A childhood memory, distorted no doubt, as all childhood memories are.  My piano teacher, Dmitri Kuvshinov.  I was 11.  He was Russian.  I was told that he had been a concert pianist for a while, but the touring life did not agree with him.  He lived in a nearby San Francisco suburb.  He had high broad cheekbones, hooded icy gray eyes, and a deep voice with a soft accent.  His face was a still slab, but I could detect his love for music underneath. His wife was Japanese and their house was largely Japanese and very calm.  She was graceful, polite, and quiet. 

I loved music, loved the dramatic stuff, Beethoven, Chopin, CPE Bach, but was neither very talented nor a hard worker.  I noodled, listened to sounds, imagined more than I performed.

My goal with my lessons was to convince Mr. Kushvinof to play.  He was so good. I could listen to him play forever.  “What SHOULD it sound like” I would say.  There was nothing more that I wanted than to have him sitting beside me playing astounding, beautiful, music.  He would look at me with his cold gray eyes, knowing that I was a slacker who just wanted to hear him play, but he would give in.

My father lost his job.  My parents cancelled my lessons due to finances.  Mr.Kushvinof offered to continue to teach me for free.  He said I had talent.  I didn’t really. But my desire to hear him play might have been a payment in itself to him. As a professor I know how wonderful it is to have a student who actually cares about the material.

I now have my parents piano. I look at the music for Beethoven’s No.8 in C minor, Op.13 with desire. I can’t play it.  I want to. The piano was damaged a little in the move.  I need to have it tuned and repaired.  Also, I lack the skill. I have desire though. I don’t think Mr. Kushvinoff ever played it for me. It was way beyond my skill level at the time. But I can imagine it. In any case I remember Dmitri Kushvinof, his icy gray eyes, and his beautiful music.

 

Money seems to me to be a lot like pebbles.  Unfortunately they are often necessary pebbles, to keep you lights on, keep your water running, have food and internet.  However it is rarely fun in and of itself.  Some people have a real thing for pebbles and they cover large chunks of their yards with them and it’s just ugly.

 

When my parents died a couple of years ago, they left me enough pebbles to pay off my debts.  So I have been debt free.  It is, of course, much cheaper to be debt free than to have debts, and then there is the pandemic, so my spending is down.  More pebbles.  I should use some for home repairs, maybe put in a second bathroom, but the pandemic has left me unwilling to have anyone in my house.

 

What to do with the pebbles in the meantime?  It is not a large amount of pebbles.  Not enough to retire or move. So as to not be wasteful it should be invested.  Ugh. I have a dislike of the whole pebble industry.  Imagine if the brains and talent of all of those pebble professionals was instead used to actually make the world a better place. In truth I suspect that professional pebble people may run a little stupid.  A scientist want to discover how the world works, and maybe change things for the better, it is a demanding occupation. OTOH it would be really nice to be able to afford to retire to somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, perhaps with a view of the ocean, maybe on the Oregon coast.  I most definitely do not have enough pebbles for that, and in truth I am old enough to no be likely to be able to build a big enough pile of pebbles before I retire. <sigh>

 

The pebbles I have ought to not just sit in my checking account, or my four savings accounts. That is not what one should do.  Why do I have four savings accounts spread over 3 banks?  That’s just silly.  So ok, I will invest some pebbles, with the presumed goal of ending up with more pebbles. I can’t make myself care a lot.  Perhaps I should be homeless and living on the street. I do like my roof and electricity, running water, and heat though.  Internet!  The internet is essential.  I like to sleep to Drone Zone on Soma FM.  I invested some pebbles.

 

Ugh Ugh Ugh Ugh.  I do not want to support the fossil fuel industry.  I do not want to support child labor, or countries that abuse human rights.  No tobacco products please.  I don’t want my pebbles crushing people or the planet. There are socially responsible funds but I can’t seem to access them on the platforms I have currently.

 

OK, so I give up and do some you-invest type things, the sort of systems that delusional day-traders use.  The rules are simple as far as I am concerned.  Buy low, sell high, think about % gains (or losses) likely, focus on biotech because I know that field best.  So cheap biotech stocks, look up the company, look up its history and news, what they make, maybe even employee reports on job sites. What are they like to work for?  I think about what is happening in the world as well. I think about what seems likely and unlikely. It is work. This is truly minor work compared to finding a good recent paper for my graduate class to analyze and discuss.  But still, it is work, and it is work for pebbles.  At least the successfully found research paper will be cool and enlightening and I may learn lots of other things in the paper hunt.

 

Ugh ugh ugh, work for pebbles and no joy.  On the other hand, it does work. A year after starting with a handful of pebbles I have a bucket of pebbles.  More than three times as many pebbles as I started with last year. <sighs>.  It’s a volatile system.  I may have only a handful in another month.  Who knows. I try to feel happy about the expanded number of pebbles.  Instead I wonder about capital gains taxes.  What I am doing is, and should be, taxable. Will I be able to work through it in Turbotax? I started with only a handful of pebbles so I don’t think I have made enough to have a dramatic effect on my taxes. I listen to the news.  I think the market is inflated.  Most of my pebbles are currently sitting quietly, not invested.  My brain says this is perhaps the wise thing to do. I would rather not be thinking about pebbles at all.

 

The increased number of pebbles is still way, way, too few for a house on the Oregon coast.  At this rate I could get there maybe, but I don’t believe it, and in the meantime it is just bucket of pebbles that requires attention and work.  <sighs again>

January.
Gorgeous glittering snow.
Citrus season.
Sharp bright air.
Sharp bright and just sweet enough
fresh oranges, grapefruit, limes.
The Cara Cara oranges and the Moro blood oranges are both wonderful this year.
I make Lisa Greco's blood orange martini with
the juice of 1 Cara Cara,
and 1 Moro orange, orange
vodka, a splash of Roses lime,
 cranberry juice, and fresh snow.
Sharp, bright, wonderful.

Raise the glass to Lisa.
If there is heaven and you are in it,
I hope that you are telling the angels hysterical stories
and making them roll with laughter,
and are telling God about the things
that should be done better.

If there is no heaven, it does not matter,
I keep you sharp, bright and wonderful in my mind.

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Do you think you are pretty?

