New York New York with Hobblings

Left to right: Fedwren, Emma, Someone Else, Q (front), Lars (back), Rian, Skits, Daisy, Me (back), Keppet (front), Dana, Biped



First a disclaimer: Although I lived in New York city for 10 years I lived way uptown and knew the west side quite well, but rarely ventured to the east side, and rarely went all the way downtown. Plus I lived there 14 years ago, and it was very overcast so my sense of North/South etc way downtown was not good. On top of that my sense of time is... well, impossible.

I intended to leave Ohio as soon as I finished teaching at noon, but I had forgotten that had to give a seminar to the grad students and senior capstone students . After this and that, I was not able to leave work until 4, so instead of hitting the highway at 3:00, I did not get on the road until 7:00, with a seven hour drive to New York City in front of me. It was 2 in the morning when I crossed the Hudson River on the lower level of the George Washington Bridge (aka “Martha”). I saw the Port Authority bus terminal Rising up on the Manhattan side, and remembered it’s white interior, the candy counter with chocolate covered marshmallow bars (“blech “ says Rian) and the perpetual cluster of middle aged Hispanic men around the OTB counter. The memory was so strong, chocolate breaking softly, bright light, careworn faces......

I passed under the station and curled down onto the Harlem River Drive, the road as rutted and narrow as ever, the black water of the east river reflecting city lights. A physical longing for the City grabbed me, twisting in my chest. On some level I was and always will be a New Yorker though I did not move there until I was in my 20’s and do not plan to ever live there again.

Needless to say it was very very late by the time I went to sleep..... in an apartment with no alarm clock. I am a light sleeper, I assumed I would wake up in time to make the meeting place at 11:00 on Saturday morning.

Well, I woke up when I meant to. I had time to get ready and my estimated half an hour to walk from 81st between 2nd and 3rd avenue, through central park and up to 106th, with a stop at Starbucks for coffee of course. (“Of course” says Rian). And, of course, I miss-judged the time it would take. In spite of walking with some speed through the occasional rain it took me 45 minutes. As I passed by the lovely rocks and trees of the North-west side of Central Park I saw a familiar figure in the distance in front of me. Keppet, who I had never met, but who was entirely familiar. She had convinced an old friend to come along, poor friend.

Due to the rain, and the fact that our recent “Accomplice” information required us to be at the South street seaport at 2:00, plans to picnic in Central Park had been scrapped. The new plan was to meet somewhere n Chinatown for lunch. Others of the group had gone rouse Rian and Co. and were somewhere in the middle of Manhattan. Only one member of the group actually currently lives in NYC, although not in Manhattan and she is not a longtime NY resident, so it turned out that I might have the best working knowledge of the island.

I suggested we meet at Canal and Mott in the heart of Chinatown. We took the subway down to Canal street and pressed though the crowd to Mott. I restrained myself from looking at the 10$ knockoff Rolexes and assorted shiny attractive things. I also restrained from stopping for a roast pork bun, a bean cake, or a curried vegetable roll from my favorite Chinese bakeries.

We finally joined up with the group. I had never met Fedwren or Q or Lars or Daisy or Keppet before. The others were familiar from Paris (ah! Paris). Fedwren had scoped out a Chinese (Pan Asian actually) restaurant with plenty of room for us all for lunch. We were crowded around a huge round table with a big Lazy Susan in the middle on which our food was placed. We could spin around to what we wanted to try.

In the restaurant


Outside the restaurant


Thus fortified we headed out to the Southstreet Seaport for our Accomplice event.

I glanced at a map and headed us south, and the streets turned and After a brief glance at a map and a few words with Fedwren, the only current New Yorker of the lot of us, I turned us onto another street and sent us walking in absolutely the wrong direction, through a part of China town I had never been in before.

By the time I figured out our mistake we had quite a ways to backtrack. We were late to the South Street Seaport, and then took a bit to find our meeting place. When we got there a narrow man in a suit slid up to us, said we were LATE and had to go away for a half an hour. So, we did, had a drink and watched a man with dreadlocks and an island accent perform amazing yoga type contortions in black and yellow patterned spandex.

Rian said “I can do that.” and “I can do that too” Then he did something else and she fell silent.

Keppet and Dana


Accomplice was fun, sending us here and there through increasingly inventive means, to a Bra Bar using photographs, to a fountain with a message rolled into a cigarette, to Chinatown (back to Mott and Canal) with a fortune cookie. We found out that handsome live frogs can be purchased in Chinatown, and that drunks aren’t always drunks, and that in spite of the crowds and the San Gennaro festival in little Italy a table with bottles of wine was held for Accomplice participants, complete with drunk (perhaps) Russian, who waved over a plate of appetizers and good crusty bread. Some of the actors were a real surprise. I surprised myself by having fun playing along with the story with the loony red-head outside the church. Thankfully we had the sense not to try to give the frog to the parishoners.....

Keppet and Skit do not appear to take the mobster seriously


The Bra Bar (no that wasn't it's name) with Lars' head oddly sticking horizontally into the frame


Rian tackling Someone Else


The Frog


Skittledog prepares to bike up the Brooklyn Bridge


The Blind Beggar delivers his clues


The Russian offers wine and advice on dating

By the time it was over we just had time to subway uptown to Carmine’s on the upper west side. They still serve their after dinner expresso with a bottle of galliano and a twist of lemon peel. Yum!

Rian's Hidden Talent and Narrisch's lovely hair



I ended my night with Dana and Lars at a nice bar, where I discovered pomegranite martinis.... Mmmmmm. The rest of the Hobblings had faded and gone to bed.

And that was just Saturday.

SEA

Watch this site

http://www.sefora.org/

Orange Julius's Grandchildren

Here is Julius's daughter Creaky with her five 3 day old kittens. Creaky is a Torbie shaded silver Oriental Shorthair. The daughter with the mark like a flame or a flower on her forhead may be too. If so she with lighten up like her mother did. The little light brown one is also a girl. The other three (two black silver tabbies and a pointed kitten-not old enough for color yet) are boys. Creaky is a good mother. She does NOT like me looking at her kittens though. She hisses and creaks at me.

Birthday of the World

I have been watching a discussion of varied cultures and religions, the advantages and disadvantages of preserving them, and the tendencies of some individual groups to try to change, absorb or convert others.

I think everything changes, but that there is value to be found in all. I guess I am something of a cultural sampler.

In any case, the Jewish high holy days are coming. This Friday is Rosh Hashana. There are some interesting recipes in the New York Times and a quote I quite liked.

"“Rosh Hashana celebrates the birthday of the world. A garden well tended is a small example of perpetual reunion.”

-Rabbi Gendler

I will step outside, take a breath of the air, look at the sky, think of beginnings. I will look at my garden and celebrate it as an example of the world's beauty, renewal, and fruitfulness.

Titles

I have many things to catch up on, posts started, not finished. Hopefully I will finish. In the meantime, a personal gripe.

Titles.

I have earned one, through many years of hard work. It is Dr. It is the only title I use. In real life people call me Dr. or use my first name. I am fine with both, though I emphasize the Dr. with freshman, and try to get grad students to call me by my given name.

Now, on occasion a website or a form REQUIRES a title. A good proportion of the time when this is the case, the choices are Mr. Miss, Mrs., and Ms. Now, each of these titles means something.

Mr. - I am a man

Miss - I am an unmarried woman or a girl who is fine with conventional double standards for women as compared to men and/or I want to make sure you know I'm single.

Mrs. - I am a married woman who is fine with conventional double standards for women as compared to men and/or I want to make sure you know I'm married.

Ms. - I am a woman who thinks it is none of your business to categorize me in an old-fashioned patriarchal way, gender should be sufficient as it is for men.

Now, if you are female your title therefore says something about your opinions and your politics. Men have no such issues. Truly, I wish women generally used Ms. and dealt with their status the way men do, and that there were not other messages about politics or personal lives attached. Married women who want to express that could say so, and talk fondly of their husbands. Unmarried women could mention being single. Women who wish to discuss feminism could and come down on one side or the other but they would not have to. Ms. almost caught on for universal usage but we went backwards, and have returned more to past double standards. At least in the red states, Ms. causes raised eyebrows. A friend assures me that in her town in her blue state, Ms. is still the prefered title for women. That was reassuring.

In the meantime, I have a title I EARNED and that is the only title I want to use. I will not use another, so some things are barred to me.

