Dan Keller's Perpetually-Under-Construction Home Page...
First: NO WAR!
in Ukraine, Syria, Burma, Palestine, or anywhere else and in 2019 and 2020 I did three extended
water-only fasts
, in 2020 was
interviewed about nursing in Covid times
(listen!)
by
Lezak Shallat (hear her on
SoundCloud)
and in 2019 after two intensive years of development released
NurseAssess
, an app that smooths nursing workflow and I built
NurseMind,
an app that, in the spirit of
Atul Gawande's healthcare checklist revolution
is changing
how nurses work
via my startup
Nurse Tech, Inc.
and I
blog about all that
(and especially at
Dan Keller's
Nursing, Health Policy and Healthcare Technology Blog
) and was
interviewed about it in my school paper,
Synapse
, got
patent 9164656
, thought about
time management
, got
vaccinated
(many of my
SNF patients had Covid
), write
essays and stuff
, used to eat vegan
(here's why)
until I got lazy, keep my
photo albums
on the Web, miss my mother
Judith Jewel Herman
(also a nurse) who passed away in 2017, have a
daughter Cara
whose middle name is Sphere for
Thelonious
, and a son Alexi who in July 2011
joined an army
and dug trenches and fired machine guns, I went again to
Jazzcamp
(after a 21-year hiatus) and loved it!, in 2021 I am learning tennis
, in 2013 toured the
medical facilities of Cuba (world's highest doctor/patient ratio; 2nd is Italy) --
we can learn from them
-- grew up in Rome
where, as a boy
I dubbed hundreds of 2nd-rate movies
such as
Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967)
(my first line is at 5'25") and was
interviewed about Rome dubbing by
Johan Melle
and in 2008 moved back there with my kids
for a year
where we had
a lot of water
but the Romans don't worry until it reaches the
occhialone
(big eye)
di Ponte Sisto
and where the brilliant Susan Levenstein blogs
Stethoscope on Rome
-- especially informative regarding Covid -- and if you curse the mediocrity of American pop culture just listen to
Italian Gattino Virgola
ringtones that blessedly are not on the cellphones of my
kids (who used to be small)
and in 2008
attended St. Stephen's where some meetings did seem to last 37 years (click this link to see a great photo caption)
and have
fond memories of my high school senior year
and in 2014 went looking for ancestral roots in
Romania and Ukraine
and in 2016
cruised the canals of France
on a
penichette
but my kids do love
sushi which I tell them to enjoy before the oceans are lifeless
(could theirs be the last generation to eat wild-caught fish?) and I took them in 2016 to
Burning Man (
my pix
), for 22 years had
a business
and the business had
a home page
-- we pioneered
the paperless classroom
(power corrupts; Powerpoint corrupts absolutely)
and our own
management system (by to-do list)
-- I even have a
personal mission statement
-- and I am a newly-licensed RN with
a healthcare blog
and in December, 2010 was "pinned" (how nurses graduate) at
(click us!)
