Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Shift
When I was very little, my dad and I used to go out in the front yard at night, clear out the broken glass, and lay down a blanket. We'd lie there side by side and talk about I don't even know what anymore, and we'd look at the stars, and he'd teach me constellations and tell me stories until I fell asleep. I used to think that I loved the stars. I'm realizing now that what I loved was him.
But wisdom comes too late sometimes, like the rain to end July's drought only slickening December's roads. I'm grateful even without it: I grew up full-up with wonder at the universe, and I ached to explore it. I wondered about the stars, and about what ran around them in elliptical elegance, spinning through the vast quiet of space. I wanted to take in all this hugeness, revel silently in it, break down and weep at the beauty of it. I wanted to swirl around each star and pet each planet and watch in wonder and awe as galaxies were born. I wanted to touch other worlds. I wanted to be moved, profoundly moved, and I thought I just might have to move off this Earth to do it. Little did I realize that it was already happening, those nights, when my miniature mind and small soul were filled with the still and shake of sky, all that emptiness rushing into me through my five senses, making me more than my mother's and my father's daughter, the talkative blonde kid with the short hair and long stories. It was those nights that made me this individual. That's where I get my religion and my science-- all I have to do is look up, and I know that we are nothing, as tiny as we are loved by the great G-d who hung these heavens. I wanted to understand that. I still do. Maybe we all do. But I was four years old, and I wasn't a philosopher. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up.
"Ballerina" was out, as was any other profession involving tights, for reasons that are probably obvious to anyone who knows me now. Firefighting seemed too pedestrian, and the sirens would get annoying. Construction work was forbidden by both parents, prompting much groaning and moaning, but whatcha gon' do? I considered being a social worker like our friend Jill, but she never got much sleep, although she did have an excellent reputation after cold-cocking a strung-out junkie who attacked her when she tried to take his son away from him. Mom was a teacher. Dad was a welder. I could combine their specialties, much as I was the result of their gene combination, and teach welding! Hmmm. No, that's not it. Finally, I hit upon an excellent plan: I wanted to be a pilot, preferably in the Air Force, when I grew up!
Then I actually got on a plane, got sick, got yelled at, and realized that I just wanted to be able to fly.
Unfortunately, I had neither wings nor hollow bones, so all throughout the rest of elementary school, I switched the career goal to "astronaut." Oh, but I was not one of those kids who's all "Look! He gets to play with a lot of flashing buttons!" Nooooo. I wanted to be an astrophysicist. I wasn't totally 100% sure what-all that involved, but I'd heard it was hard, and I'd heard it meant doing a lot of math, and hey, that sounded good to ten-year-old me. I wanted to be the best of the best of the best, and it never even occurred to me, really, that that could be out of the question. I decided I'd work hard and not make mistakes, and that would be that. I'd earn my doctorate at a ridiculously young age, make all kinds of cool discoveries, and go up in the shuttles to make incisive observations pointing to the deep nature of the cosmos.
Ha!
I stopped liking school. I started skipping class. I took less than my best from myself. No mistakes, huh? Well. . . not exactly.
That changed me. I'm not who I could have been, and I'll have to answer for it. But there's no time to fuss about that. It's brought me into medicine, which I love the way I used to love astronomy. I think the underlying principles are the same.
There are worlds and worlds out there beyond the stratosphere, but there are worlds and worlds here on Earth. The way my mother cries is a galaxy of its own, and every red or white (and blue) dwarf is a Fourth-of-July sparkler compared to the bright and broken light of your average human's soul. I can touch that sky without my fingers ever leaving a patient's wrist-- he's a sweeping expanse of his own, imperfect and wise and waiting, with stories I've never heard and a history wrought in delicate muscle, too subtle for Hubble to catch. If you look at nearby Creation with an uncareful eye, you'll be bowled over: birds so precise and beautiful; trees in patterns without seeming ordination, but still, an organization; mud in richness of life; and the colors! The colors alone are enough to make a person buckle! No wonder we're numb. We can't possibly take it all in.
I have played hopscotch with hadrons, I have crossed the event horizon of a black hole, and I have skipped over, under, through, and beyond every nebula, all without leaving this Earth, or even this city. I have gotten a hug from a five-year-old just for yelling at him in his native language. I have taken care of a ninety-seven-year-old woman who'd sustained a painful injury and needed an EKG but still was mostly worried about us EMTs having to look at her "saggy old woman boobs." I have punched walls, flown kites, jumped fences, broken hearts, and done other stupid things, and I wouldn't take any of it back even if I could. I am trailing along the smaller, fainter, holier constellations of life on Earth, and I still can't count the stars here or there, but I don't want to anymore. This is enough-- no, too much, really.
Which is not at all what I was originally going to write. Whoops.
So here's the summary of that:
I used to think NASA was really cool and needed more federal funding. Now I think preventing the spread of HIV in Africa is really cool and needs more federal funding. So I guess I've either grown up or given up. Regardless, this website's worth a visit. Might bring back some memories for my science nerds.
When I was very little, my dad and I used to go out in the front yard at night, clear out the broken glass, and lay down a blanket. We'd lie there side by side and talk about I don't even know what anymore, and we'd look at the stars, and he'd teach me constellations and tell me stories until I fell asleep. I used to think that I loved the stars. I'm realizing now that what I loved was him.
But wisdom comes too late sometimes, like the rain to end July's drought only slickening December's roads. I'm grateful even without it: I grew up full-up with wonder at the universe, and I ached to explore it. I wondered about the stars, and about what ran around them in elliptical elegance, spinning through the vast quiet of space. I wanted to take in all this hugeness, revel silently in it, break down and weep at the beauty of it. I wanted to swirl around each star and pet each planet and watch in wonder and awe as galaxies were born. I wanted to touch other worlds. I wanted to be moved, profoundly moved, and I thought I just might have to move off this Earth to do it. Little did I realize that it was already happening, those nights, when my miniature mind and small soul were filled with the still and shake of sky, all that emptiness rushing into me through my five senses, making me more than my mother's and my father's daughter, the talkative blonde kid with the short hair and long stories. It was those nights that made me this individual. That's where I get my religion and my science-- all I have to do is look up, and I know that we are nothing, as tiny as we are loved by the great G-d who hung these heavens. I wanted to understand that. I still do. Maybe we all do. But I was four years old, and I wasn't a philosopher. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up.
"Ballerina" was out, as was any other profession involving tights, for reasons that are probably obvious to anyone who knows me now. Firefighting seemed too pedestrian, and the sirens would get annoying. Construction work was forbidden by both parents, prompting much groaning and moaning, but whatcha gon' do? I considered being a social worker like our friend Jill, but she never got much sleep, although she did have an excellent reputation after cold-cocking a strung-out junkie who attacked her when she tried to take his son away from him. Mom was a teacher. Dad was a welder. I could combine their specialties, much as I was the result of their gene combination, and teach welding! Hmmm. No, that's not it. Finally, I hit upon an excellent plan: I wanted to be a pilot, preferably in the Air Force, when I grew up!
Then I actually got on a plane, got sick, got yelled at, and realized that I just wanted to be able to fly.
Unfortunately, I had neither wings nor hollow bones, so all throughout the rest of elementary school, I switched the career goal to "astronaut." Oh, but I was not one of those kids who's all "Look! He gets to play with a lot of flashing buttons!" Nooooo. I wanted to be an astrophysicist. I wasn't totally 100% sure what-all that involved, but I'd heard it was hard, and I'd heard it meant doing a lot of math, and hey, that sounded good to ten-year-old me. I wanted to be the best of the best of the best, and it never even occurred to me, really, that that could be out of the question. I decided I'd work hard and not make mistakes, and that would be that. I'd earn my doctorate at a ridiculously young age, make all kinds of cool discoveries, and go up in the shuttles to make incisive observations pointing to the deep nature of the cosmos.
Ha!
I stopped liking school. I started skipping class. I took less than my best from myself. No mistakes, huh? Well. . . not exactly.
That changed me. I'm not who I could have been, and I'll have to answer for it. But there's no time to fuss about that. It's brought me into medicine, which I love the way I used to love astronomy. I think the underlying principles are the same.
There are worlds and worlds out there beyond the stratosphere, but there are worlds and worlds here on Earth. The way my mother cries is a galaxy of its own, and every red or white (and blue) dwarf is a Fourth-of-July sparkler compared to the bright and broken light of your average human's soul. I can touch that sky without my fingers ever leaving a patient's wrist-- he's a sweeping expanse of his own, imperfect and wise and waiting, with stories I've never heard and a history wrought in delicate muscle, too subtle for Hubble to catch. If you look at nearby Creation with an uncareful eye, you'll be bowled over: birds so precise and beautiful; trees in patterns without seeming ordination, but still, an organization; mud in richness of life; and the colors! The colors alone are enough to make a person buckle! No wonder we're numb. We can't possibly take it all in.
I have played hopscotch with hadrons, I have crossed the event horizon of a black hole, and I have skipped over, under, through, and beyond every nebula, all without leaving this Earth, or even this city. I have gotten a hug from a five-year-old just for yelling at him in his native language. I have taken care of a ninety-seven-year-old woman who'd sustained a painful injury and needed an EKG but still was mostly worried about us EMTs having to look at her "saggy old woman boobs." I have punched walls, flown kites, jumped fences, broken hearts, and done other stupid things, and I wouldn't take any of it back even if I could. I am trailing along the smaller, fainter, holier constellations of life on Earth, and I still can't count the stars here or there, but I don't want to anymore. This is enough-- no, too much, really.
Which is not at all what I was originally going to write. Whoops.
So here's the summary of that:
I used to think NASA was really cool and needed more federal funding. Now I think preventing the spread of HIV in Africa is really cool and needs more federal funding. So I guess I've either grown up or given up. Regardless, this website's worth a visit. Might bring back some memories for my science nerds.
Monday, March 29, 2004
UNIX
You know I'm not good with computers.
Actually, that might be better phrased as "You know I don't really know how to operate a computer for anything other than word processing and minimally-complicated Internet use."
I'm the sort of person who kept testing her scientific calculator to make sure it wasn't lying to her. Seriously. I'd draw triangles to figure out the sin of 53 degrees just to see if my calculator had gotten it right. And it had. Time after time. And then I learned about Taylor series(es?) and grudgingly decided "well, okay, we'll take the calculator's word for it from here on out." But I still barely know how to use that thing, and I only use it to speed along the arithmetic. Don't even get me started on graphing calculators. I don't know how to use them, and frankly, I don't want to know how. If you can't do it in your head or on paper, you should practice until you can, is my opinion. Machinery is complicated, and it can get messed up pretty easily, and all in all, it's a lot less risky just to do stuff for yourself. Plus it uses fewer batteries.
Anyway, now that it's clear what a technologically-backward person I am, I hope I may present the following Fun Ling-Related Link for the Day:
INTRODUCTION TO UNIX
It's not just for compunerds anymore.
You know I'm not good with computers.
Actually, that might be better phrased as "You know I don't really know how to operate a computer for anything other than word processing and minimally-complicated Internet use."
I'm the sort of person who kept testing her scientific calculator to make sure it wasn't lying to her. Seriously. I'd draw triangles to figure out the sin of 53 degrees just to see if my calculator had gotten it right. And it had. Time after time. And then I learned about Taylor series(es?) and grudgingly decided "well, okay, we'll take the calculator's word for it from here on out." But I still barely know how to use that thing, and I only use it to speed along the arithmetic. Don't even get me started on graphing calculators. I don't know how to use them, and frankly, I don't want to know how. If you can't do it in your head or on paper, you should practice until you can, is my opinion. Machinery is complicated, and it can get messed up pretty easily, and all in all, it's a lot less risky just to do stuff for yourself. Plus it uses fewer batteries.
Anyway, now that it's clear what a technologically-backward person I am, I hope I may present the following Fun Ling-Related Link for the Day:
INTRODUCTION TO UNIX
It's not just for compunerds anymore.
It's all relative(s)
I have an amazing cousin.
Actually, I have 28 cousins, and the majority are surprisingly cool, so that's a little bit of a lead-on.
But still, while we were in Colorado, I got to see one amazing cousin in particular: the inimitable Miss Priss, a nice blend of intellectualism, warmth, humor, snappy dressing, and strappy shoes. We have not even been in the same U.S. state at the same time for over fifteen years. Had I known her better, I would have been missing her like anything, so I guess it's kind of good that we didn't form some crazy bond at age four and run around wailing and bemoaning our separated state for the last decade and a half. Ah, Miss Priss. She's a little taller now than she was back when we were playing ball and harassing our mothers in the broil of a Sioux City summer, and she's acquired rather a lot of the grownupness that tends to go along with the height gain, but she's still smart and sweet and generally worth talking to. And we both still bug our mothers all the time.
We got in on an evening flight, and Uncle Mark brought us back to his house, which was unfortunately devoid of Priss-tine goodness. She was on a date with her kind-of-boyfriend John, and they didn't get back until much later. Actually, she called as they were leaving the restaurant where they were, and she told her mother "We're coming! We're coming! We didn't even have dessert!" Apparently she even gave John a short briefing on the relative situation, as he walked right in and said "Hi! You must be Aunt JoAnn!" to my mom, then turned and went two for two: "[Boomer], right? And you must be Rachel!" This earned him ESP points until he admitted she'd told him.
So then we stayed up way too late and talked for hours. Miss Priss had the good grace to grin "Overachiever" at me when she heard about the double-major, pre-med, with a minor and plans to earn paramedic certification. Most people either go "Wa-ow" (that's "wow," made into two syllables) or take the name of the L-rd in vain. Anyway, the Prissinator's in communications/journalism, and two of her roommates are in dance, and her other roommate is apparently mostly concerned with drinking right now. Ehh. That's just a sign the roomie'd make a good engineer.
Speaking of which, Miss Priss's kind-of-boyfriend John goes to Northwestern, where he is majoring in, as he put it, "(cough) Radio, Television, and Media Communications." Aunt Mary B. the Veggie-Eatin Machine asked "Why don't you want to do engineering or some math or science major? You're so good at math and science!" John got the cutest look on his face, kind of sad and kind of stalled and kind of laughing, and replied "Because it's really hard." Folks, he ain't lying.
So, long story short, you might be surprised at the crazycool people who are lurking right in your own family. Call up a cousin or two today. Odds are, it'll be worth it.
I have an amazing cousin.
Actually, I have 28 cousins, and the majority are surprisingly cool, so that's a little bit of a lead-on.
But still, while we were in Colorado, I got to see one amazing cousin in particular: the inimitable Miss Priss, a nice blend of intellectualism, warmth, humor, snappy dressing, and strappy shoes. We have not even been in the same U.S. state at the same time for over fifteen years. Had I known her better, I would have been missing her like anything, so I guess it's kind of good that we didn't form some crazy bond at age four and run around wailing and bemoaning our separated state for the last decade and a half. Ah, Miss Priss. She's a little taller now than she was back when we were playing ball and harassing our mothers in the broil of a Sioux City summer, and she's acquired rather a lot of the grownupness that tends to go along with the height gain, but she's still smart and sweet and generally worth talking to. And we both still bug our mothers all the time.
We got in on an evening flight, and Uncle Mark brought us back to his house, which was unfortunately devoid of Priss-tine goodness. She was on a date with her kind-of-boyfriend John, and they didn't get back until much later. Actually, she called as they were leaving the restaurant where they were, and she told her mother "We're coming! We're coming! We didn't even have dessert!" Apparently she even gave John a short briefing on the relative situation, as he walked right in and said "Hi! You must be Aunt JoAnn!" to my mom, then turned and went two for two: "[Boomer], right? And you must be Rachel!" This earned him ESP points until he admitted she'd told him.
So then we stayed up way too late and talked for hours. Miss Priss had the good grace to grin "Overachiever" at me when she heard about the double-major, pre-med, with a minor and plans to earn paramedic certification. Most people either go "Wa-ow" (that's "wow," made into two syllables) or take the name of the L-rd in vain. Anyway, the Prissinator's in communications/journalism, and two of her roommates are in dance, and her other roommate is apparently mostly concerned with drinking right now. Ehh. That's just a sign the roomie'd make a good engineer.
Speaking of which, Miss Priss's kind-of-boyfriend John goes to Northwestern, where he is majoring in, as he put it, "(cough) Radio, Television, and Media Communications." Aunt Mary B. the Veggie-Eatin Machine asked "Why don't you want to do engineering or some math or science major? You're so good at math and science!" John got the cutest look on his face, kind of sad and kind of stalled and kind of laughing, and replied "Because it's really hard." Folks, he ain't lying.
So, long story short, you might be surprised at the crazycool people who are lurking right in your own family. Call up a cousin or two today. Odds are, it'll be worth it.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Serious Schu-- Redux
Today, we got back from Colorado. It was very nice, but I've hit my relaxation max, and I'm sick of very nice, so tonight after we got back I did three loads of laundry, shot hoops with the Boommeister, and cleaned out my closet. The cleaning-out of the closet yielded a sizable stash of writing from my Angsty Days in high school, and the vast majority of that crap got pitched, along with what I hope are the remnants of that young-teenage funk, but some I decided to keep, in order to remind myself that yes, I used to suck (quite a lot, actually), so I shouldn't go around hatin, because I've been that bad and worse.
Still, when the Drama bus was late and I decided to walk, I tended to end up somewhere near the intersection of Actual Thought and Mostly-Legitimate Emotion. I give you-- Schu's Homework from Freshman World History.
2. Q: For what different reasons did Japan, Italy, and the United States enter the war? [World War I / The Great War is what I'm guessing this means]
Schu's A: Italy was surrounded by it and really had no reason not to enter the war. Americans felt threatened by the Zimmerman telegram and the Germans' sinking of four American merchant ships. Japan wanted to suck up to the Allies, had no reason not to, and hoped to establish itself as a world power.
3. Q: Why might these differences have made a peace agreement more difficult to reach?
Schu's A: Doesn't matter. The only important thing about piece is that everybody wanted one of Germany.
