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• Charles M. Schulz Museum

  • When
    August 15, 2026
  •  
    10:00 AM
  • Location
    2301 Hardies Lane, Santa Rosa, CA 95403
  • Spaces left
    0

  Join waitlist

  To register, we prefer you pay online via the black register button to the left of below. For other options, contact Jim Richardson at 434-964-7946 or revjimr@yahoo.com

  Charles Schulz’s cartoon strip has graced newspaper pages since 1950, and he became the most renowned – and well-known — cartoonist of our time. We will explore the museum devoted to the creator of the artist behind Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts Gang. Schulz’s humor was at times observational, wry, sarcastic, nostalgic, bittersweet, silly, and melancholy, with occasional flights of fancy. When Schulz announced his retirement in December 1999, the Peanuts comic strip was syndicated in over 2,600 newspapers worldwide, with book collections translated in over 25 languages, animated film specials, and musical accompaniments. The museum is filled with memorabilia, comic strips, Schulz’s  re-created studio, and much more. And it is a lot of fun!

  Cost: Members & their guests: $30, others $35 

  If on the day of the event you find you can't make it, call Jim Richardson at 434-964-7946 or revjimr@yahoo.com. Simply not paying or not replying prevents us from allowing someone else to attend. No-shows do NOT receive a refund!

  If you register, then later decide not to attend this event, there may be others on the waiting list who will be able to take your place, so please cancel (click HERE, or on "Already registered" if you are on the event page) or by contacting Jim Richardson at 434-964-7946 or revjimr@yahoo.com

  If you are on the waitlist and wish to be removed without being registered, please contact Jim Richardson at 434-964-7946 or revjimr@yahoo.com

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• 40th Asilomar Conference - Feb 12-15, 2027

  • Start
    February 12, 2027
  •  
    4:00 PM
  • End
    February 15, 2027
  •  
    12:00 PM
  • Location
    Asilomar, 800 Asilomar Ave, Pacific Grove, CA

  Register

  

  To register, we prefer you pay online via the black "REGISTER" button. But you may mail a coupon and a check by snail mail. 

  Click here forThe confirmed speakers and tentative scheduling

  To be part of the PBKNCA package, do not reserve directly with the facility. Wait for the email message from Barry (probably in October). Be sure you check your email, or you may find you don't have a room. For registration or logistics matters, please contact Barry Haskell at bghaskell@comcast.net .

  The confirmed speakers and tentative scheduling are in the following table.  Below the table are some bios of the speakers and summaries of the topics.

  DAY / TIME	SPEAKER	DISCIPLINE / TOPIC	TITLE
  Fri eve	Andrew Reddie, (Teaching Excellence awardee)	Technology, public policy and global security	From Innovation to Instability: Emerging Technologies and International Security
  Sat am	David Sandino	CA water rights + the law (SCU Law)	An Inside View of the Klamath Dam Removal Project: The Largest Environmental Restoration Project in American History
  Sat aft	James Glaser	Provost of Santa Clara University  (PBK)	Everyday Democracy: Liberals, Conservatives, and Their Attitudes About Politics
  Sat eve	Alejandra Rosselli (Scholarship awardee)	Astrophysics (UCSC; PBK)	A Stellar Perspective of History
  Sun am	Gil-li Vardi (Teaching Excellence awardee)	Modern military history, wars and society (Stanford)	Is Conventional War Back? The Present and Future of war
  Sun aft	Joshua Landy (Teaching Excellence awardee)	French literature and culture (Stanford)	Marcel Proust
  Sun eve	Nancy Abrams	Music and law (Berkeley; PBK)“Philosophical Cabaret”	Science As Spiritual Power
  Mon am	Alexis Wood (Scholarship Awardee)	Geography (UC Davis)        climate change, and rural socio-political movements   State of Jefferson (title to come)	Geography in Constellation: Encountering the Far North of California

  

  Nancy Abrams:  Science As Spiritual Power

  Abstract: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” (Yeats) Why? Can “the best” change this?  It is no coincidence that the worst tend to be the most extreme in all religions, but they possess something highly valuable and empowering to themselves – a sense of personal connection to their (small, imaginary) universe.  So many wonderful people dedicated to saving the planet lack any sense of connection to the larger universe because they have no language or story that meaningfully narrates the experience of being an earthling in the real universe.  Modern cosmology could be key to that story, providing in this dangerous era a new, responsible source of spiritual power.  

  Bio: Nancy Ellen Abrams is a philosopher of science, lawyer, and former lecturer on Cosmology and Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  She is the co-author with world-renowned cosmologist Joel Primack of two popular books: The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos, which was the first to interpret the place of human beings in the new dark matter/dark energy picture of the universe, and The New Universe and the Human Future: How a Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World, which adapts concepts from cosmology as new metaphors to re-envision our world.  Her solo book, A God That Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet, proposes a way to rethink the idea of God in light of new knowledge and the global predicament. It won the 2015 USA Best Book Award in philosophy.  Nancy is also a singer/songwriter and has performed in 19 countries.  Her recent songs are on Substack at “The Philosophical Cabaret.” 

