y father was very fond of birds. As the Director of a technical school in Pasadena and an aeronautical engineer, this interest in birds was a Romantic parallel to his involvement with flight. He loved to call in the birds, whistling in their unique way. Using more than one tone, by adding an overtone of a third, a fourth or a fifth to his whistle, he made the complex calls of various birds. These overtones were achieved by whistling the primary note, then changing the shape of the mouth by puffing our part of the cheek to get the overtone. He called in the birds to feed them. He particularly liked the mockingbird, because this bird imitated the songs of the other birds. He was able to introduce a song of his own to that of the mockingbirds.

My father would sit on the roof of the laundry closet, which was accessible from the second floor of our house, and call the birds to feed. Eventually he made a better place by roofing over the area and putting windows on three sides, so creating a special spot from which to call the birds.

This was a very odd time in America. It was 1942, and war had only recently been declared. There was great paranoia about the possibility of Japanese attacks on the West Coast. On one extraordinary night there was an incident which was a response to a real or imagined attack on the city. The anti-aircraft positions opened fire at what were thought to be attacking aircraft. Los Angeles was such a large city that shells fired from one part of the city would come down in another part of the city. This gave the impression there was an attack. Other positions returned fire, resulting in a large gun battle. No one knew for sure if there was an enemy attack. It seems Los Angeles has a long tradition of making no distinction between the imagined and the real. However, there was considerable damage to scattered parts of the city.

On the night of this attack, my father and mother celebrated the completion of the bird feeding room. In the midst of this real or imagined attack I was conceived. The bird room became my room. The events of that night showed that imaginary events could have as much effect on reality as events which were physically real.

At Pasadena Junior College my father developed programs where the students actually built what they had designed. The architectural students built thc houses they had designed, and the aeronautical cngineering students built airplanes with an advanced design by Max Harlow. Tlle Harlow PJC-2 was designed in 1934, built in 1935 and 1936, and licensed in 1937. It was a monocoque plane, which meant that there was no frame-work other than the skin itself. It had low wings, retractable gear, a fully faired engine and an enclosed cabin. One of the constructed examples was purchased by Howard Hughes, who later hired Harlow to build the H-1, the Hughes Racer. This famous plane had the same elliptical, low-wing, almost laminar-flow look to the design. One of my father's students, now an airline pilot, owns a PJC-2, which he had worked on as a student. I have flown this plane.

A connection existed between my father's involvement with the aircraft as an instrument of flight and the natural flight of birds, as well as with the birds as instruments of song. As a child, I had to surrender my room to my father when he needed to call in the birds. The room was inhabited by my father's presence and the birds' song. The room, with its windows on three sides, provided a panoramic view of 270¡. The wainscot rose forty-two inches up to the window frames. The windows opened up completely so the birds could come in, while my father was protected from the rain and, in particular, the sun. This was important since he was fair-skinned and burned easily. He would sit endlessly and call in the birds. The room was occupied by song.

In my youth there was the considerable presence of astronomy in Pasadena. On Mount Wilson was the Hale Observatory. The huge 200 inch telescope of the Palomar Observatory was being created at Cal Tech in Pasadena at that very time. I went to school with the daughter of Horace Aubrev, the head of Mount Wilson-Palomar. Even my elementary school was named after the astronomer George Ellery Hale. There was considerable public interest in deep space

Probably as a result of the air attack back in 1942, an edict had been issued for all houses to place blackout shades over the windows at night. My room had these dark green curtains with tar in the middle that were completely opaque. You could pull them down and make the room quite dark in the day, although some light would come in around the edges. When I was six years old, in order to assert my own presence in the room, I took a pin or needle to these curtains and pierced them to make star patterns and the constellations. I would simply make bigger holes for stars of greater magnitude. Pulling down the curtains and darkening the room, you could see the stars in the middle of the day.

These weren't just holes in the curtains, they were holes in reality. By changing the reality of the conscious-awake state of day, one could see further into imagined space to the stars, which were actually there but obscured by the light of the sun. In the same room my father could still raise the curtains and open the windows to allow in the birdsong. The curtains did not last long and began to tear because they were riddled with so many holes. Several curtains were greatly weakened by the Milky Way.

Years later, after my father had died, I returned to the room. When consciousness leaves a space or an object there begins a death, a leaving. The room was no longer vital. But I heard a mockinghird. It sang my father's song.