A conservative health care plan

I'd be very interested to hear what any conservative American proposes to do about health care. The starting place is to acknowledge the problem.

We have a terrible infant mortality rate -- 6.3 per 1000 per year, over twice as high as the leading nations (Scandinavian countries, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong). We're ranked somewhere below places like Slovenia, Portugal and -- yes -- Cuba. Check this out at any site you like; Wikipedia includes the list from the CIA World Factbook, which says we rank 46th in the world, just ahead of Belarus, Lithuania and Cyprus. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate)

Do the conservatives disagree with this? No.

We have the highest health care bills in the world. (1) Many people don't have insurance to cover the cost of early tests and preventative care, so the ultimate costs of care are higher than they should be. (2) The overhead costs are way too high, due to the administrative costs of HMOs and other insurers, and because of an antiquated tort system which has driven the premiums for malpractice insurance through the roof.

Do the conservatives disagree with this? No.

Some of us (me included) have outstanding care -- I'm covered by Blue Cross / Blue Shield at a relatively modest cost, because my employer is fairly generous. I've never been turned down by my insurer for any test ever requested by my physician.

But I have friends who pay over $10,000 per year in insurance premiums -- healthy, retired people with no previous conditions. And we all know someone who has been denied a necessary treatment because of cost.

Do the conservatives disagree with this? No.

Inadequate support for preventative medicine and early treatment end up costing us billions. It's not clear how quickly those costs would drop under the president's plan. But over the long run, they're going to destroy us financially, unless we do something.

Do the conservatives disagree with this? No.

So, tell me, what did the conservatives propose after defeating Clinton's plan? Nothing. What do they propose now? Nothing. Why? Because they're frightened by the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies, who are spending millions to defeat a plan that will cost them profits -- profits that are part of our high health cost.

Many countries have successful systems that mix private options with public options. So do we - Medicare and Medicaid. It's funny how those who keep screaming that Obama wants to destroy your options aren't screaming about how we should eliminate the "socialist" Medicare and Medicaid programs. Those programs have been the only thing between many elderly people and poverty.

Do the conservatives disagree with this? No.

I don't know the solution to the health care problem. But an honest discussion of options would seem a logical thing for us to engage in. With regard to a public option that would force the insurance companies and drug manufacturers to compete -- isn't that one of the Republicans favorite words? It seems to me something that deserves serious consideration at the least.

I ask again, one last time, what do conservatives propose to do?

Piety

How did a religion that began with a focus on kindness, service and gentleness -- unselfishness -- become so preoccupied with the most selfish of all actions: saving one's own soul and getting into heaven?

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,

et lux perpetua luceat eis!

Cum sanctis tuis in aeternum,

quia pius es.

Give them eternal rest, Lord,

and shine eternal light upon them!

With thy saints forever,

for Thou art good.

quia pius es -- for thou art good.

pius  =  dutiful, conscientious; godly, holy; good, upright  (Collins Latin Dictionary).

pious  =  devoutly religious; making a hypocritical display of virtue; dutiful or loyal [archaic]  (New Oxford American Dictionary).

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It was, of course, Christ's own church that corrupted his message. By the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Catholic Church was telling its members that, if they didn't follow the church's dictates, they would burn in hell. They were damned by original sin, and the path to heaven lay through the Church:  prayer, ritual, and giving one's assets to the Church, rather than by service to one's fellow beings and giving directly to the poor. The Church accumulated land, gold and power. The poor and powerless sank into ignorance and misery, comforted with the promise of eternal life with all God's saints, if and only if the Church interceded with Him for them.

Then, flickers of light with Gutenberg and Luther. Literacy, the right to read God's word oneself, the right to pray directly to Him without earthly or saintly intermediaries. Renaissance.  Enlightenment. Intelligence seen as a gift from God, rather than a tool of Satan.

Progress, the end of slavery, the right of people to rule themselves -- eventually all people, regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

And today?  What a wonderful and terrible world!  There are lots of people who are pious in the original way -- dutiful, good, kind, generous, loving. And there are a lot whose piety is no more than a hypocritical display of virtue. Churches that serve God by serving the poorest and weakest among us, and churches that serve only the powerful, and themselves.

If only all Christians would stop worrying about saving their own butts and getting into heaven ... and simply strive to be pius.

summer is a-cummin

End of the semester.  The only people happier than the students are the faculty.

I should face a string of days with plenty of time for writing.  I've got to make major progress on The Book, a couple of manuscripts need polishing and submitting, and I've got a couple of review articles to write.

But the first month is already gone -- finals were over and grades posted by the end of April, and the new students arrive before labor day -- and I've gotten far too little writing done. A week-long trip to the west coast was interesting (UCLA, Sandia Labs and a NASA meeting in Phoenix) and offered some fun (time with old Peace Corps friends in Albuquerque), but it added to the backlog of stuff on my desk, out from under which I'm just emerging.

To complicate matters, May has been mostly beautiful, when it wasn't raining.  I sit at our new big table in the recently closed in back porch / sunroom, listening to birds calling across the neighborhood and hearing music from downstairs, where Marie is working in her studio. I'm thinking that it's time to open the bar...

How does (the other) one...?

After a long weekend with a friend -- a good friend -- visiting us from out of town, I wonder how (the other) one tells one that one has a habit that is irritating.  A habit that might need changing...

In this case, the habit is talking on and on about stuff that might be interesting if there were an exchange of ideas, but that becomes increasingly tedious as one rambles on and on.

One talks about oneself, and (the other) one wonders, is one is interested at all in (the other) one?

Will there ever be a break in which (the other) one can interject something?  And if there is, will one actually care?

Will one ever ask a question that hints, however vaguely, at some passing interest in (the other) one?

Will one ever ask a question which, when (the other) one gives an answer, will actually be of interest to one, rather than just an excuse for one to move on to the next monologue about one's self?

Should (the other) one just wedge one's way into the conversation, pushing one aside and telling a story of (the other) one's own experience that compares to one's?  Is conversation just to be a shoving match?

Or should (the other) one express (the other) one's concern to one?  And, if so, how?

Should (the other) one take one aside later and tactfully suggest that one sometimes dominates the conversation a bit much?  that others, even others other than (the other) one, have become a bit bored, perhaps?

If (the other) one does this, what is the probability that one would appreciate being made aware of this?

Should (the other) one be really blunt and ask one to shut the fuck up once in a while?

Well, one went back home, and life is back to normal for (the other) one...

Philly and Ann Arbor

A long weekend (last weekend), a couple of days in Philadelphia with Ian and Mandy, followed by a couple in Ann Arbor with Sarah.

It is such a delight to see our kids doing so well, and so excited about their lives. Ian's a good man -- doing well at a job that he'd prefer not to do, to provide support for the two of them. He was always a reliable, hard worker once he committed to a job. He's thinking hard about what he wants to do next, and where he'd like to go in the long run. He's gotten inspired about the possibility of historical restoration, which would combine his love of history with an artistic profession (architecture). Mandy's working her tail off at University of the Arts, loving every exhausting minute. Well, almost every one. And Sarah's thriving at the University of Michigan.

We arrived in Philly on the day that the student show went up -- Mandy's first exhibition at UA. She was done with the printing, but not with all the stitching that goes into her piece. It's a sweet graphic tale, and very nicely done to these non-expert eyes. But she got pretty badly beaten up at the critique the next day. She had to leave the room and go to her studio space for a good cry, and when Marie, Ian and I got to their apartment after our day at Penn's Landing, she was sound asleep, making up for the very long days she'd been working. It was really good that Marie could be there to provide her with some perspective on the process.

Even I tried to contribute something. I told her how we beat our graduate students up at their written and oral exams, particularly when they're defending their thesis proposals. It's painful, but an essential part of developing both a sharp set of self-critical skills, and a thick skin. Any creative person -- artist or scientist -- is putting himself out there in a very vulnerable place, and it can be pretty painful sometimes. You're so invested in what you've done -- your vision -- and your ego is on the line, too, in terms of the technical skills you have brought to the task of executing the work that shows your vision.