SMU
(a vocational school) where I learned that
the
kidneys (not the brain) run the show
and we must remedy the mediocrity of
post-secondary education (the good news is that
we
can
fix it
) despite my
bitter experience
at the surprisingly-mediocre USF, and my
swim-in-the-Bay
buddy
Hyo Kim
is doing real preventive healthcare
while I
rant endlessly
, wrote my first program on an
IBM 360
on punched cards
in Fortran taught to me by
Neil MacFarlane
, got a master's degree in
Medical Information Science
(here are some
reminiscences
)
from
UCSF
where I was privileged to be advised by
Dr. Marsden Scott Blois
, a pioneer in
medical concept representation, published
a paper (1983)
, and today I'm certain that nursing education -- always a few steps behind -- needs to add
a nursing informatics clinical rotation
, and collected a few
autographs of computing giants
but let's be careful not to
unleash a monster though I once had
a tricycle
and later an
answering machine
, have been thinking about
business
and real estate in Italy
about which country I have
opinions
and
Dolce Trastevere for whom I made a web site (but they've gone out of business... guess it didn't help), and I did create
Wifi-Italia
and Italy's
first
free public Wifi site
(former Italian president
Cossiga
repeatedly pumped my hand, extolling wireless technology -- he's got three wifis in his house) -- and here's
my
San Francisco house
(it has only two)
and
custom-built Sun Frost appliances
(yes, that's my kitchen on their web site) and a
Tel-a-Tronic Signal Center
and was featured on
the cover of the Oct. 2004
SF Apartment
magazine
and was the set for one episode of a short-lived TV series named
Partners in Crime (1984)
starring Lynda Carter and Loni Anderson and
Google StreetView caught me there
, had a piano floated up three flights by the astonishing
Ed Gong
, and now my garage has a zero-emissions
electric car in it and
25 solar panels on the roof
in the San Antonio district of Oakland (though I lived for 30 years in the Castro district
of
San Francisco
),
a town that had a great Mayor
(he's now Governor... soon President? though the one we have now (2024)
is pretty good
) though we do have
earthquakes
the real threat is
climate change
that could end California's status as America's salad bowl and, says Mark Schapiro (with whom I played in the short-lived
Deadliners band
with
Jonathan Alford
our favorite mail man on piano), (
midwestern wheat crops
are threatened, too
), and in a
state
whose economy recently surpassed the UK to become the world's fifth-largest
and now I live in
Oakland
and the
Oakland Riviera
is where it's at -- with a remarkable Oakland Sound pedigree (when it was named Freeway Recording) including the incomparable D'wayne Wiggins
and his Tony! Toni! Tone`! (go Oakland!) who recorded here and they did my favorite
What's Your Sign
-- but my favorite home was for two years the
MSO Lucid
(a surplused Korea-vintage Navy minesweeper), burned out and gave up on
cohousing
(and in 2014 shook the hand of
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan groundbreaking a cohousing project
), think about
retirement
, and am fond of technology
but people are even more interesting so I have volunteered at the
UCSF Medical Center
(Long Hospital and medical records), at the
SF General Hospital
Emergency Room, at the
Glide Memorial clinic
, at the
CPMC hospital
Emergency Room, and at the
SF AIDS/HIV/HepC Nightline
, at the Tobacco Education Center for whom I taught and built the
Tobacco Teacher web site
and as an RN for
Project HomelessConnect
, and have run
smoking cessation programs
at
Kaiser sites in the Bay Area and at
Mills-Peninsula
-- read
the interview
and
a classic denial story
-- and served as Factotum-in-Chief for
Gary Heit's
Americare Neurosurgery International
delivering equipment, training, and high-tech medical care
to the third world (
went in March, 2008, to Hue, Vietnam
) but he died in 2023 (who will take his place?) and have ridden around in
ambulances where
bad Governor Boobengrabber picked the wrong fight when he said he was
"Kicking our nurses' butts" and I had a
father
who was a painter and politico
(I am a
red diaper baby
)
and who did
the artwork for this website and for
my company's training manuals
(losing him in 2006 made
a tough year
tougher), my
mother was a filmmaker and playwright
(here is
a trailer on
YouTube
) who wrote the story of
Taxi, the ferry-house dog
and had success with her play
Funny Feeling
(that's her granddaughter Cara in the poster), have a
sister
Martheeenia -- who is (also) a great artist
with
a painting in New York's Metropolitan Museum
and her husband
Brad
who designed
Estee Lauder and
