Bennet Brabson
Email: brabson@indiana.edu
URL: http://physics.indiania.edu/brabson
Address: 200 Crandall Ct, Bloomington, IN 47401
Phone: (812) 332-6507

Dear Carletonians, I will be retiring from teaching at Indiana University. I am delighted to find that I have time to teach my favorite courses in Environmental Physics and to continue a research program in the Physics of Climate and Climate Change. I’d encourage all physicists to consider applying your enormous capabilities to this exciting field.

Boyce Burdick

Since I retired three years ago, I have been doing more business traveling and working part time than I ever did when working full time. I just got back from two weeks in Germany and will return there the beginning of December for another two weeks. I will also make a side trip to Paris for a meeting on numerical methods in transport theory.

The biggest change in our life this year is that we now have an 11-year-old grandson living with us. He is a fairly good athlete having made the Little League 10 year old all-star team. Fortunately for us, his team didn't make it past the regional playoffs. His Grid Kids football team lost their second playoff game and thus missed the local Super Bowl game. Now it's basketball season and he will be playing on his grade school's fifth grade team.

I hope to see my former physics majors at our 45th class reunion in June.

Sig Jaastad
Email: sjaastad@buenavistaco.com
Address: 19605 CR 343
Buena Vista, CO 81211
Phone: (719) 395-4849

Politics, local, state, and national has absorbed much of my time since last year. As a precinct co-captain and member of the Chaffee County Democratic Central Committee and member of the Chaffee County Planning and Zoning Commission, I spend a couple of hours each day at these duties.

Beyond that, there is the ever-present piano on which I continue to hammer hoping for music at some time in the future. My teacher is a woman of great patience. Rustic furniture building still takes some of my time and I hope to increase my activities with a portable Alaska chain saw mill that will allow me to mill my own lumber from standing dead timber around our place.
Sandee continues to gain distinction and recognition with her original weaving and knitting designs. She now has three grandchildren, one in Jerusalem and two in Philadelphia.

We continue with our fly-fishing though most fish remain well beyond danger.

We still love our solitude in the mountains though it's being invaded by new homes soon to rise around us.

As trains are our favorite form of travel and an exciting pastime, we ventured by rail from Denver to San Francisco and returned home from San Diego to Denver last spring all the while planning our next train trip.

Greetings, good health, and peace to all.

Stephen Johnson
Email: prairie@ev1.net
Address: 1802 Blue Sage Dr, Katy, TX 77494
Phone: (281) 395-5068

My second year of retirement just ended with me back to work. After 12 months of non-geophysical activities I am consulting as a depth imager. My first contract was at BP, my former employer and currently at KTI, a seismic processing company. I am paid for this, so don't let on that I would probably do it for free. I am having a good time—even with deadlines.

We have visited family and offspring in Vermont, Oregon and California and spent 2 days in Newport in full sunlight (rare for the Oregon coast). I did my usual home repair volunteering for 6 Saturdays and even volunteered to do some repairs around my own house. I ran for president of the Geophysical Society of Houston, but came in second. It was an honor to be asked to run. I am still active in Toastmasters and after 60+ speeches I am starting the program over again to keep in practice.

Bruce Murdoch
Address: 16401 Grandwood Lake Ct.
Crest Hill, IL 60435
Phone: (815) 744-0354

Our big event this year was a move of domicile. Carol and I transplanted ourselves to a new house in a Del-Webb style "55+" adult community in the Chicago suburbs. We love it so far. About half the residents are retired, the other half are empty nesters looking for a change in life style. There are lots of activities, clubs, and social interactions.

I am continuing as an Industrial Hygienist/Health Physicist and the site Laser Safety Officer at Argonne National Laboratory. This is a great job for me, involving daily interaction with the scientists, managers, and other employees. And it does become technically challenging from time to time.

Outside of work, I continue to enjoying participating in Toastmasters, presently working on my Advanced Toastmaster Silver Award, for which I must give a speech in a couple of weeks (better get to work on it). Also, practicing piano just about every day for the last several years has brought me somewhere in the range of "Intermediate".

