User contributions for York

13:3113:31, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,643 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/46/zh-cn Created page with "The platform of wealth and opportunity set by J.W. and furthered by my grandfather, also a banker, meant that my mom would want for nothing as a child. She was a great student with a full slate of sports and activities with family and a wide circle of friends. Sundays were for family picnics and summer days for swimming at her grandparents’ beach house on Puget Sound. Sports and games were an essential part of any gathering—croquet, shuffleboard, and horseshoes were..." current
13:3013:30, 28 January 2026 diff hist +10,774 Chapter One Trey/zh-cn Created page with "In my second year at Acorn Academy, I arrived “a newly aggressive, rebellious child,” a four-year-old who liked singing solo and taking imaginary trips. I scuffled with other kids, and was “frustrated and unhappy much of the time,” the director reported. Fortunately, my teachers were heartened by my long-term plans: “We feel very accepted by him since he is including us as passengers on his proposed moon shot,” they wrote. (I was ahead of Kennedy by a few yea..."
13:2913:29, 28 January 2026 diff hist +2,341 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/45/zh-cn Created page with "My mom, Mary Maxwell, grew up in the embrace of a family culture set by her grandfather J. W. Maxwell, a banker who doted on my mom and was a model for a life of constant self-improvement. As a boy in Nebraska, J.W. quit school and talked himself into a job digging out the basement of a house owned by a local banker in return for money and room and board. When J.W. put down his shovel two months later, the man offered him a job at his bank. He was fifteen. After a few ye..." current
13:2813:28, 28 January 2026 diff hist +476 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/44/zh-cn Created page with "In the letter I glimpsed the private negotiations that surely continued all though my childhood and beyond. They nearly always maintained their solid front, in private working out their differences, most of which stemmed from how each was raised. 我在信中看到他们会私下协商，这样的沟通模式贯穿了我的童年时期与之后的生活。他们会形成稳固的统一战线，私下再解决两人的分歧，分歧大多源自于两人的成长背景。" current
13:2613:26, 28 January 2026 diff hist +12 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/43/zh-cn Created page with "Mary 瑪麗" current
13:2613:26, 28 January 2026 diff hist +38 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/42/zh-cn Created page with "I love you Bill 我愛你，比爾。" current
13:2513:25, 28 January 2026 diff hist +2,035 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/41/zh-cn Created page with "My objective conclusion about our relationship is that we have much in common and a very fine thing. We want much the same social life and home life. I think it’s true that we both want a very close marriage—that is, we want we two to be one. Although our social and family backgrounds are different, I think that we are able to be understanding about problems evolving from this, because as individuals we are much the same. We do both like to be dealing with ideas—to..." current
13:2413:24, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,604 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/40/zh-cn Created page with "My mom was meticulous about keeping records of her life, photo albums of family trips and school musicals, scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and telegrams. I recently found a set of letters that she and my father traded in the year leading up to their marriage in the spring of 1951. Six months before the wedding, my father was in his hometown working as an attorney, his first job after earning his law degree earlier that year. My mother was back at the university finishi..." current
13:2413:24, 28 January 2026 diff hist +826 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/38/zh-cn Created page with "I always loved hearing this story because it so perfectly captures my parents’ personalities. My dad: deliberate and unapologetically pragmatic, sometimes even in matters of the heart. My mom: gregarious, and also not shy about getting what she wanted. It was a neat story, a distillation of the full story, one of differences that went beyond height, and which would ultimately play into who I became. 我一直很喜欢听这段故事，因为它完美地展现了我父..." current
13:2313:23, 28 January 2026 diff hist +485 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/37/zh-cn Created page with "My father always claimed his request for an introduction wasn’t a tricky way of getting my mom to go out with him. But that’s what happened. “By golly,” he said, “let’s have a date.” Then, as the story goes, two years later they got married. 父亲总是宣称，他要母亲帮他介绍舞伴，并不是为了要跟母亲约会而故意使诈。但事情就这样发生了。“真是的，”他说，“我们去约会吧。”据说两年后，他们就..." current
13:2213:22, 28 January 2026 diff hist +225 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/36/zh-cn Created page with "My mom sidled up next him, stood on her tiptoes, put her hand atop her head, and retorted, “I am not! I’m tall.” 我母亲走到他身边，踮起脚尖，把手放在头顶上反驳道：“我不矮！我很高。”" current
13:2213:22, 28 January 2026 diff hist +291 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/35/zh-cn Created page with "My mother was five-foot-seven, and my dad told her that, literally, she didn’t measure up. “Mary,” he replied, “you’re too short.” 我母亲身高170公分，父亲告诉她，她没有达到标准——他指的就是字面意思。“玛丽，”他说，“你太矮了。”" current