The Garden in the End of August 2006

My garden is in its prime. The tomatoes are coming on, I have heirlooms and cherries, and salad reds and Lemon Boy yellows. It is the time for fresh tomato salad with either red wine or balsamic vinegar, fresh squeezed lemon, extra virgin olive oil, basil, garlic and celery. Sweet amd Hot peppers are ripening, zucchini get huge overnight. The winter squash, Butternut and Spaghetti squash hang from the fence. Purple black eggplants are fat and ready to roast for babaganouj or slice into steaks for grilling. I have tender tasty Kentucky Wonder pole beans to boil briefly and then dress with a light coating of soysauce, crushed garlic, fresh grated ginger, a little rice wine vinegar and a smidge of sugar and sesame oil. My ten foot sunflowers hang heavy heads full of seeds. I will try to prepare their seeds this year.

It is a time of plenty, of succulent fresh food and zesty flavors. The winter squash will linger, but the fresh basil and tomatoes are for NOW and will not be available after cold sets in. Store bought tomatoes have so little flavor that they just cannot be used for fresh salsa, and tomatoe salad, or tomatoes with fresh mozerella and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and leaves of fresh basil. These flavors are only for now, and September, and into October. Then they will be gone again. I savor them. Abundance and richness in it's season.

Carmel

I made dinner for Narrisch and others a week ago Wednesday, we sat out on the patio, ate well, and had wonderful conversation. The yard was full of flowers, giant jade trees, and whole shrubs of rosemary. We went to visit N’s uncle, went to the beach where we watched a sea otter close to shore (Narrisch took a wonderful movie of him), out to sushi and a pastry shop that made me think of Paris. Most of the time was spent at the house of course, packing, unpacking, cleaning, talking of this and that. On Monday, the last day, we went to the aquarium where I took about 50 blurry pictures of jellyfish. They are so graceful and otherworldly and so hard to photograph. I have one or two that were in focus, and they are not interesting. It was a beautiful sunny day. Then I flew away.

The patio where we ate dinner





Narrisch on the beach


A sea otter near shore


A nice way to spend a sunny afternoon...

Detroit Airport

I am back in humid August Ohio after a week of lovely, often gloriously cool weather in Carmel, California. I went there to help Narrisch with the hard job of sorting through things at her mother’s house.

A week ago Tuesday I spent much of the day in airports. One of Northwest’s major hubs is the Detroit airport, and I rather like it. Terminal A is a huge, airy, and unbelievably long hall. A tram runs high on one side transporting people from one end to the other. Moving walks can speed you if you choose to do it by foot. There are many shops and restaurants if you have the time to stroll.

I arrived in terminal B which connects to terminal A through an underground tunnel with a light and music installation that always mesmerizes me. This time it played jazz and the colors mainly shifted through reds and blues, with beats of yellow and green.


























Coming up from the tunnel into the center of terminal A, you come to a fountain where water rises in coherent tubular arcs to fall into the center of a smooth round black table. The sheath of water on the table reflects the sky and the heads of great planes. The arcs stop and start, sending hunks of water through the air in an assortment of patterns. Children often cluster around it, fascinated by the forms of the water coming and going

Sunflower

The biggest sunflower plant, closeup.

7 August 2006 Garden

My sunflowers this year are the tallest sunflowers I have ever seen. The tallest one hasn't even opened it's flower yet. It amazes me that this represents about 2 months of growth, perhaps a bit more, but still! Photsynthesis works very well indeed. I wonder... are Sunflowers a C4 plant? Or an ordinary C3? Hmmm a casual Googling did not answer that question. That growth rate smacks of C4, but it is native to North America, which most commonly produces C3 plants...

I am off to see Narrisch. My garden will mostly have to fend for itself, and tomatoes are ripening, and the basil is huge and bushy and starting to flower. It should be cut back. The first bean flowers are turning white, and the plants are finally climbing fast. I may come back to my first beans of the year.

I am pleased with it, one of the few joys of summer. (I am not a summer person)

Garden August 1, 2006

It has been hot and humid. The heat index is 105 (41 C). However, the sun and rain have helped the plants recover from the hailstorm a few weeks ago. My tomatoes are growing tall and the first few tomatoes are ripe. My sunflowers are huge. The zucchini are producing nicely and the winter squash are starting to flower. I have hot peppers and more hot peppers, some ready to pick already. The lettuce wants to bolt, it is time to plant the next batch. My beans are clambering up their poles, and my basil is lush. It has rained so much that I have only had to set up the sprinkler once or twice all summer.

Of course the weeds grow at as fast of a pace. I spent a good chunk of yesterday pulling thistles, then edging the veggie beds with my weed whacker, then mowing that area, back of the back. I came in periodically to cool down a bit, then stopped when it started to pour. Of course much work needs to be done in the front. In a great growing summer I could be a full time gardener, and barely keep up.

So, here it is, “Growth”

Owls

Last night as I sat on my patio with a glass of Malbec from Argentina, watching the fireflies sparkle green-gold in the twilight I heard a strange noise.

It sounded like someone snoring with a whistling hissing snore, rather loudly. Finally I got up and slowly tried to locate the source. It was around my house, in the front. Was it from the streetlight? A moment of horror of some imminant and terrible electrical explosion.... No there was something large and feathery sitting on the wires by the street light. An owl! I quietly and rapidly went and got my camera, came out and photographed the owl,




















Then I heard an answering whistle hiss behind me. Another one closer up on a tree branch!
















They were Barred Owls. A deep woodlands species. I live in a little enlave in a large natural wooded park. I had heard them hoot before (described as "Who Cooks For You? Who Cooks for You Now Ahhh!") but never heard of this noise, perhaps they were hissing at each other like angry cats, or perhaps they were saying harsh endearments.

After the Hailstorm

We have had good strong thunderstorms on and off for the last couple of weeks. On monday some came through while I was at work. There were no tornado warning with them. They seemed to be ordinary thunderstorms. A few hours later I drove home, less than a 15 minute drive. As I approached my house I noticed that things looked... odd. As I pulled into my driveway it was clear some strange event has happened. The ends of banches and leaves from trees littered the ground. Leaves were plastered up the side of my house, up all my windows stuck as if glued there.

Had there been som kind of mini-tornado?

When I stepped out of the car I saw a container that I had been mixing potting soil in now had water 4 inches deep in it. It had been dry and empty in the morning. I have two pots of begonias by my breezeway door. The one on the east side was pulverized, the one on the west side, sheltered from west approaching weather by the side of the house, was fine.














Suddenly it hit me. Hail.

I ran around an checked all my plants. My hostas were shredded, branches were broken off my tomatoes, huge holes punched in my squash leaves, lettuce pounded into the ground.

The plants are slowly recovering, though I am stuck with this summer's hostas being shredded. I am still cleaning up

Fool on the Beach

Rian had a dream of the Fool on the beach with face painted blue.

I was up late with a sick cat and whiled away time playing with photoshop and pictures until I had cobbled together the Fool with face painted blue and placed him by the ocean. Rian disapproved of the Fool's face so I modified it some more. Although Rian liked that last version best, I didn't. So, here is my favorite. Long Live Photoshop!

After a Summer Rain

A few days ago, in the evening after a summer rain.





Crocosmia "Lucifer" leaves with water drops.









Red leaf lettuce surrounded by fresh young weeds... see the Junior thistle?

Orange Lily

One of nature's many fireworks, under my Spruce.

Astronauts' Quote

Disappointed astronauts had their shuttle launch scrubbed today due to thunderclouds in the area. A fellow astronaut was philosophical. They would be disappointed. Some have been waiting 10 years to get into space for the first time. On the other hand he quoted an old aeronautics saying:

"It is better to be on the ground wishing you were flying, then to be flying, wishing you were on the ground"

The Joys of Being an Adult

...include having a dinner of my own grilled chicken caesar salad, champagne, fresh fruit, and good chocolate.

Mmmm

Thistles

I enjoy gardening. I grow flowers, herbs, vegetables............... and also weeds. When I moved into my house there was lawn, areas of weeds, a couple of lilacs, a number of maples and spruce trees along the edges, a line of peonies, and one lovely heavily scented pink rose. I have steadily whittled away at the lawn, and replaced weedy areas with beds. In the front I have a number of perrenials in a border along the driveway and in shady beds in front of the house. They get augmented with some annuals every year, and every year their care gets easier.

The vegetable garden is another story. Every couple of years I expand it too. But the garden is an annual garden of course and I have enriched the soil greatly, adding much compost and tilling it with a monster of a tiller, named "The Beast".

Ohio has a great climate for growing vegetables, abundant summer rain and heat.

There is a problem though. Weeds grow very well and to giant size extremely quickly.

Winter is long and cold and you are not generally safe from frost until Memorial Day. May is unpredictable. We had hard frosts this May on the 6th and 7th, and on the 22nd, and 23rd. Aside from that this May was often warm and wet, often in the 70s and 80s.

