FALKENBERG

Joan Falkenberg and I met in Moravia in the Fall of 1992. Joan's friend Paul Cavanagh had sold me a house at 4 South Main Street in Moravia, directly across from the US Post Office, in August, 1992 and, within a few months, I started to have some trouble with squirrels invading the attic space with the onset of cold weather. After asking Paul for some help with this problem, one day in about October, 1992 Paul came by to help me out. He happened to bring Joan along and that is when I first met her at my modest house at 4 South Main Street. From the closing on the house in about July or August of 1992, I knew that Paul was married to someone else (I do not remember her name) and living with his wife on the North end of Moravia. Some time, during the next year, in early 1993 Paul's wife filed for divorce from him and she vacated their property and moved on to Colorado. I do not know what the cause of the divorce was all about. At about this same time I went over to visit Paul, in his place, and discovered that he had a severe burn on his right hand from what appeared to be contact with cooking oil that was boiling hot. He never really explained about that incident. His hand was pretty badly damaged and I felt bad for him then. Later in the Winter of 1993 I saw Joan again with Paul as he was in the midst of restoring another large and historic house in Moravia. He was quite capable at all types of restorations and was quite capable in general with computers and IT and carpentry and plumbing etc. During this brief contact I talked to him and Joan as Paul worked....just small talk. Earlier from the first time that I had met Joan, in the Fall of 1992, I distinctly remember her calling me and Paul, "Men of Moravia" meaning that she thought Paul and I were perhaps quite resourceful. I have to admit that Paul Cavanagh was indeed exceptionally capable at a multitude of things useful. The next contact I had with Joan was again with Paul...I had planned a cookout at the Fillmore Glen State Park to celebrate that Bassett's big "carbonates" NSF grant proposal was just approved, and that I was named as the principal graduate student being supported for the work (Bassett was named the PI on the work). And because this 3 year grant was approved I would have plenty of money and financial support to complete my thesis research for my PhD degree from Cornell University. As a bonus to the big "carbonates" grant being approved, during this same time, Bassett had also included me as a co-author on 2 relatively important academic papers about the theory and development of all of the instrumentation that would be used to complete the "carbonates" work to meet the requirements for the big NSF grant. The instrumentation had been developed mostly by Bassett and his other graduate student A.H. Shen, but I also contributed a little bit of the design and development of what became known as the "hydrothermal diamond anvil cell (HDAC)". In any case, I was at this cookout with my eventual wife Kathy "Hsi-cheng" Shen...who was the sister of Bassett's graduate student A.H. Shen, and Paul Cavanagh was with Joan Falkenberg, and Bassett and his recently disabled wife were there, and several other people from Bassett's group and from Roald Hoffmann's group and other people were there. The cookout happened in about mid-June of 1993 and the whole thing went off all right with some minor problems. I did not talk to Joan very much during the cookout at Fillmore Glen State Park because she was with Paul and I was with Kathy. This was maybe the second to last time I was in Joan's presence. I was glad that she and Paul were able to come to the event at all. I believe the last time I saw Joan Falkenberg was at a somewhat upscale bar and restaurant called "Just a Taste" in Ithaca on Aurora Street in the Summer of 1993, before all hell started to break loose in late August, 1993. I think Paul invited me to meet her with him at this place. In any case, I did meet them at "Just a Taste" but everyone there was relatively well-dressed and I was in plain clothes, and Paul and Joan just kept talking the whole time I sat with them, and I felt like I was really not welcome to sit with them at all. So after a while I just got up and told them that I had to leave then. That was, I think, the last time I saw Joan. From the first time I met her, in perhaps October, 1992, I was attracted to her because she is good looking. I wanted to tell her about my mysterious grandmother, Mary Falkenberg from NYC, but I just never had a chance to get her separated from Paul to tell her about this strange twist of fate. So unfortunately I never told her about the strange coincidence between Joan's name and the name of my grandmother. In any case I hope for the best for Joan and her friend Paul. 

PETROLEUM

Is, for example (1) cyclohexadiene a separation product of petroleum, or is (2) barrelene a separation product of petroleum, or is (3) 1, 3-dimethylenecyclobutane a separation product of petroleum, or is (4) 1,3,5,7-tetramethylenecyclooctane a separation product of petroleum? Are these small 3-4 connected building block molecules separation components of the various petroleum grades? And are extended fragments of these building block monomers existent as separation components of petroleum? These are things that should be explored by petroleum chemists and coal chemists.