  
  

  

  Joshua Landy: Marcel Proust 

  Joshua Landy is the Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University, where he co-directs the Initiative in Philosophy and Literature and co-hosts the nationally syndicated public radio program “Philosophy Talk.” His books include Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust (Oxford, 2004), How to Do Things With Fictions (Oxford, 2012), The World According to Proust (Oxford, 2022), and (as co-editor) The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age (Stanford, 2009).

  
  

  
  

  
  

  

  Alejandra Rosselli (Scholarship awardee): A Stellar Perspective of History 

  Abstract: The history of humanity is deeply intertwined with the cosmos. From the earliest settlement that developed agriculture to the long voyages across the seas. The history that is generally taught in school focuses only on the sky as the Greeks saw it, but our ancestors have looked at the sky from every corner of the world for hundreds of thousands of years. In my talk I hope to bring to you just a small look at the cosmos from our very own small speck of a planet. Scientists have made incredible progress to try to fully understand space, but as we learn more, new puzzles arise. The sky today is as full of secrets as it was when we built the first telescopes, and more mysteries will emerge the longer we stare. 

  Alejandra Rosselli-Calderon (UC Santa Cruz) is a Colombian astrophysicist working towards her PhD at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). At UCSC she has had the fantastic opportunity to work on the advancement of our understanding of how stars and black holes dance together in the depths of space. We tend to think of stars as points of light in space that get pulled by one another via Kepler's laws of gravity. But real stars are rarely alone. Most are born in pairs or larger families, and their lives are shaped by nearby companions. Their fate can be completely changed by close encounters, mass exchanges, or even violent ejections. In her work she treats stars as evolving entities that grow, lose material, expand, and sometimes crash into neighbors. By letting stars behave like real physical objects inside multiple-body systems, we can learn not only where they go, but also what happens to them along the way. Alejandra uses cutting edge computational codes that use detailed physical laws of gravitational dynamics, equilibrium and hydrodynamics to understand these complex systems. These tools allow her to predict not only how stars and black holes react over the course of their lifetime, but what's more, how they will look when we see them through telescopes. She hopes that these predictions can guide what astronomers search for in the sky as more advanced telescopes keep being developed.

  Andrew Reddie, (Teaching Excellence awardee)

  Title: From Innovation to Instability: Emerging Technologies and International Security

  Abstract:  Debates about emerging technology and international security often gravitate toward distant and speculative futures. Yet many of the most consequential risks are already taking shape through the integration of artificial intelligence, advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems, and missile defenses (e.g., the Golden Dome) into existing military organizations and command structures--as evidenced by recent events in Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza. These technologies are changing what states can observe, how quickly they can interpret information, and how confidently they believe they can act--often without resolving the underlying uncertainty that drives crisis instability.

  This talk examines the proximate implications of these developments for nuclear deterrence and escalation. It considers how AI-enabled decision support may compress timelines and reinforce cognitive biases; how improved sensing may threaten the survivability of mobile missiles, submarines, and other strategic assets; and how missile defenses may alter perceptions of vulnerability and damage limitation. Rather than treating these technologies as independently destabilizing, the talk emphasizes their interaction with doctrine, organizational practice, and adversary perceptions. Drawing on wargaming and experimental research, it argues that the central policy challenge is not simply controlling technological capability, but understanding how new systems reshape decision-making under conditions of acute uncertainty.

  Bio: Andrew W. Reddie serves on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, and is the Founder and Faculty Director of the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab. At Berkeley, Andrew serves in faculty leadership roles in a wide variety of UC Berkeley’s research centers, including the Institute of International Studies, the Berkeley APEC Study Center, the Berkeley Institute for Security and Governance, the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, the Institute of East Asian Studies, and the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, as well as the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. 

   He is a non-resident fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, a Future Security Scenario Lab Fellow at New America in Washington, DC, and Senior Advisor for Global Risk and AI at the Federation of American Scientists. Andrew also serves as a Senior Director of the Bridging the Gap Project. 

   Andrew received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2019. 

  

  Davis Sandino

  Bio: David Sandino serves as the Director of the University of California, Davis, School of Law Water Justice Clinic. The Clinic provides legal assistance to disadvantaged and rural water communities to improve their water supply. He taught water, environmental, energy, and tribal law courses at Santa Clara University, University of California, Santa Barbara, Texas Tech University,  and University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  He received a 1999 Fulbright Fellowship to teach in Russia, where he taught international environmental law at the Moscow State Academy.

  During his thirty-year public service career,  he served as Chief Counsel under an appointment by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and senior legal counsel for the California Department of Water Resources. He worked on significant water, environmental, tribal, financial, and energy cases. He served as the Department’s lead attorney for the Klamath River Dam removal project.

  
  

  Gil-li Vardi (Teaching Excellence awardee); 

  Is Conventional War Back? The Present and Future of war

  Talk abstract: The data is clear - for decades, conventional war was in decline. So, is it making a comeback now? And, if indeed we are experiencing a resurgence, what can current conflicts reveal about the character of war today and in the foreseeable future? In terms of strategy, operations and tactics, what - if anything - sets contemporary war apart? What is the meaning of victory (and defeat) in this context? What are the manifold impacts of new technologies introduced on the battlefield? While we cannot predict the future, we can employ historical analysis and historical thinking to attempt to make sense of the current state of war.