I have a good friend who I have seen through a dreadful marriage and a few fairly long term relationships that ultimately didn’t work out.  We are well-educated middle-aged professionals.  In the hearts of my friend’s relationship issues my advice has always been “What exactly do you want in your relationship?  Is that where your relationship is going?  If it is, great, if not, perhaps it is not a good relationship for you.” She has appreciated that simple advice.  However, I fear that my friend, like so many people, compromises what she finds acceptable simply out of a fear of being alone. 

We were recently talking about issues of finding dateable men. I expressed dismay over how many men were focused on whether a woman met their criteria of “pretty” before even considering them.  Why can’t we be humans first?  We are people who are interesting, thoughtful, enjoy things.  But no, since we, my friend and I, and so many women, are not pretty we aren’t even considered. My friend fell silent for a bit before the conversation moved on.

Later she called me to tell me how hurtful it was for me to say that she is not pretty.  I apologized for hurting her but was astounded.  I said that truly I did not consider myself or her to be pretty.  We are middle-aged women who are not physically extraordinary.  Pretty might describe a percent of children and young adult women, after that it becomes rare. It doesn’t describe us.  Why should we even supposed to be pretty? Shouldn’t being interesting and worthwhile human beings be enough?  I have been contemplating having a more in depth discussion with her on this subject.  We are both feminists, and I was astounded that she was insulted by my original remark.  I want to ask her if she thinks that the vast majority of all women are pretty, I want to ask her if she thinks that being pretty is an essential part of being a woman and if you are not it is a sign of failure, but I am afraid to.

Perhaps my bar for “pretty” is high.  Perhaps hers is low.  I don’t know.  Is my friend deluding herself?  Does it matter? If someone were to tell me that my eyes were pretty, or they liked my hair, or they enjoyed my short and very tapered fingers I could go with that and be pleased.  But if someone were to say “Oh you’re so pretty” I would assume that they are out to flatter for some reason and they would get the hairy eyeball from me.

Fairness and accuracy: how much are they alike? 

Years ago, in the early 80's, I was living in NYC. Gay men in the city, as well as in San Franciso were dying mysteriously of diseases associated with immunodeficiency. People were calling it GRID for Gay Related Immuno Deficiency. No one knew what caused it. One of the major hypotheses was that it was caused by the use of recreational drugs called "poppers". Then in 1984 a couple of scientists discovered the retrovirus, HIV. Soon it became clear that this virus met Koch's postulates and work started on how to protect against the virus that caused what was renamed AIDS as it was soon very clear that it was not only gay men who were affected in the world.

But there was this other scientist, Peter Duesberg, who in 1986 decided that HIV did not cause AIDS. He claimed, against all evidence, that AIDS is caused by recreational drug use, and now by anti-viral therapies. He is a professor at UC Berkeley and science generally tolerates contrarians, even when they are considered crackpots with dreadful data. Nonetheless in scientific circles, people look at what he says and writes and his arguments, sees that they are lousy, and dismisses it.

Unfortunately that is not how our news system works. Upon discovering this contrarian, for years every time there was a news story about AIDS Duesberg would be trotted out for equal time as the opposing voice. The fact that most everyone else was working on an infectious disease and treatments for it and Duesberg was just one solitary contrarian with effectively no data didn't matter. The News was trying to be "fair" and to give equal time to opposing viewpoints. Unfortunately that legitimized him among non-scientists and in 2000 he ended up advising the South African President, Thabo Mbeki. South Africa had a ballooning AIDS problem, and Duesberg convinced Mbeki that HIV was not the cause and that those expensive retrovirals were bad. South Africa embarked on a wacko course of advising people to drink water with lemon in it, not get HIV tests, and not take antiretroviral drugs. It is estimated that a third of a million people died as a result of these years of bad advice.

Why am I talking about this? Because sometimes equal time is not a good idea. The news should not be giving equal time to largely discredited science. A story? Sure. Talk about the contrarians. On very very rare occasions they are the ones that turn out to be right. That is why they are tolerated in science. But geez, don't give them equal time. Similarly, come Monday, if Clinton tells a lie and Trump tells ten, don't devote an equal amount of time to Clinton's one as Trump's ten. Don't over-weigh or under-weigh dramatically in an attempt to be "fair". Proportionality should reflect reality. Don't make false equality. It can cause great harm.

An Old Torch, Going Out.

An old acquaintance is dying.  He is a couple of years older than me and when we were in high school he was the first chair viola player in both my high school orchestra and our regional Junior Symphony.  He was cute, an excellent musician, and had a good sense of humor.  I played farther back in the viola section in both symphonies and had an enormous crush on him. He probably had no idea, which is just as well. 

As has been the case with almost all of my many crushes, he fell in love with someone else.  The love of his life was a cello player.  I remember, soon after they got together, riding on a bus with the other symphony players on our way to a distant town to play a concert.  I was sitting across the aisle and a little behind.  His sweetheart dozed, her head on his shoulder, his arm wrapped around her.  Her long, straight, honey brown hair glinted with golden highlights in the sunlight filtering through the dirty bus windows.  He looked at her with wonder and satisfaction.  I was jealous and sad.  There was no way to find any fault in it.  She was not spectacularly gorgeous, she was not mean, she was always supportive and sweet. It was simply my misfortune to have ever developed the crush.   She loved him, he loved her, they were lucky souls to have found each other. 

He went on to become a professional musician in a city not many hours from where I now live.  She became a school music teacher there.  We reconnected on facebook some years back.  They had raised two sons, handsome and successful young men.  Their life was not easy, the vagaries of the lives of professional classical musicians and of school teachers is not for the weak.  But they seem to have thrived, lead good lives and to have given a lot their community.  We talked of Oregon, where we were all from, music, and education.  I talked mainly to his wife.  We periodically mentioning my maybe coming up and visiting, but when I did go through their city I was in a hurry passing through on my way to somewhere else.  I never went.  I would have liked to have sat and had a beer and talked about old times, music, education, politics, how to solve the problems of the world and bring joy into people’s lives.  They were like that.

Then about a month ago, maybe two, there was information that he had had a stroke.  He was working on rehab, it was not a terrible stroke, but that recovery was slow. 

Then mentions of continuing difficulties, then YAY he played in a concert, had a ways to go, but there he was with his viola.  Then more appointments, things just not seeming to be going right.

And then…

After more work ups, it turns out he has a terrible incurable fast moving brain disease. He had not had a stroke. His sons and parents and brother (who was also cute and a bit of a crush of mine many decades ago), all zoomed out to visit, while there was productive visiting to be done. 