makes juice
, another sister, Katy
who traveled the world as the physical therapist for the New York City Ballet
and
fixes broken violinists at the Juilliard School
and invents
machines to make dancers better
and is married to
Colter the Voiceover King
and my grandfather Sidney (my middle name) invented
the Keller machine
and the process (called, oddly enough,
kellering
) for creating dies to cast curved steel surfaces (that made possible
streamlined cars) whereas
my other grandfather
(Herman Herschkowitz, renamed himself Harry Herman at Ellis Island)
came to America on Nov. 18, 1906, aboard the S.S. Amerika
(which reported icebergs just three hours before one sank the
Titanic
), I invented the
Narciss-O-Meter
, have an apocalyptic vision of
inevitable and catastrophic environmental collapse
with
global marine impacts
(especially ocean acidification) largely unnoticed (even
the Pentagon knows we're screwed
...) we're headed for a
long emergency
("America's oil consumption is the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world... Suburbia is going to fail. You can state that categorically..." says
James Kunstler (one of my gurus) in
America's New Religion
),
peak oil
was in the 70s and now we have
peak water
and record-breaking drought in California and other
visions of the future
and in 2024 I have joined
Citizens Climate Lobby
to work on this and
Michael Stocker
and Ocean Conservation Research
are doing something about the
noisy oceans
, have done projects for Silicon Valley companies including
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
and
, and have had a few
business cards
along the way, love to attend the
Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop
, for years relied utterly on an antique but marvelous piece of engineering --
HP's 200LX palmtop PC
(it runs
DOS
!) and I
still
write HTML
by hand
, spend too much time administering my network and a few dozen web sites, with things like
Bruce Borcherdt's
Midas Niggard
, have had my share of "customers from hell"
but, thankfully, none quite like
the infamous Thrasher
, toured the
Artificial Intelligence Lab and robotics workshops of MIT
with my boyhood pal
Devon McCullough and
patted a Lisp Machine
, once
acted in a movie
(that's me, second from the right) with
Rock Hudson -- it's not a chick flick and
here's how to tell
and Bing
watched it as a child in the Philippines -- ten points if you can name
this movie
-- and now
blogs about it
and I just discovered that pretty much everything I know
(e.g. what is
spam -- really! check it out!) has been collected in
a single, succinct document
-- yes!
an IETF RFC!
and New Age is debunked
here
-- in California (which has
much
in common with
Italy
) and
rowed for St. Stephen's School
and on the San Francisco Bay and
on the Tiber River
-- I like adventure sports
-- diving, parachuting, etc. (here's
parasailing in Mexico
), and if you get a chance to see the
Red Bastard, go! he's brilliant! and I
had a cat
and Roman friends (
Leo and Marilena
) who are devoted
cat people and
a cat watches
Psycho
and now have
two
cats,
Claude Shannon
(whose hand I once shook and
autograph
collected) and
Norbert Wiener
, and my pal Pat Olson
showed that the Plague of Athens was
Ebola -- is it coming back? --
and
makes us wear togas
and I lived for my first seven years on
Danskammer Farm
and here are links to my elementary school (
The American Overseas School)
and (
we visited in June, 2007
) my high school (
St. Stephen's School
(which
almost went bankrupt
in my senior year))
in Rome (where my family moved after Danskammer) where as a teen I danced to the
Free Love
in the Teen Club in the catacomb beneath St. Paul's-within-the-Walls and I go back every year (here are
pix from May, 2005
) and in 2008-2009 actually returned to
Rome for a year and
my kids attended St. Stephen's too!
, have friends Lisa and Tom who run the beautiful Italophillic web site
Your Garden Show
,
Naomi
who teaches adoring children the joys of classical strings, quasi-Roman friend Graeme Thomas who won awards for his stupendous
Kubrick 2001, The Space Odyssey Explained
(some great
Flash
) and of course you recognize
this line
, and now he's made the official
International Year of the Potato
web site (in five languages!), won
a few awards myself
and here's another adoptive-Roman friend, Catherine
who received an MBE from
this emissary (recognize him?)
of the Queen of England
for running
the
Keats-Shelley House
, and regarding things Italian
do your gift shopping for limoncello
from John and Victoria's
La Raccolta
whose web site
tech guru Phil Glatz built (he loves
Drupal
) or a silk scarf
from my Italophillic pal Lisa P.
