Sequoia Hills Stables

My wife Jenny and her sister Marily are in process of opening a horse facility on Marily's place in Elderwood (a 200 person 'suburb' of Woodlake, CA).   This, all in, is a 20+ acre facility, with mare motel, riding arenas, hot-walkers, a vet hospital facility, and innumerable pastures, paddocks, and other parapherrnalia that horses like or require.  I'll post the website when it goes 'live' next month

Where it sits is at 600 foot elevation (the sea rise with global warming won't affect it) twenty miles northeast of Visalia, at the fork in the road for the main entrances to two spectacular National Parks, Sequoia and Kings Canyon.

Address = 37997 Millwood Road, Woodlake, CA 93286.  

Here's a picture of the back pastures, showing the High Sierra Kaweah range (13,000+ foot peaks, just west of Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48 states.)

ISI access and topics

Okay, shoulda mentioned how to find the ISI blog.   Type  Innovascapes.blogspot.com  and you'll find it.  I think....

What you might also find is "why", stated something about like this:

InnovaScapes is a contraction of "Innovative Landscapes" and a play on the idea of Innovation Ecosystems.  I think of innovation much more often as a local and specific set of activities than a broad sweep on the historic pantheon, and "landscape" captures that mood and perspective better than the all-embracing "ecosystem". 

ISI has several topics underway at the moment, some with commercial sponsorship, and some with a personal vector.  We'll have some active discussion, and some stimulating debate.  Topics might include the wonders of location-sensitve devices (your smart phone, tablet, and camera) which help you with social media, but give both authorities and 'bad guys' the chance to find and finger you. 

Or the idea that our emerging medical instrumentation for gene tracking and molecular measurement can help change the AMA (American Medical Association) fiction that COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) is 85-90% caused by smoking, when in fact smoking has been on the decline in America for three decades, and COPD is on the rise, now the third leading killer in America, higher than strokes or auto accidents -- and virtually no research into its true causes or treatments.

Similarly, the rise of the InterNet, while fueled by Tim Berners-Lee and his URL work at CERN, the brilliant TCP/IP work of Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, Len Kleinrock, et al fifty years ago, and of course Netscape with Marc Andreasson (now on the HP Board, right?), was really installed and made nearly ubiquitous by much more prosaic work in the trenches (or would it be in the Hubs and Routers and glass fiber in the ground).  We will examine how the trench warfare unfolded, which elements mattered the most, and why and how they got done.

Why are these things important?  Who will care?  Can we in fact provide some useful service?  Time will tell, but I for one am as excited as I've been with any project I've ever undertaken.  Here's an invitation to ome along and join in....

Long time NO HEAR, or is it NO HERE

Well, somehow I got locked out of this blog by misunderstanding how gmail accounts shift around.  Haven't got it solved but I can get into this now to post.

The exciting news in the intervening 2 and 1/2 years could be summarized as --- "whoops, whew, WOW, whoops, WHEW, and Oh boy, here we go again"

I had a great five year run at Stanford, running the Media X program, leaving in July 2011 to become Chancellor of Cogswell College.  After getting an honorary PhD there in May 2012, and getting the school up from 130 full-time to 380 full-time students thjis term -- which got the school from desperate funding difficulty to 'break-even', I resigned from Cogswell to launch the InnovaScapes Institute ISI).

ISI will focus primarily on issues of technology and society, hopefully in general from a public stance, although I'll be seeking corporate and grant funding for much of our work.

Family-wise, lots to catch up on also.  The biggest news probably is that two of our grandchildren, Madi Hyde and Orin Orlopp, have entered college this year.  Madi, a lifetime Minnesotan, is enjoying a warmer winter in Portland, at Lewis and Clark College.  Orin, born in NJ, living in CO and AR, has selected a small liberal arts college, Lyons, in AR, about three hours drive from home in Bentonville.

Jenny and I are healthy (knock on wood), and eagerly anticipating more challenge and excitement in 2013.  All the best to you all

A sad loss in our family

My first cousin, Chris Coates, 61, passed away recently after boating in the Seattle area with his whole family -- wife Mary, two sons and a daughter, and two three year old grand-daughters. He suffered an aortic aneurism on the lake, was able to get to ER and a very lengthy surgery which they thought was successful. Early the next morning, he suffered a fatal heart attack while in the recovery room.

The services last weekend were solemn, but enabled family (as always) to come together again. Chris was working at Boeing, on the Dreamliner, and the story from his colleagues at the service was that he was always a quiet, reserved engineer who never spoke out unless he was really concerned about something. And then, they said, he could be counted on to raise the question that everyone else would duck.

The big one on the Dreamliner was that he raised the flag about the stresses on fiber strands in the composite material joining the fuselage to the wings -- this was seen as a heresy statement, but it also stopped the forward progress until checked. Upon checking, it turned out to be true, and the plane was delayed for a year -- but hopefully the wings will stay attached for planes they put in service. I'm voting for him and his conscience -- it is pretty tough to fly these big birds without wings. The Lockheed Electra tried that in 1959 and 1960 with disastrous results. Chris' dad, Tom Coates, led the design team that did the latch on the cargo door of the Boeing 747 that blew off over Hawaii; that plane landed safely, unbelievably. Airplanes run 'in the family'; my daughter-in-law, Laura, works in the same building that Chris was in; she is on the Avionics side of the Dreamliner team.