13:2113:21, 28 January 2026 diff hist +111 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/34/zh-cn Created page with "“I have someone in mind,” she said. “Me.” “我心里有一个人选，”她说，“就是我。”" current
13:2113:21, 28 January 2026 diff hist +671 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/33/zh-cn Created page with "He knew she was an officer at a sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, so he asked: Did she know someone who might be interested in meeting a tall guy who liked to dance? She said she’d check. Time went by. No introduction came. One day while walking together just outside the sorority house, my dad asked her again if she knew someone suitable. 他知道她是卡帕卡帕加玛联谊会（Kappa Kappa Gamma）的干部，于是问她是否认识有兴趣认识一位喜欢跳舞..." current
13:2113:21, 28 January 2026 diff hist +885 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/32/zh-cn Created page with "In the fall of 1946, he was part of a wave of veterans on the G.I. Bill, the generous government program that gave millions of people an education they might not have afforded otherwise. The one downside, in my father’s estimation, was that the number of men on the University of Washington campus far surpassed the number of women. That meant the chances of finding a dance partner were low. At some point he asked a friend for help. Her name was Mary Maxwell. 1946年秋..." current
13:2013:20, 28 January 2026 diff hist +958 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/31/zh-cn Created page with "My father was known as a gentle giant, six-feet-seven-inches tall with a calm politeness you might not expect from a man who was often the biggest guy in the room. He had a direct, purposeful way of dealing with people that defined him and suited his career as a lawyer advising businesses and boards (and later as the first head of our philanthropic foundation). Though polite, he wasn’t shy to ask for what he wanted. As a college student, what he wanted was a dance part..." current
13:1913:19, 28 January 2026 diff hist +608 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/30/zh-cn Created page with "My parents’ struggle with their hyperkinetic, brainy, often contrarian, tempestuous son would absorb much of their energy as I grew up and would indelibly shape our family. As I’ve grown older, I better understand just how instrumental they were in helping chart my unconventional path to adulthood. 在我的成长过程中，我的父母为了应对这个好动、聪明、常常唱反调、个性激烈的儿子，耗费了大量的精力，这也深深影响了我..." current
13:1913:19, 28 January 2026 diff hist +923 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/29/zh-cn Created page with "What educators and my parents noted at an early age were hints of what would come. I channeled the same intensity that drew me into solving the puzzle of Gami’s card skill into anything that interested me—and nothing that didn’t. The things that interested me included reading, math, and being alone in my own head. The things that didn’t were the daily rituals of life and school, handwriting, art, and sports. Also, mostly everything my mother told me to do. 教..." current
13:1813:18, 28 January 2026 diff hist +967 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/28/zh-cn Created page with "In my second year at Acorn Academy, I arrived “a newly aggressive, rebellious child,” a four-year-old who liked singing solo and taking imaginary trips. I scuffled with other kids, and was “frustrated and unhappy much of the time,” the director reported. Fortunately, my teachers were heartened by my long-term plans: “We feel very accepted by him since he is including us as passengers on his proposed moon shot,” they wrote. (I was ahead of Kennedy by a few yea..." current
13:1713:17, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,907 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/27/zh-cn Created page with "Early on, my parents knew that the rhythm of my mind was different from that of other kids. Kristi, for one, did what she was told, played easily with other kids, and from the start got great grades. I did none of those things. My mother worried about me and warned my preschool teachers at Acorn Academy what to expect. At the end of my first year, the director of the school wrote: “His mother had prepared us for him for she seemed to feel that he was a great contrast t..." current
13:1513:15, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,437 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/26/zh-cn Created page with "I was born on October 28, 1955, the second of three kids. Kristi, born in 1954, was twenty-one months older; my sister Libby wouldn’t appear on the scene for nearly another decade. As a baby, I was dubbed “Happy Boy” for the wide grin I seemed to always display. It wasn’t that I didn’t cry, but the joy I apparently felt seemed to override all other emotions. My other notable early trait might be described as excess energy. I rocked. At first on a rubber hobby h..." current
13:1213:12, 28 January 2026 diff hist +746 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/24/zh-cn Created page with "Eventually—it took about five years—I was winning consistently. By that point I was almost a teenager, naturally competitive. I enjoyed the mental wrestling, as well as the deeply satisfying feeling you get from learning a new skill. Card playing taught me that no matter how complex or even mysterious something seems, you often can figure it out. The world can be understood. 后来，大概花了五年时间，我终于可以稳定地赢牌。那时的我差不多..." current