I was busy. My spring term ends in early May. So the first two weekends in May were tied up in grading and finishing classes, and I left on the second weekend as soon as I turned my grades in to go out of town for the week between spring and summer terms. I was home on that Sunday while I hurried to prepare my syllabus and lectures for the first day of my intensive summer term course. The next weekend was Memorial Day weekend and I had a speaking engagement in New Mexico. I returned from that on Monday. The next weekend I had other commitments. So, there was a whole warm wet month without me preparing my vegetable garden beds. I did clear a corner and get some lettuce in.

The weekend before last I attacked the weeds, yanking them out of the rich loose soil in the beds, and cutting the tall grass in the heavy clay between the beds. Weeds there had to be dug out. Part way along I took pictures as proof. Some of the thistles were 6 feet tall!









I worked hard all weekend clearing the beds. Then I carted in 14 wheelbarrow loads of compost from my compost pile, and finally hauled out The Beast and and wrestled it into tilling it all. Finishing putting in plants and whacking down weeds around the compost area and along the edges had to wait until this past weekend. My back muscles are still sore, but it is done!












After a dry week thunderstorms have pounded us with rain. The weather has been ranging from warm to hot. I need to get mulch down and pull new weeds. I have put before and after pictures here. In a few weeks I will add in "growth" pictures. The pictures are looking up from the back of the garden towards my house. I already have lettuce ready to eat and soon there will be much more.... which reminds me, I need to get my bean trellis up.

And I have been working on my herb garden, but more about that later. I'm not done yet.

Sleep

We Americans typically do not get enough sleep. When you don't your IQ drops temporarily (that may explain a few things) and your stress levels go up. I like to sleep. But, I am a procrastinator and have a demanding job. So I stay up late grading, or test writing, or doing essential chores such as changing cat boxes. And then I get up early to teach. I end up running short of sleep for days. Then one day it catches up with me. I become uncooperative - No I WON'T stay to help you through this experiment, you can do it yourself - and I go home, and I crash. Today I slept almost 4 hours, unexpectedly. I got home at 6:00, skipped my pilates class, watered my newly planted vegies and flowers, came inside around 8 p.m., and BAM. I slept until almost midnight. My circadian clock, for whatever reason, is set to always be awake at midnight. I have to be sick or extremely, extremely tired to sleep through midnight. So, the result? It is 4:30 a.m. and I am still awake *sigh*. I hate seeing it get light before I sleep.

This is the kind of thing one is supposed to do as a teenager or in your early 20's. Can I outgrow it now? Please? I do not suffer from insomnia at all. I suffer from night-personess, and naps disordering my internal clocks... if I have any. My time sense is terrible. I have no ability to gauge how long anything is taking. All is relative and in flux. Chaos. It is the way the world is to me, wonderous and beautiful and uncertain.

A June Night's Musings

Tonight was my first grilling of the season, grilled steaks and then chicken. I ate as much steak as I wanted, and perhaps too much red wine, and sit outside on my tiny patio in this June... approaching the solstice. I watch for the stars to appear as the nearly full moon rises, and I think about life.

I marinated my steaks in red wine, garlic, fresh ground pepper, sugar and some liquid smoke. The chicken in a horrible undrinkable cranberry wine from Vermont, on it’s way to vinegar, with garlic and Chinese 5-spice and ginger. All came out fabulous. I will have cold grilled meat for salads for days and days. I may even need to freeze some.

I have had a productive day, and productive days are always a pleasure. Many things need to be done. I was gone much of May. First I was finishing my term, long spring term, long school year, a huge Genetics class, and also one of the worst I have taught. If I am in the mood for some flagellation I will look and see what they said about me on ratemyprofessor.com. Fortunately my Advanced Eukaryotic Genetics class was good. But even teaching only two classes this spring and dealing with my research students I was always up to my ears in work.

*goes inside briefly for an overshirt, is a chill evening*

The weekend before finals I was busy grading, the next two weekends I was on the west coast visiting Rian and Narrisch and my parents, and the weekend after that I was in Albuquerque speaking about Genetics. Four weekends lost while the weeds took over my yard. So today I cleared my vegetable garden beds and much of the area around my mulch. Hard work and with visible results. The thistles were 6 feet high. All gone now. Hurray! I will post pictures later.

So my thoughts on this now chilly evening (it is 49 degrees F now), are about my life. I have what I aimed for, tenure as a Genetics Professor, a house, a garden, a car. It is all mine, and I earned it myself. It was hard work, and in the world as a whole, I am both fortunate and have accomplished much. All my goals completed. Yet I always assumed I would be married with children. It is what people do, yes? Fall in love, marry, start a family. I had it all planned out when I was a teenager. I would get married after college, have my kids in my mid 20’s, then go back to grad school. It didn't happen, I did plenty of falling in love, but it was never mutual, and for whatever reason I was not pursued.

I pause to look up at the stars....

I have great benefits. Most women my age, all my colleagues certainly, have not only their careers but also their families to worry about, and none of my female colleagues have as little as half of the responsibility for the kids and the household chores. Most women do the lion’s share. As one of my colleagues said, she loves her husband, and her two sons, she wanted a family and could not stand being alone. Her husband, though he requires as much care and maintenance as her sons, was willing to move for her career, and he adores her. Another man she dated, who she thought was “the one” left her because she did not “need” him. The world is not yet gender neutral. It is still not common for men to be attracted to, and want to support strong, intelligent woman, wanting to make her life easier as she pursues a demanding occupation. Sometimes, yes of course, but still women are more likely to be attracted to a man consumed by his carreer, and to take joy in taking care of the mundane details of their lives.

A recent study... did I mention it in another blog entry?... found that men who were married while they pursued their doctorates and carreers in science were substantially more likely to succeed and stay in science. Presumably due to the support from their spouse. Women, on the other hand, were significantly less likely to finish and succeed if they were married. Their single colleagues fared much better. One sees this in academia in the Biological Sciences. More women graduate with degrees in Biology, women are in the majority even in grad school classes in biology and have been for some time. But when I have looked at job applicants for tenure track position here, women have been in the minority. On top of that, women may be more likely to give up on their carreer even after being successful. The other woman who was hired ten years ago, when I was, left her tenured Associate Professor job last year, to follow her husband when his career took him elsewhere. She wanted to. She was excited about the move, and had said that even with an au pair to help with their kids, she felt overwhelmed with her job and kids and household chores. She went up for tenure the year after I did, so I was part of the deliberations. A male colleague wondered out loud whether her decision to have 3 kids and the resulting juggling with her classes, indicated someone who was not committed to the job enough to be granted tenure. I am sure he voted against her. I was apalled. She was an active and productive faculty member. Now she is gone.

Well I gave up and came inside, just too cold out. The Sixth Sense is going to be on the TV, and I have lit scented candles all across my hearth. Wonderful.

So, on occasion as I eat a fabulous steak, grilled to perfection, and sip good wine and watch the stars come out, it seems a pity I have no one to share it with. And I could use another strong back to help get the garden going, and to do the variety of household projects. And perhaps after a hard day it would be nice to have dinner ready and a strong shoulder to lean my head on, a little human comfort and support.

On the other hand I relish my freedom and cannot imagine having to take care of any more than I do. I pretty much do what I want when I want, within the parameters of my classes and office hours and research students. Trade-offs, trade-offs. In a perfect world perhaps there would be someone who would want to share my life and would be a partner and an equal, someone I would support and who would equally support me. Such is not the case. And looking around, I see few who have such an equal relationship. I do not want to be someone’s inferior or superior. In truth it is hard for me to imagine someone in my life as there never has been. I'm sure I would adpat fine, but this is the life I have had, the life I know. I love my freedom. I do adore my cats and my friends and my parents, all those I love.

And tonight I sat out as the few clouds flared pink and coral and the sky turned to teal then indigo, and the moon rose and the stars came out. A lovely evening, my lovely evening.

The Sixth Sense is on, always a good movie. Last night I watched Ghost In the Shell Two, gorgeous. Why can’t American film makers make inventive intelligent fantasy like that....

For Emano

A few more pictures for Emano since she enjoyed the others.

This is the headland near Devil's Churn. There is a common piece of advice for the Oregon coast. Do not turn your back on the ocean. There is a very good reason for this. To get some idea... see the sticklike object on the rocks above the surf? and above the spouting horn on the previous pictures? Those are logs. Full sized tree logs. Logs are often floated down rivers for easy transport after being cut. At specific places they then can be loaded onto trains or trucks. Some escape. The power of the Pacific is such that it can snap those logs into the air and fling them fairly high onto the land. All you need is the right condition and the right wave. Even though the Oregon coast is not crowded with people, the occasional person gets taken out by a flying log. The lower picture is a wave crashing in a narrow chute, not technically a spouting horn, but close.

Who would win? President Bush or gay marriage?

