Island Hopping

Yesterday (Thursday, February 25, 2010, Auckland, New Zealand, time; which is currently 18 hours ahead of New York time), we spent much of the day on Waiheke Island, as Sally Peters and Hal Davidson, friends who had recently been there, had recommended. We took the public ferry from the center of Auckland, a 35-minute trip. Thanks to rainsqualls and vigorous winds, we were the only passengers dumb enough to brave the open roof-deck of the ferry.

The weather cleared magically and conveniently as we reached the island. We walked up a gradually inclining road for 25 minutes to reach our luncheon destination, the Cable Bay Winery’s restaurant; which is located on the eastern edge of the site of a Maori fortification, on a commanding hilltop now decorated with modern sculptures. Both the lightly oaked Cable Bay Chardonnay and the food were top quality, judging from the bread, greens, crème brulee, and local oysters. The view west through the elegant, modern restaurant’s open doors and expanse of plate glass is unforgettable-- through clear air, over hilly harvest-time vineyards, brown and green pastures, and open sea, to the skyline of Auckland, under bright blue skies decorated with wisps of white clouds. After a leisurely lunch, we toured the rest of the island by taxi. Waiheke’s coastline is a series of protected coves, with pockets of shark- and coral-free, pleasant beaches, with white sands on the beaches on the north side of the island. As measured by fractals, Waiheke’s coastline must be unusually long, not only in relation to its landmass, but also to a smoothed outline of its coast. Waiheke is now being gentrified with vineyards (some of the most steeply pitched that I have ever seen), a few fine residential properties, and by commuters to jobs in Auckland. The island was largely a hippie colony some 40 years ago; throughout the world, hippies were pioneers in finding great places to live!

This morning, we left Mollies, our delightful little hotel in Auckland, at about 4:30 to catch a five-and-a-half hour flight to Cairns, Australia. I am writing this blog entry from the lounge in Cairns of a charter air service that will fly us, in a twin-propeller, Cessna 402, about a hundred miles north to Lizard Island, in the midst of the Great Barrier Reef. The local time is 21 hours ahead of New York’s. It is monsoon season in this region, and it is currently raining hard. But we are told that our flight will not be delayed by the weather and that conditions at the moment are perfect on Lizard Island. As it is off-season, and Americans are not traveling to Australia as much as we did before the recession and the decline of our currency, there will be only about a half dozen other couples on the island when we arrive—versus a capacity of about eighty guests. The resort shares the island with a National Park research station. The island is out of range of satellite service for cell phones: Undoubtedly, inaccessibility is one of its charms.

Maybe we’ll get lucky with the weather while we’re there!

Down Under

On Monday, February 22, Susan and I are heading Down Under. We are scheduled to arrive back in New York on March 22. 

Although we have long wanted a sojourn in Australia (or Oz, as we are learning to refer to it) and New Zealand, we thought that Australasia was too far away, too many time zones away, and too vast to visit while I was still working. Now we think: If not now, when?

I confess to some anxiety about taking this trip: perhaps because of my sudden decline a year ago while we were in South America; perhaps because of the increased risk of developing blood clots on long flights (I've had two blood clots since I was diagnosed with cancer, and stroke is one of my greatest fears); perhaps because of the logistics of getting the airlines to permit me to take into their main cabins the syringes of Fragmin, a fragile blood-thinner that cannot be exposed to the temperatures of their luggage compartments; perhaps out of concern that we may have scheduled an itinerary that will outpace my stamina; perhaps because, by taking this trip, I am almost certainly foreclosing the opportunity to go other exotic places that are in season and that we also postponed visiting while I was working, such as Egypt, South Africa, Patagonia, and Costa Rica. But any trepidation is overridden by my awareness of how lucky I am to have this unexpected opportunity for extended travel. 

As the trip nears, my anticipation grows. We plan to swim, snorkle, and go boating and deep-sea fishing in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef; walk in parks, gardens, cities, and villages; visit museums and art galleries (I especially like Aboriginal art); go to the opera in Sydney; go racing in Flemington for the second most important day of racing in Australia each year; drive the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne; visit zoos and otherwise view exotic flora and fauna; visit stud farms and wineries; play golf (my balky right shoulder permitting) at the Royal Sydney Golf Club, as guests of a friend; climb a glacier; go boating in fiords; fly in helicopters and small planes over spectacular scenery; stay in good hotels and resorts; eat well; and drink the local wine and beer. Of course, Australasia--  particularly Oz-- is so vast that we will not get to do many things that we would very much like to do, including visit the bush and the outback, as well as Tasmania and coastal cities that are not on our itinerary. 