Carol and I attended the AARP national convention in Las Vegas in October, finding it fun and stimulating. I guess we are evolving into the silver-haired generation.

Greetings to Bob Reitz, the remaining faculty member from my naïve days on campus.

David Current
Email: current@phy.cmich.edu
Address: 3215 East High Street, Mount Pleasant, MI 48858
Phone: (989) 772-0526 (home)

Greetings to Carleton Physics majors everywhere from Mt. Pleasant Michigan. I'm into my 39th year in the physics department at Central Michigan University, and it's been a few years since I got off a reply to this annual phenom. It gets longer and longer every year.

In addition to some service courses and our Math Methods course, I have been teaching our advanced lab for quite a few years. A few years back we bought a HPGe detector and I have been learning some of the aspects of quantitative gamma spectroscopy such as efficiency calibrations and various types of corrections such as for sample self absorption and for cascade summing. I've been assembling a series of experiments on samples that we activate in our AmBe neutron source. The experiments measure gamma branching ratios and the probability of various beta channels. Students can compare their results with published data, and we are getting better and better results as we understand more about what is going on. It's about time to write some of it up and send it off to AJP.

Alan Fiala
Email: fialaalan at earthlink.net

I attended reunion this year and enjoyed a pleasant long weekend in unseasonably cool weather. The Observatory open house drew a huge crowd, even though the sky did not clear until sundown around 10:15. It was somewhat of a shock to see the old classroom now full of computers. I stood in a long line to get a somewhat precarious glimpse through the 8-inch, a reminder of the good old nights when I observed for hours on my own. The 16-inch, though, seemed to be suffering from inability of the volunteers to figure out how to work it, so I gave up after waiting about 45 minutes.

The physical plant of the campus has changed after 40 years, reflecting changes in student life. My class stayed in the townhouses and marveled at the amenities. Handicapped access is now fairly well implemented all around, but unfortunately, light pollution control is not. This seems somewhat strange for an institution and student body patting themselves on the back for being "green" and environmentally friendly.

I am still trying to work on some astronomy projects, but astronomy has basically taken a back seat to a hobby that is taking over much of my life—beekeeping. I'm now 1st Vice President of the Virginia State Beekeepers Association, and attend assorted meetings of beekeepers a couple of times a month on average. I have four colonies in my back yard, and have begun selling my small surplus crop at a farmers' market a few times during the summers.

I try to keep myself in some sort of shape through yoga and supervised exercise programs. My other hobbies include genealogy and still occasional dabbling in amateur sports car racing as an official.

Diane McCarthy (Wallingford)
Email: dennis_mccart57@hotmail.com
Address: 2432 Riviera Drive, Vienna, VA 22181
Phone: (703) 938-4096

The big adventure this year was to be in Much Hoole, England, on June 8 to observe the transit of Venus where Jeremiah Horrocks observed it in 1639. There were only a few clouds. Dennis had been invited to speak at a conference in honor of the event. We returned in time for my 40th Carleton reunion, but I got some 24-hour bug. We arrived late Friday night and had to leave early on Sunday for a trip to South Dakota, didn’t have time to see everyone. We had no damage from the hurricanes that made it to Virginia this year.

Since June 2001, when Dennis fell from our ladder and broke his right heel on our cement patio, he has improved steadily by doing special exercises daily. He is in his 39th year at the U. S. Naval Observatory and has set January 3, 2005, as his retirement date. He will continue to work there on an emeritus basis, part time.

Duncan (35) is in his eleventh year with NGA (National Geospatial-intelligence Agency, formerly the National Imagery and Mapping Agency). He currently manages R&D contracts. He continues to date, but remains unmarried.
Deidre (31) will soon complete eight years at the National Park Service. Her multiple sclerosis, diagnosed in May 2000, has been troublesome since April. Steroids required then for numbness and tingling led to insomnia. Sleeping medications and even the aid of a psychiatrist didn’t produce results. A sleep clinic has her on the right track now, but new leg weakness has required more steroids (November 2003). She and Martin Mikhail, her boyfriend of 12 years, as well as Duncan, live nearby.

