Dan Keller's Perpetually-Under-Construction Home Page...

First: NO WAR! detail from Picasso's Guernica

in Ukraine, Syria, Burma, Palestine, or anywhere else and in 2019 and 2020 I did three extended Dan with glass of water

water-only fasts, in 2020 was interviewed about nursing in Covid times

(listen!) by

Lezak Shallat (hear her on

SoundCloud) and in 2019 after two intensive years of development released

NurseAssess, an app that smooths nursing workflow and I built NurseMind,

an app that, in the spirit of

Atul Gawande's healthcare checklist revolution is changing Nurse Ratched

how nurses work via my startup

Nurse Tech, Inc. and I

blog about all that (and especially at Dan Keller's

Nursing, Health Policy and Healthcare Technology Blog) and was

interviewed about it in my school paper, Synapse, got

patent 9164656, thought about time management

, got vaccinated

(many of my SNF patients had Covid), write essays and stuff

, used to eat vegan

(here's why) until I got lazy, keep my

photo albums on the Web, miss my mother Judith Jewel Herman

(also a nurse) who passed away in 2017, have a

daughter Cara whose middle name is Sphere for

Thelonious Sphere Monk, and a son Alexi who in July 2011

joined an army and dug trenches and fired machine guns, in 2024 I went again to Jazzcamp

(after a 21-year hiatus) and loved it!, in 2021 I am learning tennis

, in 2013 toured the

medical facilities of Cuba (world's highest doctor/patient ratio; 2nd is Italy) -- we can learn from them -- grew up in Rome

where, as a boy

I dubbed hundreds of 2nd-rate movies such as Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967)

(my first line is at 5'25") and was interviewed about Rome dubbing by

Johan Melle who assembled a collection of clips of my movie scenes

and in 2008 moved back there with my kids for a year where we had a lot of water but the Romans don't worry until it reaches the

occhialone (big eye) di Ponte Sisto and where the brilliant Susan Levenstein blogs

Stethoscope on Rome -- especially informative regarding Covid -- and if you curse the mediocrity of American pop culture just listen to

Italian Gattino Virgola ringtones that blessedly are not on the cellphones of my kids (who used to be small) propeller hat

and in 2008 attended St. Stephen's where some meetings did seem to last 37 years (click this link to see a great photo caption) and have

fond memories of my high school senior year and in 2014 went looking for ancestral roots in

Romania and Ukraine and in 2016 cruised the canals of France on a penichette

but my kids do love

sushi which I tell them to enjoy before the oceans are lifeless

(could theirs be the last generation to eat wild-caught fish?) and I took them in 2016 to

Burning Man (my pix), for 22 years had a business making a living

and the business had a home page -- we pioneered

the paperless classroom (power corrupts; Powerpoint corrupts absolutely) and our own

management system (by to-do list) -- I even have a

personal mission statement and my share of pain in the business world but thankfully not a client quite like

Thrasher, listen daily to NYT The Daily

The Daily -- and I am an RN, "pinned" (how nurses graduate) in December, 2010 at (click us!)

SMU (a vocational school) where I learned that the

kidneys (not the brain) run the show and we must remedy the mediocrity of

post-secondary education (the good news is that we can fix it) despite my bitter experience at the surprisingly-mediocre USF, and my swim-in-the-Bay buddy Hyo Kim

is doing real preventive healthcare while I

rant endlessly, wrote my first program on an

IBM 360 on punched cards

in Fortran taught to me by

Neil MacFarlane, got a master's degree in

Medical Information Science (here are some reminiscences)

from

UCSF where I was privileged to be advised by

Dr. Marsden Scott Blois, a pioneer in

medical concept representation, published

a paper (1983), and today I'm certain that nursing education -- always a few steps behind -- needs to add

a nursing informatics clinical rotation, and collected a few autographs of computing giants but let's be careful not to

unleash a monster though I once had

a tricycle and later an

answering machine, have been thinking about business

and real estate in Italy about which country I have

opinions and Lucilla's

Dolce Trastevere for whom I made a web site (but she went out of business anyway... guess it didn't help), and I did create