One big ego issue is intelligence. Although the intelligences of the artist and the scientist have different forms, we're all bright, or we wouldn't be in the art game or the science game. And many of us have had a lifetime of strokes from parents, teachers and peers, telling us how bright we are. So it's really painful when we fall short in others' eyes.

Sometimes rejection comes from people we know but don't really have a lot of respect for. That still hurts, because we know that there are others who do respect their opinions.  Sometimes rejection comes from people we don't know very well. That hurts even more, because we don't know enough about them to easily dismiss their criticisms. But what really hurts is when we get rejected by someone whose opinion we do value. After such occasions, how many times have I asked myself "Why do I do this to myself???"

Ian and Marie and I had a day of tourism together while Mandy was preparing for, and then enduring, the critique of her work. We started our morning with the Seaport Museum, which was pretty cool. But the best parts were lunch, and visiting two warships after lunch.

Lunch was at the City Tavern, a reproduction of the Inn where the founding fathers often ate and drank. Waiters in knee britches, etc. I expected it to be tacky and touristy, but since it was a slow day, it was actually really nice. I'd commented on the bus headed toward the waterfront that I hoped for sauerkraut and sausages for lunch. By coincidence, the chef at the City Tavern is German, and there were some great sausages and great sauerkraut. With a pint of I-forget-which of the colonial brews, I was one happy camper!

Then to the ships...

I really like museums that feature art, or history, or anything military, or stuff related to engineering/industrial prowess. So I'm a real sucker for warships that you can walk through, because they give three out of four. We visited two of those at Penn's Landing: the Olympia, Admiral Dewey's flagship in the Philippines and later one of TR's White Fleet, and the Becuna, a WWII sub. (The latter even included some cartoons and other graphic memoribilia from the men who served on her, so it was a four for four experience...

Fortunately, Ian gets off on this stuff, too. Marie tends to be put off by the ultimate purpose of these beasts, but she humored us and enjoyed the elegantly paneled officers' mess on board the Olympia, at least after her fashion, while Ian and I wandered around the rest of this rather sweet old lady of the sea. Marie did stay topside while Ian and I prowled through the Becuna, however. Between her abhorrence of war and a tendency to claustrophobia, this boat had no appeal for her.

Like most guys who walk through these things, I try to imagine what it must have been like. Forty or more men sharing a single toilet, one minute showers once per week, plus the constant stink of diesel fuel, oil and fumes. Days, weeks, perhaps months of sheer boredom, punctuated by hours of fear and tension, and sometimes of sheer terror. Although I never wanted to serve on a sub (although it did sound really cool!), I was, like most boys of my generation, seduced by the prospect of serving topside. Since I was raised in a time when the draft was still in full force, I always thought I'd have to serve. I was a patriot, even David looked good in dress whites, and the sea beckoned...  I thought that I would become a man the first time I landed a jet plane on the deck of an aircraft carrier. My last semester at Berkeley I took the exams for Navy OCS and passed everything that I needed for flight school. Except my sitting height, which would have precluded my flying one or two of the fighters.

Thank God I changed my mind at the last possible minute and didn't show up for induction in San Francisco in January 1963. I'd made every commitment except actually signing. When the Viet Nam war ended and the prisoners got off the transport planes at Subic Bay, the Navy pilots all looked just like me -- tall, skinny, crew cuts. Hell, I wanted to sail around the Mediterranean and flirt with Italian girls, not drop bombs on people with whom I had no quarrel.

I was a little embarrassed the first time I boarded the Alabama in Mobile, in my late thirties. The first thing I thought was, "Damn! There sure are a lot of guns!!" Then, when we went onto the armor deck, the one beneath 16 inches of steel, I couldn't help wondering what it must have been like down there when hit by a bomb, even one small enough that it didn't penetrate the armor. I say I was embarrassed, because it was as if I'd never really thought about the meaning of the damned ship.

-------------------

Our time with Sarah was very full - we walked all over campus (well, you can't really walk over all the Michigan campus, perhaps in this lifetime), and through much of Ann Arbor. Sarah's dorm, where we met her roommate and some friends, the arboretum (twice), the Union 

(I love Big Ten Unions from the 20's and 30's), the Natural Science Museum, an a capella concert by Amazing Blue, a compelling movie (The Class, based on the true story of the difficulties of an idealistic young teacher in a multiracial / multicultural school in a tough Parisian neighborhood, starring the actual teacher and his students), a great Japanese meal, an OK meal at Black Pearl ("seafood and martinis" should have been a warning)...  She's loving UM and doing really well, but like lots of students today, she is really stressed a lot of the time.

Billy, Part 2

Suspicious that there might be a second cat under the house, I reset the trap Sunday morning.

Last night, I climbed into bed beside a sleeping Marie and closed my eyes. I was quickly headed down and out. But I got brought back up by a thump that I thought came from the furnace duct. I sat up and waited.

A moment later I heard a faint meowing, and I knew there was a second cat. I got up, put on pants, shoes and a sweater, grabbed a flashlight and headed for the basement.

When I opened the door from the basement into the crawl space, I found the trap empty, except for the undisturbed cat food bait; the entrance gate was still open. "Shit," I thought, "a smart one." I figured he'd avoided the trap, either because he'd seen the other cat in it, or because he was kept away by the still strong scent of cat piss.

But when I shone the flashlight into the deeper recesses of the crawl space, there he was -- Billy -- looking right at me. I took the light out of his eyes and called to him, and he came right out. He stopped to rub against my legs and chat with me and, once I'd closed the door to the crawl space, he did the "Billy stand": rising up on his back legs to invite my hand to his head, then standing as high as he can to intensify his pleasure. And mine.

I let him out of the basement, but he hung around, waiting for a handout. So I gave him a small bowl of kitty chow. That was probably a bad idea, because he's a well-known mooch throughout this part of the neighborhood, but I was so damned glad to see him clean and sleek and healthy and happy.

Welcome back, Billy!

Qualifying Exams

Minmin and Yingying have just retreated to their respective exam rooms, to begin working on their comprehensive written exams.

We struggle, as a faculty, to come up with the best way of evaluating second-year graduate students as they make the transition into full-fledged researchers. They have to do two things: First, they must demonstrate a sufficiently broad and deep knowledge of the material they need to know to do research on their chosen problem. Second, they have to write and defend an intelligent research proposal, showing that they are familiar with the state of knowledge in their field, that they can identify an important problem, and that they can choose a logical approach to solving that problem; there must also be sufficient preliminary data to convince us that they can carry out the proposed research.

The real problem is the first part -- what, exactly, is "a sufficiently broad and deep knowledge of the material they need to know"? My students need to have strong backgrounds in biology and/or chemistry and/or physics and/or biochemistry and/or biophysics and/or computer programming and/or mathematics and/or ...  Hell, they need to know everything I know, and everything I should know but don't!

The really hard part is testing the ability to think. The written qualifier isn't supposed to be a regurgitation, although it almost always contains huge doses of that. It's supposed to demonstrate the student's ability to apply what he/she knows to new problems. But it's really hard to design questions that test that.

--------------

I remember my own written comprehensive exam. It ranged from overly simple to delightfully tough.

The overly simple part was a mechanics question that shouldn't have bothered an undergraduate: a bowling ball is launched with velocity v0 and without rolling, so it slides along the floor; after a while it is rolling without sliding. If there were no loss of kinetic energy due to friction, what would the final velocity be?

The delightful question was: Suppose the electron had spin 3/2. Discuss. (b) Suppose the electron had spin 1. Discuss.  I loved this, because I could tackle anything from the structure of stars to the periodic table. I chose the latter and did pretty well, at least on part a. I blew the second part, because I forgot the difference between fermions and bosons. Shouldn't I have failed, just for that?

I had lunch with the usual crowd the day after the exam. John Merrill, a young assistant professor was always part of the group. When I commented that I loved the question, John admitted that he'd written it. I asked him what the answer was, and he said, "I have no idea. I'm looking forward to reading your answer and then trying to figure it out myself."

The exam took two days, if I remember correctly. When I got home after the second day and was relaxing and celebrating that it was over, Eric Jakobsson called me. "Congratulations!!" he said. When I protested that I'd barely finished the exam and didn't yet know the outcome, he said, "Regardless of whether you pass or fail, I'm congratulating you, because right now you know more physics than you ever have or ever will again!"

Billy

Awful experience first thing this morning.

I'd closed up a hole in the foundation. Some animal (I suspected a cat) had dug through so it could get into the basement. It had to be fairly recent, as we only finished the renovation of our back porch 3-4 months ago, and George, Tom and I had all checked out every square inch of the outside of the house several times. (They'd done a number of small repairs.)

I worried that I might have trapped some animal under there -- probably Billy, because I knew he doesn't sleep in Tommy's house at night -- particularly after I heard a caterwaul only a few hours after placing the trap. I was sure it was coming from under the house, and Sweetpea ran to one of the furnace ducts...

So I borrowed a trap from Atlanta Pet Rescue (from which we'd gotten Wally and Lumpy), baited it and put it into the crawl space. There was still no sign of activity when I checked after dinner last night.

But this morning, when I opened the door between the basement and the crawl space, I was met by a jumping cage and violent spitting. I thought for a moment it was a raccoon, but it was Billy.

We'd gotten acquainted with Billy very slowly over the years. He's one of the nine (I think) cats that Tom (and Diane, before she died) kept. 

Skid lived on our porch, convinced it was his. He was old and filthy, but sweet.  Though Sebastian tried to befriend him, Skid would back away when Sebastian came out. One morning, Tom found Skid's body on the walkway I'd put in between our sidewalk and the driveway.

Felton wanted to live on our porch, but Skid wouldn't let him. But he would stroll along the path to our water faucet, haughty, wary of me. He'd then wander back home, or on to Carolyn's house, often stopping to spray our steps or one of our bushes before he moved on. I put a bowl under the faucet and kept it filled for him – I've never known a cat who drank so much water. For over a year he wouldn't let me touch him, even though I would rinse out and re-fill the bowl each time we met; he'd wait until I moved away, then stroll over and take a deep draught. Gradually we became friends, on his terms. After many months, when I'd come out, he would deign to roll around happily on the sidewalk, just out of reach, but move away if I got too close. Finally I got to touch him, but I would have to work my way slowly over to where he was lolling. After Skid died, he began sleeping on the wicker couch on our porch and, to demonstrate his approval of our relationship, he stopped spraying the plants and the steps; now he sprays the porch right in front of the door. For the past year or two, he has been meeting me on the steps, and he's become downright affectionate. 

Billy was a cute and very rambunctious nearly-full-grown cat when we first met him. He'd hide in the bushes and play with a stick or leaves, just out of reach. Tommy told us that he'd use the cat door to get food, but he spent more and more time outdoors, apparently intimidated or abused by the other cats. I coaxed and coaxed, and I was finally able to get him to come and rub against my legs as I sat on the steps. At first he wouldn't let me touch him -- I'd get a swipe and a slash if I tried. Later he let me pet him some, but he remained skitterish, prone to a wild-eyed look and a swipe. His preferred mode was to drop down on a stair or the sidewalk beyond my reach, roll around passionately for a while, then come and rub against my legs, maybe get a few strokes, then retreat to a lower step or the sidewalk, just out of reach, and resume his rolling. Two or three iterations of this, and he'd take flight.

This morning's Billy was a completely different animal, violent, aggressive, and clearly terrified. He scared the hell out of me. I'd never seen any creature acting like that. The cage contained only fragments of the styrofoam bowl into which I'd put the bait, along with pieces of the plastic sheet that used to line the cellar floor below the cage, which he'd shredded. There was the awful stench of cat piss over everything.

After putting on a glove for protection (even though the mesh of the cage was fine enough to prevent him reaching out), I carried the cage out on to the back stoop. He was hissing and thrashing about the whole time. When I opened the trap door, he took off across the yard and disappeared.

Poor Billy. I'd not seen him since the last warm days of fall, and I'm sure this experience has rendered him completely feral. I'm sure he'll never come calling again...

Spring Break!

Today I finished the twentieth class (out of thirty) in my Molecular Modeling course – but who's counting? It's going well, but I'm tired, and I'm ready for Spring Break, which is next week. (It actually starts for me tomorrow, because I've set aside the full day to stay home and work on The Book.) When I was a student, it never occurred to me that the only person in the class who was more ready for breaks than me was probably the professor...

This point in the course marks a sharp boundary. We've finished the stuff that was reasonably well prepared coming into this year (because much of it has been there since the first time I taught the course in 2004, and it's been growing and evolving ever since). We've finished six tutorials with Oscar, the nice little program that Geoff Rollins wrote for me last year. Lying ahead is the last third of the course, the part through which I've sort of stumbled and faked things in the past, or which I've hoped to cover but never actually gotten to... Over the break the kids will carry out their first NAMD simulations, on two models of myoglobin (with four xenon molecules), an in vacuo case, and a solvated case. I've got Burak working hard to develop two or three more NAMD tutorials – the kids will have to do about one per week – and we'll finish with the structure prediction problem and the free energy perturbation simulation that Geoff developed last year. But I still have ten lectures ahead, none of which is really solid... Some of the material covers things I know little about. In particular, there are substantial gaps in my knowledge of recent literature. I need to identify appropriate material – then actually sit down and digest it. So I've still got my work cut out for me.

I love the material, and I like many of the students. And of course I like standing up in front of any group and talking... I think one of my strengths as a teacher is that I care how the kids respond and how I come across. I always try to get things to an appropriate level for them. My biggest weakness is that I strongly prefer the best students – I love it when some kid pulls some insight that I hadn't thought of out of thin air, but I get frustrated pretty quickly when the slower ones don't grasp the most basic things. Since I wear my heart on my sleeve in everything I do, I suspect that I'm not very good at disguising my prejudices in this area. And I've long believed that the best teachers are those that bring the slower students up to their potential, whatever it may be – anybody can "teach" the bright ones who figure things out on their own. So I think I'm a decent teacher, but not a really good one.

Teaching is hard work. Satisfying, but hard. It's amazing how much time I have to spend preparing for two 2-hour classes each week, even though I've taught much of the material in the past five years. Part of the problem is that I procrastinate, so the day of the class (and often the night before), I'm racing to get something done for class, often finishing at the last minute. And part of the stress comes from the fact that I'm too much of a perfectionist when it comes to details of figures – I rework and rework my PowerPoint presentations and handouts far more than I should.

And one special part of the difficulty this year is that I really want my syllabus (and figures) to crystallize into the form this material will take in The Book...

Weekend

Marie and I are putzing around late Sunday afternoon, cleaning up and arranging stuff in the new back room, but mostly being very lazy, when the phone rings. It's Eileen, just leaving a meeting at All Saints, and she wants to know if it's cocktail time yet.

It's a pleasure having the kind of friends who will occasionally drop in, and who are pleased if you drop in occasionally. Eileen is one of those. I didn't get the hole in the basement wall patched, so a squirrel or a cat may be coming in for another day or two, but it was delightful mixing martinis and sitting on the porch, drinking, munching, chatting, laughing.

Marie and I got gentle vengeance by scanning through some of the guys on the dating service (or whatever you call it) that Eileen has been using, and then persuading her to let us send four of them messages that she'd be interested in talking and maybe meeting. Eileen admitted later that she was pleased we'd done it, because she'd always waited for the guys to contact her first.