or a limoncello cake from Jan's
J.Marie Fine Cakes
and
Ken Jacobs
knows
who killed JFK
and if you need your head shrunken
Dino
is your man
and what about oddball Gail
the webmistress (eh?), and here's
where I stay in Rome
, jam with my friend
Giorgio Rosciglione
the celebrity bassist, enjoy hilarious, spunky
Luciana Littizzetto
, and there is San Francisco fixture
Chicken John
who cracks me up, worked (with Murray
who
invented the lightbulb,
makes wifi work, and practiced
hotel room engineering
) for a time at the alas now-defunct
Colex Electronic Company Limited
, 15th Floor,
Luk Hop Industrial Building, 8 Luk Hop Street, San Po Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong
,
manufacturer of what was then (1983) the world's cheapest Unix machine (and the price was low, too :-) dubbed "poxy box" by
James Hole
(it crashed
when you typed
cat
), and here's
Fritz Schaerli
, the president of
Adasoft AG
makers of
zutrittskontrollsisteme
in Switzerland where I also enjoyed working long ago, once
modeled the "...sleek, European-style monitor arm" in the Inmac catalog
(the Sun workstation screen is turned to hide the error messages), listened to Frank Zappa
and
Firesign Theater
and once had dinner with my boyhood favorite bandleader
Booker T. Jones, attended the defunct
Notre Dame International
high school in Rome with buddy
Bill Zimmerman, went to college at
UCSC
-- here's
graduation
with roommate Nic Nelken, an avowed disciple of
Dr. Bronner and now a vascular surgeon at
Kaiser -- hey, one of us made good! -- have always been fascinated by electronic music starting with Alvin Curran's in Rome in the 60's then studied with
Gordon Mumma
(who introduced me both musically and personally to John Cage) at UCSC in the 70's and in 1977 at
Dartmouth
with an inventor of the
Synclavier --
Jon Appleton
(
with Moog and Syntrophia hat
,
with prototype Synclavier in road cases
in San Francisco for a performance at the
Exploratorium
)
and at Stanford with
John Chowning
and classmate
Larry Groupé
has gone on to be an Emmy-nominated film score composer, and in 1982 I built
my first studio
with my then-roommate and techno-wild-man
Michael Schippling
, am deeply saddened by the March, 2021 loss of my little pal
Claire Callahan
in 2013 mourn for UCSF Regent, classmate
Dave Shewmake
and my childhood music teacher
Barbara Sparti whom we lost in March and June of 2013, respectively, and for drinking-buddy/jazz-loving
Fred Lewis
whom we lost in Jan. 2012, we lost musician/activist
"You Ain't Done Nothing if You Ain't Been Called a Red"
Eliot Kenin
in Feb. 2023, and for gifted pianist, best-chart-maker, and inspired software geek
Peter Eden
whom we lost in the Fall of 2011, for adored drummer
Bruce Felter
(with whom the pocket was so deep we delighted in calling it a trench) who passed on 12/20/2007, and the 7/7/7 loss of beloved friend and mentor
Joe Podolsky
, the Nov. 2000 loss of
Larry Morehead
the real estate mogul (funny story: unbeknownst to either of us at the time, the first building I bought was the first he sold), and another loss -- on 12/22/2002 my
JazzCamp
buddy
Robin Gilbert
passed away, and that year we also lost pianist/artist
Kent Holloway
, and in early 2004 so too passed away my beloved ex-father-in-law Lauri Hieta (I once married a Finn; here are
photos from that happy time
), and on 4/14/2004 we lost
Gosina Mandersloot
, and shortly thereafter we lost
Nameers
, and in 2005 was the passing of
Joe Bithell
with whose
Silicon Gulch Jazz Band
I enjoyed decades of gigs (no kidding!), and on 12/23/2005 we lost the extraordinary trumpet player and lifelong friend
Robin Hodes
, in 2007 we lost drummer and beloved friend
Ben Randall, in 2011 we lost
'bone-player
Tom Small
, and also in 2011 (July) we lost another cherished American Italian transplant and high school chum,
Lisa Marini Finerty
, and in Jan. of 2015 we lost
Dick Karpinski, and in that same month we lost my pal-since-third-grade and Romana Americana
Laura Antinucci
whose brother Richard was the drummer in my first (junior high school) rock band, and I'll forever miss my best high school pal, brilliant energy engineer
Mike Selig
who passed away on Feb 22, 2011 -- his last essay was his own obituary
, and Harvey Robb
in September of 2015 -- and here is
the grave of John Piccoli
(in the
Cimitero Acattolico
where I intend to be buried or at least to endow a tree, managed in part by
Heather
whom we lost in July of 2013 (
memorial site
) but mostly by
Mandy
-- in 2022 the Queen awarded her an
MBE
!