Wifi-Italia and Italy's first free public Wifi site (former Italian president President Cossiga

Cossiga repeatedly pumped my hand, extolling wireless technology -- he's got three wifis in his house) -- and here's my San Francisco house (it has only two)

and custom-built Sun Frost appliances

(yes, that's my kitchen on their web site) and a

Tel-a-Tronic Signal Center and was featured on

the cover of the Oct. 2004 SF Apartment magazine and was the set for one episode of a short-lived TV series named Loni Anderson and Lynda Carter

Partners in Crime (1984) starring Lynda Carter and Loni Anderson and

Google StreetView caught me there, had a piano floated up three flights by the astonishing

Ed Gong, and now my garage has a zero-emissions

electric car in it and

25 solar panels on the roof in the San Antonio district of Oakland (though I lived for 30 years in the Castro district

San Francisco),

a town that had a great Mayor Mayor Gavin Newsom and a well-wisher

(he's now Governor... soon President? though the one we have now (2024)

is pretty good) though we do have

earthquakes the real threat is climate change

that could end California's status as America's salad bowl and, says Mark Schapiro (with whom I played in the short-lived

Deadliners band with Jonathan Alford

our favorite mail man on piano), (midwestern wheat crops

are threatened, too), and in a state

whose economy recently surpassed the UK to become the world's fifth-largest and now I live in Oakland and the

Oakland Riviera is where it's at -- with a remarkable Oakland Sound pedigree (when it was named Freeway Recording) including the incomparable D'wayne Wiggins

and his Tony! Toni! Tone`! (go Oakland!) who recorded here and they did my favorite

What's Your Sign -- but my favorite home was for two years the MSO Lucid MSO-458 Lucid

(a surplused Korea-vintage Navy minesweeper), burned out and gave up on

cohousing (and in 2014 shook the hand of

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan groundbreaking a cohousing project), think about

retirement, and am fond of technology

but people are even more interesting so I have volunteered at the

UCSF Medical Center (Long Hospital and medical records), at the

SF General Hospital Emergency Room, at the Glide celebrates!

Glide Memorial clinic, at the

CPMC hospital Emergency Room, and at the

SF AIDS/HIV/HepC Nightline, at the Tobacco Education Center for whom I taught and built the The smoker's lungs (blackened) and heart (enlarged) are the ones on the left, obviously.

The smoker's lungs (blackened) and heart (enlarged) are the ones on the left, obviously.

Tobacco Teacher web site and as an RN for

Project HomelessConnect, and have run smoking cessation programs at

Kaiser sites in the Bay Area and at

Mills-Peninsula -- read the interview and

a classic denial story -- and served as Factotum-in-Chief for

Gary Heit's Americare Neurosurgery International delivering equipment, training, and high-tech medical care to the third world (went in March, 2008, to Hue, Vietnam) but he died in 2023 (who will take his place?) and have ridden around in

ambulances where grab yer own, creep

Governor Boobengrabber picked the wrong fight when he said he was nursie

"Kicking our nurses' butts" and I had a father

who was a painter and politico (I am a red diaper baby)

and some things never change

and my father did

the artwork for this website and for

my company's training manuals (losing him in 2006 made a tough year tougher), my mother was a filmmaker and playwright I don't take a pink one and a yellow one.

I don't take a pink one and a yellow one.