13:1113:11, 28 January 2026 diff hist +520 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/23/zh-cn Created page with "There was no fanfare. No grand prize. No high fives. I don’t even remember what game we were playing the first time I won more games in a day than she did. I do know my grandmother was pleased. I’m pretty sure she smiled, an acknowledgment that I was growing. 没有大肆庆祝、没有奖品、没有击掌。我甚至不记得，我第一次在一天之内赢牌的次数超过加米时，我们是在玩哪些游戏。我只知道，外祖母非常高兴。我很确..." current
13:1113:11, 28 January 2026 diff hist +46 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/22/zh-cn Created page with "One day I did. 有一天，我真的赢了。" current
13:1013:10, 28 January 2026 diff hist +690 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/21/zh-cn Created page with "We played and played and I lost and lost. But I was watching, and improving. All along, Gami continued to gently encourage me. “Think smart, Trey. Think smart,” she’d say as I weighed my next move. Implicit was the idea that if I used my brain, stayed focused, I could figure out the right card to play. I could win. 我们不停地玩牌，我一次又一次地输牌。但是我不断观察、不断改进。加米一直温柔地鼓励我。当我苦思下一步该..." current
13:1013:10, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,554 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/20/zh-cn Created page with "All the while, I studied her. In computer science there’s a thing called a state machine, a part of a program that receives an input and, based on the state of a set of conditions, takes the optimal action. My grandmother had a finely tuned state machine for cards; her mental algorithm methodically worked through probabilities, decision trees, and game theory. I couldn’t have articulated these concepts, but slowly I started to intuit them. I noticed that even at uniq..." current
13:0713:07, 28 January 2026 diff hist +707 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/19/zh-cn Created page with "We played Pounce, gin rummy, hearts, and my favorite, sevens. We played her favorite, a complicated form of gin she called Coast Guard rummy. We played a little bridge. We played our way through a volume of Hoyle’s, front to back, dealing games popular and not—even pinochle. 我们玩猫捉老鼠、金罗美（gin rummy）、伤心小栈（hearts），以及我最爱的排七。我们会玩她最喜欢的复杂版金罗美游戏，她称之为海巡罗美（Coast Gu..." current
13:0713:07, 28 January 2026 diff hist +839 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/18/zh-cn Created page with "From that time on, I would sit down to a game of cards with an awareness that each hand dealt offered the chance to learn—if only I would take it. She knew it too. That didn’t mean she made the path easy. She could have sat me down and walked me through the do’s and don’ts, the strategies and tactics of various games. That wasn’t Gami’s way. She wasn’t didactic. She led by example. So we played and played. 从那时候开始，每当我坐下来打牌，..." current
13:0613:06, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,523 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/17/zh-cn Created page with "I am staring at my cards, my head racing to find matches. Then I hear Gami say: “Your six card plays.” And then, “Your nine card plays.” She’s coaching my sister and me while also playing her own hand. She somehow grasps everything happening at the table and even seems to know the cards we’re each holding—and it’s not magic. How is she doing it? To anyone who plays cards, this is basic stuff. The more closely you can track your opponent’s hand, the bett..." current
13:0513:05, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,246 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/16/zh-cn Created page with "It’s quiet, except for the slapping of cards on the table, a frenzy of drawing and matching cards in rapid fire. We’re playing Pounce, a fast-paced, group form of solitaire. A serial Pounce winner can keep track of what’s in their hand, what cards are showing in all the players’ individual piles, and what’s in the communal piles on the table. It rewards a strong working memory and the pattern-matching ability to instantly recognize how a card that comes up on t..." current
13:0413:04, 28 January 2026 diff hist +30 Translations:Chapter One Trey/15/zh-cn No edit summary current
13:0413:04, 28 January 2026 diff hist −4 Translations:Chapter One Trey/14/zh-cn No edit summary current
12:2212:22, 28 January 2026 diff hist +4,730 Chapter One Trey/zh-cn Created page with "I was about eight when I got my first glimmer of how she did it. I still remember the day: I’m sitting across from my grandmother at the dining room table, Kristi next to me. The room has one of those huge old wooden radios that even then was a relic of the past. Along another wall is a big cabinet where Gami stored the special dishes that we used every Sunday for dinner. 当我第一次了解到她是如何做到的时，我大约八岁。我仍然记得那天：餐..."
12:1412:14, 28 January 2026 diff hist +720 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/15/zh-cn Created page with "I was about eight when I got my first glimmer of how she did it. I still remember the day: I’m sitting across from my grandmother at the dining room table, Kristi next to me. The room has one of those huge old wooden radios that even then was a relic of the past. Along another wall is a big cabinet where Gami stored the special dishes that we used every Sunday for dinner. 当我第一次了解到她是如何做到的时，我大约八岁。我仍然记得那天：餐..."