[The interest in the assignment is starting to flag, methinks. Oh, but here comes the reason.]
Schu's Q: WHY DO WARS HAPPEN? [Now you know that shizz ain't in the freshman World History textbook.]
Schu's A: Humanity is an intrinsically flawed proposition. We have that little edge of greed or bitterness or anger or hate and destroy each other to feed it. We can't leave well enough alone. We want to discover new things and find new places and experience new thrills, in hopes that somehow our knowledge or experiences or things will help us fill the hole, the intrinsic flaw, the emptiness that makes us unhappy and imperfect. We want to be perfect. We want to be G-d. But in our reaching for something beyond ourselves, we discover power, and sometimes we don't think about it, or understand what to do with it. So we abuse it. We don't know any better. Not even the smartest man on Earth [Albert Einstein] knew what he was doing, what the atom bomb would bring. Later he said that if he had, "I [he] would have been a locksmith." We try so hard to be perfect, but the only way to perfection is through perfection.
Causation is so hard to determine on this angst thing. Did I think like this because I was angsty, or was I angsty because I thought like this? And what about confounding variables (because you gotta know, there are plenty)? Let's make a t-distribution. . .
And next post, a little lightener: Stories from Beyond (the Ohio-Indiana border, that is). My cousin Miss Priss is frickin hilarious (she made me promise to put the "frickin"), and my aunt Mary Beth is not all that crazy, and my uncle Mark is still the same kid who at fourteen built a twenty-foot-high snowball in a park in the middle of the night and then rolled it down a hill into the middle of the biggest, busiest street in Sioux City, stopping traffic for damn near three hours, once everybody woke up and started trying to drive on said street. Mark is just a little closer to grown up now.
Today, we got back from Colorado. It was very nice, but I've hit my relaxation max, and I'm sick of very nice, so tonight after we got back I did three loads of laundry, shot hoops with the Boommeister, and cleaned out my closet. The cleaning-out of the closet yielded a sizable stash of writing from my Angsty Days in high school, and the vast majority of that crap got pitched, along with what I hope are the remnants of that young-teenage funk, but some I decided to keep, in order to remind myself that yes, I used to suck (quite a lot, actually), so I shouldn't go around hatin, because I've been that bad and worse.
Still, when the Drama bus was late and I decided to walk, I tended to end up somewhere near the intersection of Actual Thought and Mostly-Legitimate Emotion. I give you-- Schu's Homework from Freshman World History.
2. Q: For what different reasons did Japan, Italy, and the United States enter the war? [World War I / The Great War is what I'm guessing this means]
Schu's A: Italy was surrounded by it and really had no reason not to enter the war. Americans felt threatened by the Zimmerman telegram and the Germans' sinking of four American merchant ships. Japan wanted to suck up to the Allies, had no reason not to, and hoped to establish itself as a world power.
3. Q: Why might these differences have made a peace agreement more difficult to reach?
Schu's A: Doesn't matter. The only important thing about piece is that everybody wanted one of Germany.
[The interest in the assignment is starting to flag, methinks. Oh, but here comes the reason.]
Schu's Q: WHY DO WARS HAPPEN? [Now you know that shizz ain't in the freshman World History textbook.]
Schu's A: Humanity is an intrinsically flawed proposition. We have that little edge of greed or bitterness or anger or hate and destroy each other to feed it. We can't leave well enough alone. We want to discover new things and find new places and experience new thrills, in hopes that somehow our knowledge or experiences or things will help us fill the hole, the intrinsic flaw, the emptiness that makes us unhappy and imperfect. We want to be perfect. We want to be G-d. But in our reaching for something beyond ourselves, we discover power, and sometimes we don't think about it, or understand what to do with it. So we abuse it. We don't know any better. Not even the smartest man on Earth [Albert Einstein] knew what he was doing, what the atom bomb would bring. Later he said that if he had, "I [he] would have been a locksmith." We try so hard to be perfect, but the only way to perfection is through perfection.
Causation is so hard to determine on this angst thing. Did I think like this because I was angsty, or was I angsty because I thought like this? And what about confounding variables (because you gotta know, there are plenty)? Let's make a t-distribution. . .
And next post, a little lightener: Stories from Beyond (the Ohio-Indiana border, that is). My cousin Miss Priss is frickin hilarious (she made me promise to put the "frickin"), and my aunt Mary Beth is not all that crazy, and my uncle Mark is still the same kid who at fourteen built a twenty-foot-high snowball in a park in the middle of the night and then rolled it down a hill into the middle of the biggest, busiest street in Sioux City, stopping traffic for damn near three hours, once everybody woke up and started trying to drive on said street. Mark is just a little closer to grown up now.
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Colorado in My Mind
After a long absence due to final exams, I'm about to commence a long absence due to being out of town. I'm going out to CO (the state kind, not the poisonous-gas kind) with Boomer and my mom. We will be visiting Mark and Mary Beth, and Miss Priss (briefly). This is Mary Beth the vegan, not Mary the lawyer, an addendum I feel is necessary because practically every single aunt I have (and there are ten) is named Mary in one way or another. We will be surrendered into her very feminine, all-organic clutches for at least one day when Uncle Mark goes to testify in court, so think of me and hope she can be prevailed upon not to initiate the Makeover of the Century: In Which Schu Gets Hoochified, Prettified, Little-Bitty-Shoe-ified, and Generally Forced to Resemble Someone Who Traditionally Wouldn't Know a MIG Welder if It Came Up and Bit Her on the Nose. We shall see, we shall see.
Happy spring break to my LMUers, and neener neener neener to everyone else.
After a long absence due to final exams, I'm about to commence a long absence due to being out of town. I'm going out to CO (the state kind, not the poisonous-gas kind) with Boomer and my mom. We will be visiting Mark and Mary Beth, and Miss Priss (briefly). This is Mary Beth the vegan, not Mary the lawyer, an addendum I feel is necessary because practically every single aunt I have (and there are ten) is named Mary in one way or another. We will be surrendered into her very feminine, all-organic clutches for at least one day when Uncle Mark goes to testify in court, so think of me and hope she can be prevailed upon not to initiate the Makeover of the Century: In Which Schu Gets Hoochified, Prettified, Little-Bitty-Shoe-ified, and Generally Forced to Resemble Someone Who Traditionally Wouldn't Know a MIG Welder if It Came Up and Bit Her on the Nose. We shall see, we shall see.
Happy spring break to my LMUers, and neener neener neener to everyone else.
Saturday, March 13, 2004
Catholic Ken
Many people have sent me e-mails since the last time I checked. The funniest was from Kenneth, another friendly neighborhood flipped-out Catholic. He's the resident chef and crazy Republican. I'll copy-paste his note in here for you (NOTE: "Ore pro nobis" is Latin. It means "pray for us." Catholics don't actually "pray to" saints. We talk to them and ask them to pray to G-d for us):
"FOOD ON SUNDAY
I know that you will all be diligently working on exams so we will only have dinner of burrito
casserole, Chicken and cavatapi pasta and mostaccioli. And for Hosea cherries flambé (MMM, flaming
dessert, uhhh) with ice cream. Come to Mass and have dinner on us. We may have a meeting during the
spring break if there is any interest. But take a break and come for food.
St. Catherine of Alexandria
et
St. Thomas Aquinas
Patrons of Students
Ore pro nobis!
Ken
PS. St Patrick's Church is having a Mass on St Patrick's Day vigil (Tuesday) at 700pm. Afterward
their will be a procession with pipes, drums and torches. Their is also an indulgence attached so
come have fun, and make up temporal punishment for you or someone else. Im going as I am a sucker
for processions, drums, pipes, and torches.
St. Patrick, Ore pro nobis."
So. Y'all are also invited to Mass on Tuesday, if you'd like to come "have fun and make up temporal punishment for you or someone else."
I love Lent.
Many people have sent me e-mails since the last time I checked. The funniest was from Kenneth, another friendly neighborhood flipped-out Catholic. He's the resident chef and crazy Republican. I'll copy-paste his note in here for you (NOTE: "Ore pro nobis" is Latin. It means "pray for us." Catholics don't actually "pray to" saints. We talk to them and ask them to pray to G-d for us):
"FOOD ON SUNDAY
I know that you will all be diligently working on exams so we will only have dinner of burrito
casserole, Chicken and cavatapi pasta and mostaccioli. And for Hosea cherries flambé (MMM, flaming
dessert, uhhh) with ice cream. Come to Mass and have dinner on us. We may have a meeting during the
spring break if there is any interest. But take a break and come for food.
St. Catherine of Alexandria
et
St. Thomas Aquinas
Patrons of Students
Ore pro nobis!
Ken
PS. St Patrick's Church is having a Mass on St Patrick's Day vigil (Tuesday) at 700pm. Afterward
their will be a procession with pipes, drums and torches. Their is also an indulgence attached so
come have fun, and make up temporal punishment for you or someone else. Im going as I am a sucker
for processions, drums, pipes, and torches.
St. Patrick, Ore pro nobis."
So. Y'all are also invited to Mass on Tuesday, if you'd like to come "have fun and make up temporal punishment for you or someone else."