I offered my access to research information to his wife.  It is a terrible disease though there are some very experimental things out there.  They are nowhere near being tried on humans, and may very well be futile.  She decided not to take advantage of my offer, and that is a perfectly valid choice, perhaps indeed the best choice. 

The plan is for him to stay home, cared for by his wife until she can no longer do it.  He will be gone very soon.

And I have been oddly devastated by this.  I am not entirely sure why. He will be the second of my many crushes to die a terrible death. 

I found out about the other one a few years ago, a year after he had died.  I was shocked. I connected with his sister.  That particular crush had stayed single all of his life.  We had been close friends in college, not boyfriend/girlfriend, but close.  His sister did not even know he had had any close college friends.  Mutual friends said, yeah, that he was a very private person except with me, and I had never realized it. We parted ways when he went off to medical school and I to grad school.  He stayed single and private all of his life, though a good uncle to his sister’s kids, until he died of bone cancer in his early 50’s.  I cried over him too.  Gone forever.

I have not seen the viola player in over 30 years.  I can only imagine what his wife is going through.  She seems to be amazingly strong on fb.  I have no idea if it is just a brave front, but she seems to have a sturdy soul.

Why does this take me to tears?  I do not really know the man who is dying any more.  I do not really know his wife.  We knew each other when we were teenagers.  In social media we seem to have things still in common.  I admired them.  I admire his wife.  They seem to have lead a good life, done good things, improved the world they have lived in.  I suppose he was lucky, until the last few months, to have had the work he loved, a great family, his best friend also being his wife. He had for most of his life these important things that many never have.

Am I mourning the talented teenaged boy who gazed on his love tenderly while she slept?  Am I mourning the end of their (imagined) wonderful life?  Am I feeling sad for that plump, awkward, and nerdy teenaged girl, who also played the viola, who never had any years, any months, any weeks, or even days of a protective arm and a loving gaze?  Am I regretting not having gone to visit them (yes)? Am I putting myself in his wife’s shoes and am imagining the loss of the partner of an entire adult life?  In truth I do wish there was something I could do to give her moral support, other than what I have.

My level of sadness seems inappropriate.  We do all have to die, somehow, sometime, and he had a good life.

George Harrison in a Dream

I put this on the blog before, some years ago.  But I was reminded of it tonight, lsitening to a George Harrison song "Here comes the Moon" that I had not heard in a very long time.  So here is version two of the same dream as in the post "The Meaning of Life" .

A long time ago, probably 30 years ago, I had this dream: Some of the Beatles had gotten together to play a concert. 

It was outdoors in a Greek-style amphitheater in a park. At the end of the concert I manages to slip "backstage" and found myself in a botanical garden, the white marble of the Amphitheater behind me. 

There among the flower beds, sitting on a marble bench in the bright sun was George Harrison. I was so exited. He slowed down my puppyish bouncing and proceeded to tell me important things. Very Important Things about life, and the world, and being. I was amazed. 

But Damn! I realized I was dreaming. "But I'm dreaming" I said. 

He smiled, of course I was. 

Then I had a bright idea! If I could only write these important truths down maybe they would stay with me. I hunted up a piece of crumpled paper and a stub of a pencil. I asked him to repeat bis words of wisdom and he did, with a quirk to his mouth, some place between laughing and sad. 

Foolish child that I was. 

I woke up hand gripped tight around the paper and pencil stub, but of course my hand was empty and the great truths were gone from my head.

I am indeed a woman. Deal with it.

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Once again I have let close to two years fly by.....  I was listening to an interview on NPR on Fresh Air, and something that repeatedly annoys me came up again.  The topic is women and what women are like.  The interviewee, an intelligent funny women, asserted that women were a particular way.  In this case the subject was sex.  The assertions, women, particularly women who do not feel themselves to be attractive, will often do all kinds of things to try to please a man in bed, thinking that it is the only way to keep him.  A loose quote "You want to stick it in my ear? Sure stick it in my ear". In addition it usually takes a long time before women actually enjoy sex and they fake it a lot.  

OK  I am a woman and have no problems with that.  It is true that if I were to wake up tomorrow and discover that I had turned into a man overnight, I would have to make some changes, but it would not change me as a person.  I do not consider my gender as a deep fundamental characteristic.  Nonetheless I am perfectly ok as a woman.  I like a number of things associated with women.  I am straight.  I have long curly hair and do not cultivate a masculine look.  I wear makeup.  I like men.  Having said that….

I am strong and muscular and I like being strong and muscular.

I don’t change my mind much at all.

I am very literal.

I am not emotional.

I like math and science and being analytical.

I have no clue about how to play social games.

I cannot multitask.

I have no affinity for babies.

I do not like chick-flicks, or chick-lit.

I do not care how much money a guy makes.

I do not like to be pampered.

I am not scared of walking by myself at night.

I am not scared of being alone at night in a strange city.

I like to drive really long distances... 7 hours is comfortable for me... doing it by myself is just fine.

I am a slob.

I love science fiction, fantasy and horror.

I like hard rock.

I like the Blues.

When I was sexually active I LOVED sex, I enjoyed it the very first time, and was continually disappointed in how hard it was for me to get.  Plain vanilla sex, much appreciated. But it was so much trouble to get (and later as a trained virologist, clearly risky) that I eventually just gave up.

Generally the people I managed to get into bed were just that, people who I managed to get into bed, no emotional attachment.  I failed to get anywhere with people I was hung up on (though they often were good friends).  Divorcing sex from love was no problem for me.

Compliments make me uncomfortable more often than not.

Shopping is not generally a pleasure for me.

Shopping with some one is way worse than shopping alone for me.

I am more comfortable by myself than with people typically.

I have no children and I never will.  I have no husband and I assume I never will.

I am not terribly nurturing.

I don't worry.

I don't get nervous.

I have to concentrate not to sprawl when I sit in public, I sprawl at home, I still sprawl a little in public.

I have a good innate mechanical sense.  I am good with machines.

I do not mind getting dirty.

I love riding big fast roller coasters, ideally in the front seat.

I have no fear of insects, spiders, or snakes.

I am almost 57.  My feet don't hurt, my back doesn't hurt, my joints don't hurt.  I'm fine thankyou.

I sleep well.