  Bio: Gil-li Vardi, who joined Stanford in 2012, is an Advanced Lecturer in the Department of History and the Program in International Relations, where she specializes in modern military history. She earned her PhD at the London School of Economics in 2009, and completed a postdoc at the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War in 2010. Her research was published in War in History and Strategic Studies, as well as edited volumes on The Changing Character of War and The Culture of Military Organizations. 

  Her courses include Introduction to Modern Military History; The Great War; The Modern Battle (a class in which students study the evolution of modern warfare by replaying four major campaigns of the 20^th century), and, People, Armies, and Governments of the Second World War. 

  Alexis Wood (UC Berkeley, Norall Scholarship)

  A Geography in Constellation: Encountering the “Far North” of California 

  What does it mean to know a place? To trace its borders and to know where it begins and ends? To inherit its histories and archives or to move through its landscapes? Listen to its stories? Or to confront the stories we make as we experience it? 

  This talk takes Northern California and the recurring State of Jefferson secessionist movement as a way into this broader epistemological problem. Jefferson presents an unusual geographical object: a region repeatedly named and mapped but never formally constituted; invoked across different historical moments but without stable boundaries, membership, or meaning. Rather than treating this instability as an obstacle to defining the region, I use it as a starting point to ask how geographical objects become knowable. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and fieldwork in Northern California, I approach the region as a constellation: an arrangement of encounters, landscapes, histories, infrastructures, stories, and political imaginaries whose relations become visible from particular positions and moments. These different ways of knowing do not necessarily converge. The Jefferson found in an archive is not the Jefferson encountered in conversation, on a map, or in the landscape. The talk therefore asks what happens when geographical research does not immediately move to reconcile these fragments into a singular account of place. What can partial, situated, and sometimes contradictory forms of knowledge reveal about how regions come into being? And what might the constellation offer as a way of knowing places whose coherence lies precisely in the relations among their fragments?

  Alexis is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley, with Designated Emphases in New Media and Critical Theory. Her research examines the growing intersections between climate change, digital geographies, and rural socio-political movements through experimental cartographic methods. She is particularly interested in state secessionist movements, including Northern California’s State of Jefferson movement, and how these movements might be understood not simply as reactionary populism, but as structurally produced responses to larger issues, such as environmental degradation and chronic underinvestment. After earning her A.A. in Anthropology from Berkeley City College in 2018, Alexis transferred to UC Berkeley and joined Phi Beta Kappa in 2021, earning her degrees in Political Science and Geography with Highest Honors the same year.

  Alexis is currently the co-chair of the New Media Working Group with the Berkeley Center for New Media, a Student Board Member of the Digital Geographies Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), a Student Board Member of the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS), and acting student manager of studio.geo-?, Berkeley’s experimental cartography studio under the direction of Professor Clancy Wilmott (a winner of the 2022 Teaching Excellence Award). She is also the Graduate Student Peer Advisor with Berkeley Hope Scholars, UC Berkeley’s academic support program for former foster youth, where she advises students on graduate school applications, undergraduate research, and navigating academic life.

  

  Registration, which goes in part to scholarships, is $150 (member and their guests rate), $180 Non-PBKNCA, 

  Asilomar cost in 2026 was $682.85/person, double occupancy. Including room, all meals and parking. Of course, it will be a little more in 2027!

  We are delighted to invite you to share in a weekend of learning, dialogue, and fellowship at the Asilomar Conference Center on the spectacular Monterey Coast.

  But this is more than eight interesting speakers, it is an opportunity to renew old friendships, or make new friends at meals; walk on the beach or the trails. Explore the historic buildings of the Asilomar State Park. Visit the Butterfly Grove Inn to see the beautiful Monarch Butterflies, and much more. 

  “Education is the most powerful weapon we have to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela.

  

  “Education is the most powerful weapon we have to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela
  

  Some of you may feel ready for new beginnings.  Some may be eager to expand your learning into unexplored ground.  Some of you may just be eager for a chance to hang with friends in a beautiful,  refreshing and historic coastal retreat.  And for some of you, all three apply.  Thankfully, we are looking forward to a new season for the PBKNCA Asilomar Conference in February!  It is again time to reserve your space for a weekend of learning, inspiration, fellowship and a breath of sanity, on the magnificent Monterey coast. Come, bring a friend, and find out for yourself. 
  

  If you have questions on this year’s program, please contact dfrontczak@scu.edu. For registration or logistics matters, please contact Barry Haskell at bghaskell@comcast.net. Registration is $150, which goes mainly to scholarships. Cost will be similar to last year, about $680 per person, double occupancy, and includes all nine meals and parking. All registered participants will receive forms to reserve their Asilomar accommodations, including meals; please check your email. (Remember, to be part of the PBKNCA package, do not reserve directly with the facility.)

  Please join us once again for the annual Asilomar Conference -- to learn, engage in discussions, and to listen to one another in new ways.

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