I love Lent.
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
121-122-123: There Is Hope
It's been coming up a lot lately, so I thought I'd save some of my gen-chem chums (say that five times fast!) a little work by summarizing some of the many, many ways in which you can mess up lab and subsequently want to jab yourself in the eye with your broken glassware. Do not lose heart, young'uns, and never despair: You can have up to plus or minus sixty-five percent error without losing credit, as long as you can explain why your answer's wrong.
POSSIBLE SOURCES OF ERROR IN CHEM LAB WORK
1. Insufficiently cleaned glassware
2. Insufficiently rinsed glassware
3. Insufficiently dry glassware (mmm. Moist glassware.)
4. Spillage of dry chemicals after weighing
5. Spillage of dry chemicals during weighing
6. Spillage of dry chemicals onto your lap/lab-bench/t-shirt, followed by discreet brushing to guide them back into the tube (the "five-second rule" of chem lab)
7. Water bath boiling over into the contents of a test tube
8. Test tube contents boiling over into a water bath
9. Accidental use of the wrong chemical
10. Impurities in the right chemical
11. Failure to label test tubes adequately
12. Failure to label stock substances adequately
13. Failure to label left hand and right hand, resulting in so much confusion in the preceding physics class that it's impossible to concentrate on chem lab
14. Evolution of gases off a stock substance
15. Evolution of gases off a heated substance that wasn't supposed to get quite so hot
16. Evolution of gases off the guy next to you in lab
17. Use of tap water instead of distilled
18. Inadequate centrifuging
19. Pouring off precipitate with supernatant
20. Discarding supernatant with precipitate
21. Using the same dropper for more than one chemical
22. Using the wrong dropper for a particular chemical
23. Using a dropper instead of a pipet or micropipet
24. Liquid from inside the bulb of a pipet leaking down into the pipetted substance
25. Liquid from the leaky chem-lab roof splashing into your substance
26. Liquid from organic sources falling into your substance (literally pouring blood, sweat, and/or tears into your lab work)
27. Adding the wrong concentration of a chemical
28. Denaturing peroxide by overzealous heating
29. Denaturing a metallic salt by overzealous heating
30. Denaturing any base by overzealous heating, actually
31. Failing to heat something up high enough to denature something you wanted to denature (underzealous heating, I guess)
32. Imprecise/inaccurate measurement of added chemicals
33. Imprecise/inaccurate measurement of final product
34. Imprecise/inaccurate measurement of how long it would take you to complete the lab, leading to and hour and a half of chillin followed by an hour of rushing to get the experiment done
35. Skipping procedure steps
36. Doing procedure steps out of order
37. Falling down the stairwell steps when heading downstairs for a replacement for the 500-mL Erlenmayer flask the guy next to you in lab just dropped
38. Messed-up measuring instruments (the scale that always says "2")
39. Messed-up measuring instruments (your own personal visual impairment)
40. Shifting magnetic fields
41. Aliens
and every scientist's favorite:
42. Chance.
It's been coming up a lot lately, so I thought I'd save some of my gen-chem chums (say that five times fast!) a little work by summarizing some of the many, many ways in which you can mess up lab and subsequently want to jab yourself in the eye with your broken glassware. Do not lose heart, young'uns, and never despair: You can have up to plus or minus sixty-five percent error without losing credit, as long as you can explain why your answer's wrong.
POSSIBLE SOURCES OF ERROR IN CHEM LAB WORK
1. Insufficiently cleaned glassware
2. Insufficiently rinsed glassware
3. Insufficiently dry glassware (mmm. Moist glassware.)
4. Spillage of dry chemicals after weighing
5. Spillage of dry chemicals during weighing
6. Spillage of dry chemicals onto your lap/lab-bench/t-shirt, followed by discreet brushing to guide them back into the tube (the "five-second rule" of chem lab)
7. Water bath boiling over into the contents of a test tube
8. Test tube contents boiling over into a water bath
9. Accidental use of the wrong chemical
10. Impurities in the right chemical
11. Failure to label test tubes adequately
12. Failure to label stock substances adequately
13. Failure to label left hand and right hand, resulting in so much confusion in the preceding physics class that it's impossible to concentrate on chem lab
14. Evolution of gases off a stock substance
15. Evolution of gases off a heated substance that wasn't supposed to get quite so hot
16. Evolution of gases off the guy next to you in lab
17. Use of tap water instead of distilled
18. Inadequate centrifuging
19. Pouring off precipitate with supernatant
20. Discarding supernatant with precipitate
21. Using the same dropper for more than one chemical
22. Using the wrong dropper for a particular chemical
23. Using a dropper instead of a pipet or micropipet
24. Liquid from inside the bulb of a pipet leaking down into the pipetted substance
25. Liquid from the leaky chem-lab roof splashing into your substance
26. Liquid from organic sources falling into your substance (literally pouring blood, sweat, and/or tears into your lab work)
27. Adding the wrong concentration of a chemical
28. Denaturing peroxide by overzealous heating
29. Denaturing a metallic salt by overzealous heating
30. Denaturing any base by overzealous heating, actually
31. Failing to heat something up high enough to denature something you wanted to denature (underzealous heating, I guess)
32. Imprecise/inaccurate measurement of added chemicals
33. Imprecise/inaccurate measurement of final product
34. Imprecise/inaccurate measurement of how long it would take you to complete the lab, leading to and hour and a half of chillin followed by an hour of rushing to get the experiment done
35. Skipping procedure steps
36. Doing procedure steps out of order
37. Falling down the stairwell steps when heading downstairs for a replacement for the 500-mL Erlenmayer flask the guy next to you in lab just dropped
38. Messed-up measuring instruments (the scale that always says "2")
39. Messed-up measuring instruments (your own personal visual impairment)
40. Shifting magnetic fields
41. Aliens
and every scientist's favorite:
42. Chance.
Monday, March 08, 2004
Doctor Dictionary Word of the Day, Part Deux (the Chilling Sequel): "idyll"
"Sheep are not the docile, pleasant creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid."
--Joanne Harris, [1]Chocolat
Just to show that Doctor Dictionary is an equal-opportunity painful-example-provider: any word, from the vituperative vagary to the ideal idyll, can be used in a very true and moderately disheartening illustrative sentence. Doctor Dictionary, like milk, does a body good. Speaking of which, debates are like coughs. They're only useful when they're productive. La la la la la.
"Sheep are not the docile, pleasant creatures of the pastoral idyll. Any countryman will tell you that. They are sly, occasionally vicious, pathologically stupid."
--Joanne Harris, [1]Chocolat
Just to show that Doctor Dictionary is an equal-opportunity painful-example-provider: any word, from the vituperative vagary to the ideal idyll, can be used in a very true and moderately disheartening illustrative sentence. Doctor Dictionary, like milk, does a body good. Speaking of which, debates are like coughs. They're only useful when they're productive. La la la la la.
Doctor Dictionary Word of the Day: "vagary"
"Her words are a dreadful reminder that much of life's consequences are resultant of vagary and caprice, dictated by the tragedy of the ill-considered action, the irrevocable misstep, the irrevocable moment in which a terrible wrong can seem the only right."
--Rosemary Mahoney, "Acts of Mercy?" New York Times, September 13, 1998.
Doctor Dictionary Mood Setting of the Day: "sure not as light and frothy as yesterday when the Word of the Day was 'effervescent'!"
"Her words are a dreadful reminder that much of life's consequences are resultant of vagary and caprice, dictated by the tragedy of the ill-considered action, the irrevocable misstep, the irrevocable moment in which a terrible wrong can seem the only right."
--Rosemary Mahoney, "Acts of Mercy?" New York Times, September 13, 1998.
Doctor Dictionary Mood Setting of the Day: "sure not as light and frothy as yesterday when the Word of the Day was 'effervescent'!"
"Yes, We Really Are Monks!"
Great prices on toner cartridges, along with the satisfaction of supporting some guys who "really DO pray and help people!", at least according to their website.
LaserMonks. Can't beat it.
Great prices on toner cartridges, along with the satisfaction of supporting some guys who "really DO pray and help people!", at least according to their website.
LaserMonks. Can't beat it.
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Civil Unions: In Which I Show My General Liberal Gooiness, Consisting of a Belief That People Shouldn't Hate Each Other; and Talk about a Variety of Topics Not Directly Related Except in My Head, and Possibly Yours if I Am Convincing Enough; with Many Digressions
Okay, so some folks are wanting clarification of what I wrote about the civil-union debate Wednesday, since it certainly wasn't the clearest or most coherent thing I've ever written. I'll oblige, because you asked, but I don't really want to enter the debate if I don't have to. Honestly, as far as I'm concerned, the whole thing is just a mess, and it's like Screwtape: makes me want to get back to basics and go tutor people in reading or get a grant written for Neighborhood Services or go to Africa to help with surgeries or something. We (as a nation) are just creating drama over something that shouldn't be a big deal.