I like the gray in my hair.

I almost never carry a purse and I totally do not get designer bags.

I drive a manual transmission.  It's what I prefer.

I think "intuition" is bogus.

I realize that my body is not what is considered beautiful and sexy but I like my body.  My body has been a good machine and I am in many ways a physical person.  Yeah I could use to be thinner, but you know what, if you don't like how I look, fine.  Now if you don't like or at least respect my brain THEN I have a problem.

I get so sick and tired of people, articles, interviews all saying women this, and women that, I can almost guarantee that whatever it is that “women” are like or do according to anyone, including other women, will not be true of me.  But I am a woman!  Why must we make all these boxes and try to cram people in them.  It is so alienating.

Follies of Youth: Ray

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I was in college at the University of Chicago in the late 1970’s.  I had gone through adolescence in a blue collar part of Eugene, Oregon on the other side of town from the University there.  I was an intellectual nerd and so had had no social life to speak of.  I never had to study much, and I was never grade oriented but I managed to be in the honor society and I got great standardized test scores.

The University of Chicago was Nerd Central and I was surrounded by like minds.  I quickly developed friends, real friends! and then slid into bad habits and wild company…. such as it was at the U of C,  where the unofficial motto was “Where Fun Goes to Die”.  So I partied and slept late and had to repeat some classes, while learning a tremendous amount.  Even at parties you discussed science and philosophy.

But the upshot was that I was not able to graduate in four years. 

In the fifth year my more studious and disciplined friends were gone.  I found myself among screw-ups and people associated with the university only tangentially if at all. Among these assorted people were Ray and Diny.  Diny’s grandparents were supposedly Russian aristocracy who escaped the revolution.  I do not know if this was true, but she was petite and fine boned, with a broad high forehead, thin fine blond hair, high cheekbones, a small pointed chin, and large sad blue eyes.  She looked the part of fallen Russian aristocracy.  She had gone to the U of C.  Ray was her exact opposite.  He was a big man, very muscular with short dark curling hair.  He worked out. He was part African American, part Native American, part Polish, and part Irish.  He had a menial job, he drank, did drugs, and had an explosive temper.  He also had the one thing few of us had, a car.

Ray could take us to the clubs.  Ray could take us to concerts.

The problem was that Ray would get wasted and then drive us all home.  It was impossible to get car keys away from Ray.  It was scary. You can pretend that you are in a taxi, glue your face to the window and watch the tall buildings careening by, but in truth I did not want to die in a car accident. 

The third time Ray took us to a club, probably O’Banions, we closed the place down at about 2:00 a.m.  Ray was reeling, bashing into things.  The three of us that lived in my apartment decided to get home some alternate way. We even tried to get Diny to come with us, but she wouldn’t leave Ray.

Unfortunately for us the Howard L which goes directly to Hyde Park was shut down for the night so we had to take the Dan Ryan L which would drop us in the ghetto west of Hyde Park where we would have to wait for a night bus.

So there we were, one guy and two women, all of us white as snow and in our punk finery; black clothes, black eyeliner and all, standing near the Dan Ryan L at Garfield, waiting for a bus in the small hours on a deserted street in a bad neighborhood in Chicago at a time when Chicago was one of the highest crime cities in the country. Still it seemed like a better idea than letting Ray drive us. At least it did until a gang of youths sifted out from an alley.

There were about five of them.  There were three of us. Two of us were women.  The one guy among us was a small, slender artist.  The gang surrounded us and told us to come with them to the alley.

Now there were gangs even in Hyde park in those days, and in fact our apartment was on Blackstone and part of the territory of the Blackstone Rangers. I was no expert, but I knew a little bit about dealing with gangs.  No Way in Hell was I going to go into an alley with these guys.  I had no desire to be raped and murdered. So I ran into the middle of the street.  It was largely deserted, but during the day was a big busy street.  I could see headlights in the distance head slowly in our direction.  One of the gang members said he had a gun.  My response to that was to duck behind a parked car on the street side.  My female roommate (Anne) was being pulled towards the alley by a couple of the gang-members.  My male roommate (whose name was Jeff I think) was nowhere to be seen.

“Anne!” I yelled, “There are cars coming! Come out to the street!”

Anne, who was not much of a physical person yanked herself away from the gang and ran into the street with me.  The guys started to come after us, but the lights of the coming cars were finally starting to light up the scene and instead the guys skittered away into the ally.

One of the cars turned out to be a cab.  A cab!  In the ghetto!  Sheer luck. I hailed the cab, but where was Jeff?

Jeff staggered out of alley, badly beaten, blood running down his face and matting his hair.  So we took the cab to the hospital in Hyde Park.  Jeff had had his wallet stolen, a concussion and lots of big bruises, but fortunately nothing more serious than that. 

Thanks Ray.

We lived in a strange winding warren of a basement apartment with three bedrooms a kitchen, and two good sized common rooms that were reasonably suitable for parties.  We had our own front entrance a few steps down from the street, and on the back side of the building our own back exit, a few steps up to a small lawn a tree and a parking lot.

Some months after the gang in the ghetto incident we had a nice big party.  Of course Ray and Diny were there along with the whole general circle of friends, and friend of friends etc.  As usual Ray was all hopped up on alcohol and some other unknown substances.  He was already in a foul mood and Diny was annoyed with him.  Then some typical U of C nerdy white kid said something.  I do not know what it was.  In the noise of the music and all the people I don’t know that ANY of us knew what it was.  But Ray was sure that the kid had insulted him.  Between black and Irish and Polish and Native American Ray was always finding insult, rightful or not.  But Ray flew into a rage and went after the kid who was shocked and promptly panicked.  So I had Ray lunging after this kid  like a Kodiak bear after a salmon.  Diny tried to intervene and Ray flung her aside Her head hit the corner of the dining room table and she went down.  Ray didn’t even notice.

I am not sure quite how I did it, but I got in front of Ray, put my hands gently on the center of his chest (roughly eye level for 5’5” me) and looked straight up into his angry dark eyes, and just quietly said “Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray” until it registered on him.  Somehow the hands on his chest stopped his lunging about.