I have to call Eileen and tell her about the docent at the Birmingham Museum of Art that I wanted to meet back when I was single. After a noon group tour, I found someone who knew her and could give me her number, and I called her and asked her out. She seemed genuinely sorry that she was busy that weekend, and she urged me to call her again. I told her that I'd taken the first chance, and now it was her turn. When she replied that she couldn't call a guy and ask him out, I told her that there was no way then that we'd ever really hit it off, because I was only interested in women capable of an egalitarian relationship. She again told me she hoped that I would call her again, and I said that I hoped she'd make the next call.  She didn't, and the rest is history.

Boston

To Boston for Biophysical Society Meeting Feb 27 - March 3.  COLD. Things started out poorly when I told the taxi driver I was at the Westin next to the Convention Center and he took us to the new Convention Center, right near the airport. I re-directed him to the Westin Copley Square, which is near the Hynes Convention Center, where the BpS always meets -- or always had. Turns out the meeting this year was at the new one, so I was stuck with commuting, $15 and 15 minutes by cab, or 45 minutes by subway...

Phone call from Phil Nelson while I was en route -- to the office, message relayed by Bee. When I called him back he told me that David Beveridge had to cancel his appearance at the Monday discussion group on the use of computers in graduate and undergraduate education, and he asked me if I could fill in. (David had told him about the tutorials in my modeling course.)

Dinner with Jack Johnson on Friday night. As always, long, good conversation, ranging over science and life. Drinks at the bar before dinner, then two bottles of a very nice Pinot Noir with dinner. I haven't had that much to drink in forever. I knew it was time to go home when I could hear myself unable to pronounce "taxi" without a slur. How hard a word is that?

Saturday night I made the mistake of meeting Burak at the Society Mixer, hoping to meet someone I know to join us for dinner, forgetting that almost none of the old farts go to the mixer. (I'd invited Phil to join us when we talked on the phone, and he'd initially accepted; he cancelled on Saturday when he decided not to fly to Boston until Sunday.) Ended up with just Burak, Anton and me at a very good seafood restaurant. I was disappointed that I failed to introduce them to anyone at all.

A few good talks Sunday morning, though there was direct overlap between the only two sessions that interested me. Spent the afternoon getting ready for my talk on Monday.

Sunday night dinner with Summers Scholl, the editor of my text, plus two of her compadres from Garland, along with three other authors; Steve White among them, but a week later I've forgotten the other two names. Legal Seafood for the second time in three days.

Monday morning slept in. E-mail etc. at the hotel in the morning, then lunch with Jason Mears before the 1:30 Ed Committee session. It went OK. Phil Nelson, Dorothy Becket and me. Then a OneToOne session at the Boylston Apple Store, followed by an interview with Eric Downes, an MIT student who visited Tech over the weekend on a recruiting visit. He's interested in stuff at the other end of the spectrum from me and came back interested in Joe Montoya among others. I left Joe a voice mail telling him that if Eric ends up in his lab, Joe owes me a drink or three.

A delightful dinner with Rami Osman at the Neptune Oyster House before Dorothy Kerns's National Lecture. I'd heard from several people what a great speaker she is and what wonderful work she does, but she had far too many slides, all far too cluttered, and it was a rambling disappointing talk.

I've not been crazy about BpS meetings for several years, and this one reminded me why...

Wally and Lumpy

Jesus! The herd is growing out of control!

Last Saturday, after ordering a 90-inch long table for the back porch and after tacos at Taquería del Sol, we stopped to inspect a doggie day care place, thinking it might be good for Sweetpea to spend a day a week in the company of dogs. We never got inside, because Atlanta Pet Rescue is right next door. We'd agreed when Sebastian died that we'd love to get two cats someday -- someday -- but not until we'd slowed down on travel a bit. (Two so they could keep each other company.) Sweetpea is lonely, so, more recently, we'd been planning on getting a cat -- one cat -- to keep her company.

But I got the impulse to look at kittens. Must have been the margarita. I knew when we went in that we'd come out with two. Now we're knee-deep in cat litter, and President Obama doesn't have to worry about the economy, because our bailout plan for PetSmart has driven their stock price up significantly in the past few days.

Now the first task of the morning and the last of the evening are milking, gathering eggs, slopping, walking, loving, feeding, and cleaning up poop. I took Sweetpea out for a long walk this morning. As I collected her morning treasures in a plastic bag, I pointed out to her that I don't even take my wife out for a walk before my own breakfast...

I had a dream a few nights ago in which the western wall of our dining room was solid sheetrock, rather than windows, and there were two or three long, weeping stains on the wall, where water was somehow getting in and dripping down the wall. Night before last the dream came back, but the water was flooding out of long horizontal cracks, pulling chunks of sheetrock off and showing lathe underneath. In an instant the water went from covering a few square feet of the floor to running over it to a depth of a couple of inches. There was a Mexican workman in the other room, and I started yelling to him for help. I could hear him laughing as I kept yelling, "Do something! Do something! What should we do???" Through his laughter he said, "Turn the water off!" I had to think hard to remember that the key for turning off the master water valve at the street is propped up against the wall in the basement, in a designated and easy-to-find place.

Jesus! What are we doing???

The Marching Abominables

I started attending rehearsals of the Atlanta Seed and Feed Marching Abominable last fall. It's a serious but very funky marching band, and I figured they needed an accordion about as much as I needed them. 

At the break that first night, I was asked what I did the previous summer (a standard question), how I found out about the Abominables (another), and then told that I had to sing or play an Elvis song. While thinking about it, I told them that I'd not imagined what a delight it would be to be an accordionist in a marching band, because, like everyone else, I get sheet music with only single notes -- no multiples on the right hand, no chords for the left. It's almost easy! Then I played and began singing "Love Me Tender" and they all joined in singing.

The music is harder than I thought it would be. Never having played in a band, I initially had trouble keeping track of multi-measure silences, so I didn't know where to come in. Now I can calculate with the best of them, but I have trouble keeping track of where we are when I'm trying to play a tricky part -- one that's fast, syncopated, or with a swing tempo.

But I really enjoy it. I keep going back, week after week. I'm gradually catching on. I've almost memorized our (I started to say "their" but am determined to belong) signature song, "Sing, "Sing, Sing".

I played my first gig with them a couple of weeks ago -- the Atlanta Jugglers' Festival at the Yaarab Shriner's Temple, the back of which is right across the street from home. That's me in the back of the rest of the woodwinds, in the fedora Ian gave me. (I told them that the accordion is made of wood, so I must be a woodwind.) It was a hoot.

It was also the first time that I could hear myself play. The band is a true marching band, with plenty of brass and woodwinds and drums. We practice at the Little Five Points Community Center, in a room just like a high school band room. It's small and it's very noisy. I have to really pump it to hear myself. I started out with the flutes, in front of the trumpets, but moved across the room to get away from the strongest blats. One night, when I didn't have the music to something, I looked on to the music of the clarinetist next to me. I could occasionally hear faint sounds coming from my box, and they didn't sound entirely right. But it was only afterward that I learned how something with one sharp is actually in the key of F for a B-flat clarinet...

It was the same clarinetist who told me to stop worrying about whether or not I was playing the right note, or even in the right measure. "Just play whatever you want," he advised. I still don't know his name -- or hardly anyone else's, except Bruce and Charles (brooms), Bill Scott (trumpet -- and the only last name I know) and Tuba Diva (Souzaphone).

They're all very friendly. I told someone last Tuesday night that I wouldn't be joining them for the Mardi Gras performance tomorrow, and she was genuinely saddened.

It must be in my fate to be part of this. The morning of the Jugglers' gig, I met Marie and her Saturday morning run group at the Georgia Tech Starbuck's. When I walked in, they were playing "Sing, Sing, Sing" on the PA. It must be fate.

