Hannah Arendt Center Summer Social: Preview of Fall Conference on Friendship and Politics

This week I went to the Summer Social at the Hannah Arendt Center on the campus of Bard College.  The campus is set in rolling wooded hills on the east bank of the Hudson River between Albany and New York City. I arrived just after a short downpour so the weather was cool and cloudy. Tables had been set up for dinner outside, but the wet tables meant the event was indoors.

Christine Gonzalez Stanton, 

Executive Director, Hannah Arendt Center

As soon as I entered the large old dwelling that houses the HAC I was greeted by Christine Gonzalez Stanton, Executive Director of the HAC and the kind of enthusiastic person every organization would love to have in charge of operations.  She signed me up for the book raffle and pointed me toward the appetizers and drinks in the kitchen. 

As soon as I entered the kitchen I met Ken Landauer in person.  We had been in one of the smaller Zoom groups discussing Hannah Arendt's lectures on Kant.  Ken makes zero-waste furniture in a nearby town.  The website of his company FN Furniture lists Ken as "Chairperson" of the business noted for making things to sit on. In person he is even more dryly funny as he is on Zoom.

Ken Landauer in one of his chairs

I have been a member of the HAC for several years and attended three annual conferences in person. Since 2018, I have joined weekly meetings of the Virtual Reading Group of the HAC.  As many as 200 people participate in these 90-minute calls on Friday afternoons year-round with seasonal breaks.  At the the Summer Social and the Annual Conference I have met many people who were only faces on Zoom.  

The VRG format is a 20-30 minute introduction of the reading followed by a discussion. The discussion leader is the Founder and Academic Director of the HAC Roger Berkowitz.  I sometimes stay on line for the discussions, but I always listen to Roger's introductions of the reading.  Here is a short clip of Roger welcoming us to the social:

After the introduction, we walked through the woods up a small hill to the Bard College Cemetery. Hannah Arendt and her husband Heinrich Blucher are buried there and have small markers next to each other.  

Hannah Arendt's grave in the Bard College Cemetery. 

We all placed stones on Arendt's grave. As with so many things in Arendt's life and work, her death was controversial. She wanted to be cremated, not a usual practice in 1975 for Jews. Her wishes were carried despite resistance from a relative. Her ashes are interred in the Bard Cemetery.  

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After the walk to the cemetery, we went to the library. Arendt's personal library is in a special collection in the Bard Library.  Four scholars connected to the Bard and the HAC made short presentations about their work.  

Jana Mader, with some of the books 

from Arendt's library.

First was Jana Mader, Lecturer in the Humanities at Bard. She will present at the HAC fall conference on the friendship between Arendt and the poet W.H. Auden.  Arendt credits Auden with teaching her English and helping to edit the works she wrote in English. The poet Robert Lowell was also a friend of Arendt. Mader put books with inscriptions to greetings to her by the poets on display. 

Born in Germany, Mader teaches literature at Bard and is a writer and artist.  She just had a book published that made me wish (again) that I could read German fluently. Her book Natur und Nation cooperatively analyzes 19th century literature inspired by the Hudson River with texts inspired by the Rhine River. In October her curated walks to women's history in New York City will be published, this one in English.

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Next Nicholas Dunn spoke about Hannah Arendt's lectures and writing about Emmauel Kant.  He talked about a conference he is hosting on June 20 with the author of the book Hannah Arendt's Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, Ronald Beiner.  

Nicholas Dunn, postdoctoral fellow at HAC

Dunn talked about the way unique Arendt looked at Kant's thought and some of the response to her views.  Dunn is the Klemens von Klemperer Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. He will also teach courses in the Departments of Philosophy and Political Studies and for the Bard Prison Initiative. 

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Jana Bacevic is a visiting scholar at the HAC. She led a conference at the HAC earlier this month on the Social Life of the Mind.  She explained Arendt's reading of and view of the The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System by Milovan Dilas, a Yugoslav intellectual. As with the Kant volume, Arendt had a unique perspective on Dilas and his work.  Dilas was jailed when the book was published in 1958 because he sent it to western countries for review.  Foreign Affairs magazine published a one-paragraph review of the book in 1958 that said: 

The manuscript of this book was sent abroad for publication and the author is now in prison as a consequence. It is important both for the quality of its thought and for the fact that it is a root-and-branch criticism of Communism, including Titoism, from within the Party itself. Since he was formerly one of the ranking Party leaders in Jugoslavia, his picture of the Communist monopoly of power is particularly telling, and the indictment is made with a typically Montenegrin lack of restraint. 

