1999-2004: South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand 

Dear Pancho:

The last email you sent me (dated January 5, 2000) had my letter to you attached to it (as usual). Here's what I recommend you do from now on:  instead of using the Reply button to respond to a letter of mine, start by writing a fresh new letter, and type in our address (cekedwards@aol.com). It's a little more work on your part, but a little less moola on ours.(Actually, the expense may not turn out to be an issue: I have not yet received a bill from AT&T for the use of my Inmarsat mini-M satellite phone, and I've been using the service for over six months. Here's hoping I've fallen through the cracks in their billing department.)

As to your Legato stock inquiry, I have regrettably sold all my shares (that's how I paid for Rhapsodie). Had I kept them all, they would be worth about $12,000,000 today. But then again, I wouldn't be sitting on my fat ass  in Fiji, eating fresh fish and scuba diving every day. Anyway, I still hava hunk of change in Ann Winblad's latest venture fund, so who knows? I could  get lucky again...

We are settling down to a pretty good life here in the Yasawas. We are  anchored off Tavewa Island, with another couple of islands within spitting distance. There is always a bit of a breeze to keep us cool, there is a local market for fresh produce, fishermen drop by now and then to sell their catch, there are a couple of backpacker lodges on the islands where we can take meals, and, best of all, amazingly cheap and terrific scuba diving.

Great local villages, too. We've been here two weeks, and may never leave. Except, of course, for the hurricanes. We keep a close watch on the weather, and if a hurricane gets within 400 miles of us, we must hightail it back to Viti Levu, motor up the Lautoka River, and tie ourselves down amongst the mangrove trees. Hey, that's what hurricane season is all about here in Fiji for the next few months. The good news is that hurricane season scares off about 95% of the other sailboats, so we pretty much have the country to ourselves.

Cops, Caren just got back from the dive shop with the bad news that they won't accept her in the program without a certificate from her doctor stating that her back is OK for scuba. Bullshit insurance requirement. Now I have to dummy up a medical certificate for her. The things a captain has to do...

 Stay in touch, good buddy,

 Sam

 yacht Rhapsodie 

 Fiji

Dear Pancho:

Congrats! Our letter was included in your most recent email. May I start calling you Mr. Technology?

Good luck with the DEA asshole. If you need any muscle, I've got some Fijian buddies that can be pretty persuasive with machetes.

Back to checking the weather report — hurricane Iris is passing south of us, and the winds are up to 30 knots. Here's hoping she doesn't change direction...

Love to all,

Sam

Yacht Rhapsodie 

Tavewa Island

Dear John and Mom:

We just returned to Vuda Point Marina from an idyllic three weeks of cruising in the Yasawa Islands. and lo! What awaits us? a package of mail, cards, andsundry goodies sent from Sharon Oaks Drive by my sweet momma-loo! Thank you, thank you. It is the first "real" mail we have received in over eight months, and it was a joy to touch the paper, smell the ink, crinkle it between our fingers...

So sorry you won't be able to join us in Fiji as part of your Tokyo trip — we understand, but we thought we would give it a try, anyway. The golf course here looks a bit substandard anyway. Too many frogs on the fairways, and sea snakes in the water hazards.

The kids are delighted to be back to the mainland — this is where they have friends, and Friends Are All when you are their age. Caren, on the other hand, opted for staying at a really nice Yasawa Island resort, leaving the boat maintenance work to Mike and me. She will try to get through the next week by staying in a luxury air-conditioned room on the beach. I phoned her last night, and she says that the room service is particularly responsive.She begins a scuba course today, but still hopes to have some time for daily meditation, stretching and massage sessions. She told me not to hurry on the boat maintenance.

We said good-bye to Yann and his significant other, Mickaella, last night. They had spent the last three weeks with us, and they really didn't like the idea of returning to France. But I reminded them that the French economy was depending on their contributions.

After the boat is once more in tiptop shape, we will gather up Caren and head clockwise back around Viti Levu to Savu Savu, our original port of entry some two months ago. We will hang there for a month or two, and then, with the hurricane season behind us, will head further afield.

 Love to you both. Again, many thanks for the snail mail — it really hit the spot

Sammy

Dear family, So many holidays: MLKJr. Day, Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day, Presidents' Day, Bruce's birthday, Bert's (bless her sweet memory) birthday (today), my big number 80 coming  up. Sam and Caren, you have undoubtedly encountered a host of additional holidays/feast days. A surfeit of days to be marked and celebrated. Some deep thinker has remarked that humans are the only animals that celebrate New Year's Eve. If true, what does this tell us about the human condition? I leave you with this profound question and move on to more trivial matters.