After rehearsals, a regular group repairs to Manuel's Tavern for beer and fellowship. I go about half the time, because I want to get to know some of them better. I'm hoping that I can find someone with whom to make music on a regular basis. Any kind of music, but preferably something where I can be heard. Or at least hear myself.

Weekend

Tangled Valentine's Day. I had no definite plans except to make some music and probably work on next week's classes while Marie was working on ceramics for her March show. But she called right after her Saturday morning walk group -- as I was finishing coffee and Thursday's NYT crossword -- to tell me that Eileen needed to take her car to the Gorilla, because she'd scratched it while scrubbing off bird poop with the plasticky side of a kitchen sponge. 

As part of my efforts at saving water because of our awful drought, I've not washed my car since a year ago October. It was pretty grodey and it would embarrass me to loan it to Eileen like that, so I took it to Cactus. I'd just gotten a cup of coffee in the waiting room when I heard a horn honking repeatedly and knew right away it was the car alarm on my Camry. (It had gone off a week ago, and I had to get the AAA guy to come and point out to me that it could be reset if only I used the primary key, instead of the valet key I usually use.)  Naturally I continued to use the valet key, so I had to wait for Marie to bring me the primary one yesterday...  The Cactus guys were completely unperturbed by the honking horn and the fact that they couldn't turn the steering wheel. They got it through the wash and pretty clean inside before Marie showed up.

I ran Eileen up to the Gorilla, then she and I decided to have lunch.  It was too early to go to Taqueria del Sol, so she first took me to the Savvy Snoot, a furniture consignment place off of Huff Road. I fell in love with one piece, a hutch made from reclaimed 2" barn pine, and the guy is supposed to call me with a quote for a 9 foot table of the same style. (We've decided to go with a big work/dining table for the new back room.)

Afternoon was choppy, too. Liz Mansour came by with the papers on Sweetpea for us to sign. I'd barely touched the accordion when Eileen called, ready to go pick up her car at the Gorilla.

Dinner with my true love at La Tavola, which Marie points out has kind of become our version of Bottega / Bottega Cafe here in Atlanta. Then reading and cognac by the fire before bed.

----

A work/play day today. I spent a big chunk of it on the back room, vacuuming, cleaning, putting down the new rug etc., while Marie worked in the basement. Then a long walk, the two of us and Sweetpea, to lunch outdoors at Metro Fresh and then through the park, where the dog handled herself pretty well. We're anxious to work with the trainer and get her ready to deal easily with other dogs.

I ran out to Decatur and picked up what I hope Marie will regard as a great lamp tomorrow, her birthday... Dinner with "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", which I enjoyed the second time every bit as much as the first.

Never did work on classes...

Sweetpea

Do I want a dog? Do WE want a dog?

Marie's been thinking we need a dog to increase home security. A big bark at strangers outside would be a deterrent to trouble, and Sweetpea has that, though she uses it rarely.

Jamie, a friend of Eileen's, rescues unowned dogs and places them in good homes. We'd visited her house and rejected Edgar, a very aggressive dog who is otherwise indifferent to humans. (Sweetpea has a small scar on her nose, a souvenir of the few days she boarded with Edgar.) So we were on Jamie's watch list...

Sweetpea adopted a homeless man who frequents the sidewalk in front of Jamie's office. He was asleep ("read 'passed out'," says Jamie) and woke with Sweetpea's head on his lap. Jamie worked to persuade him to give her up for adoption, while a social worker was simultaneously working on him to persuade him to go into rehab. When he finally agreed, Jamie took the dog to the vet, where they found her in good health (and spayed) except for a mild urinary tract infection. And they found a chip in her.

They phoned the number in Jonesville given in the chip, several times, without success. Then they sent a registered letter, which was never signed for. And so Sweetpea came for a visit...

She's very sweet, housebroken, very easy-going, doesn't chew anything, and she sleeps through the night!  Well, at least she goes to her bed voluntarily in the late evening, and she's still there, or on a chair, when we awake in the morning. It's been very cold. I gave her a good belly rub after my shower one morning, then offered to put her out into the back yard while I dressed. She looked skeptically at me and went back to bed. I told Marie that Sweetpea is definitely related to her...

Corina's Visit

Corina flew in Thursday evening. She's a senior in high school and looking for programs in aerospace engineering. Although she'll probably stay in California (UC Davis and Cal Poly are her first choices), I thought we should bring her here for a look at Georgia Tech, just for comparison. This is a feeble excuse for having her visit us, but hey, any excuse works for us!

She's a delightful kid, easy and open with us. We hit it off extra well the first evening, when I pulled out two accordions and showed her how the damned things work. Her music training really shows - no problem with rhythm, and she instinctively determined the locations of keys on the right hand by feel, rather than looking at the keyboard (which is what I've always done!). I've been inspired to stop looking and to learn how to do it right myself. That will be a big help, since I can't see the lower half of the keyboard with my current favorite glasses...

Within about an hour she was playing "Holiday Waltz" almost without error and was well along with "The Brave Cowboy". How is it that these accordion masterpieces aren't on the radio every day? Or at least on YouTube?

She and I toured the campus yesterday morning. First an interview with the Undergraduate Advisor in the School of Aerospace Engineering, Dr. Sankar. Teresa, a 13-year old from Missouri, and her dad were there too. He lives in Atlanta, and Teresa's going to go to high school here. Dr. Sankar was charming, witty and informative, but the interview was in an undecorated windowless small conference room in the double-ugly cinder block Guggenheim Building.

Then on to the Bill Moore Student Success Center, under the west stands of Bobby Dodd stadium. We got to gaze over the football field from the presidential suite, and Corina imagined herself marching and playing trumpet with the GT Marching Band. Only four student/parent pairs showed up for the slide show and pitch by a charming guy who serves on the Admissions Committee. Couldn't tell if he was a student or a young staff member. (We missed the first couple of minutes when he introduced himself.)

Finally the walking tour across the cold, sunny campus. I learned a few things, like the fact that several of the buildings have exterior design features related to the disciplines inside: the bands of bricks around the Manufacturing Research Center do look like conveyor belts after you're told to look for them, and you don't even have to squint to see that the north façade of Boggs is at least shaped like the periodic table (again, once you're told...). The guide, a senior ME major, exagerrated the George P. Burdell stories a lot, but I suppose that's appropriate. Still, it's hard to believe that he was ever a finalist for Time's Man of the Year.

Lunch at Octane. Marie wanted us to do the Cyclorama, but I insisted on a 30 minute nap, so we came home. I slept nearly an hour, and Corina was zonked for the rest of the afternoon.

Dinner at the Woodside Grill was delightful, though they're clearly really struggling. Excellent food, but high prices and a lousy location. Hard to imagine many people paying $50+ apiece for dinner when there are a string of "Adult" businesses so near.

We closed the evening with "Slumdog Millionaire", a film I enjoyed immensely. I'll have to see it again before I can decide whether it's really a great film, or just a really good one.

---------

Saturday was a lazy morning, lunch at down-and-dirty Daddy D'z, and a tour of the exhibit of the terra cotta army of Emperor Qin's tomb at the High Museum, dinner in the mezzanine at Dogwood (a new place on Peachtree a couple of blocks south of North; very nicely reminiscent of Bottega in Birmingham), then accordion practice before bed.

Sunday morning a cold walk to the Flying Biscuit for breakfast, then through Piedmont Park home, an hour of accordion practice, and then to the airport to bid our GREAT niece adieu!

Spring!

Mid-60s clear, sunny spring day -- the first warm day since the solstice, so it's the first unofficial day of spring. I love the South!

Took Rebecca and Anton to lunch at Zocalo today. She, Joe and the kids are visiting Atlanta, and she wanted to get together. So I bought lunch, plus a pitcher of margaritas. Coffee afterward at Caribou across the street. After saying goodbye to Anton and Rebecca, I decided to walk the long way home, up across Piedmont Park and down through our neighborhood. A gloriously beautiful day. It reminded me of a similar winter day 38 winters ago.