(the Beatles got MBEs, too) --
listen to the 10/29/2011 RAI interview
) who died in 1955 at age 16 on his brand-new motorbike
given to him that very day by his doting father Nemo the sculptor (Juanita never forgave him and left me her house but connivers screwed me out of it after a
19-year legal battle
... no kidding!), and in June of 2017 we lost my Roman pal
Maura
, and in 2014
Pete Seeger
-- activist, inspiring musician, family friend and, in Feb. 2016,
Dan Hicks
, in 2023 we lost
Burt Bacharach
(whom
I saw live in 2017 -- fabulous!
), and in 2021 my beloved seventh-grade Ancient History teacher Hiram Dewitt
and in 2022 my fabulous Dartmouth electronic music mentor/composer/friend
Jon Appleton
(yes, I mentioned him above... can't do it too often), and in March of 2022 my Roman boyhood pal (and gifted musician in our rock/jazz band)
Giampiero Scuderi aka Chirichetto ("Altar Boy")
and in March of 2023 Giampi's brother Mimmo
(there is now only one brother left,
Uccio
, though I was called the fourth brother since I ate at their house so often) and in July of 2022 my buddy-in-Brazilian-music-joy
Vaughan Johnson
-- so I have been
thinking about death
lately -- here is
a poem about it
by one of my favorite authors, John Updike
(deceased 2009) -- and here's another:
Last Touch
and
some wisdom about grief
-- and I hang onto
old friends
-- remember shmoos?
and Pogo?
and
R. Crumb?
and went to
Thailand in 2006
to see the
longneck ladies
(and my friend
Jason
who wrote a
succinct statement of his political values
) and used to go every year to
Carnaval
in Salvador
(capital city of the Brazilian state of Bahia, the
musical soul
of that most musical country), adore
Gal Costa
Brazil's top star
(crazy hair, fabulous pipes, phrasing, time, arrangements, production, repertory, and sidemen) who, too, died in 2022 ...oh yes, another deity in my pantheon is
Ray Brown
(it's said that when he was married to
Ella Fitzgerald and they had a fight she threw his bass into the pool -- but that's not why I worship him), and in 2023 we lost
Len Chandler whose impassioned music inspired boyhood me "...so I guess we gotta keep on keepin' on", from 2000 to 2003 I made jazz acoustic bass my primary career
often as
a sideman for
singers
(here's my
musical resume
and my
gig calendar
and you can
hear me in action
), especially at my favorite bar, Specs
and made some
MP3 sound clips
(in my own little studio) of people I worked with such as
Mal Sharpe's
Big Money in Dixieland and deeply regret
his passing in 2020
, especially enjoyed playing with
Cathy Withacee Felter and My Trio
though for years my favorite gigs were at
Specs 12 Adler Museum
(but alas buffoons now run the nuthouse) in SF's Chinatown, and have compiled what, despite its relentless and interminable loquacity (and brutality toward
violists
-- I dated one once) is probably not the definitive collection of
musician jokes
, in 2004 moved on to my third career (career not job -- important distinction), have gotten interested in
wireless networks
with
and am, with my family, active in our local community (here's
us scrubbing the sidewalks
in our
neighborhood paper
), former volunteer-webmaster for
Children's Day School
that Cara used to attend, visited
my New York family
in Spring, 2002, again in
July of 2004
, and again in
December of 2005
, and
the glorious Fourth in Alameda
, and I must warn you that
terrible things happen when you turn 50
, in 2004 and
2007
strolled the
Bay-to-Breakers
, in 2007 threw a
party for Susan
, occasionally cook
(recipes here)
and am reminded by
