RE: comments by Joerg Friese the owner of the Stella Maris Resort

Dear Jeffrey,

me and Thom are working on a conference at Long Island Bahamas january 7-11, 2016, at Stella Maris resort , you are of course invited excellent people have signed up for the conference, they will help us to tackle the question concerning the personal of the Center.

As you know there is a new situation in Long Island Bahamas due to the big destruction caused by hurricane Joaquin, how it affects our plans?, well, it adds a new dimension to the motivation to build a Physics center in Long Island Bahamas, in addition to the scientific side, such a project will enhance the moral of the islanders and probably get strong support and endorsement from the goverment of Bahamas and other Bahamian organizations. I am sure everybody will be very grateful to you if you were to participate in the advancement of a high level center for Bahamas, for both scientific and humanitarian reasons.

By the way, after all the destruction in Long Island Bahamas, I do not think you have to worry about people in the center being distracted other things, the Island is not so attractive now, scientists will feel now even more isolated, just will have to worry about thinking and carrying out their research, I am now back in Beer Sheva, best regards,

Eduardo Guendelman

Beer Sheva, Israel.

Sorry, but after seeing the destruction long island becomes toxic to a center. . future destruction possible . sorry

Dear Jeffrey,

ok,

we understand your point of view, but the northern part of the island where we were planning to have the center was much less affected, we will survey the area in January, during our conference, may be take photos and see what are the prospects and will inform you, best, Eduardo and Thom

Dear Jeffrey,

here is an answer to your concerns from Joerg Friese the owner of the Stella Maris Resort, who had the following comments concerning your fears,

Hi, Eduardo: I have to say to this the following: Stella Maris land allows utterly safe choices of locations for setting up anything physical — and the right way to build will withstand hurricanes. I myself prefer to have to accept the possibility of occasional hurricane developments any time, before I would agree to contend with earthquakes, large forest fires, floods, and tornadoes! We have been through five "real" hurricanes over 50 years, and NONE of them had caused major damage! The damages of Long Island occurred where over hundreds of years little west-sea-side settlements and towns hugged what was then the 'easy' west shore, for transportation, but low-lying! It is to be hoped that this fact now provides a chance down South for re-building where one should = on safe land! There is plenty of it! We ourselves, as all of Stella Maris, had no damage — with the exception of a few roofing shingles and one part of a roof, stone-age old, which just sailed with the wind. The owner of this building sees this as an opportunity to make over his house "better". Best regards, Joerg.

He sees the hurricane as an opportunity to learn how to build and where to build, no deaths reported so far in LI as far as we know, really it does compare to the earthquakes in Chile for example. Valdivia was totally destroyed in the 60s by an earthquake, with thousands of casualties and now holds a nice physics center, here in Israel we have terrorism, which does not seem to be an obstacle for doing physics, California is also no stranger to natural disasters, but there you have so many physics centers...

all the best,

Eduardo