“Ray, I need to talk to you” I said over and over.  He eventually focused on me and I said, “Too loud in here” and keeping my hands on him gently, stroking lightly like you would a fearful cat lead him along the winding halls to the front door, walked him up the steps, told him to close his eyes and take a deep breath of the fresh air…. then I turned and leapt down the stairs ran inside and slammed the door behind me, locking and bolting it. Ray roared and crashed down the stairs and beat on the door.  I zoomed through the halls, found the kid, who had been slugged a few times but was ok and sent him running away out the back.  It was complicated to get from the front of the building to the back without going through the inside.

Diny was sitting up which was good as I had worried that Ray might have killed her.  I suggested that she too go out the back and head home and perhaps lock Ray out.  She did not want to do that.  She would go out the back, yes, but then she was going to go around through the parking lot and alley and around the block to the front of the building and collect Ray and take him home.  She said he’d be sorry by the time she wound her way to the front.

And so he was, but I had had it with Ray.  He was too much trouble.  In fact my whole life was filled with too many problematic people.  Not long afterwards I left Chicago, shaking off most of my “friends” of that time with few regrets.  I was one credit short of graduating, but I transferred that credit from the University of Oregon in Eugene rather than go back and get sucked into that dysfunctional group which included my one and only boyfriend, who I have not even mentioned in this story, who I was also eager to be far, far away from.

Dysfunctional people are often very accepting of others and easily become “friends” with misfits and lonely people. 

Sometimes it is much better to be lonely.

It is certainly far better to have a select few good friends who are sane, thoughtful people than a whole circle of problematic types surrounding you.

Bah!

It’s been close to 2 years. I think of the blog often and never write in it. Passing beauty, small joys, adventures, cats, questions, all half written in my mind, never written. I waste time in other ways. I grow discontented, then contented, then more discontented. I have wondered if I am experiencing a “mid-life crisis”. Do women do that? Do spinster women with busy jobs and no children and no lovers ever do this?

My house falls into clutter, I want the clutter gone. Yet another good show cat on the circuit, or two, or three. Wonderful retired show cats placed. Not enough snow to make January the most beautiful of months. I miss the hush and glitter of snow.

I have, once again, fallen for someone. The someone, as always, has not fallen for me. He is a talented, interesting, intelligent, kind, and single, man (as almost all have been). I am not his type. I almost convinced myself otherwise. But I looked and thought and weighed and knew better. We are friends. I intend to remain friends. My idiot heart will get over it, eventually. It just always takes so damn long.

Remember Walter? I lived in the same shared apartment with him and one or two others for what? 9 years? In love with him (I should say at him to be accurate) almost the whole time. Before and after that, how many? A half a dozen? A dozen? Crushes, stupid adolescent crushes from real adolescence through being a grown woman… now closing in on being an old woman.

I am so used to it now that this time I could stand aside and watch the chemical switch flip. I was simply enjoying the conversation and company of a particular interesting and attractive man as I had a number of times before for dinner or drinks, and then a turn in the conversation, a look and there was the sudden fall off the cliff. Shit. Why now? Aren’t I too old for this yet? And “but maybe this time….” and watching and paying attention so carefully, some flirtation on my part, careful placing of me as “friend” on his. Nope. Same old same old. I don’t get it. What is this chemical switch? Why can’t one just summarily haul oneself right back up the cliff one fell off of and turn it off. It would make more sense. Particularly since at this point in my life, even if the feeling were reciprocated (ha!) I would not abandon my job and my life as it is to go off somewhere else with someone. No. Not conceivable to me at all.

The end result is hours of rationality punctuated by stupid schoolgirl heartache. I hate it. Maybe this time I will recover quickly and the pain will leave.

That is all love is for me. Pain. It is a physical pain, sort of like being punched in the stomach. It endangers otherwise good friendships. It wastes time. I want it to go away.

I think that I make no pheromones and so this is just my lot in life. Nothing else makes sense. Yet things could be much worse than to simply be single forever. I like to be alone and I rather enjoy my singleness. I also enjoy the company of friends here and there. So, I want to turn off this one part of my heart. It serves no purpose.

Surveys

Whenever I take an online survey I am always puzzled by the types of questions that they ask.

I participated in an online survey yesterday about cars. I am seriously considering buying a car, and probably will in the next 6 months. My Honda Civic hatchback is 12 years old and has almost 170K miles on it. It is making some noises that my mechanic can’t figure out.

The survey asked me about those things, and asked if I was considering specific cars (I am), and what they were. 1) Honda Fit, 2) Volkwagen Jetta Sportswagen TDI, then in no particular order Toyota Yaris, Prius, Honda Insight. In truth the Fit is currently way at the top of the list. It is a high mpg hatchback, that has been reviewed as “fun to driive” in every review I’ve looked at, plus has an amazingly large cargo area in the back, with back seats that fold flat. Perfect for the long hauls I do for my hobby.

The survey then asked me to name luxury car brands and models off the top of my head. I know brands but not models. It then named luxury brands and models and asked lots of questions about them.

The survey wanted to know if I thought individual brands or models were technologically advanced (I assume so), if owning a car from them says anything about the cars owner (yeah, probably, what, I’m not sure), and lots of questions about what I felt about the brands (don’t feel much about luxury car brands). The questions never asked if the cars drove well, or were comfortable, or even looked good.

After I finished the survey I thought about it for a bit. I bought MegaMillions lottery tickets on Thursday. I do on occasion. The prize is over 100 million right now. I like to daydream about what I might do if I won. I realized that an expensive car is never part of my daydreams, nor expensive clothes or an expensive watch.

I would probably move to the Seattle area, or maybe Vancouver area in BC. I like the Pacific Northwest. I like the weather (cool) and the mountains, and the sound/ocean. I would like to be closer to my parents. With lots of money I could buy a nice house with a view and a little land and a second house or second living quarters for my parents. I would have to be careful about local laws. I am not moving anywhere that has a pet limit (legislation that decreases available homes for dogs and cats... stupid), nor tells you whether you can have a fence or a short list of what you are allowed to grow or what color your house is.

I would give some money to my brother, my parents, my friends, to help them with assorted financial issues. I would give money to some charities. I would give money to my University. I would hire a housekeeper and an accountant. I would eat more lobster, more sushi, go out to good restaurants more often. I would travel more. I would entertain more. Much of this is wasteful consumerism, like most people would do.

But for some reason I have no interest in a fancy car. I might get that TDI instead of the Fit, but then again, maybe not. I guess that to me it is about what is actually Much Better, and worth the price.