I had met Herb at a meeting in New Orleans and stopped off in Birmingham on my way home to interview with him for the postdoctoral position I later took. Mid-February, a beautiful day just like today. There was no way I was going to to to Birmingham -- Birmingham ALABAMA??? This was only seven years after Bombingham Sunday. And the steel mills were still tossing tens of tons of crud up into the sky every day.

When I flew back to New Hampshire that night, I missed my connection at La Guardia. Had to go down to -- what was it called? the Ferry Terminal? -- in downtown Manhattan, to catch a bus to White River Junction. It was the last bus, a milk run, so it stopped at every little town along the way. I got into White River about 2 am, and Gayle picked me up and drove us back to Sachem Village. Getting out of the car into the moonlit 15 degree night, with the world crunchy and cold beneath my feet, I thought, hey, maybe Alabama might not be so bad after all...

The next year, in midwinter, I flew from Birmingham to a meeting in Minneapolis. Landing at O'Hare, I looked out the window of the plane to see snow blowing horizontally across the hard, cold runway and thought, how did I ever live in this climate?

Today, January 23, the unofficial first day of spring. I do love the South!

Obamarama

What a thrill to watch the inauguration!

I'm an old white guy -- well, not OLD old, but I was 28 when Martin Luther King was assassinated. Old enough to remember serious arguments in college about equal rights. Some guy would always try to end the conversation by saying "Yes, but would you want your daughter to marry one?"

And now "one" is president!

Black kids were a very small minority at East Bakersfield High School, perhaps 5%, and "we" didn't socialize with "them" much. I never forgave Clevell Nichols for being (1) several inches shorter than me and (2) able to outjump me by several inches. White man's disease kept me from being first string center on the freshman basketball team, the Dirks. (OK, I couldn't shoot or dribble, either, so I wasn't even second string...) We had a few weeks of boxing in PE, and they paired us up with kids our own size when we sparred and when we did the mandatory one or two minutes in the ring. Troy Young was tall and skinny like me, but I was no fighter and no match for him. He was a very gentle soul, but he wasn't going to settle for a bad performance in the ring, so he tagged me a few times. I can still hear him saying after each punch landed, barely louder than a whisper, "Sorry, Steve!"

I remember the astonishment I felt one spring day at Cal when a beautiful black girl smiled at me. I wasn't astonished because she smiled, but because I thought she was beautiful. How blind I'd been...

Yes, Mr. President, your wife is indeed beautiful!

My generation would like to claim credit for the civil rights movement, but it was really my parents' generation that did it. Although Dr. King was only eleven years older than me, he was one of the younger ones. Rosa Parks was born the same year as my mother, and Joseph Lowery, who gave the closing prayer at the inauguration, was only eight years younger. Roy Wilkins was born in 1901, Thurgood Marshall in 1908, the same year as the most significant white civil rights leader, Lyndon Johnson.

Many whites of my parents' generation accepted separate but unequal, but they also had a disturbing sense that something was unfair about this. My generation had the same schizophrenic view, but the balance between acceptance of the status quo vs. the sense of unfairness was tilted toward the latter. This wasn't our doing, but the legacy of our parents' attitudes.

M & I attended the dedication of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in 1992. (I later told my folks that I would have never dreamed that I'd end up in Birmingham, singing "We Shall Overcome" in the 16th Street Baptist Church!)

In the Church after the dedication, Andrew Young told how, on the last day of the Birmingham protests, he first came to believe that the movement would actually succeed. Dr. King was in jail, along with several of the other leaders. The protesters gathered at the 16th St. Baptist Church, and Young was to lead their march to the jail, where they would pray, then disperse. Of course, they didn't have a permit. As they crossed Kelly Ingram Park, they came face-to-face with Bull Conner, who informed them that they couldn't proceed. Behind him stood armed police, along with Birmingham firemen manning hoses attached to huge nozzles mounted on tripods. Young, who described himself as not a courageous man, decided that it was too dangerous to continue, and that they should turn back.

He turned around to tell the marchers that they couldn't go on. He told us that, before he could speak, he saw the only thing scarier than armed policemen and fire hoses: hundreds of middle-aged and elderly black women, down on their knees praying.

Giving in to the less frightening path, he turned back around and started to walk forward. He was convinced that someone -- perhaps him -- was going to be killed. Then, he told us, his eyes met those of a white fireman. The huge nozzle, pointed right at him, dropped down just a few degrees. He realized that the white man was ashamed of what he was doing. That most whites were probably ashamed. In that moment, he began to believe that they would win.

And we all did.

Maureen Dowd had a wonderful column right after the election about white people all across the country asking black strangers how they felt about the election. She overheard a white man in a restaurant asking a black waitress if she had cried when she heard about Obama's victory. "She said she did, and he said he wept like a baby."

On election day, Marie and I had lunch at the Silver Diner Cafe, and I told the black cashier that I never thought I'd see an election like this one. She was perhaps a few years younger than me, and of course she agreed. I didn't know I was a stereotype headed for the NYT editorial page. Watching the returns that night just down the road from Hambidge, I didn't weep, but my eyes kept dripping all night. Talking alone with Marie, and in private, I have cried several times since. At Cathy and Don's, watching the inauguration while sipping Obamaramas, my eyes, like my heart, were again running over. 

My country, 'tis of thee!  Sweet, sweet, sweet land -- finally -- of liberty!!

Harvey Rules Six and Seven

M is reading "The Golden Notebook." I read it while on sabbatical in 1981. I remember little about it except that Anna decided to record her every activity and thought over the course of a single day. Inspired, I decided to do the same.

The first try didn't turn out very well. "I got up at whatever, I took a shower, I had Grape Nuts for breakfast..." That sort of thing. I decided that I needed to focus on my inner life, so I tried again the next day.

I carried a small spiral notebook with me to record things. Riding my bike along the bayou headed to U of H I'd think of something, so when I stopped at a traffic light, I'd take out the notebook and jot it down. Later, I'd see someone walking through campus, and that would remind me of something else. I'd make a note of that. Later still, something might remind me of one of my earlier thoughts. And even later I'd be reminded of what I'd been reminded of when I was thinking about what had reminded me of... I kept this up until late afternoon, when I couldn't stand the sucking vortex whirling inside my skull any longer.

When I got home that night, I poured myself the usual double manhattan -- I was drinking pretty heavily to drown my problems with CW -- and sat down at the typewriter to transcribe and expand on the notes. I worked late into the night until I thought that, if I kept it up much longer, I might lose my mind.

Rule Six: The unexamined life is not worth living. (Socrates)

Rule Seven: The over-examined life ain't so hot either.

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

So it is and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind.

Into the ground they go, the wise and the lovely.

Crowned with lilies and laurels they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.

Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.

A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,

A formula, a phrase remains – but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love –

They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses.

Elegant and curled is the blossom.

Fragrant is the blossom.

I know. But I do not approve.

More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down into the darkness of the earth they go.

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind.

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know. But I do not approve.

And I am not resigned.

     – Edna St. Vincent Millay

Bud Suddath

Bud died in 1992, and I still miss the guy and his outrageous sense of humor.

One beautiful spring morning when we were living in Vestavia, I was getting into my car to drive to work when I heard Bud teasing me in a singsong voice:  "I don't have to go to work today!  I don't have to go to work today!"

So I shot right back at him, "Yes, but you're dead!  Yooouuu're DEAD!!"

I know he appreciated that.

I Love a Good Funeral

I never attended a funeral as a kid, and I didn't understand funerals as a young man. But I responded to them instinctively. I'd always liked cemeteries.

