Welcome to MikeAndKaren.org
Our Photos
- It says cabinet and tile giveaway, but we kept the cabinets and used them variously around the outside of the house. Oh, these are pictures taken in the kitchen before we took it apart for the new, remodelled kitchen we have today.
- September-October: A Road Scholar guided tour through Poland, followed by five days driving through the area where Mike's maternal family came from. Here are photos from (1) the trip from San Francisco to Gdansk, (2) The road to Zamośź, and (3) Zamośź, the Italian medieval town recreated in Poland in the 1600's as a development project.
- June 22: A memorial gathering for, and celebration of the life of, Art Widner. Also see October, 2007.
- The new Whole Foods store, half a mile down The Alameda from our house: A behind-the-scenes look, just two days before it opens for business.
- October 9 to 21: Eating our way through Paris and the eastern Loire Valley.
- October 5: PG&E sends out a crew to reconnect our power pole transformer to the high voltage line after the wind blew the connecting wire out of its tiepoint.
- August 6: Antique Radio Flea Market, put on by the CHRS at Foothill College.
- April 2: Spring Garden Market, where the Santa Clara Master Gardeners provide plant starts for gardeners all over the area, with talks, and personal guidance for the uncertain.
- April 1: The Science Fiction Outreach Project, giving away thousands of SF/F/H books at the Wondercon in San Francisco.
- March 4 through 6: Potlatch 20.
- February 26: Maxfield Parrish sunset.
- February 20: Atascadero, California, former utopian community of small farmers.
- February 18 & 19: Wine tour of Paso Robles.
- February 11 through 13: Corflu 28.
- December 9: Pipes. Furnace pipes. Old 2.5 inch iron pipes that carry water and steam around our furnace, a steam boiler that heats our house through a 100-year old radiator system. Need work desperately, but nobody understands steam radiator technology any more. San Jose Boiler Works does, and they fixed them.
- December 3: Just a few pictures from the wedding of Alex and Esther.
- August 28 to September 20: Our vacation trip to Australia, including the 2010 Worldcon in Melbourne, shown in short form in two sections: Melbourne to Alice Springs and Uluru to Sydney. Third album, number "C": Trains and boats and planes and machinery and travel vistas. Probably more albums later.
- August 14: A vertical tasting of Ridge "Monte Bello." It's good to have such friends.
- July 3: San Jose canceled its vastly popular fireworks show this year so that the populace would understand just how tight money was in the city's budget. Karen and I searched for replacements, and found one: the special Independence Day fireworks show at the San Jose Giants (minor league) baseball game on July 3.
- February 8: Every year Brad Templeton hosts a party at which the Superbowl is recorded while we take a hike. On our return, we fast-forward through the game and examine carefully the commercials. The 2010 party was held at the new (still not quite fully open for business) headquarters of the Internet Archive.
- November 3: Jon Singer's visit was the excuse for a trip to exotic grocers and a dinner featuring the results of the search. Gordon Garb came over to help eat.
- November 1: We went to the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, but I didn't take many pictures. Here are one image of the dealer's room and five of the fantastic cake made for Poe's 200th birthday.
- September 26: We had bees, and arranged with a beekeeper [Mark Small at smallbees.com] to move them to an apiary at his location. The pictures show bees living in an architectural decoration; dead bees which had found their way into the house through the walls; and the man in the bee suit removing the tiles and vacuuming the bees up. There's a closeup of the very large combs, and the confused bees shown huddling together when they can't find the queen. The bees haunted the front of the house for a day and a half, and have now mostly gone away. Click for larger.
- August 20: Mike's photos of our BBQ dinner party for visiting TAFF delegate Steve Green.
- April/May: Karen's photos from Italy
- January 31: A trip to the Farmers Market at Ferry Plaza, SF, and a Stairway Walk. Here.
- November 8: Day of the Doon VI: A party for fans of Bonny Doon Vineyards. Food! Wine! Entertainment! Have I mentioned Wine? The Fire Dancers performed as night came and the Bonny Doon crew cleaned the place up.
- July 4: The "Rose, White, and Blue" Rose Garden District Parade and Festival, celebrating July 4th in a modernized traditional way.
- June 2: A memorial celebration of the life of Steve Cisler, held at Sanborn-Skyline County Park.
- May 8: The introduction and preview presentation of the Babbage Difference Engine #2 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
- November 17: A Truffle Dinner (!)
- October 26-28: Mike's photos from Art Con (Art Widner's 90th Birthday party, and a Ditto). Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Also includes photos from Saturday Dinner at St. Orres, Art's House,
a visit to Bowling Ball Beach, and Picturesque Scenes from Gualala, California, and The Breakers Inn (site of the party/Ditto). NEW! in 2020: Ian Sorensen's photos from Art Con.
- July 21: A few pictures from our annual Summer Barbecue.
- August 11: Mike's photos from the Survival Research Labs show at the end of the ZeroOne event.
- August 8-11: Mike's photos from the art show, events and displays of the 2006 ZeroOne digital art conference and show in San Jose.
- August 7-8: Mikes's photos from the Pacific Rim New Media Summit (PRNMS)
- July 1-4: Mike's photos from Westercon 59 in San Diego, CA.
- May 26-9: Mike's photos from Wiscon 30, Madison, WI.
- February 19: Mike's photos from a walk through Wilder Ranch State Park, an unusually decorated building lot in Santa Cruz, and the Pacific Coast.
- June: Mike's photos from the Master Gardener's tour of Napa and Sonoma counties, CA.
- May 28-31: Mike's photos from Wiscon 28 in Madison, WI.
- May 23-26: Mike's photos from Wiscon 27 in Madison, WI.
- August 23-4: Mike's photos from Toronto Fan Fair II (de facto NASFiC before there were NASFIC's).
Mike's Genealogy Pages
Do you want to know what it was like to live every day the way our ancestors did? We can't take you back there, but we can show your some of the things they dealt with every day: An experiment in displaying original "Genealogical Documents", written by and about everyday Americans, in the years before 1880. They're full of unexpected fascination and pathos, fun and sadness; and they're real. Specialist dealers sell these on eBay every day, and one of them might just talk about your family.
A discussion of the ancestry of Mike's mother, including her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents in Poland.
An ancestor table [ahnentafel] for Marvin C. Ward (Mike's father). Needs to be updated, with lots of new people to be added.
Genealogical notes on Thomas Benton Short, 1847-1907, of Blue Rapids, Kansas
Genealogical notes on William Johnson, 1806-1887, of Vassalboro, Maine; Batavia, Illinois; and in between those dates, of somewhere in New York State. Much new information has been discovered since these pages were last updated, including the name of his wife, but we still don't know anything about the family of Almyra Lee.
Genealogical Notes On Comfort Ward of Middlefield CT, Champion NY, and Carolina
Contact: mjward usualsymbol hidden-knowledge dot com
Latest update to this page: 29 September 2020
|