(here is a trailer on

YouTube) who wrote the story of Taxi, the ferry-house dog and had success with her play

Funny Feeling (that's her granddaughter Cara in the poster), have a sister Marthe at the Met

Martheeenia -- who is (also) a great artist with a painting in New York's Metropolitan Museum Diva, oil, wax, canvas, 87x65 in., 1993, collection of Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Ny, installed 1996-2002

Diva, oil, wax, canvas, 87x65 in., 1993, collection of Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Ny, installed 1996-2002

and her husband

Brad who designed

Estee Lauder and makes juice, another sister, Katy

who traveled the world as the physical therapist for the New York City Ballet

dancer perfecting her turnout with Functional Footprints

and

fixes broken violinists at the Juilliard School and invents machines to make dancers better Functional Footprints

and is married to Colter

Colter the Voiceover King and my grandfather Sidney (my middle name) invented the Keller machine

and the process (called, oddly enough, kellering) for creating dies to cast curved steel surfaces (that made possible

streamlined cars) whereas my other grandfather

(Herman Herschkowitz, renamed himself Harry Herman at Ellis Island) came to America on Nov. 18, 1906, aboard the S.S. Amerika

(which reported icebergs just three hours before one sank the Titanic), I invented the

Narciss-O-Meter, have an apocalyptic vision of inevitable and catastrophic environmental collapse our tiny, delicate, precious planet

with global marine impacts especially ocean acidification (even the Pentagon knows we're screwed...) we're headed for a long emergency ("America's oil consumption is the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world... Suburbia is going to fail. You can state that categorically..." says

James Kunstler (one of my gurus) in America's New Religion),

peak oil was in the 70s and now we have

peak water and record-breaking drought in California and other visions of the future

and in 2024 I have joined

Citizens Climate Lobby to work on this and Michael Stocker

and Ocean Conservation Research are doing something about the noisy oceans, have done projects for Silicon Valley companies including Agilent Technologies

and

and

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and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

and

, and have had a few

business cards along the way, love to attend the

Asilomar Microcomputer Workshop, for years relied utterly on an antique but marvelous piece of engineering --

HP's 200LX palmtop PC (it runs

DOS!) and I still write HTML

by hand, spend too much time administering my network and a few dozen web sites, recite

Bruce Borcherdt's Midas Niggard, toured the

Artificial Intelligence Lab and robotics workshops of MIT with my boyhood pal

Devon McCullough and patted a Lisp Machine

, once acted in a movie

(that's me, second from the right) with

Rock Hudson -- it's not a chick flick and here's how to tell

and Bing

watched it as a child in the Philippines and now she blogs about it -- and here is a different movie... ten points if you can name it

-- and I just discovered that pretty much everything I know

(e.g. what is

spam -- really! check it out!) has been collected in a single, succinct document -- yes!

an IETF RFC! and New Age is debunked

here -- in California (which has much

in common with

Italy) and rowed for St. Stephen's School and on the San Francisco Bay and Stroke! Stroke!

on the Tiber River -- I like adventure sports

-- diving, parachuting, etc. (here's

parasailing in Mexico), and if you get a chance to see the

Red Bastard, go! he's brilliant! and I cat in microwave (ok, not funny)

had a cat and Roman friends (Leo and Marilena) who are devoted

cat people and

a cat watches Psycho and now have two cats,

Claude Shannon (whose hand I once shook and autograph collected) and Norbert Wiener, and my pal Pat Olson

showed that the Plague of Athens was Ebola -- is it coming back? -- and makes us wear togas

and I lived for my first seven years on Danskammer Farm and here are links to my elementary school (The American Overseas School) AOSR

and (we visited in June, 2007) my high school (St. Stephen's School (which almost went bankrupt in my senior year)) SSS

in Rome (where my family moved after Danskammer) where as a teen I danced to the

Free Love

in the Teen Club in the catacomb beneath St. Paul's-within-the-Walls and I go back every year (here are

pix from May, 2005) and in 2008-2009 actually returned to

Rome for a year and my kids attended St. Stephen's too!, have friends Lisa and Tom who run the beautiful Italophillic web site

Your Garden Show, Naomi

who teaches adoring children the joys of classical strings, quasi-Roman friend Graeme Thomas who won awards for his stupendous

Kubrick 2001, The Space Odyssey Explained

and of course you recognize this line Hal 9000

, and now he's made the official

International Year of the Potato web site (in five languages!), won a few awards myself

and here's another adoptive-Roman friend, Catherine

who received an MBE from this emissary (recognize him?)