The only important childhood friend I lost was Darla.  We'd gone together for a couple of years in high school, then broke up shortly after our arrival at Berkeley.  She was killed in a car accident during – I think – our junior year.  Like an idiot, I didn't go back to Bakersfield for the funeral. Fortunately, her mother called me when I was home for Christmas vacation and asked me to come and see her. She had a gift for me – Khalil Gibran's "The Prophet" – and another gift – advice. She told me how important funerals are, and how I should have at least called or written her and Darryl when Darla was killed.

No one died in my family until I was 31. Granny was the first. I was in New Hampshire just a few days shy of my PhD. I didn't have much money, and my folks weren't the kind of people to say "please come" and to buy me a plane ticket to California. So, like an idiot, I didn't go.

Pop wasn't keen on funerals. One afternoon when I was in high school, I went up to Greenlawn Cemetery to pick Darla up after work. (Her dad was the head funeral director there.) She wasn't ready to leave, so I walked through the cemetery. It dates back to the early 1930's, I think, and my Grandfather Harvey was buried in the oldest part -- he died while Ma was pregnant with me. I wandered around by the pond, where I found many markers from 1939 and 1940, but I didn't stumbled across Ed Harvey's grave, and I didn't ask for directions. That evening, Pop confirmed that I'd been in the right area. When I asked if he ever visited his father's grave, he said, "No, and if you ever visit mine, I'll come and haunt you."

(Darla is buried by the pond. I've visited her grave. The stone says "There's a Song in My Heart", honoring her love of making music.)

Ma hated funerals. She didn't go up to caskets and look at the bodies, and, even as a young woman, she insisted that we give her a closed casket service when the time came. She didn't go to Uncle Ed's funeral, or to the funerals of any of her four brothers, although she was getting frail and travel was really unpleasant for her. (She did travel to Sacramento for Uncle Dick's, but I wasn't there.)

So I didn't go to Granny's funeral, and I always regretted it. When Granddad had his stoke, I didn't fly to his bedside, because he was comatose. I wanted to be able to attend his funeral, and I didn't want to make two trips to California in a short time. He only lived two or three days longer, so I wish I had gone to him, to hold his hand, to whisper "I love you, Granddad" to him before he died.

His was the first corpse I ever saw. Cold, waxy, it didn't look like him, and I don't remember the image of him there now. I was a pallbearer, and, after the service at the chapel, we rode out to the gravesite for final words. They didn't lower the casket until after everyone had left. As I walked away from the grave, I decided it wasn't right for none of us to be there while he was put into the ground, so I asked Ma's permission (! - I was 37!) to go back. Jed went with me, as I remember, and we were the last to say goodbye. The only really hard part for me was when they put the lid on the vault holding the casket. I think it was concrete, and the sound was really disturbing.

The first really good funeral I went to was Luke's. I'd never been to a visitation before, but the Weavers are of that European Catholic tradition that is more comfortable with death and emotion than the midwestern Protestant stock from which I'm derived. Everybody touched and patted him, and the kids stuck things in his pockets or dropped them onto his chest. I remember the feel of the short soft growth of hair – he was recovering from chemo – on his cold skull. Ian was really torn up. He had just turned eleven, and he'd really loved Pop-Pop. He couldn't understand how a big strong man like his Uncle Karl could be in tears one moment, then laughing and telling jokes in the next, and then sobbing again soon after.

I say this was my first really good funeral, because that's when I learned that there are good funerals, and how important it is to grieve openly.

Bud Suddath died suddenly, just past his 50th birthday in the early 90's. I was at a Gordon Conference in Rhode Island. At lunch, I was seated at a long table that ran from a central aisle in the cafeteria all the way to the window. Access was only from that aisle, and I was next to the window.  Helen Berman came to the other end of the table and signaled that she needed to talk to me. From the pain on her face, I knew it was bad news -- really bad news. I thought perhaps Marie or Ian had been seriously injured, or worse. But it was news of Bud's death, and a request that I call Lee. She asked me to be one of the speakers at the funeral, and I flew to Atlanta for it. Bud's was a terrific funeral. The Ramblin' Wreck was there, along with a couple hundred people or more. The first speaker was Bud's high school coach, and the last was Pat Cressine, who was then President of Georgia Tech. I went second. I don't remember what all I said, but I did read the Edna St. Vincent Millay poem "Dirge Without Music" (see later post). It was a great funeral.

Ken Pruitt's funeral made me think of one other: Jim Campbell's.  The eulogy was given by Harden (?), a close friend from college. He opened it by saying, "We're here today to say goodbye to Jim Campbell, a real son of a bitch."  It wasn't a joke.  Apparently there were serious unresolved issues between Jim and his four sons, who ranged in age then from the teens to the late twenties.  We learned about both Jim's good and bad qualities, and the eulogy was aimed at helping those four young men come to terms with their dad in a way that they hadn't while he was still alive. It was a good funeral.

I love a good funeral.

Ken Pruitt's funeral

Ken Pruitt's funeral was a good one. Ken loved classical music and had been given a tuba on his 60th birthday. (I was at that party, and it was among the inspirations for Marie giving me an accordion for Christmas a few years later.) I didn't know it, but Ken gave Angela a French Horn for her next birthday; I knew he played in a brass group, but I didn't know that they played together in a large amateur orchestra for several years.

Honoring these loves, we were welcomed into the beautiful polygonal Unitarian church by a brass quartet playing Beethoven, and the service included two Handel pieces (adagio and allegro) for tuba and piano, plus "Sing Me to Heaven" sung a capella by the University of Montevallo Chamber Singers. There were a couple of hymns droned out by all of us, though I'm not sure why.

Joyce Benington, a life-long friend gave a long set of "Remarks". (Do Unitarians have trouble with "Eulogy"?) Ken introduced her to her husband Fred, and he was at their side during Fred's final illness in the 90s, and Joyce talked about family. I never knew Ken's first wife (and the mother of their four kids), and we later learned from their son Keith that she was the most beautiful co-ed at UNC when Ken won her heart, in spite of his big ears and geeky ways. (I learned later from Betty Lou Lacey that she killed herself...) I'd not known that Ken was a novelist, publishing under the nom-de-plume Wilson Abut. I've just ordered one of his four novels from Amazon.

Ken also loved poetry, and Joyce read AE Housman's poem:

   With rue my heart is laden, for golden friends I had,

   For many a rose-lipped maiden and many a light-foot lad.

   By brooks too broad for leaping, the light-foot lads are laid.

   The rose-lipped maids are sleeping, in fields where roses fade.

Virginia Volker commemorated Ken's long service at UAB, beginning when her father-in-law had just become the first president of the newly separate university. Hers was the driest presentation, but the one that connected with the things I knew about Ken.

The most interesting eulogy was from Ken's son Keith. He talked about the gifts of "sweetness and honey" his father had gotten all his life, some in spite of bad choices he made. He drew on one of the Psalms, which talks about honey oozing out of a crevice in the rocks in the desert, where apparently bees make their nests. The gifts of water and honey to a traveler in that hostile land are gifts from God. Keith didn't explain what bad choices his dad had made, but their was the implication of distance from the kids and their mother. It reminded me of Jim Campbell's funeral ... about which more anon.

At the open mike session, Jim Lacey told about Ken as a mentor, Jack Lemmons talked about not knowing him as well as he should, and Judy Vines and one other administrative assistant to Ken talked about what a wonderful boss and friend he was. I wished I'd asked Betty Campbell if there was something she would have liked to have said, and maybe I could have spoken briefly for her.

Ken was a generous man, although I knew only about what he did for me. At least I got to tell Angela and Elise about that in person yesterday.

But it made me wonder -- I know people who would say lots of nice things about me at my funeral, but I can't think of very many acts of generosity on my part...

Ken Pruitt

Herb called me this morning to tell me that Ken had died last Friday, after a long illness. He was 75.