1. I don't know whether or not I think civil unions should be legal. If they could exist in a vacuum, I'd say yes, of course, because this is civil marriage, which (a) is about practical, straightforward matters like inheritances and taxes and visitation rights, and it's really not fair that some couples should be extended those benefits while others aren't, and (b) doesn't have much to do with any religious or moral structure, so I don't really see how anyone's religion/morals can be threatened by it, regardless of their beliefs about homosexuality.
However, this isn't a vacuum, and my fear is that if the issue is pushed too hard right now, it'll get shut down and stay that way for a lot longer than if we'd waited. The straight American public really hasn't had much time to get used to the idea of gay relationships, let alone see that committed gay couples are a lot like committed straight couples, and it might be time to take things a little slower. It's only been 35 years since Stonewall. It's only been 10 since Ellen DeGeneres' TV character started being open about her homosexuality. The first same-sex kiss in a soap opera didn't come until 3 years ago. This is all new to a large segment of the population, and frustrating as it is, Rome wasn't built in a day. If people had tried to build Rome in a day, Rome likely would have sucked. Civil unions are the same way. There's a danger of backlash, civil unions aren't supported by a very large majority of citizens, and we need to look at the long-term implications here, as sad as it is that we have to have considerations other than doing what's right in our view.
Backlash can be ferocious. Are we willing to take the risks associated with agitating for civil unions right now? Are we willing to take the risks associated with continuing to send the message that gay people don't have the same place in society as straight ones? I don't know. I'm not that wise. I just think that all of us, even those with very strong views one way or the other, need to re-evaluate, weighing the risks. Nobody credible wants to see individuals getting hurt. If we're going to keep that from happening, we have to put aside rhetoric, stop convincing ourselves of what we want to believe, and really contemplate things from a practical perspective removed from any emotion other than concern for all people.
2. As all y'all likely already know, I very strongly dislike politics in any form. It seems fake and superficial to me, and I don't understand the machinations/manipulations involved in getting and keeping power. To be honest, I don't want to. I want to get to and through med school/residency, work downtown, and then go wherever Doctors Without Borders will send me. It's hard for me to appreciate philosophy and within-the-U.S.-culture-war debates when there are actual wars going on in the world, there's a culture war that's making it so that many Africans won't allow Red Cross workers to vaccinate their children against polio, and the Christian philosophy I ascribe to says very little beyond "Love G-d and love your neighbor." I think we as a nation get into trouble when we move too far away from that basic big picture. It's not because we don't have good intentions when discussing details. I think that we do, for the most part. It's just because the more we try to create a prescriptive society rather than a descriptive one (and I do recognize that we have to, to some degree), the easier it is for us to stop taking the broad view, and the harder it is for us to act with kindness and grace. Additionally, I think the issue here is akin to the one about whether more U.S. aid should go to Israel or to African countries. Should we spend our time writing letters to Congresspeople over gay folks, or should we be doing something for the impoverished people here? Each group needs help. All the time we take for one comes at the opportunity cost of time for the other.
My answer is that the first thing we need to do is act, as individuals, toward other individuals with love. I think that my hanging out with someone gay does more than my letter to my Congressdude does. (Actually, that's probably a bad example, because only one of my letters to a Congressdude ever made any difference at all. Do you really think they read those letters? No. They read the names on the bank checks they get given. Ask Shayna. Her whole job last summer was to keep people from contacting their Congresschick.) I think that my conversations with people who are homeless or down-and-out help them more than does any dollar or two I could give them. We need to remember our common humanity first, especially those of us who have power, and we need to act on it. We need to love other people just for being people, and treat them with a little dignity and warmth, and not worry so much about Making Statements or Having Big Ideas or acting a certain way toward people based on their boxes (check one: gay, straight, bi. Check one: upper, middle, working class). Basic human kindness. That's what will really save us from ourselves.
When individuals are loved as individuals and as part of humankind, they're much more likely to stay here rather than hurting themselves or hurting other people or engaging in other destructive behaviors, and I think that needs to be our first concern. I think we need to keep gay teenagers from feeling unaccepted or depressed, and from harming themselves. I think we need to keep working-class children from feeling like there's no point to their lives and things will never get better, and from engaging in violence or drug use. I know it sounds gooey, but it's true. When people are valued is when they'll stay, and when they'll contribute. That's why gangs work. They're family. That's why religious gatherings work. They're family. That's why the library staff got so much work out of me, and that's why the teachers at Boomer's high school get so much out of him, and that's why my kids at the elementary schools will listen to me and learn our science lesson. It's all about family. If we can do something to extend that beyond the small groups we have now, I honestly believe we can get beyond any hardship or Big Issue.
Hell, look at the countries in the world with the smallest violent-crime rates (Switzerland, Japan, etc.). Then look at their religious or ethnic makeup. Pretty much homogeneous, in most cases. If people look the same, talk the same, share the same culture, they're less likely to hurt each other. Same thing happened during the Revolutionary War in the U.S. Why do you think Britain sent in Hessians? Hessians had their own failings, but they didn't have loyalties, so they were much more willing to fight. They didn't have the same ties to the colonists that the British soldiers did. They didn't speak the same language. They weren't family. Now, I know there are plenty of other (possibly confounding) variables involved, but I don't think we can dismiss the importance of people feeling tied to one another. Look at the gun-control policies in Switzerland and Japan. They're pretty much polar opposites. The Swiss government actually issues its citizens automatic rifles to keep at home for national defense purposes, whereas Japan has banned rifles and handguns both, allowing only a few very strictly regulated shotguns. Their Olympic rifle team actually has to leave the country in order to practice. Yet the rate of gun violence in both countries, at least until pretty recently (world crime rates are going up across the board), was practically nothing, especially compared to the overall world rate of violent incidents involving guns. Why? Well, as we all know, correlation isn't causation, but 99% of Japanese citizens are ethnically Japanese, while the Swiss are 90% either French or German. (Thanks to http://cfds.sjsu.edu/professors/watkinst/ja.htm and http://www.about.ch/statistics/ for the statistical information.) I don't think it's too far off to suggest that a shared ethnic, religious, or racial makeup creates a sense of family, and I'd argue that this sense of family is one of the factors in keeping the peace.
So here's the summary: Civil-union laws may not be as important as making individual gay people feel respected and loved in a non-governmental way. (I don't know. It's just a theory, and it depends on what a person's goals are. Mine are to keep individuals alive, contributing to society, and as happy as is possible without overriding the common and long-term good, acknowledging that "as happy as possible without overriding the common and long-term good" might not be all that happy.) Similarly, we shouldn't forget that there are big issues in our country that have nothing to do with our own little culture war.
3. I do understand the value of the civil-union debate, and debate in general. I don't think arguing in itself makes anyone a bad person. I think that arguing instead of acting makes people cold and over-intellectualized and angry and foolish, and ultimately harms us. I think that focusing on one issue alone does us no good. I think a lot of things. It doesn't matter. What matters is that I should talk to people, and that I should give them food if they need it, and that I should pray for them, and that I should make it easier for them to keep living.
Now for the irrational, emotional part.
In the end, what committed romantic love comes down to is two people and a promise. Everything else is extraneous. That's why I don't like focusing on the government/policy side of the issue. So I can't walk into the courthouse and get a license and get benefits for loving her. So what? I still love her. "Course of true love never did run smooth" and all that. When I'm demanding that I be allowed to marry her in the civil sphere, it's not about loving her, it's about getting something (recognition, death benefits, anything else) from the government for loving her. It'd be nice. It'd be fairer. But it doesn't have any more to do with our relationship than it does to do with UFOs and the findings about water on Mars. There's still just the two of us, and our promise, and that's what matters. As far as I'm concerned, this theoretical me is already married in the secular sense. I have been since the minute we decided we wanted to be, since the minute we decided she was enough for me, and I was enough for her, and it was time to go deeper.
The state could take away its recognition of opposite-sex marriages tomorrow, and straight people would be annoyed, but they wouldn't be any less married. They'd just have to go through a little more rigmarole to secure the appropriate considerations. So yeah, it's unfair that gay couples can't get married by their state. Yeah, it's sad that there are so many people out there who think this is a religious or moral issue. Yeah, it'd be nice if things did change. But all of that is just an outside recognition of an inner fact, and it doesn't matter nearly so much as the relationship itself does. Far as I'm concerned, civil marriage is just the easiest possible way of arranging spousal legal rights. If you're gay, you just have to go through more red tape to arrange yours. It sucks. But it doesn't have to be a big deal.
Similarly, my socially-conservative friends: Take a deep breath already. Civil unions aren't going to turn anyone gay. Heterosexuality does not have to be advocated for. No one was advocating for it in our past, and it still thrived. Civil marriage is a shorthand for practical legal concerns, not an embracing of anyone's "lifestyle." There are always going to be gay people out there, and some of them are going to get involved in relationships, and some of them are going to secure legal rights on their partners. It's already happened. The world has not collapsed or inverted itself. It would not collapse or invert itself if the government made it a little easier for people to gain those rights. It's not a big deal.
So. Three-point summary: Y'all, debate is valuable, but it doesn't go anywhere. It's much more important just to live your life and try to help other people live theirs. Let's try not to bring politics into love, because when we do, it only demeans all of us.