of the Queen of England for running the

Keats-Shelley House, and regarding things Italian Alberto Sordi demonstrating spaghetti

do your gift shopping for limoncello

from John and Victoria's La Raccolta whose web site tech guru Phil Glatz

built a Drupal

site or a silk scarf

from my Italophillic pal Lisa P. and

Ken Jacobs knows who killed JFK

and what about oddball Gail Gail's URL GURL license plate

the webmistress (eh?), jam with my friend

Giorgio Rosciglione the celebrity bassist, enjoy hilarious, spunky

Luciana Littizzetto, and there is San Francisco fixture

Chicken John who cracks me up, worked (with Murray Murray Freeman

who invented the lightbulb,

makes wifi work, and practiced hotel room engineering) for a time at the alas now-defunct

Colex Electronic Company Limited, 15th Floor, Luk Hop Industrial Building, 8 Luk Hop Street, San Po Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Colex Electronic Company Limited, 15th Floor, Murray and Dan in Hong Kong

Luk Hop Industrial Building, 8 Luk Hop Street, San Po Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong,

manufacturer of what was then (1983) the world's cheapest Unix machine (and the price was low, too :-) dubbed "poxy box" by

James Hole (it crashed

when you typed cat), and here's Fritz Schaerli

, the president of Adasoft AG

makers of zutrittskontrollsisteme in Switzerland where I also enjoyed working long ago, once modeled the "...sleek, European-style monitor arm" in the Inmac catalog

(the Sun workstation screen is turned to hide the error messages), listened to Frank Zappa Frank w/ guitar

and Firesign Theater

and once had dinner with my boyhood favorite bandleader Booker T. and the MGs

Booker T. Jones, attended the defunct Notre Dame International

high school in Rome with buddy

Bill Zimmerman, went to college at UCSC

UCSC -- here's

graduation with roommate Nic Nelken, an avowed disciple of

Dr. Bronner and now a vascular surgeon at

Kaiser -- hey, one of us made good! -- have always been fascinated by electronic music starting with

Alvin Curran's in Rome in the 60's then studied with Gordon Mumma

(who introduced me both musically and personally to John Cage) at UCSC in the 70's and in 1977 at Dartmouth Baker Tower

with an inventor of the

Synclavier -- Jon Appleton

(with Moog and Syntrophia hat, with prototype Synclavier in road cases in San Francisco for a performance at the Exploratorium

) and at Stanford with John Chowning and classmate

Larry Groupé has gone on to be an Emmy-nominated film score composer, and in 1982 I built my first studio with my then-roommate and techno-wild-man Mr. Etant-Donnes

Michael Schippling, am deeply saddened by the March, 2021 loss of my little pal Claire Callahan

in 2013 mourn for UCSF Regent, classmate

Dave Shewmake and my childhood music teacher

Barbara Sparti whom we lost in March and June of 2013, respectively, and taken from us in 2024 another beloved -- revered! -- mentor from OSR,

Allan Ceen -- no one knew more about Rome than he -- and for drinking-buddy/jazz-loving

Fred Lewis whom we lost in Jan. 2012, and my favorite local pianist Bob Johns

(playing trumpet here; multi-talented; played many of my parties and in our band

CBop) left this earth on 1/17/2025 and is sorely missed, and we lost musician/activist "You Ain't Done Nothing if You Ain't Been Called a Red" Eliot Kenin

in Feb. 2023, and for gifted pianist, best-chart-maker, and inspired software geek

Peter Eden whom we lost in the Fall of 2011, for adored drummer

Bruce Felter (with whom the pocket was so deep we delighted in calling it a trench) who passed on 12/20/2007, and the 7/7/7 loss of beloved friend and mentor

Joe Podolsky, the Nov. 2000 loss of Larry Morehead

the real estate mogul (funny story: unbeknownst to either of us at the time, the first building I bought was the first he sold), and another loss -- on 12/22/2002 my JazzCampWest

