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About Duke basketball and Coach K's last game

About Duke basketball and Coach K’s last game

Dear Diego, Happy Birthday! Enjoy being 17! I thought I’d tell you about the college I went to, Duke University, and our basketball team. Our most famous building is the big chapel. Our mascot is the Blue Devil. Our coach is named Mike Krzyzewski. It’s pronounced sort of like sheh-shev-ski. We call him Coach K for short. He retires this year, and we’re all sad to see him go. Basketball is very…

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Remembering Dad

Dear Diego, Thank you for your letter. I’m glad to hear that you were able to continue learning remotely. At the college where I teach, we had some events in person, but a lot of classes had to be remote. I found out that it’s very challenging to lecture or give a quiz when part of the class is in the room with me and part are viewing me on their computer. We hope to hold all classes in person…

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The COVID 19 challenge

Dear Diego,

It’s good to hear from you. Thanks for telling me about how you celebrate holidays and birthdays!

Life has become a little different here in the past week. You’ve probably heard about the COVID 19 virus that’s spreading around the world and making lots of people sick. In the United States, we’re concerned that many people might get sick all at once, so we’re trying to prevent that.…

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Sit on the floor and play with your children and grandchildren!

Sit on the floor and play with your children and grandchildren!

Dear Diego,

Thank you for telling me about your family. I will pray for them!

I’m not married yet and I don’t have any children. I’m still waiting for the right woman. Sometimes it takes a while to fall in love.

I do have lots of young cousins and friends. My grandmother’s youngest brother had three sons, and all of them have children. I’ll include some pictures of them.

Every November, on the…

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Band Concert: Spanish Dreams

Band Concert: Spanish Dreams

Dear Diego,

Thank you for your letter and the pictures of your family!

I’d like to tell you about my band and our concert. I belong to the Charleston Concert Band. The band has been getting bigger. We now have 60 to 80 musicians. We are all volunteers. We play for the joy of playing good music. There are many different instruments: trumpet, trombone, tuba, French horn, clarinet, saxophone, flute,…

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Clarinet concert by Lipton, and Pentecost

Clarinet concert by Lipton, and Pentecost

Dear Diego,

I thought I would tell you about two special events.

My church hosted a concert on Saturday May 25. The performer was a man named Philip Lipton. He is an expert at playing the clarinet. Among other jobs, he was a teacher for a short time at El Sistema in El Salvador. So of course I thought of you! Philip likes Spanish literature, especially poetry by Federico Lorca. Two of his…

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A bit about Vienna

A bit about Vienna

Dear Diego,

Thank you for your letter. I’m glad you would like to play the guitar. There are many beautiful songs for the guitar. You can play it solo, or sing along. I hope you get the chance to learn it.

You said you would like to visit Spain. I would, too. Some day I hope to visit Spain and France and Italy. I studied French in school, but I’ve never visited France. I have visited Austria, the…

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Fixing things

Dear Diego,

Thank you for your letter. You mentioned that you’d like to learn how to repair cars. That sounds like a good idea. Fixing things can be hard work, but it’s also fun.

My car is 18 years old. I really like it, but lots of its parts have broken. The radiator broke. The transmission fluid leaked. There’s a light that won’t turn on any more. Spark plugs, sensors, and batteries wore out.…

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Solar eclipse, August 21, 2017

Solar eclipse, August 21, 2017

Dear Diego,

I hope all is well. I’d like to tell you about something special that happened here in Charleston. On August 21, 2017, there was a total eclipse of the sun, and it was visible from Charleston.

A solar eclipse happens when the moon passes directly between the sun and the earth. The moon’s shadow covers a small part of the earth. If the timing is just right, the eclipse is total, and…

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Elementary school

Dear Diego,

I finally got your letter and drawing! Sometimes it takes a long time for messages to get here from El Salvador. Thank you for writing.

You asked about schools that I attended. I’ll tell you about the first grade school I attended. Students from all over the city went there. No one has to pay to go to grade school in the United States. The government pays for everything. We didn’t wear…

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Charlestonians in the 2016 Olympics

Charlestonians in the 2016 Olympics

Dear Diego,

I’m writing this on Friday, August 5, 2016, which is the day the Olympic Games start. Several students from the college where I work are competing. They sailed for the college. Stefano Peschiera was in my calculus class. He will sail with the team from Peru. His event is a race in a small sailboat called a Laser. Enrique Jose Arathoon is sailing for your country, El Salvador. He also…

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Republicans suffering from voting paradoxes

Republicans suffering from voting paradoxes

I read this op-ed piece in today’s Post & Courier:

After Trump, the GOP may need a better voting system (Kathleen Parker, Washington Post)

It’s an opinion piece, but it’s actually about (gasp) mathematics!It’s not so much about the candidates themselves, but the mechanics of the Republican (and Democratic) primaries, and how these frustrate voters by defying intuition about fairness. One of the…

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Mythbusters

Dear Diego, I hope all is well. I thought I would tell you about another TV show I like to watch. It’s called Mythbusters. The show is about a team of people who test rumors, advice, superstitions, and stories to find out if they might be true. They are experts at working with dangerous things like fire. They can do experiments that I could never safely do myself, and when they find out something…

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Quirk in VirtualBox on Linux

Quirk in VirtualBox on Linux

VirtualBox-4.3.32-1.fc22.x86_64 on Fedora 22

I suddenly started getting an error message that VirtualBox couldn’t start my Windows VM because it was set to use 3D acceleration and 3D acceleration wasn’t available. This was strange because I’ve been running this VM on this same machine and never had a problem with it before and hadn’t changed any of its settings. I wondered if it had to do with a…

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Another flood! and some pictures of Callie

Another flood! and some pictures of Callie

Dear Diego,

I’ve had an adventure. Do you remember when I wrote about how sometimes it rains so much in Charleston that the city floods? Well, since I last wrote to you, it happened again! A stream of storms came in off the ocean. It rained for two days straight. Two feet (about 60 cm) of rain fell on South Carolina! The college where I work closed for four days. My band was supposed to pay a…

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Storms and rainbows

Dear Diego,

You asked about the weather here in Charleston. Most of the time, it’s warm and humid. It can get cold from November through February. It rarely snows. We sometimes have ice ice storms and the bridges freeze. The rest of the time, it’s warm. July and August can be very hot.

Normally, we get plenty of rain. Sometimes we get too much rain and the city floods. I’ve included a funny…

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Something terrible has happened

Something terrible has happened

Dear Diego,

Something terrible happened here in Charleston on June 17, 2015. You may have heard about it already. A man went to a church here and murdered nine people at a Bible study. One of them was the pastor. The police caught him the next day. He says he is not sorry, and that he wants to make people sad and angry. He says he did this because he decided to hate people with dark skin.

I know…