Our strategy for Australasia is to change hotels as infrequently as possible, sallying forth for day trips by car, plane, or helicopter. For those of you who have been down under, our itinerary is as follows:

February 24- 26, Auckland, New Zealand (staying at Mollies).

February 26- March 2, Lizard Island, Australia.

March 2-7, Melbourne (staying at the Park Hyatt).

March 7-12, Sydney (staying at the Park Hyatt).

March 12-15, Christchurch, New Zealand (staying at the George Hotel).

March 15-19, Queenstown, New Zealand (staying at Eichardt's Hotel).

March 19-22, Taupo, New Zealand (staying at Huka Lodge).

For the long flight down under, I am taking along to reread: Robert Hughes's epic of Australia's founding, The Fatal Shore; and Bruce Chatwin's  account of Aboriginals' Dreamtime creation myths, The Songlines. I haven't figured out yet what to read on the flight back to New York: Maybe I'll just try to catch up on the news! 

Progress

It seems to me that there are grounds for optimism about human progress. Science gives us better understanding. Science spawns technology that produces tools to do better science. Technology enables wealth-creating productivity improvements and advances in education, information technology, communications, transportation, commerce, entertainment, medicine, and energy production and conservation. Global interdependence makes warfare between trading partners more self-destructive and irrational. Increasing prosperity gives us, mankind, the luxury of expanding the catalog of human rights.

There are of course great risks to human progress as well, such as natural disasters, nuclear arms proliferation, religious fanaticism, terrorism, catastrophic environmental changes, destructive uses of science and technology, and such societal follies as the growing indebtedness of many of the more mature democracies. But one can choose to be an optimist and try to do one's part to advance human progress.

While one can point to many instances of our becoming less inhumane and perhaps making the world safer for mankind, I cannot think of any way in which we humans have improved the world for other forms of life. Since our brains and intelligence grew to the point that we were able to subjugate all other forms of life and to exploit natural resources, and we emigrated out of Africa and populated the globe, we have unbalanced nature. We have exterminated species; depleted resources; and despoiled the earth, the bodies of water, and the air. 

Although we can at best mitigate some of the damage that we have done to the world in which we live, our collective consciousness of the consequences of our activities is growing: Increasing prosperity gives us the luxury of worrying about such niceties. One reason that I devoted the last years of my career to investing in nanotechnology is nanotechnology's potential for enabling sustainable development. For me, such investment was a way of expressing optimism.

A Rainbow's Arch

On Sunday, February 14, in a simple ceremony, my family interred my father's ashes in the little garden on the grounds of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Jacksonville. Dad and Mother donated the gate to the garden, as well as one of the church's windows. Dad attended St. Mark's for decades, until he and Mother moved to Vicar's Landing, a retirement community in Ponte Vedra Beach. The land on which Dad's father's house stood, and in which Dad had lived for a short time, is now part of St. Mark's campus. Dad also did some of the architectural work at St. Mark's, including designing the rectory.

On the way to St. Mark's, Susan and I drove past the turnoff to Lakeshore Junior High School, which my brother and sister and I attended, and which Dad designed. After the ceremony, we drove two blocks from St. Mark's to pass by Ortega Elementary School, where Dad designed the building additions in which my brother and sister attended their first and second-grade classes, and-- having skipped first grade (a bad decision, by the way)-- I attended second-grade classes. We then drove by the 1939 vintage home on Ortega Boulevard in which my brother and sister and I were raised, and which Dad designed, to a lunch hosted by Mother at Timuquana Country Club; which, as I have noted previously, Dad also designed.

Yesterday, in Ponte Vedra Beach, we held the church service in memory of Dad, and the reception afterwards, at Christ Episcopal Church. Dad attended that church for the many summers that he spent at Ponte Vedra Beach; where, in the mid-nineteen thirties, he designed most of the original houses and, over the ensuing six decades, many others, including the two that he designed for us. Christ Church itself was designed by Wellington Cummer II, a friend and colleague of Dad's, and the father of my roommate at the Hill School; when Mr. Cummer left the practice of architecture to enter his family's business, Dad drafted the architectural plans for Christ Church based on Mr. Cummer's design.

