Personal Photo Album

 

This is a picture of me in my office during the summer of 2000. My wife, Paulette, made the two prints behind me. The one over my right shoulder is a woodblock of our cat Misty Gray; it shows here in one of her favorite activities - sitting on a chair watching the birds on the birdfeeder. We had Misty and her sister Hello Dolly for seventeen years. The print over my left shoulder consists of two geometric figures associated with proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem; they are hard to see, but the one on the left is the "windmill" figure used in the proof in Euclid, while the one on the right comes from a proof of mine (of course, it turned out to be well-known). During a talk at a national AMS-MAA meeting, Richard Askey mentioned that he often asked his second semester calculus classes to give a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem; he was disappointed in how few of his students could give a proof. His talk challenged me to see if I could prove the theorem; fortunately, I was successful. My wife made the print to help me celebrate my success.

 

This was taken in Prague on June 15, 1993, our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. The bridge in the background is the Charles Bridge that was built during the Middle Ages.

 

Here is a picture of Paulette and me with our niece, Sarah, and nephew, Jake. It was taken at Christmas, 1998 at the house of my Bonnie and Dan Murphy. Bonnie is my sister, and the mother of Sarah and Jake. We are fortunate that they live here in Winston-Salem.

Now it is Christmas, 1999. Note how Sarah and Jake have changed.

 

Paulette, Sarah and Jake are celebrating spring.

 

Paulette and I spent our 1999 summer vacation in Maine and Vermont. While in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, we stayed in a Bed and Breakfast that was the childhood home of our close Winston-Salem friend, Magee Drummond. One morning Paulette tripped over a brick stove hearth in the B&B and broke her foot. It was a serious break (as we found out later), but Paulette continued to enjoy the vacation. She wound up being in this fracture walker for about eight weeks. Sarah and Jake are helping Paulette swing in the swing on the deck at our home.

 

Our summer vacation in 2000 was spent relaxing at a house we rented in the village of Ocracoke on the Outer Bands island of Ocracoke. Here is a picture of the sunset over Ocracoke Harbor.

While vacationing on Ocracoke we went to the opening to the public of the Hatteras Lighthouse on Hatteras Island on Friday, May 26; recall that the lighthouse was moved, in order to save it from the encroaching ocean, during the summer of 1999. We were standing in line to enter the lighthouse while the opening ceremonies were being held. The line was fairly long, and I told Paulette that my estimate, using modern statistical estimation techniques (guessing), was that there were about 150 people ahead of us. When we entered the lighthouse, we were told that we were guests 150 and 151! I was off by about 5 or 6 in my count since a few people ahead of us elected not to climb the lighthouse. This is a picture of us on top of the lighthouse.

Here is a view from the top of Hatteras Lighthouse of the path of the move; the lighthouse originally stood at the end of this path near the ocean. Note the religious vehicles in the foreground paying homage to the electronic god (the media was present to cover the opening ceremonies for the lighthouse).

 

This is a picture of me in our backyard pretending to pump water with the pump that came from my grandfather's farm near Osceola, Indiana; I can only pretend since it's no longer connected to water. All water for livestock (work horses, cows, pigs and chickens) was pumped by hand with this pump from the early 1920's to the late 1930's when electricity came to rural northern Indiana. He then attached an electric motor lift to the pump. The pump was in use until the late 1980's.

 

We remodeled our house during the summer of 2000. Here is a picture of Sarah and Jake helping us with the remodeling. Note Jake's toolbelt and helmet. The task at hand is removing our old fireplace, which was replaced with a set of French Doors.

This is another remodeling picture. Sarah, Jake and Paulette are looking through a wall that is in the middle of being removed.