PASSIONS
My passion is not limited to science and space exploration - it is grounded in my family and encompasses a love for a little corner of Maine, for music, and for science fiction movies.
Family
My first passion is my family - my wife Roseann, son Garret and his wife Amanda. They are my rock. Without them I wouldn’t be who I am. One of the things we loved to do in winter was snow skiing. In summer we always wanted to be near water.
Maine
In 1945, when I was 3 years old, my father bought an old frame camp on Kezar Lake, a beautiful pristine lake in Lovell, Maine bordering the White Mountains of Maine and New Hampshire. I spent every summer thereafter at the lake until I left for college. Those youthful lakeside summers were fabulous - a terrific way to grow up with the kids in neighboring camps pretty much our own age. I grew to think of Lovell and Kezar Lake as hallowed ground and have since replaced the old camp with a 4-season home for my own family. It is where my wife and I live during the warmer months of the year and enjoy the company of close friends in the area. I’m involved now with the Town and volunteer organizations to preserve the local environment and keep it free from invasive species.
Music
Music is my intoxicant. I like almost all varieties of music including the blues, dixieland, ragtime, rock & roll (especially the 50s thru the 70s), and classical music. My favorite classical composers include Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, most 19th Century romantic composers, and Shostakovich in the 20th. But at the top is Mozart. I maintain a large collection of CDs with the works of many composers including all the works of Mozart.
Sci-Fi Films
I am a collector of classic science fiction films, particularly those of the 1950s when the genre was in its infancy and I was a teenager. Until CGI transformed science fiction films, those of the 1950s remained among the most creative for technical innovation and as classic film literature. Science fiction films of the 1950s are a window into the culture of those most delectable times, and they are a delight to revisit for someone who grew up in that era. While the 1950s produced some of the best science fiction films ever made, this era also produced some of the worst films ever—those awful B-grade, drive-in theater science fiction movies that with the right viewing attitude can be amusing. While I don’t have a copy of every sci-fi movie ever made available on DVD, it is pretty close - both the good, the bad and the awful.
My list of the dozen best science fiction films of the 1950s in chronological order:
1950 Destination Moon
1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still
1951 The Thing from Another World
1951 When Worlds Collide
1953 It Came from Outer Space
1953 War of the Worlds
1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
1955 This Island Earth
1956 Forbidden Planet
1956 Earth vs the Flying Saucers
1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers
1957 The Incredible Shrinking Man
While the sci-fi movies of the 50s take me back to my youthful fascination with space and science, I’ve remained an avid fan of the genre. The movie “2001” transformed the genre in 1968 with its eye-popping CGI and existential plot. “Alien” then followed in 1979, one of the best sci-fi movies ever made, adding novel ideas of extraterrestrial biology and a new level of visceral terror to the genre. A whole series of “Alien” films followed and the story line continues even today with new films such as “Prometheus”. The first three Star Wars movies of the same era were more family-oriented adventure films rated for young fans and embraced by a larger public. I still revel in a good science fiction movie and look for the best each year.
Computer Simulations
For a brief time between 1978 and 1985 I harbored a fascination for home computers, beginning with the Apple II. I was blown away by what that little computer could do after having used a large mainframe during my graduate school years. I quickly realized that the Apple II was fully capable of illustrating how we navigated to the planets and created a simulation called “Saturn Navigator” in which the player could navigate his spacecraft from Earth to Saturn, decelerate to orbit outside the rings, and then avoiding the rings to navigate to an orbit between the planet and rings. It was published by subLogic. Next I created a simulation called “Rendezvous: A Space Shuttle Flight Simulator” in which the player could launch the Space Shuttle and control thrust and attitude put the Shuttle in Earth orbit. It was published by Edu-Ware.
My final simulation, “Wilderness: A Survival Adventure”, was a large project in collaboration with JPL engineer and mission designer Charles Kohlhase. It was a simulation of being lost in the Sierra Nevada mountains and having to walk out to a remote Ranger station. It was a very complex program and encoded expert information from wilderness and medical experts on what to pack, how to navigate in the wilderness, how to deal with weather, terrain and wild animals, how to find food and water, how to construct shelter, and how to deal with medical problems such as dehydration, malnutrition, and physical injury. A detailed wilderness survival manual was provided in the package. At its release, Wilderness was a truly professional simulation running on Apple II and IBM personal computers. The graphics were state of the art at the time. Speed, complexity and memory requirements dictated programming it in 6502 assembly for the Apple II including a custom, stripped-down, faster disk operating system. It was programmed in C for the IBM personal computer. Wilderness was published by Electric Transit and won “Adventure Game of the Year” in 1983.