The memorial service was entitled:

                                   

 A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE OF

Clyde Eugene Harris

April 4, 1910 - January 17, 2010

Because Dad outlived almost all of his contemporaries, it was gratifying that the memorial was very well attended. While the service was traditional and poignant, it was beautifully executed and was indeed a celebration of Dad's life. As my brother pointed out in his remembrance, Dad always greeted each day with optimism.  In late March or early April, 1513, Don Juan Ponce de Leon may have landed on the shore that we now call Ponte Vedra Beach, in search of the Fountain of Youth. Although Ponce de Leon never found it, I believe that Dad did.

Afterwards, at the reception, Mother insisted on standing, for as long as she could, to thank Dad's and her friends for their presence. After the reception, as I walked outside the church into a gentle rain, one of the clergy hurried over to me and pointed upwards: A rainbow's arch spanned the sky. 

Postcard from the Seashore

As I type this blog entry from our room, which is just above swaying, rustling palms and about forty yards from pounding surf, news reports of near-record snowfalls in the Northeast are enhancing my appreciation of the blue sky and bright sunshine outside. We are staying at the Jupiter Beach Resort & Spa. The beach curves in a jagged arc to the southeast, in front of a state park that begins where the resort's property ends and extends for about three miles. To the north are three condominiums, then more state parkland until the Jupiter Inlet, about three-quarters of a mile away. In a feature unusual for Florida, there are coquina rock formations protruding from the sand at water's edge, for about an eighth of a mile to the south and a quarter of a mile to the north of the hotel.

It is cool today, for this time of year, in this place; but the water is warm enough for pleasant wading in the surf. The waves are rolling in from the northeast, carrying wet-suited surfers obliquely to the shore. The sea has been rough during the three days that we have been here: As the tide rises, the surf's assaults sculpt the coquina, sending foaming spray ricocheting skyward. Today, gray is missing from the seashore's palette: The robin's egg blue and white of the sky and the browns of the beach frame the greens, blues, and whites of the ocean.

Since I was a child, the ever-changing seashore has kept its primeval hold on me: through the sights, sounds, and smells of the ocean pounding against the shore; through the feel of the sand beneath my feet, now soft, now firm, now wet, now dry, now warm, now cool, now coarse, now smooth; through the air's transmission to my skin of the sun's warmth, to my eyes of the sun's glare, to my body of the wind's pressure; through the waves rolling in incessantly, each a life cycle, no two alike, remaking the beach with each advance and retreat, erasing the brief imprint of my footsteps; through the symbiotic life forms in the sea, in the air, and on the shore. The sea itself remains familiar and mysterious to me: Even when calm, danger lurks in its depths, and potential for crushing violence remains stored in its waves. By day, I am mesmerized by the seashore's stupendous juxtaposition of earth, sky, and water. At night, I am comforted by the surf's roar and pounding, the planet's slow, irregular pulse.

Some say that life on earth was born in, and emerged from, the sea. Certainly, life cycles seem as natural to me at the seashore as they did in East Africa or in the Galapagos. I take some solace in thinking that my ashes will be cast into the ocean's vastness: whence some may reemerge on the shore.

Memorial Service

On Monday, February 15, the memorial service for my father will be held at Christ Church in Ponte Vedra, Florida. Tomorrow, Susan and I will fly down to Jupiter, Florida, to enjoy the balmy weather, play golf, see horses, and stroll on the beach. Later in the week, we will drive north to Ponte Vedra to join my gathering family.

Illusory Pattern Perception

On page 30 of the February issue of Scientific American, Michael Shermer writes about a study recently published in Science, entitled "Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception." Schermer writes: "Defining 'illusory pattern perception'... as 'the identification of a coherent and meaningful interrelationship among a set of random or unrelated stimuli ... (such as the tendency to perceive false correlations, see imaginary figures, form superstitious rituals, and embrace conspiracy beliefs, among others),' the researchers' thesis was that 'when individuals are unable to gain a sense of control objectively, they will try to gain it perceptually.' "

As I read Schermer's column, it struck me that this thesis explains a lot: not only about belief systems, but also about common perceptions amongst cancer victims and their friends and loved ones. A diagnosis of advanced cancer is certainly conducive to losing a sense of control! 

Sixty-Seven Years

Today, with gratitude and mild bemusement, I greet my sixty-seventh birthday. More than once in the last eleven months, it crossed my mind that I might not live to see it.

Knowledge that I have terminal cancer has heightened my consciousness of the irretrievability of each second ticking away. In my adolescence, the poignancy of time passing was at least equally intense. Clocks, watches, and sundials have always fascinated me. But neither time-keeping devices, nor the workings of memory, can recapture youth's ferocity. 

