Despite the fact that my work is in some sense one of my hobbies, I also
have many other interests, and am only sorry that there are not enough
hours in the day to pursue them all as often as I'd like... Among them
are playing music on the fiddle and mandolin and anything else I can get
to make a decent sound, drawing portraits, landscapes, and other kinds of
things that strike my fancy, whether animate or inanimate, art and music
in general, and of course, reading and writing, as well as photography,
and movies. Having been an athlete (basketball, football, track, etc.) until
an ankle injury ended my formal career early in my freshman year in college,
I still enjoy all kinds of sports: many as a spectator, and some as a
participant. (A later severe knee injury during intramural football at Johns
Hopkins University finally caused me to decide that some sports are better
for watching since I'd still like to be able to walk and move about well!)
I also still enjoy hiking and camping a great deal, and of course, since
I've been fortunate enough to travel a fair amount all over North America
(to all 50 states, and to 11 of the 13 Canadian provinces and territories - all except Newfoundland - which I've flown over lots of times - and Nunavut - up by northern Greenland - and to most several times),
as well as all over much of Europe and South America, I do enjoy travel,
languages, and learning about different cultures and their history and
customs and their ways of cultural and artistic expression, etc. I also am
very fond of archaeology, geology, paleontology, and history in general,
and during a number of visits to Italy, was very happy about
touring around Pompeii and Herculaneum (Roman, 1st Century A.D.), and Paestum
(Greek - also known as Poseidonia - 5th-7th Century B.C.),
plus seeing ancient Hawaiian heiaus and other Polynesian archaeological and
cultural and natural sites
in the Hawaiian Islands while visiting the Big Island of Hawaii, plus Maui,
Oahu, and Kauai, Inupiat and Arctic culture and life in and around Barrow,
Alaska (even getting a short trip of a few hours out on the Arctic Ocean
with an Inupiat family in 2005!), plus going from Skagway, Alaska to
Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, to Dawson City in the Yukon, and again north of
the Arctic Circle, over the mountains and Mackenzie River to Inuvik, Northwest
Territories, and Tuktoyaktuk, NWT (on the Arctic Ocean by the Mackenzie River
Delta), and back in the Yukon and Alaska, seeing
examples of Athabaskan culture south of the Brooks Range, flying around up
close to the high peaks in the Alaska Range (Denali, Hunter, Foraker, etc.) near
Talkeetna, going out on the Chena and Tanana Rivers in Fairbanks, and the
beautiful Matanuska and Susitna Valleys north of Anchorage. On other trips, I've been up the Dalton Highway, over the Yukon River to Coldfoot and Wiseman, then over the Brooks Range via the Atigun Pass to the North Slope and down to Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay, as well as over by the Bering Sea to Nome and out to the end of the road at the village of Teller, and up once again above the Arctic Circle to Kotzebue. I was supposed to fly up to Anaktuvuk Pass, as well, but I was the only passenger, and so they wouldn't fly that day. Seeing some Native American and early European and colonial sites in the U.S., Canada, and South America has been a very interesting thing that I've gotten to do, also. Places
containing early South American native artifacts (Inca, etc.) like the good
Museo Pre-Columbiano in Santiago, Chile have been a lot of fun to visit, as
has been seeing a bit of the Andes of Equador, Peru, Argentina, and Chile,
and visiting places like La Serena, Vicuna (home of Gabriela Mistral, the poet) , and Portillo in Chile,
and in Europe seeing Celtic and pre-Celtic mounds in Ireland and Britain and
visiting places such as Galway and the west of Ireland, the mountains and
coast of County Donegal in Ireland, the mountains and glens of Northern
Ireland, and also seeing various
remnants of the European medieval, Renaissance, and later periods - places
like Venice, Florence, Bologna, Cremona, Rome, Naples, Granada and its medieval
Arabo-Andalusian gem -
the Alhambra, Cordoba, Merida, Caceres, Sintra, Paris, Epinal, Montpellier,
Antibes and the Riviera, Genoa, Milan, Zurich, Munich, Innsbruck and the Alps,
Salzburg, Prague, London, Stirling, Loch Tay and other beautiful lochs, Glencoe, Fort William, the Isle of Skye, Inverness, Aviemore, Pitlochry, and the Scottish Highlands, Dunkeld, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Holyhead and the coast and mountains of North Wales, and the
views in the English Lake District plus cities like York and Durham,
and hosts of other cities and towns and the often-beautiful countrysides
and small villages surrounding such places -
all fascinating places to see for someone whose family has, except for a
relatively short stint in Canada in the 1920s, been in North Carolina and
Virginia since around 1695-1718 on one side
and probably around the 1750s-1760s on the other!
I also have very much enjoyed getting to take part in paleontology field work
in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming with a group from the Johns Hopkins
University, and exploring other places in the North American West like
Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, Bridger Tetons (Wind River), and Big Horn
Mountains in Wyoming, Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Parks, and Banff and Jasper National Parks in the Rockies
in Montana and Alberta, Vancouver Island and the southeast coast and islands
and mountains of British Columbia and Washington State, Mount Baker and the
North Cascades and Olympic Mountains and coastal rain forest of Washington
State, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, Crater Lake, and Mount Shasta in the
Cascade Mountains of Washington, Oregon, and northern
California, the Coastal Range and Sierra Nevada of California and Nevada, the
mountains of southern California, and the mountains and deserts of the Four
Corners area and all around northern and southern Arizona, New Mexico, Utah,
and the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Idaho, plus the mountains and coasts
of Eastern North America from the southern tip of Key West, Florida, to the
Outer Banks and high Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, to
Meat Cove at the northern tip of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, among many other
places in between. Working around my house and lawn take up some of my time,
and I usually enjoy that as well, though like any homeowner, there are times
I'd just like to pay someone else, and sometimes I do!
I do, however, like to design and
build things for my house out of wood, as well, though I've only rarely managed
the time to do it. I also like to cook for friends on those occasions when
we can make the time. I'm fond of my family (mother, brother, and my late
father), too... And
though I can manage to make myself extremely busy at times, I also realize
that there are times when its very important to take a break and just watch
the sunlight and shadows change on the side of a hill, or the clouds as they
drift by overhead, or the moon and stars as they rise and set through the
changing of the seasons, and the coming and going of the leaves and all kinds
of weather, or to just play with my cat, or watch him as he plays, or to have
a conversation (I'm not quite sure about what!) with him in his own language...
(NOTE: He died in 2004, but was a true cat to the very end - trying to get me
to chase him and play only 2 minutes before he was felled by a blood clot
through the heart. He was a great cat and likewise is missed greatly!)
Photo credits: Dorret Oosterhoff (Top L); Dave Schott (Top R); Dave Schott?
(Bottom L); Amy and Harry Braun (Bottom R)
Top:
Playing music with friends (and STScI colleague Harry) and Meg Ferguson at
the wedding of an Irish astronomer and friend, Brian Espey (L), and playing
solo fiddle to the waves on a stony beach in Nova Scotia (R).
Bottom:
Playing at a concert in Nova Scotia (L) and at a festival in Chapel Hill,
NC (R).
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