Poll results May/June 2006

58% - the percent of Americans that think gay marriage should be illegal
48% - the percent of Americans that think cilvil unions should not be allowed
45% - the percent of Americans that think civil unions should be allowed
42% - the percent of Americans that support a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage
36% - The percent of Americans that think gay marriage should be legal
29% - George Bush’s overall approval rating


ABC story and gay marriage poll info
http://abcnews.go.com/US/Politics/story?id=2041689&page=1

Wall Street Journal artical on Bush approval rating and Harris poll
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2006/05/11/bushs-approval-ratings/

Oregon Coast

After Rian and Narrisch and I had fun in Seattle, Washington and had lunch with Robin Hobb, Narrisch and I took a train down to Eugene, Oregon. There we spent a few days with my parents, went to the coast, and visited Narrish's Alma Mater. Here are a few pictures from the coast trip.
















This is at the Darlingtonia wayside, named for the carniverous pitcher plants that grow in the acid bogs there. Their common name is Cobra Lilly. The are large, often rising 2 to 3 feet from the water, curled and flared with a network of veins and transparent windows to confuse the unfortunate insects that wander in. They were in bloom with thin straight chartreuse stalks dangling dark blood-colored flowers here and there. Tall native rhododendrons displayed pink flowers in the surrounding forest.
















This is a spouting horn, produces by holes are worn in the black volcanic rock. The tide was high and there was a strong wind flinging hard waves against the rock. At times like that water shoots through the fissures and holes, spouting briney plumes high into the air. The air was filled with mist from the crashing ocean. This was near Devil's Churn, north of Florence.
















The wind is almost constant on the Oregon coast. It bends trees into sculptures, peeling off bark and bleaching the underlying wood silvery. Yet the trees hang on, putting out new leaves and branches on the sides away from the wind.

It was a beautiful day with a cloudless blue sky. Rare on the Oregon coast.

Views en Route

These pictures are for Rian, who will not look to see such wonders. Maybe someday. Thunderstorms over Ohio.
















Flying into Phoenix near sunset.













So beautiful.

What a wonderous world we live in.

Robin Hobb

Two weeks ago Rian and Narrisch and I had lunch with Robin Hobb, who suggested we call her Robin. We ate at an interesting eclectic sandwhich shop called the Antique Sandwhich in Tacoma. Fortunately the food was not in fact antique sandwhiches. It was a lovely afternoon. And here is a picture to prove it!

More About Price

I am thinking once again about some of the issues I mentioned in "Fakes", but this time just about pricetags.

The cost of an item in money affects how I think about it. I suppose this is true for everybody. HOW it affects our opinion varies from one to another though. I am someone who increasing monetary cost results in an often decreasing desirability and/or opinion of it. If a thing costs twice as much it better be AT LEAST twice as good or pleasing. So the dinner at a fancy restaurant with wonderful ambience and fabulous food may indeed be worth twice as much as the lower key café down the block. But if the food is at all off, or the music somewhat annoying, or the margarita less good and twice as much, I feel ripped off and annoyed.

The little black dress at J. C. Penney’s may (or may not) be made of slightly lower quality material, but look and feel as good as the one at Macy’s and the Penney’s one being 39.99, and the Macy’s one being 129.99 make the Penney’s one so very much more desirable and exciting to me. If my mother insisted on buying me the Macy’s one I would feel icky about it.

Others of course, feel exactly the opposite. In fact, finding out that an item came from a low-priced place like Penney’s would make them feel that the item was ugly or inferior in some way, and they would feel icky about someone buying them a gift from such a place.

Some of that is the "tribe" issue that my freind Noelle talks about. What identifies you with those you associate with, what you wear and where you got it fom, and the underlying knowledge of price, is important in many social groupings. On the other hand being too fixated on money can imply other things. I remember that one of the characteristics that truly marked Moll Flanders as a whore by nature was that she thought about every personal transaction, every transaction in general in terms of money......

A NYT article on money and freinds and "pods" .
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/fashion/sundaystyles/07friendss.html?ex=1147320000&en=51740dae1201c5bd&ei=5087%0A

So, How does price affect your views?

How common in scientists?

"Studying Tiny Fruit Flies, and Reaping Big Rewards"

By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: April 29, 2006, New York Times

"ALBANY, April 28 — A California neuroscientist and biologist whose research of fruit flies found genetic links to human behavior was awarded the $500,000 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, the country's largest award in the field."

"Some of Dr. Benzer's most widely known research came when he used fruit flies to explore the way genes affect sleep patterns. He found that some fruit flies were genetically programmed to sleep at abnormal times, but that injecting them with normal genes would change that.

Similarly, Dr. Benzer said, he is coded to sleep at different times than his wife, who wakes up at 6 a.m. and typically falls asleep by 10 p.m. Dr. Benzer, on the other hand, stays awake until 4 a.m. and sleeps until noon. He routinely works in his research laboratory into the early-morning hours, he said.

"We make it a point to have dinner together," he said."

Neighbors and Star Trek Memories

When I was little, 4? 5? my family had a TV for about a year. I watched a variety of kids programs, and other things. I remember Mighty Mouse, and The Mickey Mouse Club, and Gumby, and The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone. My parents, on observation, decided that the TV was bad for us, my brother’s grades were falling and he had become belligerent about being allowed to watch his favorite shows. So they gave it away.

As a result I grew up without a TV. This had a number of effects. I read voraciously, it was my main entertainment, which helped me stay way ahead of my peers intellectually. I played outside a lot, and developed a great attraction to our world and all the living things in nature. I also lacked the basic social common ground of favorite TV shows. I was often confused or shocked by terms and phrases my peers used, not knowing the popular shows they came from. It perhaps made me even more of an outsider than I would have been anyhow. I like the fact that I am well read and well rounded, so I can’t say I regret it. I do wonder how my brother felt, having something he wanted and adored given away like that, when it could have been kept.

I did see a bit of TV here and there, while babysitting as a teenager or when over at friend’s houses. At some point I discovered the reruns of Star Trek. I loved it. I adored Spock. It was amusing actually, as in 5th grade I had been called Spock by some classmates, and I had no idea to what they were referring. In any case, I ended up trotting across the street to a neighbors house to watch Star Trek every day. They had seven boys and one girl, and one of the younger boys was my age. We were all friendly and their house was pleasantly chaotic and no one minded me being rapt in front of the TV every day for an hour. So I watched the series through, and through again, and again.

Just tonight I wondered, what if they had minded? What if they had wanted to watch something else on TV in that time slot?

What if the addition of yet another child to the house was a burden? Not that I think any of those things are likely to have been true, but how would I have felt, relying on something someone else had, for something I desperately wanted? Would it have burned me not to have it? Would envy and longing have eaten at me? Knowing myself, I don’t think so, but can I be sure? What if I could watch it only on occasional days, and never know in advance which days those were. I do recall that I missed days, for one reason and another, which was a great excuse for watching the series over and over.

At the root, my question is about covetousness, and wanting that which is not yours. It is not something I am generally prone to. But on occasion there is something that someone else has easy access to that I never will have, something I WANT. It is a great unpleasantness, yes? I can understand why one of the Ten Commandments has to do with envy or covetousness, for things (specifically your neighbor’s house, or donkey) or people (specifically your neighbors husband, maid, slave). Of course the Ten commandments are truly followed by few people now. For example, how many people do no work on the Sabbath (whether you consider it Saturday or Sunday) and/or do not take advantage of those who do? But in truth coveting can be a powerful destructive force in a community or a society.

What about withholding? If one could freely give what another desires, is it not a bad thing to fail to do so? Of course one can send one self down a long road of guilt for all one has not done that one could have.

In any case, my neighbors were kind to me, and I am sad that all the children are long gone to the various corners of the country, and that June, the family matriarch, has had health problems and has been moved to Washington D.C., in with her youngest son. This all happened at Christmas time, and I was visiting my parents and I was told what day Paul was arriving to pick her up from the hospital pack her up and take her back east. And I, dawdling for no good reason, missed them. I should drive out to D.C. from here to go visit. If I do not, I may never see her again. She and her family were the only neighbors who were really close to my parents and my brother and I. My parents are now more alone then they were....

Well, enough late night meanderings.

Babies and Baseball

When you meet a stranger what do you speak of? There are topics of conversation that can serve as common ground for strangers in a social setting. For the young it is relatively easy, pop culture, music, school. This is complicated by the addition of physical appearance and gender of course, is one attractive? cool? of the same “tribe” as a friend of mine put it? If you are female and wearing silver rings on multiple fingers and so am I than we may be of the same “tribe”. Goths proclaim themselves with their black clothes, the popular kids by their physiques and current fashion. The process is easy, if fraught with snobbery and cliquishness. The young are more cruel than adults.

For adults it can be trickier though. People become set in their ways and expectations. Location becomes important, common experience very important. As a college professor, if I am dumped into a group of other college professors, or scientists, or even academics in general, I am fine, but such groups are not that common.