Okay, so some folks are wanting clarification of what I wrote about the civil-union debate Wednesday, since it certainly wasn't the clearest or most coherent thing I've ever written. I'll oblige, because you asked, but I don't really want to enter the debate if I don't have to. Honestly, as far as I'm concerned, the whole thing is just a mess, and it's like Screwtape: makes me want to get back to basics and go tutor people in reading or get a grant written for Neighborhood Services or go to Africa to help with surgeries or something. We (as a nation) are just creating drama over something that shouldn't be a big deal.
1. I don't know whether or not I think civil unions should be legal. If they could exist in a vacuum, I'd say yes, of course, because this is civil marriage, which (a) is about practical, straightforward matters like inheritances and taxes and visitation rights, and it's really not fair that some couples should be extended those benefits while others aren't, and (b) doesn't have much to do with any religious or moral structure, so I don't really see how anyone's religion/morals can be threatened by it, regardless of their beliefs about homosexuality.
However, this isn't a vacuum, and my fear is that if the issue is pushed too hard right now, it'll get shut down and stay that way for a lot longer than if we'd waited. The straight American public really hasn't had much time to get used to the idea of gay relationships, let alone see that committed gay couples are a lot like committed straight couples, and it might be time to take things a little slower. It's only been 35 years since Stonewall. It's only been 10 since Ellen DeGeneres' TV character started being open about her homosexuality. The first same-sex kiss in a soap opera didn't come until 3 years ago. This is all new to a large segment of the population, and frustrating as it is, Rome wasn't built in a day. If people had tried to build Rome in a day, Rome likely would have sucked. Civil unions are the same way. There's a danger of backlash, civil unions aren't supported by a very large majority of citizens, and we need to look at the long-term implications here, as sad as it is that we have to have considerations other than doing what's right in our view.
Backlash can be ferocious. Are we willing to take the risks associated with agitating for civil unions right now? Are we willing to take the risks associated with continuing to send the message that gay people don't have the same place in society as straight ones? I don't know. I'm not that wise. I just think that all of us, even those with very strong views one way or the other, need to re-evaluate, weighing the risks. Nobody credible wants to see individuals getting hurt. If we're going to keep that from happening, we have to put aside rhetoric, stop convincing ourselves of what we want to believe, and really contemplate things from a practical perspective removed from any emotion other than concern for all people.
2. As all y'all likely already know, I very strongly dislike politics in any form. It seems fake and superficial to me, and I don't understand the machinations/manipulations involved in getting and keeping power. To be honest, I don't want to. I want to get to and through med school/residency, work downtown, and then go wherever Doctors Without Borders will send me. It's hard for me to appreciate philosophy and within-the-U.S.-culture-war debates when there are actual wars going on in the world, there's a culture war that's making it so that many Africans won't allow Red Cross workers to vaccinate their children against polio, and the Christian philosophy I ascribe to says very little beyond "Love G-d and love your neighbor." I think we as a nation get into trouble when we move too far away from that basic big picture. It's not because we don't have good intentions when discussing details. I think that we do, for the most part. It's just because the more we try to create a prescriptive society rather than a descriptive one (and I do recognize that we have to, to some degree), the easier it is for us to stop taking the broad view, and the harder it is for us to act with kindness and grace. Additionally, I think the issue here is akin to the one about whether more U.S. aid should go to Israel or to African countries. Should we spend our time writing letters to Congresspeople over gay folks, or should we be doing something for the impoverished people here? Each group needs help. All the time we take for one comes at the opportunity cost of time for the other.
My answer is that the first thing we need to do is act, as individuals, toward other individuals with love. I think that my hanging out with someone gay does more than my letter to my Congressdude does. (Actually, that's probably a bad example, because only one of my letters to a Congressdude ever made any difference at all. Do you really think they read those letters? No. They read the names on the bank checks they get given. Ask Shayna. Her whole job last summer was to keep people from contacting their Congresschick.) I think that my conversations with people who are homeless or down-and-out help them more than does any dollar or two I could give them. We need to remember our common humanity first, especially those of us who have power, and we need to act on it. We need to love other people just for being people, and treat them with a little dignity and warmth, and not worry so much about Making Statements or Having Big Ideas or acting a certain way toward people based on their boxes (check one: gay, straight, bi. Check one: upper, middle, working class). Basic human kindness. That's what will really save us from ourselves.
When individuals are loved as individuals and as part of humankind, they're much more likely to stay here rather than hurting themselves or hurting other people or engaging in other destructive behaviors, and I think that needs to be our first concern. I think we need to keep gay teenagers from feeling unaccepted or depressed, and from harming themselves. I think we need to keep working-class children from feeling like there's no point to their lives and things will never get better, and from engaging in violence or drug use. I know it sounds gooey, but it's true. When people are valued is when they'll stay, and when they'll contribute. That's why gangs work. They're family. That's why religious gatherings work. They're family. That's why the library staff got so much work out of me, and that's why the teachers at Boomer's high school get so much out of him, and that's why my kids at the elementary schools will listen to me and learn our science lesson. It's all about family. If we can do something to extend that beyond the small groups we have now, I honestly believe we can get beyond any hardship or Big Issue.
Hell, look at the countries in the world with the smallest violent-crime rates (Switzerland, Japan, etc.). Then look at their religious or ethnic makeup. Pretty much homogeneous, in most cases. If people look the same, talk the same, share the same culture, they're less likely to hurt each other. Same thing happened during the Revolutionary War in the U.S. Why do you think Britain sent in Hessians? Hessians had their own failings, but they didn't have loyalties, so they were much more willing to fight. They didn't have the same ties to the colonists that the British soldiers did. They didn't speak the same language. They weren't family. Now, I know there are plenty of other (possibly confounding) variables involved, but I don't think we can dismiss the importance of people feeling tied to one another. Look at the gun-control policies in Switzerland and Japan. They're pretty much polar opposites. The Swiss government actually issues its citizens automatic rifles to keep at home for national defense purposes, whereas Japan has banned rifles and handguns both, allowing only a few very strictly regulated shotguns. Their Olympic rifle team actually has to leave the country in order to practice. Yet the rate of gun violence in both countries, at least until pretty recently (world crime rates are going up across the board), was practically nothing, especially compared to the overall world rate of violent incidents involving guns. Why? Well, as we all know, correlation isn't causation, but 99% of Japanese citizens are ethnically Japanese, while the Swiss are 90% either French or German. (Thanks to http://cfds.sjsu.edu/professors/watkinst/ja.htm and http://www.about.ch/statistics/ for the statistical information.) I don't think it's too far off to suggest that a shared ethnic, religious, or racial makeup creates a sense of family, and I'd argue that this sense of family is one of the factors in keeping the peace.
So here's the summary: Civil-union laws may not be as important as making individual gay people feel respected and loved in a non-governmental way. (I don't know. It's just a theory, and it depends on what a person's goals are. Mine are to keep individuals alive, contributing to society, and as happy as is possible without overriding the common and long-term good, acknowledging that "as happy as possible without overriding the common and long-term good" might not be all that happy.) Similarly, we shouldn't forget that there are big issues in our country that have nothing to do with our own little culture war.
3. I do understand the value of the civil-union debate, and debate in general. I don't think arguing in itself makes anyone a bad person. I think that arguing instead of acting makes people cold and over-intellectualized and angry and foolish, and ultimately harms us. I think that focusing on one issue alone does us no good. I think a lot of things. It doesn't matter. What matters is that I should talk to people, and that I should give them food if they need it, and that I should pray for them, and that I should make it easier for them to keep living.
Now for the irrational, emotional part.
In the end, what committed romantic love comes down to is two people and a promise. Everything else is extraneous. That's why I don't like focusing on the government/policy side of the issue. So I can't walk into the courthouse and get a license and get benefits for loving her. So what? I still love her. "Course of true love never did run smooth" and all that. When I'm demanding that I be allowed to marry her in the civil sphere, it's not about loving her, it's about getting something (recognition, death benefits, anything else) from the government for loving her. It'd be nice. It'd be fairer. But it doesn't have any more to do with our relationship than it does to do with UFOs and the findings about water on Mars. There's still just the two of us, and our promise, and that's what matters. As far as I'm concerned, this theoretical me is already married in the secular sense. I have been since the minute we decided we wanted to be, since the minute we decided she was enough for me, and I was enough for her, and it was time to go deeper.
The state could take away its recognition of opposite-sex marriages tomorrow, and straight people would be annoyed, but they wouldn't be any less married. They'd just have to go through a little more rigmarole to secure the appropriate considerations. So yeah, it's unfair that gay couples can't get married by their state. Yeah, it's sad that there are so many people out there who think this is a religious or moral issue. Yeah, it'd be nice if things did change. But all of that is just an outside recognition of an inner fact, and it doesn't matter nearly so much as the relationship itself does. Far as I'm concerned, civil marriage is just the easiest possible way of arranging spousal legal rights. If you're gay, you just have to go through more red tape to arrange yours. It sucks. But it doesn't have to be a big deal.