JazzCamp buddy Robin Gilbert

passed away, and that year we also lost pianist/artist Kent Holloway Kent Holloway, circa 1980

, and in early 2004 so too passed away my beloved ex-father-in-law Lauri Hieta (I once married a Finn; here are happy Hietas

photos from that happy time), and on 4/14/2004 we lost

Gosina Mandersloot, and shortly thereafter we lost Nameers fat cat

, and in 2005 was the passing of

Joe Bithell with whose

Silicon Gulch Jazz Band I enjoyed decades of gigs (no kidding!), and on 12/23/2005 we lost the extraordinary trumpet player and lifelong friend

Robin Hodes, in 2007 we lost drummer and beloved friend

Ben Randall, in 2011 we lost 'bone-player

Tom Small, and also in 2011 (July) we lost another cherished American Italian transplant and high school chum,

Lisa Marini Finerty, and in Jan. of 2015 we lost

Dick Karpinski, and in that same month we lost my pal-since-third-grade and Romana Americana

Laura Antinucci whose brother Richard was the drummer in my first (junior high school) rock band, and I'll forever miss my best high school pal, brilliant energy engineer Mike Selig

who passed away on Feb 22, 2011 -- his last essay was his own obituary, and Harvey Robb

in September of 2015 -- and here is

the grave of John Piccoli (in the Cimitero Acattolico

where I intend to be buried or at least to endow a tree, managed in part by Heather

whom we lost in July of 2013 (memorial site) but mostly by

Mandy -- in 2022 the Queen awarded her an MBE!

(the Beatles got MBEs, too) -- listen to the 10/29/2011 RAI interview) who died in 1955 at age 16 on his brand-new motorbike

given to him that very day by his doting father Nemo the sculptor (Juanita never forgave him and left me her house but connivers screwed me out of it after a 19-year legal battle... no kidding!), and in June of 2017 we lost my Roman pal

Maura, and in 2014

Pete Seeger -- activist, inspiring musician, family friend and, in Feb. 2016,

Dan Hicks, in 2023 we lost Burt Bacharach

(whom I saw live in 2017 -- fabulous!), and in 2021 my beloved seventh-grade Ancient History teacher Hiram Dewitt

and in 2022 my fabulous Dartmouth electronic music mentor/composer/friend Jon Appleton

(yes, I mentioned him above... can't do it too often), and in March of 2022 my Roman boyhood pal (and gifted musician in our rock/jazz band)

Giampiero Scuderi aka Chirichetto ("Altar Boy") and in March of 2023 Giampi's brother Mimmo

(there is now only one brother left, Uccio, though I was called the fourth brother since I ate at their house so often) and in July of 2022 my buddy-in-Brazilian-music-joy

Vaughan Johnson -- so I have been thinking about death lately -- here is a poem about it by one of my favorite authors, John Updike

(deceased 2009) -- and here's another: Last Touch and some wisdom about grief -- and I hang onto old friends -- remember shmoos? shmoo

and Pogo?

and

R. Crumb?

and went to Thailand in 2006 to see the

longneck ladies (and my friend

Jason who wrote a succinct statement of his political values) and used to go every year to Carnaval Dancing in the streets of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil!

Dancing in the streets of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil!

in Salvador (capital city of the Brazilian state of Bahia, the musical soul of that most musical country), adore Gal Costa

Brazil's top star

(crazy hair, fabulous pipes, phrasing, time, arrangements, production, repertory, and sidemen) who, too, died in 2022 ...oh yes, another deity in my pantheon is

Ray Brown (it's said that when he was married to

Ella Fitzgerald and they had a fight she threw his bass into the pool -- but that's not why I worship him), and in 2023 we lost

Len Chandler whose impassioned music inspired boyhood me "...so I guess we gotta keep on keepin' on", from 2000 to 2003 I made jazz acoustic bass my primary career