As usual, Diane and I brought in 2009
with our friends. I was starting to
relax about my finances, thinking I could make it two more years when Diane
would start Medicare and I could drop my expensive company insurance plan. Income from my Social Security, Missouri
bonds and the rent Sue and Joe were paying each month were very helpful. My U.S. and Missouri income taxes were
negligible. This was the result of
having no capital gains from selling stocks and net losses on both my business
and the rental condo.
Diane and I continued to enjoy
participating in our usual Columbia activities, particularly the times we could
share dinners with friends. We very much
enjoyed our life together in Columbia. Our first short trip of the year was in early
February to attend the marriage of niece Tracy to Tim. We teased her a lot about her changing her
five-letter last name of Booth for her husband’s fourteen-letter last name of Rauschenberger.
Tracy’s parents, Sue and Joe, and sister
Kelly flew to New Jersey for the wedding.
They were joined by their son Joe, Jr. and his wife Angie. Now all of Sue and Joe’s children would be
married. Tracy was their only child who had
graduated from college, in this case Rutgers, Diane’s alma mater. Tim was a college graduate and high school
teacher.
Family with bride and groom. From the left:
Kelly, Sue, Joe, Tracy, Tim, Angie and Joe, Jr.
After Earlene and Vince’s late February/early
March visit to join us at the True/False documentary film festival, it was time
for Diane and I to take our Olivia two-for-the-price-of-one trip. Since Tahiti is in the South Pacific, we
first flew to Los Angeles on American Airlines.
Then we boarded Air France’s nine-hour flight to Papeete, the capital of
Tahiti. We needed to recuperate, so we
spent two nights in a hotel that our friend Craig arranged for us. The first day we took a tour which circled the
island enabling us to see the beautiful waterfalls, grottos, and gardens. We stopped at the Paul Gauguin Museum that
told the story of this artist’s stay in Tahiti.
The next morning, we just walked around the town, visiting the market
and seeing the fresh produce and seafood, including some large South Pacific
tuna.
Hotel in Papeete
View from hotel grounds with Jeanne &
Diane
Waterfall on island trip
Tuna
The next afternoon we checked in with
Olivia and boarded the very luxurious ship, the Regent Seven Seas' Paul
Gauguin. We cruised around the south
seas visiting several islands, all very lush and vibrant. Twice we were given concerts on board the
ship, once by native women playing Tahitian musical instruments and dancing. A farewell performance was given by both men
and women. The dress and movements
reminded me of similar performances we had seen in Hawaii. It is thought that the settlers of Hawaii
left from these Polynesian islands.
The Regent Seven Seas Paul Gauguin
Tahitian Rock Band
There were several highlights for me. On the first island we visited, we were
driven around in Land Rover Defender Trucks. The back of the trucks had been covered and
the locals had been very imaginative about constructing seats with cushioned
backs along both sides. At a stop they
served us fresh fruits and shredded coconut picked while we watched. They entertained us with singing and playing
string instruments. Repeating an
occurrence Diane and I had in New Zealand (another South Pacific country), we
were all asked to choose a song to sing.
Again, the one everybody knew was “You are my sunshine.”
Shredded coconut and banana
Where we sang “You are my sunshine”
We visited an oyster farm which grew them
with the hope that they would produce a black pearl. Our next stop was at a vanilla bean
plantation. We spent one day on a
“private island” where we could swim. The water was so shallow that we could
walk out to the reef using our snorkel masks and equipment to see the colorful
fish.
Oyster farm exhibit
Fresh vanilla beans
Swimming in the shallow water
On another island, a gay American man took
us on a tour to visit some remarkable archeological sites. He lived in Tahiti with his partner who was a
native, and our guide commented on the machismo of Tahitian males.
I listen to our resting archeological guide
(I am not a ground sitter)
When we arrived at the airport for our 1:15
am flight home, the waiting area was packed.
Our flight wasn’t the only one leaving at that unfriendly hour. Our Olivia friends were exhausted. While waiting to board, they laid on the
floor and fell asleep. We enjoyed our
tour of the Tahitian South Pacific, but I’m not sure we would have done it
without the lure of the two-for-the-price-of-one. Even then, the cost for one trip plus two
airplane tickets was not cheap.
