Jeff Erickson's Family
- My beautiful wife
Kim Whittlesey is a
geometric group theorist. Kim finished her
Ph.D. thesis at
Berkeley in 1998 under
John Stallings. Kim is a senior lecturer in
the UIUC math department.
Kim is the reason we don't have weeds in our yard; instead we have bindweed and cukcweed and creeping Charlie and choriopsis and false phlox and....
- Damien is an artist and naturalist who dearly loves his parents but thinks we're kind of idiots. Despite the inevitable ravages of adolescence, Damien is kind and insightful and unstoppably creative, and sometimes infinitely wiser than either Kim or me. Damien is the reason we don't have bugs in our yard; instead we have weevils and wheel bugs and mason bees and qustion marks and damseflies and aphids and....
- Hannah is an sunny engineer, crafter, and climber with boundless energy and curiosity, who dearly loves her parents but knows that we're kind of idiots. Hannah is the reason we don't have birds in our yard; instead we have robins and cardinals and crows and starlings and red-wing blackbirds and dark-headed junkos and...
- My mom Connie
Erickson paints and draws portraits for a living.
Check out her
online portfolio and her
blog.
Mom recently moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, because ain't nobody buying portraits in Urbana.
- My dad Jon Erickson is a retired medical physicist who ran his own
consulting company
for many years. Dad used to be a professor of radiology, which
mostly inoculated me against both academic and hospital politics.
His master's advisor was a student of
Robert Oppenheimer.
Dad used to keep an electric hammer in his office. It looked just like a regular claw hammer, but it had a brass plate with a toggle switch and a red LED on the end of the handle. When anyone asked how it worked, Dad would flip the toggle switch, the LED would light up, and he'd say “There, now it's on.” People say this story explains a lot about me.
- My sister Tina Erickson
is a photographer, biker,
retronaut, and even more of a
coffee snob
than me. Her husband Don Bernier
makes documentaries;
you might have seen his
Emmy-nominated
editing work on PBS. Tina frequently accuses me of breaking
things, which would bother me a lot more if it weren't true.
- Coco is a black Lab mix who we adopted in February 2016 who thinks she's still a puppy.
She would like to go on a walk right now, please, unless you would like
to throw this ball, or perhaps you have a pizza you'd like to accidentally drop
on the floor.
- Nori was a Lab/Shepherd/Husky/Akita/something-or-other mix who died in 2013, after living with Kim and me for almost 12 years, including the first several years of Damien and Hannah's lives. We all miss him!
- "Zits" (3/30/98) by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman