Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–258
a beam, with stakes driven through them. So you see a graphic example of what happens to cell
phones. So Jeffrey’s in there, and his cell phone rings. They say, “Jeffrey, turn it off and don’t
answer it. Turn it off.” Then a day later it rings again, and the Grove is full of people who don’t
defer to authority or care much about who is important and who isn’t. He was escorted to the
gate and kicked out. [Laughter] You’re supposed to go there as a real retreat. If you want to
communicate, you go off-site, fire up your cell phone, and maybe you can communicate, but at
the Grove that part of life is back to a more primitive state.
ASPATURIAN: Are women ever invited as guests?
TOMBRELLO: Only for the picnics. They have two picnics a year, one in the spring, one in the
fall, and I have taken people—women people—to the picnics. Frankly, I think the atmosphere
improves with women there; the women add a lot. I arranged to take Talulah and Elon [Musk],
because when I first met Talulah she was very interested in the Grove. She says, “Never any
women.” I said, “Well, there are waitresses.” And she says, “I can play a waitress.” I said,
“Talulah, I do not want to look up over my morning blueberries and see you. Would you like to
go to a picnic?” So, we took in a picnic. The first thing she wanted to do was see one of the
rooms. We get it opened up. She looks at it and says, “Just like girls’ boarding school in
England.” I think that particular visit cured her curiosity about the Grove. She had a great time
that day, and now it holds no mystery as far as she’s concerned. We took a friend of ours up
there at another picnic. She didn’t expect to know anybody, but she almost immediately ran into
a friend of hers who is sort of engaged to a Grove member artist we know. You see a lot of
different people there. You meet people that you have known in other lives. I’ve run into people
from Schlumberger. I reconnected with Ed Knapp, my friend from Los Alamos and the National
Science Foundation. We had some discussion of Ed. He died of pancreatic cancer about a year
ago [August 2009].
ASPATURIAN: How large is the membership?
TOMBRELLO: A few thousand. Of that, probably 125 academics, and probably something of the
same sort, or maybe a little bit higher, of the performers and artists. Some of the performers are
actually artists who, when they’re there, just start painting backdrops. There are some very
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