the World Trade Center attack
to attend to
disaster preparedness (my ham callsign is
KG6OIE
) and, accordingly, have been
programming my radios
-- if you live in the SF Bay Area, you may find useful my
collection of local public agencies frequencies and
police codes
(in a crisis, know what's going on!) and Cara and I became
NERTs
, and was relieved we got rid of
(click for rant)
Fuehrer Bush
and elected an adult
though alas he worsened the cyber-police state so we need defenses like the
FOIA Machine
and Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are patriots facing down
Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
... too bad we didn't get
Bernie... we got a nightmare worse than any I could have imagined
-- gone, too, now (hurray) but maybe the next one will be Oakland's very own Kamala
-- and I have
improved the US Constitution
but I still haven't burned
my draft card
and I propose this
modest solution
(ahh, to protest in style like the Italians!)
but if you want to date one you must know
the rules
and I used to visit
Helmut's Timberlock ranch
, in 2004
Arky is into basketball
and in 2006
he is into soccer
and in 2003 he joined me on a
mind-boggling (and strenuous) sea-kayaking trip in Baja
, once swapped apartments with
Eric Richmond
, my buddy from third grade (his is in London where I saw my forever pal
Amedeo
who takes
pictures of Roma
) and also from third grade there's
Johnny Bruckman (funny... he doesn't look like a third grader... :-) whose Dad changed my life by showing us kids on Johnny's ninth birthday
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
(in their private screening room, no less!) and I became the tough, silent loner (hah!), love to visit
Rick Ackerly's ranch
in Mendocino County's Anderson Valley (the new Napa Valley), and
Jeff Johnson alas no longer runs the progressive
Peace Pundit
site (but we love his letters to the editor of the SF Chronicle) and Karen Ande makes
poignant
photos of orphans in AIDS-torn Kenya
, did
silly little computer art thingies
, in 2007 I finally went to
Burning Man
and played in the
Burning Band
and
in 2016 took my kids
who were astounded... as was I, and I fervently oppose capital punishment -- barbaric! (
essay by my brilliant high school philosophy teacher
Steven Schneebaum
) -- and
solitary confinement
-- yes, we do torture in America
-- I have
an opinion
on just about everything political, admire
Chris Hedges
and
John Nichols
and learn so much from their books and talks, and the brilliant
podcasts of Sam Harris
and
Holly Shaw
teaches us about queens (and queening?) and I avoid superstition (everyone's got an opinion about food and diet;
few are scientific... especially all this
blather about "carbs"
) and wishful thinking (Atkins is popular because people like being told to eat
steak and butter) but research and science reveal that
beans
are indeed the cholesterol-lowering, insulin-balancing, life-prolonging, musical fruit
-- just ask the
Pritikin program for health and longevity
, have my political heroines including
Congresswoman Jackie Speier
whose hand I shook
today at UCSF
(oops, tassle on the wrong side...)
and am proud to live in the Bay Area
home of five of the six most-visited websites in the world:
Facebook
Google
YouTube (Google owns it)
Yahoo!
Wikipedia
#5 is a Chinese-language site
collect
Weegee photographs
, I
used to have a big nose
, and I fret about
growing old, sigh
and also about
the longevity of my data CDs
, and...
you noticed this entire page is a single sentence
?
Updated Wednesday, 25-Sep-2024 13:27:34 MDT