Christmas holiday planning should get under way if there is serious family interest in Hawaii. Len and Inger made enthusiastic noises about spending a week before Christmas in Maui but have lately avoided the topic. Maui is fine with us. My suggestion of the Lake Las Vegas resort was met with hoots of derision. Clods. Another possibility, we could all fly to wherever Sam and his family then will be, assuming that there is a decent hotel there, for a full family reunion and then fly home to deal with the food poisoning and parasites in more familiar surroundings.

My course in Art and the Law, the thirtieth version by my count, is moving along well. My next book, a collection of cultural property/art law essays, which the publisher sort of promised to have out for my birthday, definitely will appear later. Publishers. The monsoons have limited golf, but the matriarch was out there dodging the rain on the links yesterday and we have a tee  time reserved on Sunday, just in case the course hasn"t washed away by then.

Len has got us interested in the high tech stock market. I observe that, family loyal as he is, his portfolio still includes LGTO. We have put a toe in the high tech water, anough to experience the ecstasy of a couple of winners and the agony of one loser in the course of a couple of weeks. These stocks certainly move fast.

I am preparing my lectures for the Japan course on "American Law." American law students who are university graduates spend three years learning American law and I am supposed to cover it for Japanese undergraduates in five afternoon classes? We deal here with what some people would call compression but others would less kindly characterize as superficiality. An interesting assignment, which I am actually enjoying, although it's early days still. Nonetheless, superficiality, here I come. Naturally I am thinking about how to make a book out of this. Perhaps with someone else's name on it. We'll see.

Dell now sells something called a "web appliance" for people who are unable to cope with PC's. You plug it in and punch the e-mail button (the one with the big E on it) for e-mail and/or the Internet button in order to websurf. Another company is marketing one that also includes a big P button to order pizza. I am not making this up. I suggested to the matriarch that we get one for her but she resists the idea. Definitely not a techie, but maybe I'll suggest it again when she's in a better mood.

We appear to be in excellent shape. I would have a firmer basis for judgment in a couple of weeks had Dr. Stegman's nurse not called to postpone my appointment for an annual physical. But as far as we can tell we are defying the odds. Relax and enjoy it.

Hugs all around, J.

Dear Sam, 

Your poem on my 80th birthday is of course a masterpiece. Like all celebratory verse, it contains passages that some might consider hyperbole, and there are parts that might not hold up in court. But, unlike all other pieces d'occasion, this one is from you to me, and I am utterly delighted and moved by it, as is you mother, to whom I took the liberty of showing it. I have also forwarded it to Bruce and Len. As to pouring love and wisdom, I don't know about the wisdom, but you definitely got the love part right.

And thank you for the telephone call during the surprise party last night. It supplied an element that was missing from a festive affair. In addition to family there was an assortment of our friends, several of whom, like RE (who also wrote a poem), asked about you. It was good to hear  you voice, and Caren's, and to know that you really do still exist and can still speak English. Others who spoke to you gave differing reports of what you said about your plans. Did you really suggest that you might be back by the end of this year?

Sam, my wonderful adventuring son (if I may drop the "step-" this one time) you bring me great joy. 

Love, John

Dear Sam, 

Good idea. The feeling around here is, as it has long been, that you can write and should write and that the sooner you begin finding your own voice the better. The way you do that, as you know, is to write and keep writing and then write some more. It never gets any easier, but it gets better. As Fitzgerald said, there's nothing to it; just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein. On the voice topic, the trick is to stop writing what you think other people expect or want. Of course there is a sly kind of writing that caters to readers' expectations while secretly despising them and, eventually, oneself. That is very unpleasant for all concerned. But if you are not going to tell people what they want, what are you going to write about and, more important, how are you going to write about it, whatever it is? Good questions, which can be paraphrased as: Who am I? What do I want? What am I doing here? What's it all about, Alfie? Such questions easily and quickly lead one to despair and self-doubt. That is where I come in. You have to trust someone. You can trust me. First, you can trust me when I say that I believe you have what it takes to be a real writer. Second, you can trust me to answer honestly if and when you want my opinion. The opinion may not be worth much, because what do I know about writing? but it will be honest. A journal is, by all accounts, a good way to begin. So begin already.

We want to send some birthday presents. Is your present address (did you catch the subtle play on words there?) still good? For how much longer? What's this I hear about plans to revisit the mainland this summer?