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Thomas Bartscherer, the Peter Sourian Senior Lecturer in Humanities, was the final speaker.  He announced that his volume in the series Hannah Arendt--Complete Works. Critical Edition will be published this year. He was so happy about the firm publication date that he had the audience chant a call and response of 

"When?"  
"This year!"

He told us each volume of the critical edition includes images of works in Arendt's library that she used for reference in her works.  Underlines, notes, starred items, are all included in the published book along with the text itself. His volume is on Arendt's The Life of the Mind, her last and uncompleted work. She died on the week she was to begin the third volume on judgement.   

Bartscherer talked about some of the complexities of finding and compiling annotations.  Arendt had five copies of Aristotles Nichomachean Ethics: two in Greek, two in English, one in German. She made notes and underlined passages in all of them, on different passages in each book.

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After the library we went back to the HAC building and ate dinner together, a buffet meal set up in the kitchen.  During the dinner I met more people who read and admire Hannah Arendt.  I am very much looking forward to returning for the conference on Friendship and Politics in the fall and possibly the event on Kants lectures next month.  

Street Numbers Freeze History

 

In Lancaster County, the roads from Lancaster City to the outer boroughs radiate in every direction, a hub and spoke system like the German countryside many residents came from two centuries ago.  To the north is the Lititz Pike, the road to Lititz. To the west is Harrisburg Pike, the road through Mount Joy and Elizabethtown. Between them is the road to Manheim, the Manheim Pike. 

 

To the east is the road to New Holland that passes through CDP (Census-Designated Place) of Leola.  I ride the New Holland Pike because it is very flat and has a wide shoulder.  On one of my recent rides, I noticed that the numbers on houses and businesses in Leola switch from West to East at a place almost a mile east of what I would have thought was the center of Leola.

Coming from Lancaster, the street numbers count down from Rutter's Store at 370 W. Main Street to a house at 2 W. Main. Then the numbers go from the Post Office at 10 E Main St. to a home at 509 E. Main St. where the numbers switch to West Main Street in New Holland. The name NewHolland Pike is used on the road from the Lancaster City line to the edge of Leola.

What surprised me was that the numbers in Leola switch from East to West Main Street at Maple Avenue. That location is well past what looks like the center of Leola: the two traffic lights where PA Route 772 intersects with PA 23. 

It turns out that the numbers switch from East to West near the location of the former Glenola Train Station that connected Leola with Lancaster more than a century ago. The Leacock Township Building is also near the place where the numbers switch. So even though the busiest part of Leola is east of the intersection of Main and Maple, the building numbers preserve the history of the time when the train station was the center of Leola.

Five miles east in New Holland, the numbers count down to the center of the borough, but differently. The numbers count down on West Main Street until 101 at the intersection with Roberts Avenue. Then on the east side of the intersection the numbers count up from 104. There are no numbers below 100 on either East or West Main Street in New Holland. But the numbers on the North-South roads, like Roberts Avenue, drop to double or single digits as they approach Main Street. 

Another oddity is that the center of New Holland is all on East Main Street. It's mostly residential on West Main Street with scattered businesses along the road. The central business area starts immediately on East Main Street.  

Road numbering in cities can be logical, but not necessarily.  I grew up in the Boston area, a city with no grid at its center. In Manhattan, the east-west street numbers are at zero at Fifth Avenue and increase to the edges of the long, thin island. But the avenues have numbers that simply increase from south to north. There is no way to to know where 101, 365 or 565 Fifth Avenue is except by memory.   They are the Zara store, the CUNY Graduate Center and the Adidas Flagship Store. 

     

Benetton and the End of Communism and Cigarette Ads

 

At the beginning of the 1980s, the winning cars in Formula 1 racing were billboards for cigarettes and oil companies.  The Marlboro McLaren, John Players Special Lotus, the Gitanes Ligier, dominated the winners circle in Formula 1. 

Then in 1986, Luciano Benetton, a maker of Italian knitwear, bought a team and went to win a driver's title and two manufacturer's championships. 

Benetton also brought his clothing business to communist countries beginning with Hungary in the mid-1980s.  I read about Benetton and the decentralized clothing empire he created. His knitwear was made by women working as independent suppliers. Benetton would decide on the colors at the last minute and be sure his knitwear was in the color of the season.  