So, those who think my Medal of Defiance was accidental haven't gotten to know the family. Chris's brother Tom, co-founder of Trimble Navigation, also has pedigree in this "emperor has no clothes" perspective. We all got it from ancestors, including William Coat(e)s who made the history books in Stonington, CT in about 1725 as indigent, without food or heat during an awesomely cold winter, but he was too proud and refused help from the community.

Jacques Henno, Alderman from Valenciennes France got the bailiff's daughter, Mme. Pesquier, pregnant in the neighboring town of Mons, Belgium around 1500 A.D. His grandson and namesake Jacques de Hennot (himself Alderman of Valenciennes), sided with Guy de Bres, the fiery Huguenot preacher executed by the French King Louis XIV in 1567. Hennot was captured twice, escaped both times, and under threat of death from both the King of France and the Duke of Alba in Italy, fled to England.

Hennot's 7th generation grandson, Abner Enos, born in New York, was living at age 26 in Indiana when gold was found in California. Off he went, a story told in "Across the Plains in 1950" which is on file in Salt Lake City Mormon archives. He intervened to save two men from hanging in "Hangtown" (now Placerville, CA), a move he wryly notes 'could have cost me my life'. That was but one of many harrowing tales in his saga. We think Chris Coates just was "one of the family"

Facts are, we lost a good man...

Family news

Well, as the Easter blog said, Meredith would have a baby join the twin girls in August -- she did, and Molly (short for Margaret) has joined her sisters Lizzie and Katie. Lizzie (Elizabeth) is pretty sure that this is not really a good idea; Katie (Katherine, I think) is much more receptive at this point. We have several Margarets -- Peggy Finn Semling is a Margaret, Meg Dowley is a Margaret -- but none called Molly. WELCOME, MOLLY! Molly is an August 25 b'day, following Grandma Martha's on the 19th, along with my Sharon and Shannon. Hard to imagine that Grandma Martha has now joined the SEPTUAGENARIAN club (sounds almost phallic, doesn't it); my mother was a Grandma at forty since I was so precocious (or was it just lusty???). Not sure whether it's better at one age or another, but it is great regardless.

We have been trolling for NEW NEWS of oven baking, but at the moment we have no info around the loop. We can definitely say that we're not expecting anything but a new puppy.

The other NEW NEWS though is also terrific -- CINDY and the BOYS (as in our twins, Jack and Sam, and their dad Charlie and stepson Chris) have all moved to Piedmont, next to Berkeley. They are getting settled -- the boys start school next week, and the home is a wonderful old Tudor on a quiet street. We are SO THRILLED to have them closer, lots closer. We went over for a weekend, had a great walk around the neighborhood and down for dinner in the quaint little town area. She's already involved at Berkeley, taking the boys to the Lawrence Hall of Science; Jenny thinks that is spectacular.

Love, Chuck

transition

The day before my birthday, we had a very hard loss. Our two dogs, Zoe and Sadie, were romping and running all over our newly planted back garden, chasing squirrels and each other. And then, they weren't. This was sometime around 4pm, Jenny was home, but didn't think much about it for a while, and then she missed Zoe.

Thinking she'd gotten out, Jenny searched all over for her, but the sad discovery was that she had dropped in a corner of the yard, looking almost like she'd been running at full speed (legs akimbo) and just collapsed. Whatever, she was gone, and Sadie was distraught... in fact, we all were, as it sunk in. Heart attack? Don't know. She was but six, and it was indeed a tough six years -- she'd had surgery on both front elbows at six months, major cancer surgery and radiation two years ago, and routinely got sick from dissecting miscreant squirrels she managed to catch in the pasture. But she loved life, and she gave it everything she had in terms of enthusiasm and passion. Not unlike Jenny and me???

I couldn't write about it for awhile, and someone asked from the last posting, "one dog?", so I thought I should explain. Anyway, she was the greatest sister and littermate for Sadie. Sadie just moped around for two weeks, maybe three, and now she's got a little more spring in her walk, thankfully. But GUESS WHAT -- we all do, although Sadie doesn't know quite how good it will be, and she might not even recognize it when it happens, at first. WHAT? you might ask. Well, of course! The puppy was born last Sunday, and we pick her (or maybe him) out of the litter in early October, and she comes home later that month. This will be our seventh purebred Black Lab -- are we traditional or what? Works better to have two at a time (three is one too many, we also know)

Charger was my first Lab; he welcomed Jenny as a nearly blind, deaf but very lovable old dog of twelve who lived two more years, about as long as Labs go. We then got two seven week old puppies, Blarney and Murphy. Murphy died of a heart attack or seizure at 18 months, and Kringle replaced him (Blarney thought a little puppy was the dumbest thing we could do). When Blarney died at thirteen, we brought a rescue dog, Molly, home. Molly was a wonderfully smart dog, half yellow Lab and half Chow; unfortunately her Chow tendencies were hard to train out of her, so eventually this was a painful situation for all of us.
When Kringle died at thirteen of cancer, we brought two new pups -- Zoe and Sadie -- home at a time my parents were living with us in a three bedroom rancher in Summerland near Las Vegas (and they were not exactly dog people, whew, INDEED). Molly helped raise them, and they turned into the most wonderful Labs, affectionate and loving but also with a good bark for strangers that doesn't bother Jenny late at night at all.

Sorry for the reminisces; our dogs are really our children at this phase of our lives. Wonderful companions, loyal beyond belief, and loving always. Love to you all, Chuck

The Garden up closer

Couldn't resist one more picture, this one of the steps to the 'back forty' for which the path is barely visible at the top of the pix. This path and the retaining wall, and the plantings were all a few days in place before the party. Jenny plans things this way -- to get me to 'perform'.