Tragedy

What's happening in Haiti is tragic. War is tragic. Destruction of species is tragic. A child's or a young parent's affliction with terminal disease, or with terrible, chronic disease, is tragic. Anyone's prolonged suffering is tragic. Wasted human potential is tragic. 

What's happened to me so far is not tragic, beyond the lot of all human beings: fated as we are to know that our lives are finite; that the world itself, and indeed the universe, is finite. In two days, I'll be 67 years old. In all of human history, what percentage of mankind lived so long? Until very recent times in a handful of wealthy nations, life for human beings was indeed short, nasty, and brutish. Darwinian selection did its work amongst humans with little interference. 

My father was born only 45 years after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. I have lived in the most prosperous period of the greatest nation, the most humane society, that has ever existed. I am privileged to have been educated at one of the finest prep schools, one of the finest undergraduate schools, and one of the finest graduate business schools in the United States. My parents were married for almost 71 years; I have been married for 42 years. Until my father died recently, no member of my nuclear family had ever been terminally ill with chronic disease, much less died. I spent the last 24 of my 42 years in business as an entrepreneur, doing constructive work, building businesses alongside bright, high-energy, high-minded, creative people. I have met, and in some cases know, some of the most prominent people in business, technology, finance, science, medicine, education, philanthropy,  journalism, the law, Thoroughbred racing, and various other endeavors. I have found role models amongst both family and friends. Taking into account my laziness, shyness, cowardice, disorganization, and modest talents, I did reasonably well professionally and was able to support my family. I have been able to afford contributions to worthy causes. I haven't had to deal directly with politicians, and I have delegated most interactions with bureaucrats. My wife and I raised our children and have lived our adult lives in perhaps the most interesting city in the world, the Rome of our time. In spite of being a hacker, I have played a number of the finest golf courses in the United States. (I wish that my father had gotten to play as many of them as I have gotten to play!) I have indulged my passion for racehorses in the best of company. My wife and I have travelled to some wonderful places, and we are mulling more travel plans.

Since I was diagnosed with cancer, my family, friends, and caregivers have been kind and supportive. So far, my disease has neither sunk me into chronic depression, nor forced me to retreat into wishful thinking. I have not been subjected to chemotherapy since May, and my medical oncologist just allowed me to delay resumption of it for a while longer.

Given the longevity of my parents, cancer may cost me perhaps a third of my life, but it would not have been the most vigorous third of my life.  Eventually, I might well have gone blind from glaucoma and/or wet macular degeneration, and I would have run most of the other risks of aging that plague mankind. 

I don't see my life as having been significant or especially interesting. As for tragedy: Certainly my cancer is unfortunate and mildly ironic. Like most people, I have had bad luck, regrets, and down times; I've been disappointed and rejected. But I have enjoyed good luck, acceptance, and the satisfactions of success too. I flatter myself that I am still learning, growing, and improving in character. I feel loved by family. And I certainly have had a lot of fun along the way. To the extent that I have suffered from the slings and arrows of fate, I have extracted a measure of revenge by living well-- i.e., by indulging myself.

It seems to me today that any potential for significance and tragedy in my story is captured in words of Eugene O'Neill that I quoted in this blog on January 3: "The tragedy of Man is perhaps the only significant thing about him.... Somebody facing life, fighting against the eternal odds, not conquering, but perhaps inevitably being conquered. The individual life is made significant just by the struggle, and the acceptance and assertion of the individual, making him what he is not, as in the past, making him something not himself." 

 

Anniversary

Today, Susan and I are celebrating our forty-second wedding anniversary. Cheers!

cNs

Given my involvement through Harris & Harris Group, Inc., in nanotechnology, including investments in companies developing cancer therapeutics; my wife's and my long-standing philanthropic support for basic research on cancer; and my recent cancer diagnosis: I am gratified that the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT has established the Center for Nanotechnology Science (cNs). 

To quote from cNs literature: "Many grand challenges of addressing cancer, from detecting a few early malignant cells among billions of healthy cells, to delivering potent drugs to late-stage tumors without harming other tissue, require new approaches that target the miniscule components of cells-- DNA, RNA, proteins-- and their chemical signals and pathways. Nanotechnology, the development and engineering of devices so small that they are measured on a molecular scale, is on the brink of enabling such approaches."

Godspeed.