Similarly, my socially-conservative friends: Take a deep breath already. Civil unions aren't going to turn anyone gay. Heterosexuality does not have to be advocated for. No one was advocating for it in our past, and it still thrived. Civil marriage is a shorthand for practical legal concerns, not an embracing of anyone's "lifestyle." There are always going to be gay people out there, and some of them are going to get involved in relationships, and some of them are going to secure legal rights on their partners. It's already happened. The world has not collapsed or inverted itself. It would not collapse or invert itself if the government made it a little easier for people to gain those rights. It's not a big deal.
So. Three-point summary: Y'all, debate is valuable, but it doesn't go anywhere. It's much more important just to live your life and try to help other people live theirs. Let's try not to bring politics into love, because when we do, it only demeans all of us.
Friday, March 05, 2004
Black Holes and Dust Bunnies
which are apparently just about the same thing (in a manner of speaking), according to some people who would know.
I have been reading a lot lately, and doing spring cleaning, and while you probably won't benefit personally from the latter, the former might be of use:
Alias Olympia, by Eunice Lipton. I like the story, and I like the insight into history, and I like Victorine Meurent (a painter and musician famous for modeling for Eduoard Manet). I don't like the author's insistence on including narrative slips of her own life, and I don't like her implication that Victorine, as a capable and independent woman, must have been gay. See, because if you're a woman who doesn't need to cling to a man all the time, or who chooses to live her own life with minimal regard for other people's opinions, or even who can gaze at other people in a direct and unflinching way, you clearly can't be driving stick, so to speak. Oh, wait. Yes you can. Still, with three to two, it's probably worth a look-see.
The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. I don't know what it is, but I just don't like most of Lewis' work. I soldiered through Mere Christianity, but that was more out of a sense of obligation than anything else, and he still seems stale and priggish and self-important and unnecessarily haterly when I glance back at it now. I know he's well-beloved, and I'm sure that's for a very good reason, but I just don't see it. However, this book was a lot better than Mere Christianity, by virtue of being much worse: I got fed up with it quicker and went to go do something more important. So Screwtape: a good motivator to do something else. Anything else, in my case.
QED: the Strange Theory of Light, by Richard Feynman. Honestly, if you're looking for a spiritual classic, this is much more likely to fill the bill than is anything by Lewis. There's a certain holiness in quarks and hadrons, I think, that transcends words and arguments and squabbling and leaves us with nothing but awe. Plus, there are numbers. And pictures.
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, by Beverly Daniel Tatum. Good thoughts, good stories, reasoned conclusions, deep insight, minimal "duh" factor, no killing of Whitey. What more can anyone ask?
Timequake, by Kurt Vonnegut. Strange and lyrical, like everything the man writes. It's hard to summarize or comment on, but I'd recommend it.
That was pretty much all for this week. Let me know what you are reading, if you're reading, and what you think.
which are apparently just about the same thing (in a manner of speaking), according to some people who would know.
I have been reading a lot lately, and doing spring cleaning, and while you probably won't benefit personally from the latter, the former might be of use:
Alias Olympia, by Eunice Lipton. I like the story, and I like the insight into history, and I like Victorine Meurent (a painter and musician famous for modeling for Eduoard Manet). I don't like the author's insistence on including narrative slips of her own life, and I don't like her implication that Victorine, as a capable and independent woman, must have been gay. See, because if you're a woman who doesn't need to cling to a man all the time, or who chooses to live her own life with minimal regard for other people's opinions, or even who can gaze at other people in a direct and unflinching way, you clearly can't be driving stick, so to speak. Oh, wait. Yes you can. Still, with three to two, it's probably worth a look-see.
The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. I don't know what it is, but I just don't like most of Lewis' work. I soldiered through Mere Christianity, but that was more out of a sense of obligation than anything else, and he still seems stale and priggish and self-important and unnecessarily haterly when I glance back at it now. I know he's well-beloved, and I'm sure that's for a very good reason, but I just don't see it. However, this book was a lot better than Mere Christianity, by virtue of being much worse: I got fed up with it quicker and went to go do something more important. So Screwtape: a good motivator to do something else. Anything else, in my case.
QED: the Strange Theory of Light, by Richard Feynman. Honestly, if you're looking for a spiritual classic, this is much more likely to fill the bill than is anything by Lewis. There's a certain holiness in quarks and hadrons, I think, that transcends words and arguments and squabbling and leaves us with nothing but awe. Plus, there are numbers. And pictures.
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, by Beverly Daniel Tatum. Good thoughts, good stories, reasoned conclusions, deep insight, minimal "duh" factor, no killing of Whitey. What more can anyone ask?
Timequake, by Kurt Vonnegut. Strange and lyrical, like everything the man writes. It's hard to summarize or comment on, but I'd recommend it.
That was pretty much all for this week. Let me know what you are reading, if you're reading, and what you think.
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
1 Letter, 1 Debate, 101 Degrees
Smart move of the day: writing back to my dear sainted swearing Grandma Schu, who wrote me last week to tell me about everything from Lent to HVAC to the Iowa State-Kansas basketball game. My grandma is eighty-seven years old, and she could kick the ass of any one of y'all out there tonight, G-d bless her healthy heart, and there's never been another one like her. From shoveling snow to polishing up punks to praying the rosary to cleaning up in bridge and bingo, this sweetly tough lady is constant cause for me to give thanks to good G-d that there is courage in this world, and cursing. I am so very very lucky to be one of her grandchildren.
Dumb move of the day: attending a discussion/debate about civil unions and gay marriage. This is why I currently have a fever (the 101 degrees of the title) without organic explanation, and why my heart is proverbially heavy, and why I'm here to write instead of reading physics.
I hate the rhetoric surrounding these debates. I hate all the noise-- rights, denial of benefits, preservation of family, slippery slope, historical precedent, two people who love each other, on and on and on until it's hard to hear what's at the root of this. I hate the politics of it. I hate that the politics has become so deeply a part of it. I hate that families, of all damn things, have become the focus of firestorms, and that love is bound in legalities, and that all we can do is talk, talk, talk ourselves in circles, to death, when outside a world is waiting. I hate the abstractions and I hate the allegations and I hate the anger, and I hate that I can't help it, that I can't say "Get back to basics" without being un-understood. What's at the middle of all of it? It's fleeting, it falls away, it evaporates in evanescent waves, undefinable and undeniable as smoke (and likely as cancer-causing). We can sling arrows, rocks, mud-- "You're afraid!" "You're abnormal!", but we can't slough away dead dread and division from our souls. We can't reach up and turn on the cosmic light in this vast closet to get specific answers for our side.
And why not? Because we're both of us wrong when we wander away from the root of who we are and what we know. We hold ourselves up as experts, and construct our strategies and stories for a carefully calculated effect, trying to show how smart we are or to justify our beliefs, our lives, and what do we gain for it? Nothing. Nothing! It's not our brothers and sisters who judge, or whom we judge. It's our brothers and sisters we're called to love. Why fight? Why fret? Why forget our place in the world? It's by trying to be so complex and sophisticated that we fall, and fail. What's simple is profound, and what's profound is what we're made for, not surface struggles. I find more beauty in one person's held-back tears than in all the braying of the high-flung arguments. It's real. It's genuine. That's what's deep, and why waste our time in the shallow end? Life is too short. Life is too short for us to waste our time arguing about our relationships when we could just be living them, and appreciating them, and not getting caught up in this destructive pick-pick-picking at other people and ourselves.
This life is but a single breath. We flower and we fade. All our life weighs nothing but half a breath in the vast completeness of every world. What can we possibly think our opinions and intellectual strivings yield or mean? What can we possibly hope or help to gain by snipping, sniping, griping our way through some bitter unsatisfied "urgency"? My mind rebels, repels my desire to make it all I am. My soul alone can see in that single lightbulb swinging from the closet ceiling, and what does it say? What does it say? Does it issue position papers? No! Does it wear bracelets strung with letters to remind me of the Word made flesh? No! It says "Get off your ass and love this world and these people fiercely, ferociously, freely, and don't you rest until the resurrection comes, because they need a hell of a lot of help. A hell of a lot of help."
So talked down, wound up, bound up in all this rumbling of tonight, I turn to jumbling all my words together in an effort to make it right, or what I feel is right. I hope I've helped something, but you never can tell, and it's probably just as well. Good night and happy hearts to you all. Live intensely and in awe.
That is my blessing on you.
(I hope it pleases G-d. I hope that we please G-d. I have no way of knowing that either ever will. But we're nowhere without hope, and so be blessed, and be beautiful, and be brave.)
Smart move of the day: writing back to my dear sainted swearing Grandma Schu, who wrote me last week to tell me about everything from Lent to HVAC to the Iowa State-Kansas basketball game. My grandma is eighty-seven years old, and she could kick the ass of any one of y'all out there tonight, G-d bless her healthy heart, and there's never been another one like her. From shoveling snow to polishing up punks to praying the rosary to cleaning up in bridge and bingo, this sweetly tough lady is constant cause for me to give thanks to good G-d that there is courage in this world, and cursing. I am so very very lucky to be one of her grandchildren.