Meanwhile, I wonder why surveys always ask you how you “feel” about things and particularly how you “feel” about brands, rather than if you think they work well, make a good product, etc.

After I finished this, uploaded it and checked the site. I looked to the left and saw the Metarasa chart. Well duh, I am all about thinking, very low on the feeling-extrovert. Why would I "feel" about a brand? But, I STILL buy things, so Marketers howabout giving me something solid to think about?

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday. Happy birthday to me!

I left home at 17. My birthday always falls late in fall term. I have been an academic all of my adult life. I have been single the vast majority of my adult life. I only truly celebrate my birthday once in a blue moon. Sometimes I take myself out for dinner. Sometimes I indulge myself in some way that I rarely do on other days, but not in general.

My parents always send me a gift and a card. This year the gift was a wonderful cookbook… 200 curries? It looks fabulous.

In truth birthdays are only special for people with families that they live with I think.

I threw myself a good party on my 30th, and a good party on my 50th.

Sometimes people say, “What are your plans for your birthday?” or “Have a wonderful time on your birthday!”

In truth it is just another day.

I had a beer and a piece of cheesecake. Last Friday I had a better beer and a piece of cheesecake. I have been thinking about Sushi for weeks. I got paid today. I could go get sushi. If I take grading with me, I can perhaps get something done, and have something to do, while eating.

I was talking to Noelle this afternoon. She was musing on who takes care of the childless when they are old, as we have mutual friends who are childless couples. My answer: friends or strangers. If you have children it may well be friends or strangers too, but with feelings of guilt and abandonment added. In addition in a childless couple one may get taken care of by the other, and that other then has to shoulder that as well as often being alone afterwards. Then there was that study, reported in the New York Times, on how over 20% of married women who get brain cancer or MS are divorced by their husbands within a year of diagnosis. The reciprocal rate for men who were diagnosed and then divorced? 3%

There are distinct advantages to being single and unencumbered. If I were to develop a serious illness I will not need to worry about being abandoned on top of it.

Meanwhile, I am free to celebrate my birthday, or not, as I so choose.

I am going out with friends tomorrow, two of my fellow faculty (the gray haired ladies of the department) and their husbands. Tomorrow is one of my colleagues birthdays.

My only caveat to all of this is when people expect me to DO something for my birthday, and then express… sympathy? Or insist that I MUST do something If I don’t have plans. It rather makes me wish that I were the only one who knew when my birthday was (aside from my parents of course). It makes me feel like they think that I am deficient or sort of pathetic.

My colleague just called to tell me when and where we are meeting tomorrow. Her husband is a picky eater, so we have settled on a close but not very inspiring bar/pizza place before the play. My colleague sighed and said “you have an advantage being single”.

Yes, I get to do what I want, eat what I prefer, and celebrate or not depending on what I need to do.

Today is my birthday! Happy Birthday to me!

Reproduction

I was reading an article in the NYT about the well over a million dollar cost of a pair of IVF twins with complications, and how this is not terribly uncommon with IVF babies. This often ends up as cost to our health care system that we all end up subsidizing directly or indirectly. Now I happen to like children, and when I was young I always assumed that I would have some. Such is not the case. If I had been married and unable to have kids I MIGHT have adopted, but then again maybe not. As a single woman, nurturing kittens and my garden sometimes seems like too much work. I cannot imagine the extra stresses of a child under these conditions, no matter what the joys. Several studies have indicated that people without children are happier than those with. On top of that, there are waaay too many humans on this planet.

So, in a curmudgeonly fit I wrote this comment in to the NYT:

"I am a childless woman, and not childless by choice, who truly does not understand why my fellow women think that having a child is so critically important. So I am going to be a curmudgeon here. We are not short of people, or even babies, in this world. I don't think that extraordinary ways to produce a child should ever be subsidized. The ability to reproduce links us with cockroaches not the things that make humans unique. If you cannot have a child with any biological ease and you MUST nurture something because you are hardwired or socially ingrained that way, adopt, get a puppy, or learn how to transcend your animal desire to have a child. Being childless is not the end of the world. There are plenty of people who CAN have a child who will do so and raise their kids well. They will do the job nicely for those of us that can't or simply don't due to life's vagaries.

If you can't feel self worth if you can't be a mother you need help."



I wonder how many incensed replies I will get.

The meaning of Life

I should not be writing this down now as I am writing exams, but Diana jogged my memory. So here it is.

I grew up largely ignorant of popular music. It was pretty much in college that I discovered the rock and roll standards. I bought Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, soaking it all up my freshman year. I borrowed a tape of a late Beatles collection from a friend and listened to it late at night and I dreamed....

......I dreamed that The Beatles, or some of them at least, played a concert. Perhaps John wasn’t there, was he already dead? After the concert, when the audience was gone, I went backstage, and there was George, waiting for me. He took me out a back way to a sunny terraced garden, full of flowers, and he looked hard at me and told me the things I would need to know in life, the ways and secrets. I suddenly realized I was dreaming and I was horrified. What he was telling me was so very profound and important! I would forget it as soon as I woke up! I scrabbled around for a something to write with and scribbled down the meaning of life and the secrets to living it well with a stub of a pencil on a fragment of paper. George patiently repeated and waited while I wrote. When we were done I clutched the paper tightly in my hand, and awoke fingers gripped in a tight fist around nothing.

The secrets were lost.

Critical Thinking

I have seen all 400 some students twice through so far... 370 some of them again tomorrow, then drive off to Edison New Jersey.

I'm tired.

I have some interested and interesting students. The campus is crowded. Enrollment is up. I have already had students in my office hours, and have already have a handful just walk in outside of my office hours. I have put up a sign asking students to please respect office hours, or to set up an appointment. If they continue to wander in randomly I'm going to be in trouble. How will I manage my lab, make sure my lectures are prepped, my homework assignments, quizzes, and tests written and graded if some percent of my 400+ students wander in to "just ask a question" randomly throughout the day? Something tells me that this is going to be a hard term.

I have been talking about science and the scientific method to all my freshmen (around 330) and assorted other people, students and not. I am tired right now, so this will probably be less than coherent. I may edit it later. I am one of those people who goes back and edits posts.

I was reading somewhere that we scientists are doing people a disservice by being too politically correct and not promoting evidence-based information and critical thinking for fear of offending people's belief systems.