The spring was very busy after our return
to Columbia. To help raise money to improve the Farmer’s Market, we sponsored a
dinner for four couples at the home of one of the vendors. Diane and I also served as judges at the
April election for city council and school board. Bob and I continued our meetings about math
textbooks and materials to be adopted by the Columbia Public Schools.
In the summer I submitted my second paper
to the Journal of Pharmaceutical Statistics.
I was very surprised when the editor asked me if I could tell him one or
more names of statisticians who would be qualified to review the paper. Of course, I gave him Nancy’s name. He didn’t know that she was my friend and had
been helping me with the paper. It
wouldn’t have taken a super sleuth to discover that she was in the local
Statistics Department. I was surprised
when she told me that he actually did ask her to be one of the reviewers. She accepted
By the first of September, it was time for
a U.S. driving trip with stops along the way before visiting our families on
the East Coast. We started out by
entertaining our interest in caves. Previously
Diane and I had visited the Blanchard Springs Cave in Arkansas and the Onondaga
Cave at a Missouri state park southwest of St. Louis. Our first stop on this trip was at Mammoth
Cave in Kentucky where I had been as a young girl with my parents. It is the world's longest known cave system,
over 400 miles in length. Although much
of it is the typical limestone cave, part of it has been protected by a cap of
sandstone. Showing that we were in good
physical condition, the next morning we walked the four miles and 1,313
mandatory stairs that were part of the Grand Avenue Tour of the cave.
Mammoth Cave
That afternoon we drove to the Shaker
Village where we had reservations for a dinner of fresh seasonal
ingredients. The tour the next morning
took us from building to building while explaining the beliefs and history of
the Shakers. They were at their height
in the early 1800s, believing in the communal ownership of property and
equality of the sexes. However, since
they opposed marriage and were proponents of celibacy, they were doomed to
failure as a major subculture.
After two days of driving, we arrived in
Princeton, NJ to visit my sister, Earlene and her husband, Vince. Vince cooked dinner, served with copious
glasses of wine. The next day they took
us to Philadelphia to visit the Franklin Institute, a science museum, and the
Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was
entertaining to watch Vince try to cope with a car GPS that insisted on sending
him across a city bridge that was closed.
After going in circles for the third time, he finally drove to another
bridge and then used the GPS. We spent a
day visiting Booth family relatives and another day at a Baumunk family get
together at Craig and Mary Ann’s.
Three generations of Baumunk’s
On our way to East Stroudsburg, PA the next
day, we stopped to have lunch with my University of Missouri research assistant
friend, Chao-Min. After a day of
visiting Diane’s nephew Joe Belanger, wife Angie and their two young sons, we
headed west, using the northern route through Toledo, Ohio. Before going home, we stopped in Iowa City to
see a woman we had met on an Olivia cruise.
She took us to many places in the short time we were there: the Amana
Colonies, the Cedar Rapids Art Museum to see the Grant Wood collection, the
Iowa Old Capitol Building in Iowa City, and the Hoover Presidential Library in
West Branch.
Diane with Belanger family
The Amana Colonies woolen textile mill
Shortly after returning to Columbia, we,
and many others from Columbia, attended a public appearance by our Senator Claire
McCaskill at the Lewis and Clark Middle School in Jefferson City. Diane helped manage the crowd. She had been working as a volunteer in
Claire’s constituent office which opened in Columbia after she was elected in
2006.
In September, I received a letter from the
Columbia Public Schools advising me of the upcoming meetings of yet another
committee on which I had volunteered to serve, the “Student Performance
Committee.” I was asked to help develop
a plan that would guide the district’s teachers over the next five years, by
developing specific, measurable objectives for improving student
performance. Of course, I chose the
subcommittee on math. Bob was smart not
to join me on this committee.