I was a fan of the Benetton team for the decade and a half they raced--1986 to 2001.  Benetton surprised the racing world. They were the first clothing maker to sponsor a Formula 1 team and they were a success from the first year: Gerhard Berger won the Mexican Grand Prix in a Benetton the first year the team was in operation. 

Benetton was the first team for Michael Schumacher, one of the greatest driver's of all time.  With success the team sought more sponsorship becoming billboards first for Camel and then for Japanese cigarette maker, Mild Seven.  The team won the driver's title and two manufacturer's titles in 1994 and 1995, but by 1996 Schumacher was at Ferrari and the team was in decline. Renault became the title sponsor for the last two years of Benetton ownership: 2000 and 2001. 

Cigarettes no longer sponsor the cars. The leading sponsors in 2023 are car makers Mercedes, Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin and Ferrari along with Red Bull and Alpha Tauri sports drinks. 

The posters above are in the upstairs hallway of my home along with a print of 1992 World Champion Nigel Mansell in a Williams Renault.  Nigel is the name of my youngest son. But Benetton is still my favorite team.

Pissing Contest: Real and Metaphorical

Between birth and enlisting in the U.S. Air Force, I had two addresses. Both in the town of Stoneham nine miles north of Boston. The first was 48 Hancock Street. The second was 41 Oak Street. My parents lived in the house at 41 Oak Street from 1957 until my mother sold the house in the 1990s more than a decade after my Dad passed away.

My first friend in the "new" neighborhood on Oak Street was a boy named Bobby. He lived two houses away at the corner of Oak Street and Victoria Lane. We were friends, and like most boys fighting is part of friendship.  

Many times in my life I have had metaphorical pissing contests with other kids, co-workers, and soldiers. But only once did I have an actual pissing contest.  Soon after we moved to Oak Street, Bobby and I were playing and something went wrong. Whatever the cause, Bobby and I did not have the side-by-side competition of who can piss farthest, longest, highest. 

We turned and faced each other for a battle of who could make the other smell worse. We both won, or lost, depending on how it was judged.   

Although my memory of my childhood is very limited, I have some memory of Bobby and I standing next to the tall hedges that separated his yard from the Bishop's house (Mr. and Mrs. Bishop, not a church official) and emptying our bladders toward each other.  

Our mothers were displeased at our need for a change of clothes. We were friends for years after, so the actual pissing contest was not fatal to our friendship. In later life, I found having a metaphorical pissing contest could end a relationship.  Best to avoid both.  

Nothing Ever Dies: Re-Reading a Haunting Book About War and it's Aftermath

I am re-reading the book Nothing Ever Dies because I first enlisted during the war in Vietnam 51 years ago and this book holds a mirror to my service during that war and all the wars I served in and during over the fifty years that followed. 

The notes below are thoughts from reading the first chapters.

Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War by Viet Thanh Nguyen 

The opening chapter, “Just Memory” begins: “This is a book on war, memory, and identity. It proceeds from the idea that all wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” 

Nguyen then tells us the war known as the Vietnam War in America is American War in Vietnam. This identity crisis is central to the war as perceived by those who lived through and after it in Vietnam and neighboring countries. 

It is one of the truisms of history that the winners write the history. But in the modern world history gets written by everyone with the means to tell their story. America was the clear loser of the wars in Southeast Asia from the mid 1960s to 1975. But America names the war and controls much of the narrative because America is the biggest producer of movies, books and other forms of bringing story to the world: all published in English. 

The stories from Vietnam can never have the distribution of American narrative, especially stories in the Vietnamese language. Language itself is a tool in the hands of those who want to shape war as it happens. Russia is “liberating” Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine. 

The sovereign country of Ukraine is a territory when defined by Russia. Those who are with Russia, like the Christian Nationalist propagandist Tucker Carlson, sided so openly with Russia that his shows were a regular part of Russian state news programming. 

The people of Ukraine describe what happened as an invasion. They describe war crimes committed by Russia. They want freedom. They want peace. They have a compelling message, but Russia is bigger. Someday, the war will end and the two narratives will compete in the world of ideas. 

Before the opening chapter is a short prologue. The first sentence of the Prologue: “I was born in Vietnam but made in America. I count myself among those Vietnamese dismayed by America’s deeds but tempted to believe in its words.” Like so many Americans who lived during the war, I “mistake Vietnam with the war named in its honor.” 