The public is largely uninformed about the scientific method and how to sort the good (well-founded and researched) information from the bad (opinions without evidential support).

If you don't know the difference than all become equal and distinguished only by emotion and belief. Emotion and belief can be powerful forces for good, yes, but also for ill.

We used to have a good non-majors class at my Unversity that I helped design and teach. We abandoned it just this year due to lack of personel to teach it, organize it and financial support. It was a science course for non-majors and thousands of students took it every year. We would teach over 30 sectios of it every term. In any case in the part I designed I had a section on science vs pseudoscience.

Science is based on trying to understand and explain natural phenomena. Pseudoscience is anything that tries to pass itself off as science but does not meet all the criteria that science meets.

A scientific statement is testable. It always has the possibility of being wrong. To be accepted by the majority of scientists it needs to be repeatedly tested. It should be tested in many ways with as many alternative explanations as possible accounted for. Many scientific tests involve controls. Control groups are the same as the tested group with the exception of the variable tested. In medicine, double-blind testing is typically employed so that neither the patient nor the scientist making observation has any idea whther the patient is in the test (placebo) group or control. There have been some very interesting studies of dramatic effects caused by things other than what you think you are testing. Red pills may work better than blue pills, pills that are thought to be expensive work better than pills that are thought to be cheap. Pills work better than no pills. All of this involving pills with no active ingredients.

So, how do you tell good science from pseudoscience?

Real Science:
Has logical explanations that are based on what we know about the real world.
Is testable, and can be shown to be wrong or can be supported.
Has been tested, using substantial different trials, and well controlled studies, which possibilities of bias removed as much as is possible.
Rarely makes large claims (for example, a good new cholesterol drug may lower cholesterol 10%)
Is verifiable through studies published in good scientific peer reviewed journals.
If it is about something ingested, it has been approved by the FDA.
It is easy to look up the scientists and research institutions that have studied it.

Pseudoscience:
Does not admit to the possibility of being wrong.
Relies on testimonials instead of scientific studies.
Is not easy to find data about (numbers, study results).
Makes wild claims (Always works! 100%, miraclulous!)
Appeals to emotion, not reason
Does not have approval from FDA or other independent testing agency.
Often claims “leading scientists” or “Space age technology” or “ancient Chinese wisdom” or some such, but sources are not identifiable or clear.
Often wants money up front.

Fall term 2009

Tomorrow the new term starts. This term I have over 400 students in 4 lecture classes. My University has recently been reclassified as an Urban Research University, and we are under pressure to do more research and publish more. I have 3 undergrad researchers and 2 or three grad students in my lab, and my Dean did not even know that I have a research program. I have the heaviest teaching load in my department, I think it is even more than the full time temp we have who only teaches. The PTBs in my department have little or no respect for me in spite of the fact that I have probably the best research training in my department. Indeed my research goes very, very slowly. It is hard to keep the lab and it’s members functional when I am tied up in classes like I am.

Nonetheless, I am looking forward to the start of the term. Our enrollment is substantially up, we have students who have transferred in from excellent private schools all over the country. State schools are benefiting from this economic downturn on the student front. The State is cutting our funds of course. Oh well. No silver lining lacks a cloud.

I hope that this year my students will want to learn. Maybe this year the majority will study. Perhaps this year they won’t be angry that I cannot somehow inject them with the information and problem solving skills that they seem to expect simply from paying tuition.

I look forward to the bright, motivated students that I will meet this year!

We Are Not Short of Robins

Yesterday I finished writing my syllabus for my summer Genetics class and I was heading off across campus to the copy place to get my syllabus copied. As I headed across our pretty park-like campus with it’s winding paths, rolling hills, grass, flowers, and trees I saw a large handsome crow sitting on a tree looking intent and intense. I wished I had my camera on me for his sleek and wicked look contrasting to the lovely spring day. Suddenly he swooped forward towards a set of low bushes with a small tree growing up from them, lunged in and flew off with a nest in his talons. A crowd of robins and sparrows chased him as he flew away.

"You evil thing!" I exclaimed and chased after him myself. He flew up to a lower branch in a taller tree and started to peck through what he had grabbed. When I got under the tree, waving my arms at him, he flew off again and something solid fell from his grip, down into the pachysandra.

I went over to the ground cover in the area where the object had fallen, imagining something horrible. I looked and looked and looked, and finally, there was a baby bird, a half-grown robin, already fledging, with rust orange feathers on his belly.

I headed back to the bio office with the syllabus and copy order form clutched under an arm and the little robin cradled in my hands. He was solid, chubby, very warm, and looking at me with a worried brown eye. He had a little spot of blood on the back of his skull and perhaps a scrape near a wing, small looking wounds. I talked to several people and the suggestion was to see if there was any nest left to put him back in, or to raise him myself. I raised a robin once as a child. It was a long processed, he fledged, I taught him to fly, and then he ate a slug pellet, sickened, and died. I did not want to hand raise another. I went back to the area and saw a female Robin in the little tree looking at me worriedly. I looked and looked and finally found a nest. It is an old, deep, and well built nest. I imagine that the crow had only taken the top layer. I put the baby back in it, then went on to get my syllabus copied.

On the way back I worried. What about the damage from the crow's talons or beak? Would the little bird get infected and die? So, I went back to the office and got a little packet of triple antibiotic ointment, went back out to the nest. I saw that at least one of the parents had been in the nest judging by a fresh adult dropping on the outside of the nest, took out the baby and put some ointment on his head wound. and placed him back in his nest. His mother chirped at me in concern from a nearby branch.

Today I went to the nest camera in hand to see if I could get a picture of the little guy. As I approached the tree my heart fell, no parent flew out of the nest, no parent sat on a higher branch to glare at me. The little nest was empty. Crows are smart, and they are nest predators. He probably came back around and snatched the chubby baby in the evening after I left.

I am sad about it. I felt like I had done a small creature a good deed. It has been a bad couple of weeks in cat-land, a good friend is facing a truly difficult time. Another has been setting tests for our relationship that confuse and sadden me. The baby robin was a small pleasure yesterday.

Crows aren’t evil. This is how they live. The world is not short of robins. The world is a tough place for most creatures. We humans in Industrialized countries forget that. Just 200 years ago most children did not live to adulthood, most adults did not live long lives.

How lucky we are. How obsessed with trivialities we can be.

Problems in Education.