In New York City, where I lived for ten years, strangers speak of their jobs, what part of the metropolis they live in, politics, culture, travel. These are common ground for New Yorkers in general. Once you get out into more typical American cities, suburbs, and towns these topics become uncommon. Instead, men speak of sports, cars, and to a lesser extent, their jobs. Women speak of husbands and children, sometimes shopping.

If you are man who has no interest in sports or cars, or if you are a woman past youth who has never been married or had babies, it is exceedingly hard to participate in these initial ice-breaking conversations. What do you do when the common ground is not in fact in common? I can talk about the weather of course. I like weather. But too often I slip and talk about my job or politics too quickly to strangers. Soon I am the strange one in the room. I long to be back in the company of academics, or simply my own company.

I am just not interested in talking about babies or baseball.

Moral War?

An interview with the Rev. Richard Land from March 23,2006

“A Christian Defense of the War in Iraq"
"Removing a dictator, introducing democracy, staying the course in difficult times--it's right, noble, and it's just.

As president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, the Rev. Richard Land is one of the most influential moral voices on the conservative Christian scene. He spoke to Beliefnet's Holly Lebowitz Rossi about why, as a Christian, he supports the war in Iraq as much today as he did when it began 3 years ago.”

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/188/story_18823_1.html

It continually amazes me that there are many Americans have no problem with deceptions and manipulations aimed at facilitating the start of a war that has now killed 2347 Americans in the military and wounded another 17, 469 - let alone the 34,000 or so Iraqis killed. These fellow countrymen are willing to believe that Iraq posed a direct threat to the U.S. in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and have no issue that we have left many more directly threatening and/or genocidal regimes in other countries untouched. Yet, these same people, willing to accept our leaders’ pursuit of this war, by whatever means, were disgusted and appalled by the previous President allowing an eager adult intern to perform a sexual act on him, and then being deceptive and manipulative about it.

Which deception is more detrimental to the lives of our fellow Americans, our position in the world, and out future? Which actually causes the most harm? What kind of “morality” is this?

Many of the people that think Clinton should have been impeached and think that GW Bush is a hero consider themselves strong Christians. What kind of Christianity is this? How often did Jesus preach against violence, preach for peace? How often did he preach against sex?

Of course there are many Americans who do not agree with the war, and undoubtedly the majority of Christians world-wide do not agree with it. There are too many who do think like the author of the quote at the top. Or perhaps, too many people like that in positions of power.

Why do religious extremists of so many stripes promote killing? Why is deception about adultry so much worse than deception to engage in a war that will kill thousands and thousands of people? Why is death so much less abhorrant than sex?

http://icasualties.org/oif/

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

How lucky we are!

How lucky we are,
To have hot, hot, water for a bath or shower on a cold winter day.
To have electricity to light our way in the small hours
To have ripe mangos in March in the north.
To be able to walk into a metal ship that flies through the air to visit ones we love, thousands of miles away
To have music, magnificent music, at the touch of a button
To have soft beds and full stomachs
To be able to pick up the phone and hear a friends voice
To have information on multitudes of subjects available at our fingertips
To be able to know what is happening, at this moment, all over the world
To be able to meet those of like minds, wherever they may be on this planet, not having to make do with those you run into in you local community, as our parents did.
To have conversations with those people, singly or in groups in simulaneous print in Austarlia, France, Sweden, wherever, whenever.
To have the luxury of learning
To be able to do so much more than just survive

How lucky we are!

We live in a world full of magic and marvels, the likes of which our ancestors could not conceive of. And I, and I understand things which were inconceivable not long ago. It is a fabulous age we live in.

Do not forget it.
Do not forget it
Do not forget it.

How lucky we are!

Morning People and Night People

Why is there a virtue associated with being a morning person and a suspicion of vice associated with being a night person?

In my first full time job as a technician in a science lab, people came in at all hours. More of the technicians were 8:30 to 4:30 varieties, except one who came in at 7:00 and left at three, and I who came in at 10:00 and left at 8:00 or 9:00, sometimes much later. The grad students started wandering in around 1:00, mostly didn’t get to work until after most of the techs were gone and often worked until midnight.

I have always liked working late. The place gets quite, one has peace to really work, one can play whatever music one likes, and if you have no commitments one can spend as much time as needed to do something right. I have also liked the company of night people. Night people seem to be more philosophical and contemplative, perhaps in keeping with dark and quiet. In my experience morning people seem to often be more impatient and unwilling to work out the picky details of trouble-shooting and pick their way through complicated processes.

If one IS a night person, forcing oneself to be in early is often very counterpropductive. Getting up early means being short of sleep, groggy and slow, thinking poorly, coordination off. An extra hour or two of sleep can make an enormous difference. Too often we humans short ourselves on sleep and function poorly as a result as it is.

In this first lab job of mine the early morning arriver got chosen to be the tech supervisor. I have always wondered if her early arrival was taken as dedication by the lab head. Soon after her promotion she expressed disapproval about my hours. She admitted that it was ok with the lab head, but she disliked having 3 hours when I wasn’t there, and she wanted to see me getting more work done. As she did not know the projects I was working on I tried to explain all the work I was doing. She shut me up, and told me to write out a log of everything I did, and when I did it, for the next two weeks.

That was a pain, having to stop all the time to write everything down. I did complain a bit. At the end of the two weeks, the supervisor read through my log, and checked up on my experiments. Then she said she was glad she’d made me write everything down, as it clearly forced me to work. I was furious. I had worked no differently than before, she simply had not ever checked to see what I was doing before.

I have seen this happen to many a night person. Morning people seem to suspect that the night people are playing around, not working. They rarely ask, instead the worst is assumed. A friend is currently getting this from her boss.

Interestingly, night people rarely assume that morning people fool around and don’t work when they come in early. We too buy into the idea that being early is a virtue in and of itself. We suspect that we have an almost moral defect in not being able to sleep early nor rise early. Yet it seems that there is no correlation between how hard people work and their prefered hours. The only exception being that if you force a person to work short of sleep they do not perform well.

Night people do their work, and also rarely mind finishing up things for morning people.

Why is the reverse not true?

Ideally there are all types working together early people to get things started then regular hours folks to carry through the middle of the day, then night people to pick up loose ends and work through problems. No one is better than the other.

I like to wander in late, sip at my coffee, come up to speed in the afternoon, and work into the quiet night. I play good music and serve as unofficial advisor for any late working students in the department. It is nice to have the equipment to myself. At the end I leave to a starry sky and empty roads - a lovely peaceful close to a long day.

Related to Fakes

This is a wonderful site. Read and learn.

http://www.skepticwiki.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

"Note that any advertisement claiming that a product is chemical-free is essentially claiming that the product consists of a perfect vacuum."

Fakes

It has been over a month since I've written here, many blogs started none finished. I’ve been busy.

I’m busy today too, but an article in the New York Times caught my eye. It is about something that has always eluded me, the value of a thing aside from the thing itself.

The article is about fake costume jewelry. http://nytimes.com/2006/01/29/technology/29ebay.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=2d9fd6c2b6f37545&hp&ex=1138597200&partner=homepage

OK. Costume jewelry is not made of precious stones or precious metals. The point is for it to look nice. There are bits of glass and brass etc. made to be shiny and pretty or flashy.

So. There are people who collect name costume jewelry, antiques. And now there are people making fake costume jewelry with the appropriate rhinestones and metal using modern glues, stamping the name of old, known, costume jewelry makers and selling them on e-bay. This drives down the price of the “real” costume jewelry.

OK. Now, I can see having a personal fondness for a shiny attractive piece because your great aunt owned it and wore it, and there is a picture of her as a glamorous young woman with the brooch pinning a lovely scarf. I can see valuing a piece for it’s appearance. I can even comprehend the idea of a piece being valued for the hands that made it. Perhaps a famous or interesting person held it in their hands and glued the rhinestones into their settings. But how can one so value apiece stamped out by a machine with glass glued in by low wage workers more than the counterfeit made now to be just as attractive? Why should the original hold any value simply because it is old?

Similarly why should a simple cotton knit T-shirt be more valuable if it has a name designer on it’s tag or printed across it’s front, or if it was bought from say, Saks Fifth, then the same design and cotton sold at JC Pennys? Again, I understand if one is cotton of a quality knit and the other a cheesy polyester blend. Or perhaps one made by workers earning a real living vs nearly enslaved sweatshop workers in a third world country. I certainly understand copywrite and patents. Without that how would an artist or inventor make a living?

But, what is the deal with valuing the company name and age on an item, paticularly when that maker is long gone or just a high profit corporation?

To me, that added price is… somewhat offensive, wasting resources that could be so much better spent elsewhere, I shudder a little when I see such names. I don’t like walking into such stores.