When I enlisted in 1972 near the end of the Vietnam War, I signed up for the education that I did not care about when I graduated just the previous spring. But education, career, learning beckoned after several months of loading trucks and looking at the men beside me doing the same thing I was as at triple my age. 

For me the war meant a chance to get away from home, from the small world of Stoneham to a world I could not imagine. I had not been south of Erie, Pennsylvania, west of Cleveland, Ohio, or ever flown on an airplane. I cannot remember any dread in connection with the Vietnam War. It was a route to freedom. 

The war I saw on TV news was no different than the war movies and serial dramas, showing endless American heroism and victory. The world looks so different now. I served in the military four times, each time getting out I was sure I was done. Then three times, I re-enlisted. During those four enlistments, I served in or during four different wars. 

Until 24 February 2022, I thought I served during three losses, one win. Now the one win, the Cold War, needs an asterisk. The peace we thought would follow the end of the Soviet empire cracked immediately in the Balkans and broke in Ukraine. We watched as oligarchy followed empire in Russia. 

Beginning in 2014 and with open fury in 2022, The Empire Struck Back. 

Reading Nothing Ever Dies it was clear from the first pages that more than four wars shaped the psyche of the kid who so happily signed up in 1972. My Dad was a veteran of World War II. For good and ill, those were the best years of his life—it was clear every time he told and retold his stories from the war. 

My uncle Jack served in the Air Force from 1958 to 1978. He had three full tours flying over southeast Asia in a tanker plane then and F4 Phantom II fighter plane. To say I worshipped them shows how shallow my actual religious practice has been in my life. My regard for them in uniform had none of the skepticism I always felt toward God Himself. Which means in addition to the wars I was in or around, I was haunted by wars before I was alive, wars that happened between my last two enlistments (The Gulf War, Grenada, Somalia, The Balkans) and the wars that formed the backbone of the history of America, Europe, and Israel. 

Nguyen says, “…the most important reason for Americans to remember what they call the Vietnam War, the fact that it was one conflict in a long line of horrific wars that came before it and after it. The war’s identity—and, indeed, any war’s identity—cannot be extricated from the identity of war itself. … because war is not just about the shooting but about the people who make the bullets and deliver the bullets and, perhaps most importantly, pay for the bullets, the distracted citizenry complicit in what [Martin Luther] King calls the “brutal solidarity” of white brother and black.”

The Spark in the Machine: A fascinating book about the science behind acupuncture

 

I am more than halfway through reading The Spark in the Machine: How the Science of Acupuncture Explains the Mysteries of Western Medicine. A good friend is in a graduate medical program learning to be an acupuncturist. When she talked about the electrical basis of how acupuncture works, I became interested. 

The book describes how acupuncture works in the spaces between organs and even cells inside the body and uses tiny charges to promote healings. Right away I found myself more interested than I expected.  The beginning of the book talks a lot about fascia, the tissue that wraps around organs in the body and divides different zones of the body.  Fascia is made from cartilage which also makes up bone and ligaments.  

The author says cartilage is a semiconductor. It can carry a charge along its triple helix structure, but like many crystal structures, it can also generate micro charges when bent or compressed.  

When DNA does its many jobs in our bodies, the signals move up and down the double helix.  Charge carries information among genes. So it made sense that cartilage could carry and generate charges.  Also, a crystal that can generate electricity when compressed can be moved when a charge is applied.  I am looking forward to seeing how this effect works in acupuncture.

I have not yet had acupuncture, but the book is opening some fascinating views of the body and how it works.  

At one point the author was talking about how tough fascia is. In my mind I went to my worst injuries from missile explosions and high-speed crashes and thought, 'Fascia kept my insides inside!'

If you are interested in acupuncture and how it works. This book is really good.

Three Score and Ten: Second Life Begins This Year

In the first Canto of the Divine Comedy Dante Aligheri tells us he is 35 years old because he is "In the middle of life's journey."  Life's journey is three score and ten years, seventy years, which I will reach and pass in ten days.

Dante never reached three score and ten. He died in 1321 in exile from his beloved Florence at the age of 56. The belief that 70 years is the lifespan of a human being is a quote from the Book of Psalms, 90:10  

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Seventy is a major life milestone, so it has me thinking about what I will do with the next decade. 

The previous seven years have been "the best of times and the worst of times" of my life.  Living has been wonderful. My family is healthy, I have been healthy except for a few smashed bones, but the major illusions of life got crushed since 2015.  

