I had pneumonia until three days ago when I was discharged from the hospital. These days, my health has been doing well: In May, I attended my younger daughter Amelia Altalena’s graduation from college. In June, I spent two weeks in McKeesport, PA seeing how low-cost high-tech housing for elderly and disabled individuals can be […]
Joanna
My mother’s Thanksgiving story and my Thanksgiving letter
Let us start with my mother. My mother Miriam told me [when I was a freshman at Druid Hills High School in Decatur, Georgia in 1961] of her attempt to convince her Aunt Marcia (Tanta Masha) to have a Thanksgiving celebration in 1933 when my mother was eight years old. Tanta Masha, married to Sol […]
Hegira Succeeded: Report on the 989-mile-away-Engagement-Party-for-my-daughter Joanna
Mazel tov: Welcome to My Hegira. Webster’s defines hegira as: “A journey esp. when undertaken to escape from a dangerous or undesirable situation.” Cosmic Invitation How else to feel other than I am, often thinking Flash Gordon soap– O how terrible it must be for a young man seated before a family and the family thinking We never saw […]
Joanna, my elder daughter, is engaged to be married
August 15, 2012: Today, my elder daughter Joanna Marie Solkoff became engaged to be married to Jade Kosmos Phillips.
Navigating
This site has two central locations:
I. THEME: No shelter from the storm
II. DIGRESSIONS (not related directly to the theme; my daughters Joanna and Amelia [ “You regard your family as a diversion?), stories, career, and whimsy.
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Navigating NO SHELTER FROM THE STORM
Where do I want to go?
To a neighborhood which must be developed: A global model of independent living for elderly and disabled individuals consisting of:
a) An experimental residence for an individual or a family. For example, Blueroof’s Experimental Cottage in McKeesport, PA–a one story residence on inexpensive land in a burned out section of a Rust Belt town where a community could be developed.
b) Low-cost factory housing (mobile home) residences where sensors and other off-the-shelf technology are embedded in the walls.
c) Technology includes: +Security system. +Motion detectors to monitor falls, especially high risk areas such as the shower.+Computer voice simulation combined with wireless communications so the walls of the building call family or emergency services for help.
d) Research facility at a major university, e.g. Penn State’s Immersive Construction (ICon) lab where a virtual reality (animated 3-D) model of the real experimental residence helps prospective residents, the architectural, engineering, and construction community, caregivers, et al. change design before additional construction takes place.
e) An inter-generational accessible community.
Random Thoughts: January 30, 2013
Time for more random updates and personal revelations out of date to everyone but me January 30, 2013: Someone stole Goya’s head. (The fact that his happened in the 19th Century is irrelevant.) “On a November morning of 1888 in the cemetery of the Grande Chartreuse, Bordeaux, the Spanish counsel resident in that opulent city […]
Countdown over: Amelia’s graduation ceremony was very wet; may end with my joining the Smyth County Moose Lodge
Asheville CITIZEN-TIMES previews the graduation ceremonies that have now taken place: “ASHEVILLE — Former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles will speak at UNC Asheville’s graduation ceremony in May. “Bowles served as President Clinton’s top assistant and was tapped by President Barack Obama to tackle the nation’s budget woes. He also spent five years as […]
Poem: Difficult
In Africa, lion after lion fell before the Colonel’s artillery. Rhinos, hippos, antelopes, wildebeests, and all manner of game were struck down, helpless as Democrats. When a skeptical George Creel asked one of Theodore Roosevelt’s guides how the former President, “blind in one eye, and myopic in the other,” could hit any of the animals […]