It might make a real impact if all who pay more for an item due to a name, instead just bought items for appearance and/or material quality, and paid attention to the source of an item, how eco-friendly? How well are the workers treated? Higher labor costs, and care to environmental impact would make items cost more, but wouldn’t that added cost be so much better than that added simply because of the name or age of the item?

Adding value based only on age and name “authenticity” in mass produced items is what seems fake to me.

A Final Fiasco

I am tearing my hair out.

What is wrong with me, my students, and my textbook?

My final in my General Biology: Molecules and Cells (required first Biology for majors) is optional. It is cumulative and can be used to replace a lower earlier test score.

Some topics are harder for students than others. Photosynthesis, how plants make sugars using water, carbon dioxide, and energy from the sun, is one of the harder ones. Nonetheless, there a number of points of general interest in the topic. These are things I would think that a student would remember, because it explains what you see around you.

At the time I was lecturing on photosynthesis, the leaves were turning. Our falls colors are beautiful here in North Eastern Ohio.

So, first I talked about pigments. We see colors on objects because they have pigments that absorb part of the visible spectrum of light. Our eyes only get what is reflected. The light absorbed is trapped in the pigment molecules and never comes back to our eyes.

A black T-shirt is black because it absorbs all of the visible wavelengths of photons (energy particles of light), so our eyes see darkness, no light. A red T-shirt is red because it absorbs wavelengths other than red. The red light reflects off and comes to our eyes. And green leaves are green because chlorophyll absorbs blue and red and orange wavelengths. Green gets reflected so we see green.

Light is energy, so pigments gain energy in absorbing photons. That is why a black car seat gets so very hot on a sunny summer day, and why white clothes are cooler on such a day. Chlorophyll traps light energy. That energy collects and eventually pops an electron from chlorophyll entirely out of orbit and it goes to another molecule, setting off a cascade of energy transfering reactions of a type called electron transport. That is how the whole process begins.

Because chlorophyll does not get energy from green wavelengths, thrifty plants make additional pigments that absorb green light, instead reflecting yellow, orange, and red. These accessory pigments include carotenoids, of which beta-carotene is probably the most famous. These pigments are more stable than chlorophyll. When the weather gets cold, deciduous trees shut down the metabolism in their leaves. Chlorophyll is relatively unstable and rapidly degrades and vanishes. The carotenoids linger on for a while. So the green of chlorophyll vanishes, leaving instead yellow, orange and red carotenoids that you normally don’t see because of the more prevalent green chlorophyll overpowering them.

I spent most of an entire lecture on this, with lots of pictures, spectrums, pictures of trees before and after turning color. And, as I said above our trees were turning at that time. The text has two pages on pigments in general, with spectrums and wavelength diagrams.it then has a page each on chlorophyll and carotenoids. There are pictures of trees when green then turned orange and pictures of colored leaves on the carotenoid page. The book then spends six pages talking about the displacement of an electron by absorbed light energy, and it going into electron transport. That is a complicated process.

I also talked about where chlorophyll is in the plant cells, with pictures. It is located in the innermost parts of chloroplasts in structures called the thylakoid membranes. Again there are many digrams of plant leaf structure on my slides and in the book to show this.

The students missed a question about chlorophyll and fall colors on the test that included this subject. So, I put another one on the final. The students know to study from their previous quizzes for my final. So I put the following question on the final.

Which of the following is true of chlorophyll?
a) It absorbs green light.
b) It has electrons that can be shifted out of orbit by photons.
c) It changes from green to yellow or red in the fall
d) It is localized in the chloroplast outer membrane
e) none of the above

The students answered as follows on the group that had the Monday afternoon final:
18 picked c)
11 picked a)
9 picked d)
2 picked e)

And one, only ONE picked b) – the right answer


What is wrong? What am I doing? What are THEY doing?

Fill In the Blank

I am reviewing some chapters for non-majors biology textbooks.

It is making me grumpy.

One of the books appears to have been written directly in response to needs that I and other Professors perceive and complain about to book companies. Biology, medicine, health, and ecology are becoming increasingly important to understand as an informed citizen. College Biology classes for non-majors should provide scientific literacy, an understanding of what science is, and useful, practical information.

Here and there, through my extensive education in the biological sciences, I have unearthed some tidbit of immediate practical import. I have understood for years the problems with partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, over-use and incorrect use of antibiotics, the fact that cervical cancer is primarily a sexually transmitted disease, that eating a lot of meat is hard on the world’s resources, that goose-bumps are an evolutionary remnant of the reflex that allows other mammals to fluff their coats in response to cold or fear.

These and many other useful and/or interesting bits of knowledge do not really require a Ph.D. to comprehend. In turn they can be instructive on the basic processes of biology. Why not write a non-majors biology text packed with these useful tidbits used as examples of categories of biological processes?

So, this author has aimed to do just that.

Hurrah!

But, the text is often convoluted and impenetrable. To make matters worse, throughout the book are question for students to answer to monitor their progress. A great idea, yes? But the questions are fill in the blank, which can be ok, but are too often bad. If the question is a repetition of a sentence in the text, with a key word or two missing then the student simply needs to find the sentence and dutifully copy the word. This does not require any understanding of the concept or process discussed. It does not require understanding the definition of the word. It does not even require an understanding of the English language. It only requires pattern recognition. Furthermore it encourages plagiarism, copying being correct.

I have students in my classes at my university who have had many such “tests” and they are great at pattern recognition. The ones with high grades are often great memorizers in general. They often understand little. They resent me for using different wording on my test questions than I used on my slides in lecture, or that they read in the book. They think I ask too much in requiring them to understand something.

Who would write such questions? What do they think they are teaching? Grrrr.

Requiem

Champion Ti Shebi’s Orange Julius of Synergy

March 2000 – November 2005

I first saw Julius at a showhall. He was a bright-eyed bright orange little thing of about 5 months old, he had no stripes at all and a bright white undercoat. A true red smoke. The color so rare I had never seen it before. I wanted him. After some negotiating, his breeder, a friend, entrusted him with me.

He was a sweet and silly boy. He started out with a newly neutered older ex-stud, Robinhood, as a companion in Diana’s bedroom. The ten year old and the kitten were soon fast friends, and competed in goofyness, purring, wanting belly-rubs and playing with anything available. One of Julius’s favorite toys was a scrap of paper.

His personality never changed from kittenhood through being a stud to being a neuter and around the house pet.

He had the attention span of a gnat and loved toys. This made him endlessly amusing. He would trot across the room (he rarely walked) and spot a toy.

“A toy!” his expression indicated. “The coolest toy!” He’d grab it, toss it high in the air, bounce high himself, thunk down with it and kick it, leap up and toss again. Then at some point he’d toss it over his shoulder and lose track of it. He’d stop, looking both excited and confused.

“What? What what? What was happening? .... Oh well” and trot on. Then coming back around he’d spot it.

“A toy!” “The coolest toy!” and up in the air it would fly.

Julius also loved strangers. He would greet visitors at the door and often fly unexpected onto their shoulders. He purred hard,kneeded his long monkey toes on the human's shoulders and chest, bonked his head against them, enjoying contact, then wiggle-squirm to get down and run around, only to come back. The littlest thing would have him purring and quivering in excitement.

He fathered one litter of kittens and was then neutered. He helped raise his babies, sleeping with them, cleaning them, playing with them, and looking confused when they sucked on his belly.

He was never a wonderfully healthy cat. His whole litter had been ill when they were little. I think perhaps his health was compromised then, though there was no way for me or his breeder to know that. He was lithe and muscular, but prone to dropping weight. Julius had perpetual problems with his sinuses, then he had an attack of pancreatitis, then others. Finally he became deathly ill in July. It turned out it was potassium deficiency, brought on by kidney problems, that seemed at first to be not very severe. Potassium levels restored he recovered some, only to level off after a couple of months, then slide slowly down. At the end he was just skin and bones, perpetually dehydrated in spite of fluid therapy and medication. He mainly slept in a warm pile of his buddies, including his daughter and little grandchildren. He got up mainly to drink, or pee, but he still had to move at a trot, no strolling for Julius.

At his last visit to the vet, he cheered up considerably on seeing his doctor. He always liked him. He purred, he head bonked, he hopped into his lap as we talked of failed kidneys. He thought about hopping down and trotting around the exam room. His doctor held onto him though, stroking his bony back with gentle hands. Julius then got to see the technicians, he always loved to see new people. For him, it was a good way to go.

On Wednesday afternoon, as the seasons first snow fell softly, I buried him beside an old fashioned climbing rose, on the other side of the trellis from his buddy Robinhood. I planted scented daffodils on top of him. It seemed appropriate for the sweet, silly, sunny boy.

That night was very cold. It is cold still.