12:1312:13, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,397 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/14/zh-cn Created page with "Those weekend visits were special. Her house was just a couple of miles from ours, but spending time there felt like a vacation. She had a pool and compact mini golf course we’d play in the side yard, set up by my grandfather. She also allowed us the treat of television—a tightly controlled substance at our own house. Gami was up for anything; thanks to her, my sisters and I became avid game players who made anything—Monopoly, Risk, Concentration—into a competiti..."
12:1312:13, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,099 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/13/zh-cn Created page with "My grandparents had built a house in the upscale Seattle neighborhood of Windermere big enough to accommodate grandkids and family gatherings. Gami continued to live there after my grandfather died. On some weekends Kristi and I would stay over, alternating who got the privilege of sleeping in Gami’s room. The other one slept in a nearby bedroom where everything from walls to curtains was pale blue. Light from the street and passing cars painted eerie shadows in that b..." current
12:1312:13, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,537 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/12/zh-cn Created page with "From that point on, Gami channeled all her love and attention into me and my older sister, Kristi—and later my sister Libby. She would be a constant presence in our young lives and have a profound effect on who we would become. She read to me before I could hold a book and for years after, covering the classics like The Wind in the Willows, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Charlotte’s Web. After my grandfather died, Gami started to teach me to read for myself, helpi..." current
12:1112:11, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,623 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/11/zh-cn Created page with "Two months before my fifth birthday my grandfather, J. W. Maxwell Jr., died of cancer. He was only fifty-nine years old. Following his Christian Science beliefs, he had declined modern medical interventions. His last years were filled with pain, and Gami suffered as his caregiver. I learned later that my grandfather believed his sickness was somehow the result of something Gami had done, some unknown sin in the eyes of God, who was now punishing him. Still, she stoically..." current
12:1112:11, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,168 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/10/zh-cn Created page with "Her faith probably had a role in shaping her into an extremely principled person. Even back then, I could grasp that Gami followed a strict personal code of fairness and justice and integrity. A life well-lived meant living simply, giving your time and money to others, and, most of all, using your brain—staying engaged with the world. She never lost her temper, never gossiped, or criticized. She was incapable of guile. Often she was the smartest person in the room, but..." current
12:1012:10, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,290 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/9/zh-cn Created page with "When Christian Science rapidly expanded across the West Coast in the early 1900s, both my mother’s and father’s families became devout followers. I think my mother’s parents drew strength from Christian Science, embracing its belief that a person’s true identity is found in the spiritual and not the material. They were strict adherents. Because Christian Scientists don’t track chronological age, Gami never celebrated her birthday, never disclosed her age or eve..." current
12:0812:08, 28 January 2026 diff hist +625 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/8/zh-cn Created page with "Her mastery fascinated me back then. How did she get so good? Was she born that way? She was religious, so maybe it was a gift from above? For a long time, I didn’t have an answer. All I knew was that every time we played, she won. No matter the game. No matter how hard I tried. 当时她的精湛技艺让我着迷。她怎么变得这么优秀？她生来就是这样吗？她有宗教信仰，所以也许这是上天赐予的礼物？很长一段时间，我都没有..." current
12:0412:04, 28 January 2026 diff hist −9 Translations:Chapter One Trey/7/zh-cn No edit summary current
12:0212:02, 28 January 2026 diff hist +1,228 N Translations:Chapter One Trey/7/zh-cn Created page with "My initiation into this family culture started early. When I was still in diapers, Lala started calling me “Trey,” the card player’s lingo for three. It was a play on the fact that I was the family’s third living Bill Gates, after my dad and grandfather. (I am actually number four, but my dad chose to go by “junior” and in turn I got called Bill Gates III.) Gami started me off at age five with Go Fish. In the coming years we would play thousands of hands of c..."
06:3406:34, 28 January 2026 diff hist +135 Copyright Marked this version for translation current
06:3306:33, 28 January 2026 diff hist +42 Copyright No edit summary Tag: Visual edit: Switched
01:5501:55, 28 January 2026 diff hist +114 Chapter One Trey/zh-cn Created page with "In my family there was no faster way to win favor than to be good at games, especially card games. If you were confident in rummy or bridge or canasta, you had our respect, which made my maternal grandmother, Adelle Thompson, a household legend. “Gami’s the best at cards” was something I heard a lot as a kid. 在我家，想赢得青睐最好的方法就是要很会玩游戏，尤其是纸牌游戏。如果你是拉密（rummy）、桥牌或是凯纳斯特纸牌..."
01:5301:53, 28 January 2026 diff hist +114 Chapter One Trey No edit summary Tag: Visual edit
01:5201:52, 28 January 2026 diff hist +16 N File:Source Code Track 005.mp3 No edit summary current
01:5001:50, 28 January 2026 diff hist +18 Main Page No edit summary Tag: Visual edit
01:4901:49, 28 January 2026 diff hist +84 Main Page No edit summary Tag: Visual edit

28 January 2026