The following continues the serialization of Chapter 3 from SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity:
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My Waning Years in Biotechnology
How does one mourn the death of a grandchild? There is an Oriental proverb that says one’s responsibility to family is not completed until the grandchildren are successful. I thus have, in part, failed, for there has been a premature death, of a promising young child.
I have no real children, but I can point to a number of visions in various stages of attaining reality, or not. In most, I am a generation removed from actual parenthood. That is, I planted a crucial seed. In 1990, when I chaired the World Hydrogen Energy Conference held in Hawaii, I was referred to as the grandfather of hydrogen—U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga was the father—for I had, a decade previously, drafted the very first legislation on hydrogen introduced in the U.S. Senate. I was all of 50 years old when called grandfather. I few years later, at a biohydrogen workshop in Tokyo, the speaker, David Hall of the UK, showed a slide of a project on which we had worked together, and pointed out I was a collaborator, and he referred to me as the grandfather of the field. This was partly, too, because I had chaired the first three international biohydrogen workshops a decade earlier mentioned in the previous section. Having written the first Senate draft of the bill on hydrogen, which became law, I take particular pride in serving as the grandfather of biohydrogen, and, perhaps, hydrogen in general (Chapter 4 in Book 1 treats this subject.) Yes, Henry Cavendish, in 1766, discovered hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, but call him an early great grandfather.
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How does one mourn the death of a grandchild? There is an Oriental proverb that says one’s responsibility to family is not completed until the grandchildren are successful. I thus have, in part, failed, for there has been a premature death, of a promising young child.
I have no real children, but I can point to a number of visions in various stages of attaining reality, or not. In most, I am a generation removed from actual parenthood. That is, I planted a crucial seed. In 1990, when I chaired the World Hydrogen Energy Conference held in Hawaii, I was referred to as the grandfather of hydrogen—U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga was the father—for I had, a decade previously, drafted the very first legislation on hydrogen introduced in the U.S. Senate. I was all of 50 years old when called grandfather. I few years later, at a biohydrogen workshop in Tokyo, the speaker, David Hall of the UK, showed a slide of a project on which we had worked together, and pointed out I was a collaborator, and he referred to me as the grandfather of the field. This was partly, too, because I had chaired the first three international biohydrogen workshops a decade earlier mentioned in the previous section. Having written the first Senate draft of the bill on hydrogen, which became law, I take particular pride in serving as the grandfather of biohydrogen, and, perhaps, hydrogen in general (Chapter 4 in Book 1 treats this subject.) Yes, Henry Cavendish, in 1766, discovered hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, but call him an early great grandfather.
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The Dow Jones Industrials went up, then down 139 in the first 70 minutes of activity, then recovered to plus 13 at 8763. This stabilization was important for next week, as, while the unemployment rate rose to 9.4%, the rate of loss slowed. A steep descent at the end of the day would have been ominous for a day of relatively good news. World markets all went up, except for Scandinavia. Oil stayed relatively steady at $68.54/barrel.
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