PARADISE

You can tell that the Universe is chaos by starting with the 9 fundamental natural constants. The ninth fundamental natural constant is the force constant of the diatomic hydrogen molecule, and it sets the scale for all of chemistry. The 5 dimensionless ratios of these 9 natural constants are ever so slightly perturbed from their corresponding mathematical approximants, and because of these very slight perturbations the corresponding Universe is chaos at all scales and probably forever...only when they revert back to their exact values, that they currently closely approximate, will "Paradise" reoccur.

POLYMORPHS

Conceivably the glitter series and hexagonite series C networks could also be realized as III-IV and III-V binary compositions and possibly as Group IV allotropes and Group IV binaries. And possibly IV-V binaries where the Group IV element is Si or Ge or Sn or Pb. I do not know how many compositions are possible but it is over a dozen I believe. They are targets for 3D synthesis eventually. The 3-3 double bond has a high force constant and pi bond delocalization capacities. Might lead to interesting electronic and mechanical properties. The synthesis of such realizations is an important frontier for chemistry and physics and materials science...some day.

C-N BONDING

It is an important observation that (a) C-N 3d extended structures are notoriously difficult to make and are probably never observed in crystalline form while (b) H-C-N heterocycles form the basis of the informational structure of life, apparently, and they are planar and have delocalized pi bonding in the H-C-N heterocycle ring systems that they form. It is as if H-C-N bonding is designed mostly to form heterocycles in the informational architecture of life on Earth...and maybe not for anything else. Where B-N and C and Si-C bonding etc. may be important for 3-3-4 networks.

ZAX

David Zax was hired by Cornell University, through a traditional faculty search process, and was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry to begin in the Fall, 1990. I was accepted for admission to the graduate program in Chemistry about Christmastime, 1989 to begin studies at Cornell University at the same time that David Zax began working. I began the whole graduate school process at Cornell by preparing for and taking American Chemical Society standard graduate competency, or placement, exams. At some time before the Fall semester began in 1990, I directly met David Zax by going to his office in Baker Laboratory and talking to him about his research program. He told me he was taking students in a research area of solid state NMR. At this time I came across a friendly graduate student entering Cornell with me named Benjamin Chew. Ben Chew joined David Zax's research group in the Fall, 1990 and he was Zax's first student. Chew was mathematically competent, and quite adept at troubleshooting complicated instrumentation and he helped David Zax assemble the first solid state NMR instrument that the group used; employing a large and powerful magnet. My interest at the time I talked to Zax about NMR work was to study instead high pressure chemistry with a diamond anvil cell, specifically I was interested in isolating or creating hypervalent compounds derived from ammonium salts. Hypervalent meaning that the coordination number about the N atom was greater than the usual 4. My choice of thesis advisor was thus Dick Porter and I applied to Porter's group and he, based upon my ACS competency exam scores and my GRE scores, accepted me in to his group. Later Porter unfortunately died and I was very lucky to be able to get Roald Hoffmann to go along with accepting me in to his theoretical chemistry group as a "honorary member". Zax and I worked together in about Fall, 1992 semester where he was the competent professor, and I was the perhaps struggling graduate student teaching assistant. teaching a kind of upper level undergraduate course that was oriented towards instrumentation and physical chemistry. Zax was very patient with me and was liberal minded about my teaching methods. The semester progressed smoothly with Zax as the professor, and I learned much physical chemistry from him as I tried to be a reasonable teaching staff to the very bright Cornell undergraduate students I had responsibility for then. 2 very bright students that come to mind from the Fall, 1992 period were Ross Berntson and Alice Mauskopf. Zax kept me on for the whole semester and it all worked out OK between us. Today in 2020 Zax is still a Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University and he has written over 60 scientific articles in his unique area of Analytical-Physical Chemistry....he also has written over a dozen general interest science articles for the glossy, high profile magazine Smithsonian, and in what else I have learned about David Zax he is a very active member of the Cornell University Senate. During the time I got to know David Zax I must admit I felt a kind of unusual kinship with him for some reason.