Last Sunday your mother lured me to the Stanford Museum and it turned out to be yet another surprise, a biggie. Two New York friends who are big in the art world, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, had donated a gigantic Mark di Suvero sculpture to Stanford in my honor. Aggie and Daniel and Mark were all there, and they and representatives of the University and the Law School all said nice things, and I responded but have no recollection of what I said. Then there was a dinner for thirty or so people at Bob and Ruth Halperin's home, at which people made more talks and I again responded. Len and Inger attended both events and said I did not embarass (sp?) them. I am still trying to take it all in. The sculpture is gorgeous, and it fills a big  hole in Stanford's outdoor art collection. To have such friends. It's also great to have great kids. I love and appreciate you, Sam. 

Hugs all around out there, including Mike.

John

Dear Boogie:

 Just in case you were not actually holding the receiver when I spoke to you earlier today, this email has an electronic "Got You Last" attachment that has already infected you, your computer, your wife, and your progeny to the twelfth generation. 

Bruce, your advanced age has me concerned. I, at 57, find it more and more difficult to perform what used to be simple, unconscious moves. Zipping a fly after urination without catching the penis in the zipper. Cleaning dribble from my vest after the evening meal. Remembering the name of someone to whom I have been introduced three minutes earlier. Picking up the five pound dinghy anchor without developing an arm sprain that lasts for three weeks. What particularly depresses me is that all of these ailments are just the beginning of the end, and that all of them (and worse) will be visited upon you in short order, if you haven't already experienced them. It's genetics and age, Bruce, and they have you by the short hairs.

Me, I am certainly feeling my age. Boat life is rough on the body, and tropical life isn't all fun and roses either. The heat affects me more than most, and this is the summer season, so each day usually gets up to 90 degrees (but you know all about this kind of weather, don't you?) We are almost always able to swim off the boat in gorgeous water, but then the problem of too much sun presents itself. So I'm gradually developing techniques - I should say schedules -- for handling the new life we are all leading. I move a lot slower: I read a lot more; I do boat stuff when the sun is low; I stay up later and get up later; I spend a lot more time just sitting in a nice place looking at a nice view; I spend a whole lot more time  with my two children, teaching them, reading to them, just watching them. Rachael is 10 and Dana is 8, and they have become (by force of circumstances) the best of friends (and, occasionally, the worst of enemies). My favorite images are of the two of them racing around the boat (at anchor), swinging from various lines, diving into the water, swimming under the boat hulls, announcing the discovery of yet one more weird underwater denizen -- and always, of course, completely naked. In fact, I haven't worn a pair of long pants, nor a pair of underpants, nor for that matter a pair of proper shoes, in more than eight months. i find myself getting surprisingly out of shape — life on a boat can be truly the laziest life on earth (especially if you have a young healthy crewman who is constitutionally incapable of sitting still for more than thirty seconds without fixing or shining or building something with his hands). I will probably make the effort to get back in shape in the near future, if only to keep up with the little ones.  My biggest problem is figuring out where to go from here. Caren and the kids— and Mike as well -- see no problem in tooling about the way we have been for several more years. And nor do I. But what then? Back to Portola Valley and two careers and cars and everything else we left behind? Live on a boat the rest of our lives? Find a nice place somewhere cheaper than Portola Valley (that should be easy) where we can settle down and not have to work any more? Some combination of the above possibilities? Here I am, less than a year away from Silicon Valley, and I'm already trying to figure out my future. Why can't I just sit back, relax, and enjoy the good times while I can? Hey, Bruce, that is easier said than done. What I suspect is happening is that I am transitioning from one life style to another, and I haven't completed the transition. We've talked to many other "yachties", and theyall agree that the first six months are the hardest. After that, either the trip is off, or the trip goes on until the money runs out.

So, anyway, life goes on, and continues to be full of surprises. From my conversations with you and Che, it sounds like your lives are full, that you are traveling all over the place, and that your teaching load is immorally low. Good going. And happy birthday. Please let me know if the certificate of 150,000 shares of Microsoft stock doesn't arrive soon — sometimes the Fiji postal service is not that reliable.

 Love from the middle son,

 Sam

Yacht Rhapsodie

Fij

Dear Big John and Mom, Len and Inger, Bruce and Che, Erik, and Lisa

Hey, sounds like I missed one hell of a birthday party. I hope you saved some cake for us, because we are indeed heading your way -- in the July/August 2000 time frame, to be exact. We hope to hit the Bay Area, Gold Lake, and both sets of Caren's parents, so a certain amount of scheduling is still before us, but the commitment is firmly in place. It just seems a lotless complicated for us to travel to our families than to have bits and pieces of our families trickling over to this part of the planet.

It is late, I've got lots more email to go, and tomorrow I have to get up early for the workmen, so that's all for now. But you can count on us this summer -- whoopee!

Lots and lots of love,

Sammy