One of the terrific aspects of MIT in those days was the enormous variety of experimental work that either took place there or was talked about in seminars by outside speakers aggressively recruited by the faculty.
My maternal grandmother had a mountain cabin deep in the Tule river canyon just south of Sequoia Park, to which we were often invited as a family or as individuals.
My job at Stanford is rather different from the ones I had held previously in that my own ambitions must take a back seat to the well-being of the students with whom I work.
Western society has many flaws, and it is good for an educated person to have thought some of these through, even at the expense of losing a lecture or two to tear gas.
My father had grown up a widow's son in Chico, served as a naval officer in the war, followed his brother into the law, and had come to Visalia fresh out of law school to work in the Tulare County District Attorney's office.