I continue to maintain the home front and teach ballroom dancing for the county park authority. I had successful carpal tunnel surgery on my left hand in March. (The right hand was done in May 2003.) I also do church and volunteer work and still take a ballet-modern jazz class for exercise. In August I got certified as an open water scuba diver. I’ve dived several times before as a limited “resort” diver, but now we will have an opportunity to dive in Tahiti before joining a cruise to view the total solar eclipse in the Pacific in April 2005.

We are quite unhappy to be facing four more years with President Bush.

Bill Sipfle
Email: sipfle@aol.com
Address: 811 Palmer Rd., Ashland OR 97520
Phone: (531) 482-2933

I am still enjoying retirement (from Bell Labs 14 years ago) in Ashland, Oregon, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and beautiful mountains. My wife Kathryn helps support us with a new tenure track position in the library, as chief cataloger, of Southern Oregon University just a few blocks away. I mostly play, including tennis, bicycling, hiking and duplicate bridge. I had a scare last spring when my cancer diagnosis of 19 years ago finally got ugly. But I seemed to have survived and even feel well with a return to normal activity. Although not fully recovered at the time, I was able to enjoy our 40th reunion in June and once again enjoy seeing classmate Paul Zitzewitz and wife Barbara, as well as countless others. If you've never been to a reunion, please consider it—they are wonderful.

Paul Zitzewitz

Holiday greetings, Barb and I enjoyed spending time at my 40th reunion this past June. It was great to see such a large group of classmates. It was on that trip that she felt chest pains and the day we got back she went to the hospital and ended up with an angioplasty and a stint. We've been practicing healthy eating ever since and she's been faithfully attending a cardiac care exercise clinic at the University of Michigan Hospital. She's feeling much better and has lost some weight (as have I). Heart problems announce themselves in very different ways in women and men.

Our son Eric and his wife Christine had twins this past March. We spent time in New York with them after Zach and Zoe were born, and they were able to visit us on their way back to Palo Alto in July. We'll be seeing them in Arizona and California over Christmas. Our daughter Karin and Sean Pue will be married next Memorial Day here in Michigan. They're both finishing their Ph.D.s at Columbia (in anthropology and middle-eastern literature) and are in the job market.

The 2005 edition of my high school textbook, the seventh I've worked on, was published this year. I had been the only author since 1990, but this time McGraw-Hill employed a team approach, and I worked on keeping a consistent style. I spent a week in San Diego this summer at a workshop learning the Physics for Elementary Teachers project developed by Fred Goldberg. I'm using it in my courses for future elementary teachers. Barb continues to work for ProQuest on web-based course packs.
Best wishes to everyone.

Barbara (Goss) Levi

Although I officially retired from Physics Today last January, I continue to contribute a news story about every other month as a consulting editor. Last spring, I had the fun of being a “Journalist in Residence” at UCSB’s Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics.

I’m now a “grandma” three times over and enjoy spending time with the little ones. My husband and I continue to take hiking and biking trips. Greetings to all.

Richard Karon
Email: karon2@cox.net
Address: 140 America Way, Jamestown, RI 02835 2004 was exciting, challenging and rewarding for me as Manager of Technology Investments for Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems Business. Building on the work from 2003, I matured and grew the technology Roadmap process into primarily top-down planning linked to our Strategic Business plan. As part of this process, I developed an R&D "proposal" template that mimics our process for pursuing new programs, thus incorporating more business justification to assure that our investments are tied to our business strategy. The challenge still is to show the business impact if we don't perform a project; and to determine, "how much do we need to invest?"

