02
Oct
The long hiatus between posts attests to the abundance of my life and the learning curve to improve my computer skills. The book came out in August 2012, in time for the American Chemical Society Nuclear Division Centennial Symposium honoring Glenn T. Seaborg and Charles D. Coryell, my father, as co-founders of the field of radiochemistry. Walt Loveland organized this event and invited my talk,”Charles D. Coryell: A Daughter’s Perspective,” recorded as the movie below. The book is available on Amazon as paperback and eBook, though eBooks do not include the back cover. The better quality paperback can be ordered from bookstores from Ingram Distributors.
In 2014 Carl and Sarah returned to Seattle from Singapore to give birth to Maren Seelye Starkweather. That winter Maria joined geologist Cathie Hickson on the Seabourn Quest as watercolor artist, sailing between Valparaiso, Chile and Buenos Aires, Argentina, via the Antarctic Peninsula and South Georgia. On her return in January, she and Darin announced the prospect of Stella Lee Coryell, born July 6, 2015. Both granddaughters arrived in water baths in the care of attending midwives. After Carl was born in 1975, Lucy Gray Martin sent us Frédérick Leboyer’s 1974 book, Birth Without Violence describing such births and infant massage.
By 2017, both families departed expensive Seattle for the western shores of the Salish Sea. First, Maria and Darin with Stella moved to Port Townsend in Jefferson County on the Quimper Peninsula where they navigate mostly by bicycle. Next, Carl and Sarah settled into a modest ranch home on a generous lot backing up on woods with trails in Winslow, Bainbridge Island. Carl commutes to downtown Seattle, Pivotal Labs, by bicycle and ferry. Sarah gardens with zest and skill, especially planting fruit trees and courageously shortening them for easy harvesting. Both families participate in PEPS groups, (Program for Early Parent Support) thereby widening our world of friends, too.
Seelye has been working on a book about the largest iceberg to break off West Antarctica into the Ross Sea and writing amusing science fiction stories. He has joined a writing group and avidly supports the summer Clarion West community of writers. He wants to put science into science fiction and more humor.
For me, I kept up exercising and coping with increasing discomfort and received a new titanium and plastic hip joint in March 2017. Revising my diet to high good fats and low carboydrates lowered my high cholesterol and weight more I would like. Thanks to orthopedic surgeon Sean Amann, and my physician at Kaiser-Permanente, Michelle Seelig, I was spared opiate addiction, and recovered quickly. It is wonderful to have restored mobility.
We drove to Corvallis, Oregon, for the solar eclipse and stayed with Walt and Patricia Loveland. There Walt provisionally recorded my audio narrative, “Charles D. Coryell: A Daughter’s Perspective,” to the American Chemical Society Nuclear Division Centennial Symposium, inspiring me to bring the project to completion: the Movie below.
Last fall I contributed to an interdisciplinary course taught by Professors Arwyn Smalley (Chemistry) and Nathalie Kuroiwa-Lewis (English and Writing) at Saint Martin’s University (Benedictine) in Lacey, Washington titled Atomic Narratives. The syllabus included readings in chemistry, ethics, poetry, memoir and two field trips. I attended more than half the classes as a “living memoir” and delighted in visiting the Reed College Reactor near Portland, OR, and to The Reach Museum in Richland, and the B-Reactor site on the Hanford reservation, WA. The furnishings were all reminiscent of early days at MIT, with a vintage Electrolux vacuum just like my mother’s. Sat in Enrico Fermi’s office chair and at the control center. The engineering of the numerous cells and their cooling is a modern marvel! On the way home we visited the lobby exhibits for the LIGO experiment, the Laser Interferometric Gravity Observatory.
At last with help from many, all acknowledged except for the last, I sent Walt the flash drive of the movie. The young Frenchman, Mathias Van de Kerckhove, who bought my 1986 Volvo 240, has become a treasured friend and neighbor. He has made many videos and patiently enthusiastically carried me over the top! Thank you, Mathias.