Archive | September, 2013

Google_blue_sky

Punishing sun and relentless regulations

The sun in Mountain View can be relentless. Although there were several overcast hours, the vast majority of the time the sky was a cloudless azure blue. The air was so dry I could feel the UV rays burning my skin. I have a college reunion coming up in ten days. One of my classmates […]

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Lius_Ba_Sept2013

The view from Mountain View: No going back

When we left the Coast of Maine a few days ago, the goal was to conflate a few disparate agenda items into a short trip. We needed to transport a few fragile items from our DC home back to Maine. The invitation to chair a board-level meeting at my hospital inspired us to revisit civilization, […]

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Google_Debbie

Why I no longer lust after a job at Google

I’m sitting in a bustling Peets cafe in Mountain View, CA, two miles from Google’s offices. Yesterday we had lunch at the main Google campus with our son, who is newly working there as a lawyer. The sky was blue. The temperature, in the low 70s, was perfect. The campus is marked by green lawns and […]

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Barbie

A fellow retiring physician: what are the odds?

It was one in a million. Debbie and I were furling the sail on my son-in-law’s 22-foot sailboat after a short sunset cruise in Stonington harbor. The fishermen were in for the day. The wind was dying down. The water was calm. We were exulting in a flawless trip. The outboard worked as designed. The knots […]

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View_from_plane_June2014

Summer is over: what comes next?

It is Sunday, September 1st. It is early morning. The lobstermen are not fishing. The summer people have left. The fog is thick. The air is heavy. It is hours before the local church bells ring. The locally-ground 44 North Sumatra coffee is dripping. The quietude is total.   The pleasures of not commuting It […]

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