Beauty Under the Microscope

Somehow I had missed that the 2005 Nikon Small World awards were out. These images always astonish me. Alien architecture, intricate patterns, beautiful symmetries, abstract art, kaleidoscopes of color, all seen through the lens of a microscope. They should make screen savers for Macs though.

http://www.microscopyu.com/smallworld/gallery/index.html

Colored Stars

It has been a clear day all day, and now into the night, clear, clear.

My eyes are succumbing to age. I went to a real eye doctor for the first time on Thursday morning. My right eye has been going from bad to worse. It is astigmatism as it turns out. As one ages astigmatism gets worse. My left eye is no longer perfect either so, I am getting glasses.

Tonight however, the stars seem clear and sharp. The edges of the moon are perfect with only a bit of double image angling up due to the astigmatism. What will they look like with glasses when they arrive?

It is an unusual night. Something in our lowland air has intensified the colors of the stars. Betelgeuse in the shoulder of Orion and Aldebaran half way from there to Mars are both red coals, while at Orion’s foot Rigel shines blue. Above them Capella is yellow-white. Mars itself is so bright and orange, and the Moon waxing, close to full sheds blue-white light, drenching the landscape in cool dreaminess.

I am always amazed that some don’t see the color in the stars I am also amazed that some don’t see color in their dreams. In fact many see no clear images at all in their dreams. My dreams are as vivid and full sensory as real life, perhaps even more so. Sometimes I confuse the two.

Tonight I have a fire in my fireplace, a half of a bottle of a nice red wine awaits. Jazz plays cool and warm on my stereo. A late, yet heavily scented rose blooms from a bottle that once held pear cognac brought from Paris.

It is now, here, officially my birthday.

By the Corporation, For the Corporation

The government of the U.S.A. is steadily becoming a government of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation. The goal is to increase profits, earning for CEOs and stock-holders. To that end we focus on immediate returns, research becomes that which is fast and produces immediate profit. Workers are an expense to be kept as productive and inexpensive as possible. Funding for programs that don’t have immediate payback on the bottom line are trimmed, those that increase profits are expanded.

This leads to all kinds of interesting fallout. Long term thinking is risky, as a corporation’s yearly profits determine it’s returns and ratings. Education is one of many things that requires long term goals. A child entering school now will not be a productive worker for ten to twenty years. That is just too far away if you are watching only this year’s bottom line, perhaps next year’s too if you are thinking ahead.

Much of our success as a country has come from our inventiveness and our education. Our pre-eminence in this area is fading rapidly and may already be lost. An article in today’s New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/business/yourmoney/13invent.html?hp&ex=1131858000&en=39c228d2051e5eb1&ei=5094&partner=homepage) on inventors and what they have to say about the current state of invention and research is disheartening, but not at all surprising to me. As a science professor at a pubic University I see a dramatic change in both the quality and expectations of students and in our support from our government. Less and less are students motivated to actually learn and gain skills, and less and less is our state government willing to support us.

Thomas Jefferson foresaw some of the problems we see now in corporate America. The gap between the rich and the poor grows and grows. Speculation and profits drive up housing costs in most parts of the country until the average family cannot afford to own. Though fortunately that is not true here, one of the cheapest real-estate markets in the country.

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered”.
-Thomas Jefferson

What can I do? How do I instill a love of learning, an interest in innovation, a pleasure in personal skills gained through work? How can people be convinced that more money does not equal more happiness but personal achievement can?

Are there many of us who think, as I do, that our country and our public education institutions should not be run by MBA’s interested primarily in the bottom line and corporate profit, but by those who want to give something to the people?

Intelligent Design

Science teachers at all levels should be able to distinguish science from belief. Science is the process of testing hypotheses to see whether they are supported or not with the aim to find natural explanations for the world and universe around us. A hypothesis is a scientific statement that must be testable and subject to being disproved.

Science is independent of faith. Whether one believes in God or not has no bearing on the scientific process. What is important in a science teacher is that they understand what the scientific process is, and can teach it to their students.

Intelligent Design is not testable and is therefore not scientific. It should not be taught as if it was scientific. To do so will further deteriorate our students’ understanding of what science is. Already we Americans are slipping in science, an area that we used to be the best in the world.

Intelligent Design is a perfectly acceptable, even lovely, belief. We can look at the world around us, see its beauty and complexity and consider that an affirmation of the hand and eye of a greater power if we are so inclined. We can neither prove nor disprove that belief.

There are many things we do not yet know or understand. A true scientist develops hypotheses about how or why these things happen and collects data to see if their ideas are supported or not. Many hypotheses are disproved by the facts. That is the nature of science. We learn from this process. On the other hand, a person who relies on faith instead of science to explain the natural world may choose to see a mystery as evidence of a higher power and refrain from trying to solve its puzzle. Such a person may condemn others who do look for solutions, interpreting it as an attack on their faith. This is not necessary. When scientists do piece together the hows and whys of one process, there will always be other unknowns for those who see God in knowledge gaps.

For most scientists, including Darwin who was a man of faith, testing hypotheses to work out the processes by which things happen is not incompatible with faith. After all, who are we to know the mind and methods of God?

Truth and Beauty

"The mathematician Hermann Weyl was quoted as having said not long before he died, "My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful, but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful."

Mathematicians, artists and writers may choose beauty over truth. Scientists can only hope that we do not have to make the choice."

-Lawrence M. Krauss, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Case Western Reserve University
New York Times, Essay "Science and Religion Share Fascination in Things Unseen": November 8, 2005

missing paper

I am missing a peice of paper I need for my 9:00 a.m. class tomorrow morning.

In truth I would have forgotten about it except that a student in my evening class, which finished at 6:50, said something that reminded me of it. This piece of paper was given to me just a few days ago. And it is now hidden amongst the thousands and thousands of pieces of paper in my office.

I am very glad that there is no particular place I need to be, other than here hunting for a piece of paper amongst many. I can lisen to the BBC, and maybe get rid of some paper, and file some more. The hundreds of quizzes from yesterday don't need to be graded tonight. I do need to write a new one one for my 10:00 to 11:50 class for tomorrow, but it will be short...

When the BBC hour stops at 8:00 p.m. I have some new CD's to listen to. (Thank you Emma)

At one time, Professors used to have secretaries.

I could really use one.

Late Night Questions

This is my tenth year teaching at my University. I have tenure, the cost of living is low, the mission of the university is important to me.

Next year, I will have lived longer here than I have lived in any one place in my life. I who was born and raised in the San Francisco bay area, who has lived in Oregon, Chicago, Seattle, New York City for ten years, will have live d in this depressed rust belt Ohio town longer.

The other day as I was walking through our quite lovely campus, filled with trees and little hills, some thing, some scent, produced an intense memory of the smell of the ocean. I walked on, but for a moment my mind placed me on the coast, surf crashing, wind blowing, skies gray and changeable. Gulls cried piercingly in a memory so strong I could see them cutting sideways through the wind.

I am hundreds of miles form any ocean, thousands from the mighty Pacific.

Because of my heavy teaching load I can’t do the level of research I used to. I feel like I under serve my research students and my classroom students as well, yet I can see that I work much harder at it than many of my peers. Yet, my efforts are met with fear and loathing by many students whose primary evaluation of a professor is on how easy they are, and how little work they have to do.

Ohio asks us to do more with less. We try, but of course, we do less well.

Am I in the right place? Is this the best I can do? How can I do better? Can I just relax and enjoy what I have? Can I be the Scientist I’d like to be? Can I be the scientist I used to be? What about my hobbies dropped for lack of time? Art, writing, music... is there no room for them in my life?

It is late. I have hundreds of quizzes to grade. No time for a midlife crisis. In truth, most of the time I DO manage to relax and enjoy what I have.

Perhaps I just need a fast car and some nights on the town.

Tonight, halfway through October in this northern clime, two moonflowers light up my trellis under a cool cloudy sky. That perhaps is enough for now.

Hot Peppers

Hungarian hot wax peppers are peculiar things. They grow yellow and waxy looking. Like many peppers they turn red if you leave them on the plant long enough.

I like them best red. Then they are sweet and bursting with ripe pepper flavor.

They are listed as a mildly hot pepper. I think they would be better categorized as variable.

I have several picked recently. They are a lovely saturated red.

Early this afternoon I sauteed an onion and some Poblano peppers, dark and blackish green. I chopped the tip off a red wax, tasted it. Sweet, rich, a hint of fire. I deseeded and chopped the rest of it and added to the sautee, threw in eggs and milk, scrambled, then added a bit of sharp cheddar and cilantro. It was heavenly.

It was so good in fact that I chopped another small onion, another Poblano, and another red wax deseeded and sauteed as before and added an egg etc.

Except that the second time the rising aroma made me cough. My nose started to run, I grabbed a tissue, wiped, and then my nose was burning. I touched a fingertip to my tongue.

