|| default || § ¶Creeley
Robert Creeley passed away this morning at his home in Odessa, Texas. He was 79.The Way
Somewhere in all the time that's passed
was a thing in mind became the evidence,
the pleasure even in fact of being lost
so quickly, simply that what it was could never last.
Only knowing was measure of what one could
make hold together for that moment's recognition,
or else the world washed over like a flood
of meager useless truths, of hostile incoherence.
Too late to know that knowing was its own reward
and that wisdom had at best a transient credit.
Whatever one did or didn't do was what one could.
Better at last believe than think to question?
There wasn't choice if one had seen the light,
not of belief but of that soft, blue-glowing fusion
seemed to appear or disappear with thought,
a minute magnesium flash, a firefly's illusion.
Best wonder at mind and let that flickering ambience
of wondering be the determining way you follow,
which leads itself from day to day into tomorrow,
finds all it ever finds is there by chance.
from If I Were Writing This
|| default || § ¶Apropos, Courant Institute, 1965
In today's New York Times there is an article about Peter Lax, who just won the prestigous Abel award, equivalent to the Nobel prize, in Mathematics. Prof Lax was one of those great mathematicians I came into contact with when I worked at the Courant Institute, as described in the item below .|| default || § ¶Forty Years Ago... is a long time
While in bed the past weeks with the flu, I had a lot of time to ruminate on the progress of my life so far. (Don't worry, I'm not dying. But it WAS a horrible flu... still lingering.) And then I realized that this Spring (2005) will be the 40th anniversary of my first real job.In June, 1965, I started my first full-time job as a computer programmer. I was 21, with a B.S. in Math from Brooklyn Poly. Oddly enough, when I graduated Poly in '64, I had no idea what I was going to do. I was not a great student, and knew right off I'd never make a great mathematician. And I didn't play poker, a sign that my career in math would be limited. But along the way as an undergrad I had part-time jobs in the Brooklyn Poly computer center (IBM 650/7044)and learned Fortran and assembly language programming. I even got a teaching fellowship after graduation, the first the Poly computer center ever issued. I taught a course on programming, while at the same time taking Max Goldstein and Jack Schwartz's Principles of Computation course across the river at the NYU Courant Institute.
This turned out to be a fortunate thing. Because after finishing Max's course in the Spring of '65 (I got an A with a term project simulating a Turing machine using a macro language for the IBM 7044), I informally asked Max for a job at NYU. Max was director of the Courant Institute computer center, then run by the Atomic Energy Commission. And I knew they were about to replace their IBM 7094 systems with a "supercomputer" - the CDC 6600. There is more to read...
|| default || § ¶The Grand-Twins are 4 Months Old.
Click on the picture to see some recent pictures of Katrina and Marcel.
|| default || § ¶Out Sick
Flu got me.In bed since Wednesday.
It's been awful.
But starting to feel normal.
Had to cancel everything, put everything else on hold.
Very humbling experience.