It seems crazy in retrospect, but I really, really believed America was getting better.  All of my life from 1964 (The Civil Rights Act) to 2015 (Gay Marriage) more people got more rights and more freedom than ever before.  The Jim Crow South became illegal in 1964. By the 1970s women had many more rights, including the the right to choose their own health care options.  

In 2004 George W. Bush won re-election with a dirty, Karl-Rove-run campaign against gay rights.  By 2015, gay marriage was legal across America.  I not only believed more people would get more rights, but I thought the racist rednecks would die out.  A Black man was elected President in 2008!  

But in 2016, it was clear that the gains of women, Blacks, gay people and other minorities were fragile.  The rednecks I thought were going to fade away were cheering their flaccid hero at hate-filled rallies across America. The hater-in-chief promptly put neo-Nazis in the White House.  Every action by Trump from then to now is to reverse freedom and end democracy. His fake Christian base loves and supports him and will give up all of their freedom for the white "Christian" nationalist nation he wants to rule as king.

Which leads me to my goals for the future.  

• Preserve democracy in the US and abroad--in Ukraine and Taiwan particularly as the front lines of democracy in Europe and Asia.
• To support candidates and protesters here and abroad who want to preserve democracy and fight tyranny.
• To do what I can to keep Israel from falling into illiberal democracy or outright religious tyranny.
• To fight for women's rights and gay rights and minority rights alongside those who are attacked Republicans who want to reverse all rights--except for themselves.
• To enjoy the wonderful life I have that allows me to see friends in America and around the world and support what they are doing.  

Three Score and Ten is just the beginning.

Men and Women Under 23 are 80% of the US Military: Many Do Great Things, Some Screw Up

Me at 23: The Oldest I Ever Felt*

The news is full of the 21-year-old airman Jack Teixeira, the intelligence specialist who is behind the most recent major leak of classified information.  Many of the comments I have heard question how someone so young can get access to so much classified information.  As if his age was the problem.

In all of military history, young people, much younger people than Teixeira, have had enormous life and death responsibilities. As a former sergeant and leader in the Army, I believe the problem in this case was supervisory. I have friends who are leaders in hospitals, museums, and in small and corporate businesses. Anyone hiring people with access to sensitive information check the social media profiles of their prospective and current employees.  Teixeira's leaders failed him; he is still guilty of treason. 

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress Bomber

In World War II, the Eight Air Force, the bomber command, lost more men than the Marines lost in the entire war in the Pacific. The men in the bombers that flew over German territory had a 50% chance of being alive at the end of 25 missions. That 50/50 chance of being alive is how the Army Air Force set 25 as the number of missions for bomber crews.

Each plane had six enlisted men and four officers. The average age of the enlisted men was 19. The four officers averaged 22 years of age, led by the pilot who was a first lieutenant or captain either side of 25 years old. Whatever age these men began their 25 missions, half of them would be killed, wounded, or captured before they had another birthday.  

Each of the ten men in the crew had life-and-death responsibility for the rest of the crew and for other airmen in the planes in their squadron. Most of them were the around the same age as Teixeira when they flew. Half of them were the same age as Teixeira when they died.  

The military puts great responsibility in the hands of men and women who are 21 years old. They should review security procedures, but the military has to trust young people.

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*By the time I was 21 years old, I was blinded in a missile explosion and recovering my eyesight. The next year I went to armor training and was a tank commander before my 23rd birthday.  

A few months after my 23rd birthday, I was in Colorado packing to go to the East-West border in Germany with 1st Battalion-70th Armor. I read a story in the "Army Times" newspaper that said 80 percent of the Army was less than 23 years old. In 1976 I thought, 'I am older than dirt. Most of the Army is younger than me.'   

Even now as I approach my 70th birthday, that day in September 1976 was the oldest I ever felt.

When the Flight Goes Wrong, Data is All That Matters

 

Since 2017 I have flown overseas every year to every continent except Australia: almost 20 trips total. I have flown many airlines. In addition to the trans-Atlantic flights, I have flown short, regional trips within the Americas, Europe and Asia.  

My main criteria for picking flights is price.  But after I get a list of cheap fares, I eliminate the airlines that have a weak or non-existent back office.  In the 1990s when e-commerce was new, many companies had a "sneaker net."  They had several systems that were not integrated and had to pass paper or messages between ticketing, scheduling, etc. 

This is how to pick an airline.