I teach science (Genetics) at an open admission public University. I have watched my incoming students steadily decline in their ability to handle basic math and logic. As a geneticist, I can assume that their genes aren’t changing from year to year. Yes genes influence intelligence, but so does environment. On top of that, intelligence by itself is not a fabulous predictor for success.

At my University the big exception to the trend of decreasing interest and decreasing skills is foreign-born students. We have sizable communities of South Asian, Central European, and Middle Eastern students. We have very few East Asian or Hispanic students. It doesn’t matter if these foreign-born students spent their entire school career in the U.S. or not, they have learned to value education from their parents. They treat me and other professors with respect, they do their homework. Some American-born students do too, but there is a pronounced difference in the groups as a whole.

Think about it, there are advertisements that make fun of science and learning. Smart kids are stereotyped as socially backwards nerds. The popular “Rate My Professor” website gives points for “easiness”. We do not value knowledge or intelligence.

I try to make my students work hard, solve problems, and comprehend the material. The end result is hopefully some better mastery of the subject, but my student evaluations are full of hatred for my expectations and for making the students work. My good students hang out in my office and lab, asking questions, discussing genetics and biotechnology, trying to convince me to let them work in my laboratory. They always express puzzlement about the terrible things they have heard about me from their peers.

In truth, the terrible thing is that I want my students to learn and understand. I want them to think.

Until we, as a society, start putting a high value on academic achievement we are going to continue to slide compared to the rest of the world. We don’t value education. We pay teachers poorly and make them work very hard. It is no surprise that students who struggle with their classes often drift into education, and that brilliant education majors often do not stay education majors. Education is considered low-end work. It does not command respect.

What do we value? Money, fame, and sexiness. That won’t serve us too well as a nation in the long run.

The 'Destruction" of Wealth

OK, economics is not my thing. I am pretty good at seeing the big picture, the concrete, the forest that all the tree are in, whatever, but economics largely escapes me.

NPR was talking about the "great destruction of wealth" that is going on.

I don't understand the concrete reality of this. Wealth usually has to do with money, yes? So you have money or you don't. If you have money and put it in the bank, the bank presumably will give it back to you when you withdraw it. If you have money and you put it under your mattress it will stay there, but also serve no useful purpose in the meantime. If you put your money under your mattress, smoke in bed, catch your mattress on fire and burn up your money, you have destroyed it.

Now, if you put your money on a bet on a horse, you no longer have that money, you spent it. It is not destroyed, it has been spent. If you were clever and lucky, the horse wins and the track awards you money based on how much total money was bet on the horse out of the total money spent on that race, and taking their profit margin into account. Overall, all the people betting on that race put more money in than they get back with winnings, and the best horses win some money, and the track makes a profit off the bets, the horses entered, and the people who paid admission to watch as well as what they ate and drank. All together no wealth was destroyed, though it got moved around.

Now if you are a bank you have people pay money into a variety of banking services, the bank in turn pays money out in various ways that they hope to make money on. In recent years the banks foolishly sent money out to people who were buying houses that they couldn't really afford, and spent money on other things that were essentially bets. The banks were not clever or lucky and they lost a lot of bets. the money is not GONE it just got moved around.

Similarly, people bought houses by taking out loans and then bet on the idea that their houses were increasing in "value" and took out more loans etc.

Turns out that the housing market was overinflated. Real Americans just can't afford to pay that much for houses, so the bets were not good ones. Any perceived wealth that these people thought they had was just not there. Nothing was destroyed. The houses still exist. Unfortunately for the mortgage holders, they can't make their payments, the loans default and all the money that they HAD paid to the bank stays with the bank and the people are tossed out of the house. So the people spent a chunk of money and only got the time they lived in the house from it, kind of like paying rent. The bank got some but not all the money they loaned back, only the original seller should be still happy. nonetheless, the money used was not destroyed, rather it is all in the hands of the bank and the original seller.

I would chalk it all up to foolish betting. Investors were imagining big wins that they just didn't get.

Unfortunately, that left these bank's money spread in places where they couldn't get it back, so they are short on cash and won't lend money easily and we are way to used to doing too much on credit so the whole economy skids. But, no wealth was DESTROYED.

So, what am I missing?

Educate or leave it be?

I am an educator. I also have a standard academic/intellectual approach to things. I am happy to debate, I like to find out what the truth is, I take a bit of odd egotistical pride in admitting I am wrong when I am.

Now, what if someone else is wrong, or says I am wrong when I'm not? My native tendency is to correct them, and supply direct evidence showing what I am saying is true (or as true as we poor human creatures normally get to).

Now add on another hitch suppose the misinformation that the other person has is common misinformation? I run into this problem frequently, as there is a lot of common misinformation out there.

And finally what if the misinformation is propaganda? This is where I get the most conflicted. 1) Wow is that WRONG and it is used to support what I think of as bad ideology on top of that! 2) If I give this person the information that will show the errors they will think it is an attack on their ideology, which in truth it will be and they may take it very personally. 3) They may be so successfully propaganda brainwashed that they will assume that I am the one who is, and disregard all evidence to the contrary.

But still, there I go, bringing out information, showing data, all with a sinking heart.

Tonight I was doing it about stem cells. I was so pleased to see the removal of Bush's strict limits on human embryonic stem cell research. There has been so much promising work done with mouse ES cells that it is a real shame that similar work has lagged so with human ES cells. Obama's removal of Presidential limits will not open the field wide of course, congress and States need to deal with it now. But, I was pleased and Obama's statements about separating science from ideology were nice to hear.

Of course I found myself accused of being blatantly political in my approach to science. I was told that "All of the promising research is in adult or umbilical cord stem cells. This is nakedly political." In truth the person doesn't think that the federal government should support ANY scientific research, or education for that matter. The free market should handle everything. Personally I would not want to live in that entirely free market world. I think the government provides societal roles that the free market really can't, but that is besides the point.

There is some very exciting embryonic stem cell work being done. Most of it is done with Mouse ES cells, and a good chunk of it not in the U.S. So, I supplied lists of articles and titles and authors for a handful of cool new ES studies published in the last few months. Most of them were done with mouse cells, most of them were not dne in this country. A couple of them checked non-embryonic stem cells to see how they might work. Answer? Not so well.

I completely expect to be lambasted for this, or to be met with hurt. Oh well. It seems that I can't not do it. I want to set the facts straight.