KEVIN T. KELLY: Personal Interests

Basically, I have way too many.

Wife: Noriko Nagata, Associate Professor of Modern and Classical Languages, Universitiy of San Francisco.  Noriko is doing great work designing and empirically testing the effectiveness of parser-driven Japanese language software that allows the user to type in a sentence and then gives feedback pinpointed to the nature of the students' errors.  I stay at Noriko's place in the Summer.  We have no children so we do as we please.

Sailing:  I was a champ in college in the International Enterprise class.  I raced Lasers in graduate school.  Now I rent boats on the bay in San Francisco with Noriko.  I have sailed snipes, E-scows, Y-flyers, FJ's, and 470s.  I also did a chartering class in the Chesapeake.  Secret: big boats are tubs.

Model Yacht building:  In Summer I  live near Spreckels Lake in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.   I have scratch-built four plank-on-frame lapstrake model sailboats:

  1. RC IOD racer (three years!)
  2. RC English cutter (one year)
  3. display swampscott dory (two  months)
  4. display whitehall boat (two months)
Noriko helped me build the IOD racer (in a management capacity).  A friend in San Francisco recently showed me the inside of the Dolphin rowing and swimming club (across from Girardelli square) and my jaw dropped when I saw the acres of perfectly varnished whitehall boats and the perfectly appointed boat shop.  Needless to say, I have one more quixotic activity to make room for...

Carpentry:
I have made tables, and lamps, a drafting table, Japanese window screens, etc.  But there is nothing like wooden boatbuilding, the finest thing a person can do.

Peak bagging (with Noriko):
It's like math.  You work like mad and eventually you can see something.  Then you have to go down and you can't remember how you got there.

  1. East Vidette, Sierra Nevada (class 3, wow!!)
  2. Junction Peak , Sierra Nevada (class 3, got lost on face, timed out)
  3. Grosser Solstein, Innsbruck (class 1)
  4. Nordkettegrat traverse, Innsbruck (wow!)
  5. Karwendel klettersteig , Mittenwald (wow!)
  6. Mount Haeckel , Sierra Nevada (class 3, too careful on snow field, timed out on ridge, snow blind, postholing with 55 pound pack, penitentes)
  7. Mt. Wallace (class 2, summited on the way down from Haeckel's ridge)
  8. Schwartzhorn, Dreizehntenhorn, etc. Switzerland (class 1)
  9. Akadake traverse, Japan (class 1, crowds, fun)
  10. Mt Brewer, Sierra Nevada (class 2, two hours on top, back after dark, wow!)
  11. Japanese southern alps (class 1)
  12. Mt. Lyell, Sierra Nevada (class 2-3, loose cliff above bergschrund)
  13. Mt. Agassiz, Sierra Nevada (class 2, wow!)
  14. Volcanic ridge, Sierra Nevada (class 2, we took a photograph and later saw that Ansel Adams took one at the same place!)
  15. Pico della Vellandro, Dolomites (class 1 with scary cornice and deep snow)
  16. Half dome, Sierra Nevada (class 1)
  17. Kuna peak, Sierra Nevada (class 2, on our honeymoon!)
Painting (acrylic and oil):  I taught Noriko and now she is better than me.  We follow the technique of Kevin Callahan, who emphasizes pure colors mixed from a minimal pallette of primaries, since an accurate mix always requires three colors anyway.  Whenever we do a new painting, the worst one in the house gets bumped.  Now only two of mine are left.  Help!

House:
I redid my kitchen cabinets, laid a ceramic floor, and am putting a new varnished ceiling in my porch.  I hired people to sandblast the stone exterior, point the masonry, put on a new roof, replace the kitchen plumbing, and am currently putting in a new driveway and walks.  Get the idea?  I'm not sure if the moral  is the myth of Sisyphus or that nothing has a solid foundation.

Cooking:  The more exotic, the better.  Sadly, there are only so many you can try.  We are currently playing with Carribbean and Morroccan recipes.

Buddhism and Japanese Culture:
I have been in Japan for about twelve weeks altogether now and it starts to sink in.  The zany happy feeling steadly dissipates and then... you start to realize what they really think of you!  Anyway, I have grown very fond of the rustic temple atmosphere in my wife's hometown, Kamakura, Buddhist lore, traditional Japanese tools, carpententry, temple architecture, etc.   Because of this, I increasingly look to eastern analogues when I approach the history of western philosophy.