I have heard people complain that airlines are annoying when they send regular texts reminding you about seat choice or luggage limits or baggage rules. But those same people are ready to sing Hallelujah! when their flight is delayed, changed or cancelled and they get instant notification with options for rescheduling.  

For me, United Airlines is the best in this regard. I have flown American and Delta and they also have excellent apps and notifications. When a United flight got cancelled, my phone lit up with options. I flew TAP, the Portuguese national airlines,  for the last time last fall when I had a flight cancelled.  The long story about dealing with an airline that has a sneaker net is here. 

Since I travel with no checked luggage, I can check in on line for  most flights and walk straight to security. I also have TSA PreCheck and Global Entry, so there is no security reason to keep me from automated check in even for overseas flights.  With United, I have checked in on line for flights in the US, Brazil and Europe. 

I recently flew Norse Atlantic airlines. They have no app; their website seems to  allow check in, but then tells me I can't check in on line; they are not integrated with TSA Pre; they have no automated check in at major airports in America or Europe, so travelers like me with no checked luggage stand for an hour in line with people who have five suitcases on baggage carts.

On a recent Norse flight, I got in contact with a customer service rep on email. I told her how long I had been waiting, that I got to the airport three hours early and I did not want to miss my flight. She suggested going ahead of others in the line.  I told her I would not do that and suggested they send more people to check in to take care of customers. She could do nothing because they did not have the systems in place. 

All Americans saw what happens to an airline with outdated computer systems in the 21st century when a huge winter storm cancelled thousands of flights.  All airlines had some flights cancelled. Southwest had half the cancellations of all the airlines combined. Every Wednesday morning I have breakfast with a retired air traffic controller. He knew the Southwest disaster was data management.

I worked for two multi-national companies in the 1990s that switched from paper to fully integrated electronic systems. The switch was long, painful and expensive, but the difference was profound for customers and managers. From manufacturing to delivery there was real time information for every step.  

For all the traveling I do, I do not find travel easy even when everything goes well.  So while price is my main criteria for picking a flight, I will not fly with an airline that has a lame app and any problems with data management. 

I recently flew with Spirit Airlines. I loved it for the old-fashioned reasons of nice people, on-time performance and easy boarding. But if anything had gone wrong, they had an app that would have me on my way as soon as possible.  And all for $74 round-trip. 

 

 

Gordon Moore: The Chemist at the Center of the High Tech Revolution Dies at 94.

 

In 1965 when I was twelve years old, I learned basic electronics from a 600-page book published by the Amateur Radio Relay League--the ham radio operators.  The big book taught me both vacuum tube circuits and transistor circuits. Integrated circuits were not part of my basic course.  

Transistors were invented in 1948. The integrated circuit--transistors and diodes on a single silicon chip--was patented in 1959.  In 1964, the number of components on a single chip had risen to 120. The following year, while I pondered the mysteries of triode and pentode tubes along with NPN and PNP transistors, Gordon Moore published the bold prediction that the number of components on a microchip would double roughly every 18 months: Moore's Law. 

He was largely correct. I could not even count the quibbles about Moore's Law, but a single microchip can currently include billions of components.  Starting at 120 per chip in 1965, billions is a lot of doubling. 

In 1968, Gordon Moore was a co-founder of Intel Corporation. He was very much a part of making his own law come true decade after decade.  

I met Moore briefly in 2004 and again in 2005. I worked for the Science History Institute, which at the time was very much a museum and library of the history of Chemistry.  Moore was there because he was trained as a chemist and saw the high tech revolution very much as a chemical revolution.  

In 2005, Moore held the conference celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Moore's Law at the Science History Institute. Most of the speakers flew in from the other coast to Philadelphia.  Moore wanted the celebration to be connected to chemistry.  

But Moore's 2004 visit to the Institute is a story I have told and retold. At the time our library wanted to acquire the Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library: 6,000 rare science books dating back almost to the invention of printing held privately by Neville. The founder and President of the Institute, Arnold Thackray, asked Moore to donate the money to acquire the books.  Because there was a competitive bid and not much time to close the deal, Moore wrote a personal check for $10 million in Thackray's office.

Not many people could write a check for $10 million, but Moore could and did and we got the collection.

During the 2005 Moore's Law Conference, Moore spoke about the early days of the high tech revolution and how microchips were everywhere in just 40 years.  His remarks gave credit to many people and was full of thanks for great colleagues.