Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–259
interesting people who just do that, and, of course, some of the photographers. Interesting place.
It wasn’t what I expected, and I enjoyed it a great deal. Women had their own version of it on
the East Coast. Sonia Sotomayor belonged, but then, I guess because of political pressure,
resigned from it. I’d like to see some transition—that sometime in the distant future, Bohemian
Grove becomes coed.
ASPATURIAN: Like Caltech.
TOMBRELLO: Right!
ASPATURIAN: A model for it to emulate.
TOMBRELLO: Well, that was interesting, because somebody had made a suggestion about
somebody to give a museum talk, and I said, “Well, I have to point out to you that he is
subordinate to a woman who basically led the research and is really the person who speaks for it.
I think we would look kind of foolish to invite him rather than her, and you can’t invite her.” I
said, “I think you have to forget the topic unless you can figure out a way, sometime in the
future, for us to start inviting women to give talks.”
ASPATURIAN: Maybe it’s time. It’s the 21st century.
TOMBRELLO: It’s just going to be increasingly embarrassing, because there are more and more
cases where women are going to be the ones who are leading particular things that are going on.
But some of the talks are very, very good. Walter Alvarez gave an extraordinary talk on, sort of,
deep time—looking at history with some deep vision of it. Then there are some like Bill Gates,
who gave a talk that everyone agrees was the second worst talk in the history of the Grove.
ASPATURIAN: How come? Is he just not a natural speaker?
TOMBRELLO: No, it wasn’t that. He wasn’t so much self-important as he was sort of oblivious to
the fact that this was much more of a personal talk about Bill Gates. It just didn’t resonate with
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