Dumb move of the day: attending a discussion/debate about civil unions and gay marriage. This is why I currently have a fever (the 101 degrees of the title) without organic explanation, and why my heart is proverbially heavy, and why I'm here to write instead of reading physics.
I hate the rhetoric surrounding these debates. I hate all the noise-- rights, denial of benefits, preservation of family, slippery slope, historical precedent, two people who love each other, on and on and on until it's hard to hear what's at the root of this. I hate the politics of it. I hate that the politics has become so deeply a part of it. I hate that families, of all damn things, have become the focus of firestorms, and that love is bound in legalities, and that all we can do is talk, talk, talk ourselves in circles, to death, when outside a world is waiting. I hate the abstractions and I hate the allegations and I hate the anger, and I hate that I can't help it, that I can't say "Get back to basics" without being un-understood. What's at the middle of all of it? It's fleeting, it falls away, it evaporates in evanescent waves, undefinable and undeniable as smoke (and likely as cancer-causing). We can sling arrows, rocks, mud-- "You're afraid!" "You're abnormal!", but we can't slough away dead dread and division from our souls. We can't reach up and turn on the cosmic light in this vast closet to get specific answers for our side.
And why not? Because we're both of us wrong when we wander away from the root of who we are and what we know. We hold ourselves up as experts, and construct our strategies and stories for a carefully calculated effect, trying to show how smart we are or to justify our beliefs, our lives, and what do we gain for it? Nothing. Nothing! It's not our brothers and sisters who judge, or whom we judge. It's our brothers and sisters we're called to love. Why fight? Why fret? Why forget our place in the world? It's by trying to be so complex and sophisticated that we fall, and fail. What's simple is profound, and what's profound is what we're made for, not surface struggles. I find more beauty in one person's held-back tears than in all the braying of the high-flung arguments. It's real. It's genuine. That's what's deep, and why waste our time in the shallow end? Life is too short. Life is too short for us to waste our time arguing about our relationships when we could just be living them, and appreciating them, and not getting caught up in this destructive pick-pick-picking at other people and ourselves.
This life is but a single breath. We flower and we fade. All our life weighs nothing but half a breath in the vast completeness of every world. What can we possibly think our opinions and intellectual strivings yield or mean? What can we possibly hope or help to gain by snipping, sniping, griping our way through some bitter unsatisfied "urgency"? My mind rebels, repels my desire to make it all I am. My soul alone can see in that single lightbulb swinging from the closet ceiling, and what does it say? What does it say? Does it issue position papers? No! Does it wear bracelets strung with letters to remind me of the Word made flesh? No! It says "Get off your ass and love this world and these people fiercely, ferociously, freely, and don't you rest until the resurrection comes, because they need a hell of a lot of help. A hell of a lot of help."
So talked down, wound up, bound up in all this rumbling of tonight, I turn to jumbling all my words together in an effort to make it right, or what I feel is right. I hope I've helped something, but you never can tell, and it's probably just as well. Good night and happy hearts to you all. Live intensely and in awe.
That is my blessing on you.
(I hope it pleases G-d. I hope that we please G-d. I have no way of knowing that either ever will. But we're nowhere without hope, and so be blessed, and be beautiful, and be brave.)
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Monday, March 1
Last night, PJ's grandfather died. I will be baking him banana bread, which is a poor substitute, obviously.
Last night, the news drifted north that Father James W. Jones had died the day prior, and Christ the King parish was bereft, while Christ the King of Heaven was doubtless joyful to welcome another soul to Him. Funeral is Wednesday (tomorrow) at 11AM at Christ the King. Call (614) 688-7448 tomorrow morning if you need directions.
Last night at IDG, we talked about Heaven and creation and original sin and about how holiness filters from the fourth level of Heaven down into this physical world, and it nearly brought some tears to hear a group member say "Well, everything has to die so it can return to the highest level."
Last night, the Allies talked (and talked, and talked some more, bless their passionate hearts), as the Allies tend to do, and they asked many good questions of themselves, struggled and strove in conversation with these issues as Jacob with the angel. The reedy flute music creeping in through the walls from the room next door made it all just a little bit surreal, and the clang of clashing swords from MRG's stage combat practice mirrored our talk in a way too obvious for any decent writer to plot. "Yes, but see, they're actually not hurting each other, or wanting to. It's a carefully choreographed dance of anything but death. . ." My young'uns are so beautiful, with their idealism and their "I" statements, that it almost hurts, sometimes, to be around them, the same way the water in the shower almost hurts when you've turned it up till it's the hottest you can stand. The Allies, too, are cleansing. Although my shower's never tried to pull me into a group hug.
Last night, I finished Timequake, by Kurt Vonnegut, and it was painful and lovely and humorous. Thank you, Kinneret.
Last night, I went up to visit my friend, and resting gently on the fire alarm box in the hall was the blue-cast figure of a plastic policeman, the kind like an army man, made en masse in a mold. He stood solid but askew on his elliptical base, one hand on his holstered gun, the other pointing ahead, his legs fixed in ready running, off to apprehend some visible threat to the safety of our state and souls. I found him comforting, and I'm not sure why.
Last night, I went to bed early, even for me, tucked up under a layer of fleece and one of jersey, leaving the curtains and the window open, watching the light and sound from outside play across the ceiling like Cubist art, not fully abstract, not fully recognizable, an elite system I'm not high-echelon enough to understand. I wondered why the trees grow the way they do, and why time seems to pass in points and lines instead of colors, and why the pull of gravity both literal and figurative is so dishearteningly and necessarily strong.
And then, last night, after all that, I had a dream about margarine tubs. A whole bunch of people had a whole bunch of Country Crock containers, from all different kinds of Country Crock (Regular, Churn Style, Light, Added Calcium, etc.), and the people were going to throw away the margarine tubs, but I intervened and said I'd put them in a recycling bin. Shortly after that, while heading to the recycling bin, I realized that the margarine tubs were just what I needed-- I could store leftovers in them! (In dreams, some people fly, some people fall, but I organize refrigerators. . .)
Tonight is voting (COSI: free or not?), and physics, and Boomer, and Mom. Happy trails to you (or happy tails, if you're an unusually intelligent dog), until, G-d willing, we meet again.
Last night, PJ's grandfather died. I will be baking him banana bread, which is a poor substitute, obviously.
Last night, the news drifted north that Father James W. Jones had died the day prior, and Christ the King parish was bereft, while Christ the King of Heaven was doubtless joyful to welcome another soul to Him. Funeral is Wednesday (tomorrow) at 11AM at Christ the King. Call (614) 688-7448 tomorrow morning if you need directions.
Last night at IDG, we talked about Heaven and creation and original sin and about how holiness filters from the fourth level of Heaven down into this physical world, and it nearly brought some tears to hear a group member say "Well, everything has to die so it can return to the highest level."
Last night, the Allies talked (and talked, and talked some more, bless their passionate hearts), as the Allies tend to do, and they asked many good questions of themselves, struggled and strove in conversation with these issues as Jacob with the angel. The reedy flute music creeping in through the walls from the room next door made it all just a little bit surreal, and the clang of clashing swords from MRG's stage combat practice mirrored our talk in a way too obvious for any decent writer to plot. "Yes, but see, they're actually not hurting each other, or wanting to. It's a carefully choreographed dance of anything but death. . ." My young'uns are so beautiful, with their idealism and their "I" statements, that it almost hurts, sometimes, to be around them, the same way the water in the shower almost hurts when you've turned it up till it's the hottest you can stand. The Allies, too, are cleansing. Although my shower's never tried to pull me into a group hug.
Last night, I finished Timequake, by Kurt Vonnegut, and it was painful and lovely and humorous. Thank you, Kinneret.
Last night, I went up to visit my friend, and resting gently on the fire alarm box in the hall was the blue-cast figure of a plastic policeman, the kind like an army man, made en masse in a mold. He stood solid but askew on his elliptical base, one hand on his holstered gun, the other pointing ahead, his legs fixed in ready running, off to apprehend some visible threat to the safety of our state and souls. I found him comforting, and I'm not sure why.
Last night, I went to bed early, even for me, tucked up under a layer of fleece and one of jersey, leaving the curtains and the window open, watching the light and sound from outside play across the ceiling like Cubist art, not fully abstract, not fully recognizable, an elite system I'm not high-echelon enough to understand. I wondered why the trees grow the way they do, and why time seems to pass in points and lines instead of colors, and why the pull of gravity both literal and figurative is so dishearteningly and necessarily strong.
And then, last night, after all that, I had a dream about margarine tubs. A whole bunch of people had a whole bunch of Country Crock containers, from all different kinds of Country Crock (Regular, Churn Style, Light, Added Calcium, etc.), and the people were going to throw away the margarine tubs, but I intervened and said I'd put them in a recycling bin. Shortly after that, while heading to the recycling bin, I realized that the margarine tubs were just what I needed-- I could store leftovers in them! (In dreams, some people fly, some people fall, but I organize refrigerators. . .)
Tonight is voting (COSI: free or not?), and physics, and Boomer, and Mom. Happy trails to you (or happy tails, if you're an unusually intelligent dog), until, G-d willing, we meet again.