Before the month of September was over, the
editor of the journal forwarded the comments by the two reviewers on my
paper. I was asked to consider them and
invited to re-submit the paper. I worked
on either incorporating or rejecting their comments, writing a letter to the
editor describing my actions. Of course,
Nancy made useful suggestions, most of which could be incorporated in some
way. After reading the second reviewer’s
comments, I wondered how good his command of the English language was, let
alone his statistical knowledge. I did
give him the courtesy of a thorough response to each of his comments. I sent my response and revised paper back to
the editor.
The editor only asked my friend Nancy to review
the revised paper. Her comments were
even shorter, making it easy for me to respond.
The editor approved my revised paper, “Guidelines for accurate EC50/IC50
estimation,” for publication in the journal Pharmaceutical
Statistics. After reviewing and correcting the journal’s
proofs of the paper in March, it was published online in April 2010 where it
could be purchased for a fee. I
celebrated what I considered the victory of now having my two papers concerning
the use of EC50s published in the respected scientific literature. I hoped their availability would improve the
science in the fields that relied heavily on EC50 estimation. I must have succeeded since by 2024, the
article had over 45,000 reads and almost 700 citations.
The next big event in our house happened
over the Christmas holidays in 2009.
Diane was active in the Women’s Symphony League that raised money for
the Missouri Symphony. She even served
as President one year. One of their
fundraising activities was selling tickets to the annual Holiday Home
Tour. We volunteered our home to be on
the tour that year. We recruited our
friends to serve as docents in the rooms and wrote up scripts they could use to
describe the contents.
Tour homes were supposed to contain large
seasonal decorations, something to which Diane and I said: “Bah Humbug.” We didn’t want an indoor tree and instead set
around large, red poinsettia plants. We
hired a man who was expert at trimming outdoor trees with strings of
lights. Our maple tree was a manageable
size. We agreed to buy the strings of
lights and bulbs and allow him to keep all of them in exchange for his adorning
our tree. It was all the tree decoration
we had ever wanted.
Our “magic” tree of lights
We said goodbye to 2009. At the beginning of 2010, I only had three minor
clients having lost the company whose computer system I had used for the
calculations in my paper. I just
finished that work in the nick of time.
Now, I could only do calculations in Excel that didn’t require FDA
validation. I was getting used to
retirement and was starting to tell old clients, or new ones that inquired,
that I was no longer doing statistical consulting.
Early in February, we had another Tai Chi
celebration at our house for the Chinese New Year of the Tiger. We provided plenty of food and drinks for the
large hungry crowd of our classmates and their families. Our master, Kenny
Greene, had started teaching us the 108-form, and we all could see it would
take a while to learn. Earlene and Vince
came late in February for True/False.
Our first big trip of 2010 was a week’s
tour of Big Bend National Park in Texas.
Our tour company, Off the Beaten Path, was recommended by The National
Wildlife Federation. I found it easy to
expand this tour to a three-week driving trip.
Leaving Columbia in mid-March, we drove to Oklahoma City where we
started the next day by visiting the state capital. After lunch at the Brewery in the Bricktown
area, we toured the National Memorial and Museum on the grounds of the Murrah
Federal Building which was bombed on April 19, 1995. The bombing was perpetrated by two
anti-government extremists with white supremacist, right-wing terrorist sympathies,
Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. I
felt like the exhibits soft-pedaled that aspect of the bombing. We still had time to visit the Oklahoma City
Art Museum Dale Chihuly Collection. This
art museum is host to the largest Chihuly exhibit in the world because Dale
Chihuly’s mother was born in Oklahoma City. Our last visit of the day was to the National
Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum where we saw some unique guitars made for
Les Paul and Mary Ford and many others, as well as fabulous western art,
paintings and sculptures.
Heading toward Santa Fe, New Mexico, we
spent the night in Amarillo, Texas, visiting the Palo Duro Canyon State Park in
the afternoon. It is the second largest
canyon in the U.S. The next day, we
joined our friends Joe and Karen from Denver at the two-bedroom casita they had
rented for us to share in Santa Fe. The
next morning, we drove to the Georgia O'Keefe home for
a tour. After lunch we went to the New
Mexico State Capital often referred to as the "Roundhouse" because of
its circular structure. It houses a permanent,
public collection of contemporary art by artists of New Mexico. Our final day with Joe and Karen was the day
of the museums: Museum of International
Folk Art, Museum of Indian Arts & Culture and Wheelwright Museum of the
American Indian. It was good to see our
dear friends and enjoy the southwestern cuisine of Santa Fe.