This year I stepped up to be President of our local chapter of Toastmasters International. We earned the "President's Distinguished Club" recognition by achieving 9 of 10 possible club health points in advancement, training, etc. I continued to practice my speaking skills, and earned the second [Silver] Advanced TM certificate. I also completed a High Performance Leader project. This project developed an approach for using Toastmasters as an employee development tool across our Business. I'd be happy to share the results with anyone whose organization is interested in a cost-effective tool to improve their efficiency thru better communications.

Excellent communications skills and decades of proposal writing can really pay off. This summer, I nominated the Raytheon Center where I work for "Employer of the year" to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society [RI chapter]. This is to recognize special efforts on the part of the company for employees with MS and other disabilities. I've become active in fund raising and education for MS due to a close family involvement with this difficult disease. We have a fairly high incidence of MS in Raytheon's RI employees and families. I recruited a few coworkers to support the nomination. We were selected for the RI award, and then selected for the National award among the 60 MS chapters in the US. It's great to work for a people-oriented company.

Linda and I have become long distance grandparents. Both of our kids and their families have moved to Portland, OR. We miss being with them during the long periods between our visits. Such is life in our mobile society.

Happy and healthy 2005 to all.

Maurice Hamilton
Email: mauricehamilton@att.net
URL: www.mauricehamilton.com
Address: PO Box 3006, Los Altos, CA 94024

I continue to practice rheumatology part-time at Kaiser, but also spend a significant amount of time pursuing photography and the digital darkroom. My first photography book, "The Digital Darkroom Guide with Adobe Photoshop," was published earlier this year, and I have just completed the sequel, which describes black-and-white digital techniques.

After completing her MBA, Vivien studied sleep medicine at Stanford and has now transitioned from neurology to sleep medicine as the medical director of a sleep laboratory in Cupertino. As a consequence of her new position, we have relocated to Los Altos. This area has always been special to me, perhaps because my first exposure to life beyond Carleton was at Stanford. In any event, we are happy to be living minutes from campus.

I would be glad to hear from fellow physics alums. Best wishes for the Holidays and the coming year.

Duncan McBride
Email: dmcbride@NSF.gov
Address: 4608 Tara Dr, Fairfax, VA 22032
Phone: (703) 292-4630 (office)

I continue to work as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation, where I handle physics and astronomy proposals for undergraduate labs and courses, and work in several other programs that don't involve physics. The work keeps me in touch with people all over the US who have good ideas and want NSF support to carry them out. It's interesting work, although the volume can be overwhelming at times. I did receive one notable honor this year: I was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society, after nomination by the APS Forum on Education, for leadership at the national level in improving physics education for undergraduates.

Outside of work I continue to sing in a good regional chorus that performs 5-6 different concerts a year. This year we are the chorus for two of the National Symphony Orchestra pops concerts, including four performances of a Christmas concert in early December. Working with a professional orchestra is demanding but fun, and the Kennedy Center Concert Hall is an awesome place to sing.

After teaching at the National Zoo a few years, Ann has returned to the preschool where she taught previously. In June our daughter Alicia (Carleton 2000) completed a master's degree in Technical Communications in the School of Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle, went with her group to give presentations at conferences in Sweden and the Netherlands, and returned to the Washington, DC area. She is now Webmaster and Director for Electronic Communications at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Quaker lobby in DC. She is engaged to be married in June 2005. Our son, Justin, is living with us and working while he explores what to do next.

It was nice to meet Kris Wedding in early November at the Workshop for New Physics and Astronomy Faculty operated by APS, AAPT, AAS, and AIP and supported by an NSF grant for which I am Program Officer.

I look forward to more news from Carleton and from everyone else. Christmas Greetings to all.

John Brabson
Address: 169 Big Horn Ridge Dr. NE
Albuquerque, NM 87122
Phone: (505) 856-6916

Greetings from sunny New Mexico (cabin fever sets in after two days of clouds here.) This year was certainly boosted when I received notice from the U.S. Patent Office that my patent application (Sensor Data Analysis Using State Machines) had been awarded a patent! This software can find either expected patterns (how many rods were moved to the pool last year?) or unexpected patterns (who moved the crane when no fuel movement was on going?)

