The March of Toms
News from the world of Toms (fitfully updated by TC).

May 24, 2006, Ancorage, Alaska.
Tom and JoAnna Christensen's Crazy Croissant has opened in a new location! "This is a much better location," JoAnna says.

And a sidenote on Tom Christensens in history: Fishboy reports that ever since 1940 Tom Christensen has held the record for the largest crappie caught in Minnesota. Bonds might conceivably catch Aaron, but Tom Christensen's crappie record appears, according to Fishboy, out of reach of any pretender.

Now on to the cavalcade of Toms ...

Thomas
Christensen

1. Thomas Christensen (www.rightreading.com) is your host--author of several books, editor and publisher (North Point Press, Mercury House), translator (Like Water for Chocolate, Fuentes, Carpentier, Cortázar, Céline), director of publications (Asian Art Museum), graphic designer, king of the fishes, etc., etc. For more see my bio.
 
In the early 1990s, Jay Schaefer of Chronicle Books and some others held regular get-togethers for San Francisco publishing people, a sort of Algonquin Roundtable West (all we lacked was the wit). At one of these, I met another Thomas Christensen, who was a production guy at HarperSanFrancisco. He said that Knopf had called him asking him to translate García Márquez's The General in His Labyrinth, and he had to decline (not knowing Spanish). That's the closest I got to translating Gabo--as Lee Goerner, the editor at Knopf who had been looking for me, called him. (I ended up reviewing the book for the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review.)
 
Also, in college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I got some speeding tickets for another Thomas Christensen (not no. 5 below, surely?). This was convenient as I used to blame my own misdeeds on him.

So you see, of Thomas Christensens there really is no end.

Thomas
Christensen

2. Thomas Christensen
(http://blog.tc.dk/blog/1) reviews science fiction books and takes pictures of his travels to such places as Singapore. He works with computer graphics programs and is into popular music; he set up a forum page for the "Danish goth/industrial scene." He lives in Copenhagen, but he is a different TC from no. 9 below. At one time we exchanged links, as we both have Singapore pictures and reviews pages, but our websites have both evolved since then.

Thomas
Christensen

3. Thomas A. Christensen (http://www.neurobio.arizona.edu/faculty/christensen/) is a neuroscience researcher who is into single-neuron and systems-level analysis of olfactory codes in the insect brain. He has worked on 3-D reconstructions of the insect olfactory system. He is associated with Hildebrand Lab, Arizona Research Laboratories, Division of Neurobiology.

Thomas
Christensen

4. Thomas E. Christensen
(http://www.umaine.edu/set/eet/faculty.htm#Christensen) teaches senior high school class in his church and serves on its Board of Trustees. He enjoys camping, wood working, antique engines and HO trains and lives with his wife and three children in Hampden. He has been involved in equipment development for the forest and fishing industries, creating such machines as a crabmeat/ bone separator, a crown vetch dehuller, mussel harvester, wood chip furnaces, and material handling equipment. He teaches courses in fluid power and serves as the Key Professor for the Key Fluid Power School at The University of Maine.

Thomas
Christensen

5. Thomas Christensen (http://www.centralmadison.com/tom_pictures.html) is a realtor in Madison, Wisconsin--the town where I grew up--and, like me, he received his MA from the University of Wisconsin. "Tom C. has focused on the Central Madison Market since 1983. He has seasoned expertise, unsurpassed market knowledge and a large network of contacts in the Central Madison area. Since 1981 Tom C. has lived in Central Madison and has extensive knowledge of the neighborhoods--property values, services, buses, parks, schools and shopping. Two of his four children still attend Central Madison Schools."

Thomas
Christensen

6. Thomas M. Christensen (http://www.uccs.edu/~tchriste/) "is the Interim Dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Energy Science at the Univeristy of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Tom has taught a wide variety of courses and has won both the college and campus-wide teaching awards. He is an active researcher in experimental surface and thin film physics. Tom regularly travels out to local schools to make presentations on physics, light, sound, and astronomy. He is available to do workshops and short courses on a variety of topics in vacuuum and thin film technology."

Tomas
Christensen

7. Tomas Christensen (http://hem.passagen.se/cross_1/christiansen_1996.htm) is an innovative bass player who joined Hansi Cross in his series of progressive Swedish rock albums.

Tomas
Kristensen

8. Tomas Kristensen
(http://users.pandora.be/peter.morley/Joest.htm), along with co-drivers Michele Alboreto and Stefan Johansson, won first place in the 1997 Le-Mans in this A42 white Joest Porsche.

Thomas
Christensen

9. Thomas Christensen
(http://thomas.dossier.dk/) is Bachelor of Political Science, Master's student, and Lieutenant-Commander, Royal Danish Navy Reserve. "Beside my studies I am roller-skating for exercise, during the winter skiing and occasionally also play golf, and recently found a new source of inspiration: Poetry and short stories. Most of my weekends I spend with my girlfriend--either in Copenhagen or Gothenburg, Sweden. My greatest passion is to travel: I have visited most of the European continent and last summer I spent five weeks in Mexico. Within the last year I also spent time in Austria, France, Germany, Russia, Spain and Sweden. I speak English and Russian more or less fluently, Swedish fairly and have a knowledge of German and French."

Thomas
Christensen

10. Thomas Christensen
(url has gone bad) says "Davs! Mit navn er Thomas Christensen og dette er min egen hjemmeside. Ja jeg ved godt at den er lidt kedelig--det indrømmer jeg gerne. Jeg læser datalogi på Aarhus Universitet. Derudover arbejder jeg som studenterprogrammør ved Computational Biology Group-University of Aarhus for især Jotun Hein, hvor jeg bl.a. har arbejdet med simulationer af gen-sekvenser."

Thomas
Christensen

11. Thomas Christensen
(http://music.uchicago.edu/?christensen) is a theorist and historian of music theory with special interests in 18th-century intellectual history, problems in tonal theory, historiography, and aesthetics. His honors include an award from the NEH (1995), the Wallace Berry Book Award, Society for Music Theory for Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment (1995), a Fulbright Research Fellowship (1989-90) for study in East Germany, an ACLS research fellowship (1989-90) and a DAAD award (1986). Elected Vice-President of the Society for Music Theory (1997-99), President of the Society for Music Theory (1999-2001), Chair, AMS 50 Dissertation Fellowship Committee (1998-2001), Reviews Editor, Music Theory Spectrum (1995-98), Editorial Board Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of Music Theory.

Thomas
Christensen

12. Thomas J. Christensen
(http://web.mit.edu/shass/soundings/issue_98f/dep_newfac_f98.html#ThomasC) is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He specializes in Chinese foreign policy, international relations theory, and international security affairs. He has authored a book, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947-58 (Princeton University Press, 1996), and articles on topics ranging from China's contemporary security policy to security alliances in European history. He is currently involved in two research projects. The first addresses the triangular relations of the United States, China, and Japan in the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. The second addresses the roles of ideology and nationalism in China's policies toward its communist allies in the 1950s and 1960s.

Tom
Christensen

13. Tom Christensen
(http://www.tomchristensen.net/849/3441) Recently this new Tom has come from nowhere to dominate the TC news and search engine results. He is the Tom Christensen who was appointed Canada's Minister of Children and Family Development on August 15, 2006. (He previously served as Minister of Education and Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconcilation.) Tom seems to have started his political career as chairperson of the Vernon Jubilee Hospital Foundations Annual Light-a-Bulb Fundraising Campaign.