Karen and Joe in Sante Fe
Outside of Georgia O'Keefe home
We drove further south to Carlsbad, New
Mexico where we spent the next three nights.
The first day we drove to the Guadalupe Mountains National Park and
spent the day hiking. I again wanted to
share a cave experience with Diane, so on our final day we took the King's Palace cave tour at the famous
Carlsbad Caverns. I chose this tour
because it took us through four highly decorated chambers and into the deepest
portion of the cavern, 830 feet beneath the desert above. Also, I knew I could count on the rangers to
conduct a black-out, turning off all artificial lights revealing the natural
darkness of the cave. Unless you have
had the opportunity, it is difficult to comprehend the experience of not being
able to even get a hint that your hand is in front of your face. I have never
been able to replicate it except in another cave.
Carlsbad Cavern
The next day we drove to the El Paso
airport, left our car in the long-term parking lot and met our tour group at
the baggage claim. On our way to Big
Bend, we first stopped at Fort Davis where all-black infantry and cavalry
regiments that were established after the Civil War were stationed. A
National Park Service ranger described the fort’s importance in understanding
the presence of African Americans in the West and in the frontier military. On the square in mile-high downtown Fort
Davis, we checked into the Hotel Limpia where we had our welcome dinner and
learned more about our guides and fellow travelers. We had already discovered that some of the
guides had very keen vision. When we
were on the grounds at the Fort, they easily spotted birds I would not have
noticed. They carried and set up tripods
with eyepieces trained on wildlife for us to view. We slept very well nestled in the Davis
Mountains.
Sharp-eyed guide with tripod
Fort Davis sculptures of black soldier and
his horse
Driving from Fort Davis, we found the scenery
very interesting. Texas was not just
relying on big oil anymore. The
hillsides were peppered with big windmills, and I could see passing trains
transporting blades elsewhere.
The Park was a welcome sight. The area has an ancient geological history
involving the collision of tectonic plates which created a bump called the “Big
Bend”. It can be visualized by looking
at a map of Texas. On the west side, the
border doesn’t go due north from the southern border with Mexico, but turns
west, then drops south (forming the bump) before it heads back north
again. The National Park is located at
the southern tip of the bend.
Outline of State of Texas showing the “Big
Bend” on the left
Our lodging at the Chisos Mountains Lodge was
located near the start of a trail we took the first day. The Window Trail began by sloping downward. The footing became tricky as we had to jump
from rock to rock in a dry creek bed. We
decided it was all worth it since the view through the “window” at the end was
magnificent. We sat in the creek bed and
ate our packed lunch. It was slow going
back uphill, and we were very glad we had our walking sticks and plenty of
water in our backpacks.
Jeanne and Diane on the Window Trail
View through the “window”
One night after dinner the guides took us
to an area where there were several wooden telephone poles with holes near the
top. As the sun set and it got dark,
little owls emerged from the holes and started flying around. These elf owls are only about five inches in
length and migrate to the area from Mexico.
Other nocturnal animals we looked for included the kit fox, bobcat,
kangaroo rat, and bats. During the early
and late morning hours, we saw mule deer, coyotes, jackrabbits, and
cottontails. Our guides also described
the varieties of cacti, desert flowers and other plants. There was an amazing amount of diversity in
this desert environment.
As well as creating the western boundary of
Texas, the Rio Grande River forms the southern boundary of the national park. We visited the river twice, once in a canyon,
walking on a ledge high above the swiftly moving water. The other time was along a shallow,
slow-moving section of the river where the road went right down to the water. We saw friendly Mexicans riding their horses back
across the border after a visit to the park.
It was obvious they were not immigrating.
In 2021, Texas Governor Greg Abbott
proposed a border wall along his state's boundary with Mexico, but it could run
into a Texas-sized problem at Big Bend National Park. I would hate to see a big barrier built
through this or any other National Park such as the one partially completed at
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona.