Chris Riddiough
Email: criddiough@igc.org

I'm working for SAS (the statistical software company not the airline or the shoes) as a technical trainer. I teach programming and statistics and, with the latter especially, I try to bring in my astronomy examples. We discuss the method of the least squares so I talk about Legendre and Hubble and othersæwhile it's still a way from my days in the astronomy dept, it lets me keep my hand in a little bit.
I'm still living in Washington D.C. (where I've been for the last 20 or so years) with my partner, Judy Nedrow. We've got two cats and many nieces and nephews who keep us busy. In my spare time I'm the treasurer of Americans for Democratic Action.

Barbara Whitten
Email: BWhitten@ColoradoCollege.edu

Hello to everyone at Carleton! This has been a busy year, but a very satisfying one. I've traveled a lot, giving talks about my site visit project, What Works for Women in Undergraduate Physics? A highlight was a trip to Carleton last spring to participate in the seminar series on the occasion of Rich Noer's retirement. It was a real pleasure to honor Rich, and I enjoy seeing everyone at Carleton. Thanks so much for including me.

This fall has been just as busy, because I am doing another round of site visits, this time to physics departments in women's colleges. I love to travel, but am beginning to look forward to staying home and teaching in the spring.

On the home front, Jake graduated from high school and started college at University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, a psych major, if you can imagine. So I'd have an empty nest, only Penelope is home for a year to regroup. I did sell my big "family" house in Monument, and have moved to a smaller house just 12 blocks from campus. After 15 years of commuting, I really love walking to school.
Happy Solstice to all,

Jim Eddy
Email: feefers@fast.net
Address: 3820 Leah Drive, Emmaus, PA 18049

Greetings from Far Demographia. It has been a decade or two since my last report so there are a number of news items worthy of a report. I had two whacks at sending my children to Carleton, but came up short on both of them. My daughter Nicole is the brain in our family and I am quite sure that she would have thrived there. We made two trips from our home in Allentown Pennsylvania to visit the Carleton campus during the summer and each time it was more beautiful than the previous year. The new library, the new science buildings, the new arts building, Sayles Hill, the new student union. The student guides were as good or better than any other college we visited. She applied. She was accepted. Thank you, thank you. She chose Smith, a women’s college. I had not the standing to even discuss the matter with her. She thrived at Smith.

I had a second try with my son Matt. We trooped back to Carleton two more times. Matt aspires to be a basketball player. Carleton added a gorgeous athletic center. The campus was even more beautiful. The student guides were even more charming. Matt is not the scholar his sister is, but he does have other gifts that he seems to do very well with. He applied. He was accepted. Thank you, thank you. He chose ... Macalester. Yikes. I whiffed again. We only visited Macalester at the insistence of his mother. I think she has it in for Carleton. Bummer. Matt is thriving at Macalester. Maybe the children know what they need more than their father does ... Naaah!

I mentioned that Matt has aspirations to be a basketball player. He is a little taller than 6'3" and has had a long career in the sport since the age of 8. He was on the JV team at Mac last year. To members of the Carleton community who are into trivia: look for an Eddy on the Macalester roster. This year he went out for the football team. This is the first time that he has played football since he was a 105 pounder. But Macalester has a famously bad football team so he figured he might get to play. They made him a tight end and put him on some special teams. He traveled with the team to play Carleton a week or so ago and they got clobbered. I forget the score but I think Carleton got more than 50 points. He told me a tale about Schiller and a helicopter and a 5 or 10-minute delay in the game. He called it the biggest taunt in the history of sports. I tried to explain to him that Schiller's entrance had nothing to do with Macalester or the score in the game, or anything else, but it was as big a part of Carleton tradition as Rotblatt, but he was not buying it. Sadly, I now believe my wife and son both have it in for Carleton.
But not me, I am not daunted. I hope for redemption with grandchildren. If they are willing to listen to a dottering old fool with very fond memories,