I owed Ken a lot, in two ways. First, he took me under his wing when I was a very young pup. He was my only mentor other than Herb. They were the only ones to ever talk to me about what it means to be a professor, and how one should progress up the ladder. And they were also the only two real scientists in the puny little Biomath Department. Second -- and I learned this only years later -- I owed my tenure to Ken and Charlie Bugg.

When I came up for tenure during that fateful sixth up-or-out year, I got turned down. Jane Hazelrig, who was a couple of years my junior, also got turned down. By chance, I got to see her rejection letter from the dean; it was identical to mine, except mine had one paragraph that hers didn't, describing the appeal process. Today I realize that perhaps that extra paragraph may have appeared in every letter to someone in their final chance at tenure (Jane still had another chance coming). But, at the time, I interpreted it to mean that Jim Pittman was encouraging me to file an appeal. I talked to Malcolm Turner, my chair, about it, and he supported the appeal. To my delight and surprise, I got promoted.

(I hadn't expected it and didn't really think I deserved it, because I was so slow getting started, scientifically. In thinking about what I would do if I got booted, I figured I'd move to Idaho and pump gas. After years of focusing on a career, I thought perhaps I'd try focusing on recreations instead, which meant I should move somewhere close to the mountains.)

When Charlie Bugg retired in the mid-90's, Herb took me aside and said that he guessed it was finally OK to reveal something confidential: that Charlie and Ken had both been on the SoM Tenure Committee when I came up, and they both fought for me. Although the Committee voted me down, their arguments were sufficiently strong in my favor that Jim Pittman decided to promote me on appeal.

In retrospect, I think Ken, Charlie and Jim made a good decision for all concerned.

Thanks, Ken. I'll miss you...

Happy marriages

Old ycronam is still far enough under the weather that we canceled our dinner plans and stayed home last night. Dinner by the fire and "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing", a sweet 1987 Patricia Rozema film about art, honesty, imagination, love and life.

So, how is it that I'm so happily married? What does it take?

Some, like CW, insist it's all about commitment, determination, sticking it through thick and thin, and so on. I guess if you don't get lucky and/or make the right choice, that's the only way to get through the damned thing. Maybe one can have a successful marriage under those terms, but not a happy one.

For a happy marriage, you've got to have two people who are each capable of happiness, a good match of attitudes, values and interests, and a large dose of kindness and patience.

There's a lot of luck involved. First, in that combination of nature and nurture that yields two adults that are both reasonably decent people who are happy with life's prospects. Genetics can produce a colicky baby who grows up to be a whiny adult. Or a child might get good genes but grow up in an emotionally unsupportive environment that produces an adult who is untrusting, or unkind, or frequently depressed. Unhappy adults rarely have happy marriages.

The second piece of luck comes in being at the right place at the right time. If Mister Right or Miss Perfect doesn't cross your path when you're both available, you are SOL*.

And the third piece of luck comes in the extent and duration of the match. It's hard to know in a matter of months just how well matched you will be for the long run. You may both love some shared activity early on, but there's no way of knowing how long either of you will stay interested in it. You may have the same religious and social values at the beginning, but there's no way of knowing whether or not one of you will have some revelation later on that will take you in different directions. One of you might discover that your faith is hollow and that you cannot believe in God. Or religion may not be important to either of you at the beginning, but then one of you wakes up one day and finds Jesus. When you first meet, you cannot know how either of you will feel about wealth, or poverty, or middle-class life or whatever financial fate awaits you later. If you're childless when you meet, you cannot know how the stresses and joys of parenthood will affect your marriage. These depend in unpredictable ways on whether you have one child or many; whether your children are healthy or not; and on the kids' personalities.

And there's no way of knowing how age itself will affect you:

I once heard a woman in her late sixties -- call her Sally -- complaining about her 90-something year old mother -- call her Nel. Sally said that, years earlier, Nel's own mother had been a very difficult old lady. Back then Nel had said, "Sally, when I get old, don't let me be like my mother!"

Now Nel is old, and just like her mother. Sally recently reminded Nel "Mother, you said you didn't want to be like Grandma when you got old." 

The old lady responded, "Yes dear. When I was 65, I was a real expert on being 90!"

So there's a lot of luck in whether you will grow apart, or stay close, or grow even closer with the passing years.

I've been very lucky on all accounts. M is my soul mate, my life companion, the person I admire and love most in all the world, the woman who loves and understands me, the woman to whom I never have to explain myself. Well, the last is a bit of an overstatement -- of course I sometimes have to explain, but she's always been understanding and completely supportive of me. To my good fortune, it's always been easy for me to also be understanding and completely supportive of her.

Advice for those considering a life-long commitment? The only suggestion I have is the one my own mother made to me when I was a young man: always be gentle to one another.

-------

* Shit Out of Luck

Happy Anniversary

22 very happy years of marriage celebrated today.  Don't know why, when I first awoke, I was thinking of the worst day of my life, an awful Christmas Eve fight three years before I met Marie.

Between Marie and me "never a cross word" would be an exaggeration, but there's never been a fight. The cross words are rare. They're sometimes provoked, sometimes not, but they always produce an apology on one side or the other.

Marie is my soul mate – she understands me so well that I never have to explain myself to her.

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, too. Of course there are times that I have to explain myself. But she always understands the explanation and never argues with it. And I've never had the impulse to argue with her when she explains herself to me.

There are lots of ways in which we see the world differently. After all, she's an artist and I a scientist, so we are presumably dominated by our right and left brains, respectively. But our fundamental attitudes are completely aligned. Neither of us thinks that whatever truths we each hold go beyond the personal to the universal; neither of us thinks that others who see things differently are screwed up; neither of us thinks that we have to force or persuade others to see the world as we do. Both of us see life as a gift.

I remember a windy, rainy late afternoon in Birmingham when Marie was a few minutes late picking me up. This was before cell phones, and we'd agreed on a time and place. I was shivering under an umbrella on a dark street corner, dodging splashes from passing cars and growing more miserable by the minute. "Where the hell are you, woman???" I kept muttering. I was in a bit of a snit when I climbed into the car.

But she's like me -- she was genuinely sorry and apologized with feeling. And I knew that, had the situation been reversed, I might have been a little late and she in a bit of a snit. I knew that she had no ulterior motives, and I knew as I warmed up that we'd soon be sharing a drink, appetizers, good conversation and, a little later, a good meal. Life is too good and too precious to waste on anger at small unintentional offenses. By the time of her second apology, I could honestly say "That's all right. Forget it."

Sadly, this cold has be so far down that we'll have to delay our anniversary dinner tonight to some other time.

Philly

M and I had a long weekend in Philly with the kids.  Such a delight to see them coming into their own.  Mandy loves University of the Arts, and Ian is within sight of his first promotion with Chipotle, which will get them to a reasonable place financially. They love their tiny apartment and are making friends...

We shared a belated Christmas with them, exchanging gifts in our room at the Latham Hotel.  Then a couple of crammed days of tourism -- the rare book room at the library was an exceptional event, and Michael, Elizabeth and Jessie came up for the day to join us at the Franklin Institute.  The best part of the visit was lingering over meals together, with long, easy talk and just being together.  A round of Carcassone on the last day was fun, though the Kid clobbered all the rest of us.

I did lose the battle with the chest cold I'd been staving off for some time, however.  When we got home Sunday night (after a delayed flight, of course), I took to bed.  I've probably averaged 12 hours of sleep each day since then.  We had tickets for the Chick-Fil-A Bowl for last night (New Years Eve) but gave them away rather than go out.  A good thing, too, as LSU was merciless.  Our opening kickoff was out of bounds, and they scored in about half a dozen plays. We managed a field goal, and then it was downhill from there.  A 28 point second quarter (none for us)...

Today enough energy to go out for the matinee of "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime" with Kristin Scott-Thomas.  A beautiful and heart-rending film.  Home for Marie's hoppin' John for the traditional New Year good luck dinner.