Checkpoints operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection are located
on all north/south highways leading from the Big Bend area, and are staffed at
all times. That should suffice.
Horsemen heading to Mexico after crossing
the shallow Rio Grande
Hike along the Rio Grande as it flowed
between steep walls
Most
evenings we ate at the lodge restaurant, but on the last night we had a special
treat. We boarded the van for a trip to
the Starlight Theatre in Terlingua where we not only had a big Texas dinner but
Texas-style entertainment on a stage. I
was amused when I went outside to the toilet, which fortunately was of the
flush variety, to read the sign saying “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down,” giving
testament to water shortages in this part of Texas.
The next day we started our way back to El
Paso, stopping for the night in Marfa, an art hub that attracts tourists to
view the featured minimalist art. Our
farewell dinner really got out-of-hand with a lot of drinking and kissing going
on, in which Diane decided to participate.
That is the only thing that made me glad this part of our trip was
over.
After picking up our car the next day, we
began our travels toward home, stopping for the night in Fort Stockton. We really needed to do laundry but were warned
to inspect a washer before using it since the men working in the surrounding
oil fields were using them to wash their oil-laden clothes. On the recommendation of the motel desk clerk,
we ate our best Mexican food of the trip at a little café on the edge of town.
We drove through Bluebonnet country with a
stop in Fredericksburg for lunch before we arrived in Austin, where we spent
two nights. We had a busy day there
making four stops: 1) the Zilker botanical gardens located on the south bank of the Colorado
River; 2) the Texas state capitol, 3) the Blanton Art Museum, and 4) the LBJ
Presidential Library located at the University of Texas. Late March was a good time for viewing
flowers at the botanical gardens. There
were many volunteers giving tours of the capitol and telling stories about
Texas history. We enjoyed the exhibits
in the LBJ Library, particularly of his civil rights initiatives and the small
exhibit about the life of Lady Bird.
Bluebonnets
Zilker botanical gardens
Texas state capitol building
It was a short drive to College Station,
the home of Texas A&M University where we made two stops: 1) the Presidential
library for the first Bush President and 2) the MSC (Memorial Student Center)
Forsyth Galleries. After his eldest son
entered politics, we referred to George Herbert Walker Bush as Bush 1 for
short. We didn’t like the exhibits as
much as the ones at the LBJ library. They
seemed to be more political and extolling his time in office, instead of being
more descriptive.
George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and
Museum
It was a long day of driving the next day to arrive in Little
Rock, Arkansas. Following our pattern,
we toured: 1) the Arkansas State Capitol, 2) the Arkansas Arts Center, and 3)
the Clinton Presidential Library. The
Clinton Library was having a special exhibit of the Madeleine Albright
Collection, entitled “Read My Pins.”
Secretary Albright wore pins which communicated a message before,
during, and after her years of public service.
For example, after she was told that the Russians had planted a
listening device—a “bug”—in a conference room near her office in the State
Department, she wore a pin the shape of a huge bug the next time she saw the
Russians, and they got the message.
Interior of the Arkansas State Capitol
Me outside the Arkansas Arts Center
Clinton Presidential Library
Example of an Albright pin
Soon after returning home, I went to see a
gynecologist. I was experiencing some
vaginal discomfort and bleeding. She found
a urethral caruncle (a small growth on the urethra). I was worried that our love-making had caused
the injury. At this point in our
relationship, the sex wasn’t all that important to me, but affection was.
Our early morning routine demonstrates one
example of how we showed our affection for one another. I started the coffee brewing in the master
bathroom while Diane warmed up milk for the coffee in the kitchen microwave. She prepared the cups of coffee and brought
them to the bed where we leaned back and enjoyed our first cups. This was a time when we talked about the
previous and next day’s activities.
Before we got out of bed, I put my arms around Diane and held her while
she learned over and we shared a slow, gentle kiss. It was a wonderful way for us to maintain
some physical closeness and start the day.
I loved Diane deeply, respected her intellect (and cooking), and enjoyed
her company on our increasingly frequent travels together.