1997

Friends, Susanne leaves Denver,

and Cornelius enters Columbia

Rolf and Barbara in Spain

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This year the visits of friends started with Clydette Powell. I put on my Tibetan hat for the picture.

She was followed by two ghost from our years in Göttingen and Cambridge: Paul Fjelstad and his brother-in-law Jan Houtermanns, the son of the famous physicist. They arrived in an old beaten-up car like Paul had always driven. Unfortunately nobody took a picture.

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At Hanka and Kris Maliewicz's we had met that winter an intriguing Cal-Arts student from Georgia: Tamunia Sulamamidze. She soon became a regular visitor at our house. Willful but with a great heart we really liked her. Her brother was making lots of money from mining speculations in Moscow and supported his sister grand style....

Hanka, Tamunia, Kris Malkiewicz, and Barbara at a dinner party at our house.

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In February Susanne appeared in great distress in Pacific Palisades. Her company was trying to divest itself of her by doing a very similar trick as Aerospace : undermining her professional.performance..

We tried hard to cheer her up, talking and reexamining her difficult situation.

This see-sawing at her job went on for months. However, Susanne was smarter than I. In November 1997 she finally intuited that her generous salary was the reason. It way above the pay similar managers in the organization earned. A reduction in pay is unthinkable in American business practice. She confronted the organizer, who had been specially hired to get her out, and within a few days they had offered her a generous separation, and she left with excellent recommendations at New Years 1997. She found a new job in a store in Augusta, Georgia, and to John's regret they left Denver.

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.In March Sophia and David baptized Alexandra. We attended the solemn service. David provided the background music.

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To divert Suschen from her troubles Barbara met her in New York at Cornelius' place in Brooklyn for a few days in March. In great excitement Barbara and Susanne roamed the town together.

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In August Cornelius flew to Denver and went jeeping with the Woods in the Rockies.

This is when John took this charming picture of the two siblings.

Cornelius changes to Prof. Hen's lab at Columbia

Cornelius was still teaching at the Manhattan high school. Despite the success he had with his students and the directrice of the school, he slowly came to the realization, that he would not want to try to motivate inner-city children for the rest of his life. He decided to leave and find himself a postdoctoral position at Columbia.. He wanted to investigate anxiety in genetically manipulated mice. Prof. Hen was delighted to take him, and once more he was able to quickly join his laboratory, first supported by Hen later by a grant from NIH.

The summer he spent with Carolyn in Los Angeles, while we took off for 5 weeks in Spain in October - November.

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Rolf and Barbara in Madrid and Andalucia.

We spent a week in Madrid exporing the town and its museums, of which there were many. Then we took the fast train to Cordoba, rented a car, and wandered all over Andalucia for three weeks from Granada and the Sierra Nevada to the Atlantic coast and Sevilla. A well planned itinerary and cool but stable weather made this a most enjoyable trip.

To save space I send you to my Spain-webfile: click here to see and read abot the details of our adventures.

At the end we spent another few days in Madrid, revisting the most exciting places for the second time. Spain and especially Madrid were highly charged during that year before Spain joined the European Union.

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After our return Cornelius and Barbara went to see the Djobadzes, who had got married and spent several years in Spain.

Wachtang and Irene Djobadze in their house in Oceanside. Wachtang had run away from Georgia as a boy with the retreating German army in 1943-44, studied archeology in Freiburg after the War, and later held professorships in Salt Lake City and East Los Angeles. His name to fame was the excavation of an early medieval Georgian church on the Black Mountain in Antiochia, Turkey. Distant relatives, his mother had been a Tchitchishvili, in Tbilisi had set us on his tracks. Our freindship had several wild Georgian-German ups and downs, but thanks to Barbara and Irene, who comes from Germany, we are still friends....

Cornelius stayed with us until the end of November. His relationship with Carolyn was coming to an end - actually to our relief. As much as we loved Carolyn - Barbara's precious godchild - the two were not destined for each other. With Barbara's circumspect help we succeeded to restore Carolyn's confidence and trust in us. This took several months. In December Cornelius found a sunny and airy new apartment for himself at 119 Payson Avenue at the top end of Manhattan, and bought himself a powerful Kawasaki motorcycle for Christmas to drive to his lab near Columbia University.