already contains a varied and interesting array of personal information, photos, and links to many other recommended sites. Our daughter Jill expects to be making her own contributions to their site over coming months, so how can I not recommend it? Their URL is: http://www.geocities.com/mindflayer68/

I believe you'd enjoy visiting any of these sites.

My Guestbook

You're welcome to sign - or browse - my guestbook.

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Bob's E-mail Address

I'd love hearing from anyone by e-mail at rwhend@infionline.net

I also respond to snail mail. My postal address is: Bob Hendricks, 403 French Road, Rochester, NY 14618.

(Last rev. 4/07 – in part)