Fire.

It was still heavenly to eat if a bit sizzling on the lips and tongue. I kept a glass of milk handy and enjoyed it, but 9 hours later the heat has worked through my skin and my fingers burn.

Always surprising the Hungarian wax. Hot, mild, medium, and no way to tell which, except to taste.

Not checking thoroughly in advance can lead to long slow burns later.

If you are expecting the burn you can cut on a plastic cutting board and wear latex gloves, protect yourself. That trick was taught to me by a Hispanic roomate from El Paso many years ago.

The burn itself is caused by a substance called capsacin made by the peppers as a kind of defense. Capsacin binds to mammalian nerve cells, opening tiny channels in the membrane that normally open in response to heat and pain. It is harmless. It just FEELS like it burns. Birds have slightly different channels, so are immune, and happily spread the seeds about.

I like hot and spicy food. The burn adds to the pleasure somehow. I like roller coasters too. The animal self fooled into thinking there is danger. The mind knows better.

Knowledge can changes fear into fun. In other cases it turns fun into fear. Having good information is important. Often it is very important indeed. With knowledge, one can be prepared.

Basil on the Last Day of Summer

Today is the last day of summer.

I left work early today because this morning it looked like my cat Angel was going to have her kittens immanently. When I arrived home, it was apparent that she was very pleased with herself but not in any hurry, so I did some yard work.

It was warm and sunny, in the low 80’s. I pulled thistles in my vegetable garden, trimmed the grass between the raised beds there, and picked some peppers and tomatoes. I had let some of my early crop of romaine go to seed, and now have a small forest of young lettuce as a result. I must remember to do that on purpose next year. I tied up long wandering tomato vines, including some cherry tomatoes that volunteered and are making surpassingly sweet little tomatoes.

I also grew three types of basil this year: regular Italian sweet basil, cinnamon basil, and anise basil. The cinnamon basil and anise basil are superb in Asian food. All the basil plants are all huge, bushy and flowering and thinking of going to seed. I have dried basil this year, but not made pesto, so I cut the sweet basil substantially, and hauled armfuls of fragrant basil up the hill and into my kitchen.

I washed the basil in between checking on Angel and fielding phone calls. I removed spiders and earwigs and damaged leaves. I found a weed with green basil sized leaves amongst the basil. I tossed it unceremoniously onto the kitchen floor so that is would not end up in the pesto. I filled my blender with huge green leaves, added extra virgin olive oil and a little water and blended the mix into a porridge like consistency. I pulled an ice cube tray out of the freezer and emptied the ice into a plastic bag. Squeezing the bag of ice into the freezer was a challenge.... if I stopped and ate the rest of the ice cream there would be room.... No, I don’t need to eat the ice cream! Ice away, I filled the tray with pesto and popped it back into the freezer. I had only used part of the pesto.

I took out another tray of ice, emptied the ice into a second bag, squeezed the bag of ice into the freezer, filled the second tray with pesto. I packed as much pesto into the tray as I could, but there was still a good deal left. So, out comes the third and last tray of ice. Once again, ice into the bag, pesto into tray. This time the tray was not full to the top with pesto, and all the pesto was used.

I went to the freezer, opened the door. A bag of ice flew out, landed on one end of the tray of pesto and flipped it out of my hand onto the floor, splattering me, the refrigerator and the floor with bright green fragrant pesto.

“Oh dear” I said.

I stopped and thought about that. Was it not worth a four letter word? I do use them. Apparently not, the floor needed to be washed anyhow.


The tray had landed right side up and less than half the pesto was gone. I wiped off the tray set it on the counter and spent some time removing ground basil and olive oil from various places. Much soap and water did the trick. I then went to the over filled tray in the freezer and scooped out pesto into the last tray to make two moderately filled trays.

So now my kitchen floor has a very clean spot and a weed.

And I have enough pesto freezing to last a year.. I will empty the trays into a big zip lock freezer bag and store in a downstairs freezer to be used one cube at a time, with fresh crushed garlic and butter, perhaps with tomato paste and/or pine nuts, on pasta or fish. Yum!

Beauty in the Small Hours

It is late, very late, and I was going to turn off the light and drift into the landscapes of dreams, but I thought of my moonflower and the likelihood that it will be gone before I rise. I had to see it one more time before I slept.

Also the full moon, would it be hidden still?

I slipped out, wearing very little, and in this small hour, between two and three, I was rewarded.

The moon is neither hidden nor free, but set amid curdled clouds. These clouds for all their substantial appearance are thin, unable to hide the white brilliance of the full moon. The moon outlines each and every one in silver, while their centers are steely gray. Adding to that, the cloud’s moisture creates halos around the brilliant moon, cobalt blue near, golden to peach outside of that. The air is still. The clouds barely move, set in their intricate curling silver edged layers. The moon shines bright, casting shadows. The moonflower, huge, white, and ethereal, emits a faint fragrance of honey.

Now I will sleep.

Perchance to dream

Moonflower

On my back patio I like to have plants for a night garden. The herb garden is there, and this year a heavily scented white Nicotiana. I have four o'clocks, scented geraniums, and sweet alyssum. Someday I would like to extend the little patio a bit. I have perused plans for pouring concrete, thought about gravel underlays and rebar reinforcement to survive our hard winters. But for now it is a small patio beside an herb garden held by a little retaining wall and an arched arbor.

On the arbor is a scented climbing rose Zepharine Drouhan, that has not yet bloomed. This is it's first year. A beloved David Austin rose Abraham Darby, failed to survive a hard winter a couple of years ago. So I have traded an extravagantly scented apricot rose for what I hope will be an equally extravagantly scented rose colored rose, that may be hardier. It has certainly climbed well in it's first year.

For years I have tried to grow moonflowers. They are huge morning glory like flowers that open at night and are supposed to be heavily fragrant. I never get them planted soon enough or transplanted soon enough. Last year I came close. Long spiraling buds appeared right before first frost. They never opened in the chilly nights.

Today as I headed out to the vegetable garden to do some weeding and trimming and tying, there was a big spiraling bud, larger and long necked unlike the Heavenly Blue morning glories I planted with the moonflowers last spring. The Heavenly Blues have done well, covering the top of my trellis with large blue flowers every morning. I took the bud's picture. A little over two hours later the sun had set and I came up in the twilight, and it was open! I took more pictures. The scent was not heavy, light and sweet, but it is a somewhat cool night. The flower is at least six inches across. I wish I had sat, with a glass of wine and perhaps someone to share the wine and evening flowers and watched it open. Tonight is a full moon as well, though obscured more than not by clouds.

It is supposed to be warmer over the next week, so I may have more. Summer refuses to relinquish its hold, but for these huge beauties I can tolerate some more heat.

Next year I will start them earlier in bigger pots, and give the a support to climb before they are set out. Perhaps in hot, breathless August my trellis will glow with enormous moonflowers glowing under a full moon.

Too Much Summer

Summer drags on and on. Some people are summer people loving heat and light. I am not.

My University is now on a Semester system, has been for some years now. So school starts a week or two before labor day.

Yes we settled the strike, the night before classes were to happen. Our take home will diminish over the next three years relative to inflation, unless the economy tanks, but what are we to do? The state is cutting us another 1.5 million dollars this year, and that is not even taking inflation into account.

A hundred years ago professors used to make four times the average income of someone in America working 12 months. At least one, G.H.M., complained that his salary was not sufficient to easily keep his and his wife’s nice clothes, good food, societal position, servants, laundry service and gardener. His budget was tight.

Ah, to have been that professor, freed of house and garden maintenance aside from what I wanted to do, being concerned about appearances in society. Well, maybe that would onerous. Appearances.

The U.S.A. used to have the best education in the world. These days we slip, and slip. No one much minds that we are 7th or13th. Our economy once flourished with innovation. Now we prefer to spend on advertising we want to convince the masses to buy based on name or sexiness, actual advances are secondary. We no longer truly care about academic excellence.

I am sluggish and slow and cranky with the long hot summer. Fall invigorates me. Crisp air, brilliant colors in my lovely park, the prospect of sharp night and a sharp mind await. Soon, soon.

For now it has been dry since the remains of destructive Katrina poured rain on us. I no longer can convince myself to water or mow. Tomatoes hang ripe, red peppers sit on bushes. Basil has gone wild and flowered. I need to tend to them. I just need cooler air and some time.

All our seasons are strangely shifted here. year after year I notice the same thing summer lingering into October. Then glorious color, a shot of adrenaline in sparkling clean air. Winter is delayed until January. Often enough deep freezes linger into April. Spring is cold, cold until May or June, then a short and vivid spring and back into the long energy and thought sapping summer.

I long for fall. I want to have energy. I want to WANT to be at my University. I want rain. I want to be able to think again.