Make Your Body Move

I did something yesterday that I'm struggling to sum up in an adjective. Exhilarating? Difficult? Crazy? A bit of all those things, but the only word that really captures it is "triathalon."

Technically, this is what would be known as a mini-triathalon. You swim 400 yards, bike 12 miles and then run 3 miles. They have these things every Monday night in Lake Placid through mid-August. Last year I didn't find out about them until the day before the last one and I had neither run nor swam at all that summer. So I chickened out. This summer, although I'm not in nearly as good a shape as I was last summer, I did swim a bunch of laps and even ran a few times so that I could participate. I even did all 3 in succession once.

So here's the experience. Before we even get there, I look in the paper and see the results from the prior week. I know approximately how fast I can do this, about 10 minutes for the swim, 45 minutes for the bike and 30 for the run and about 5 minutes for changes. This puts me about 10 minutes behind that last person (out of 8) in my age group to finish. There were a few older women who were a bit slower, but that's it. I manage to convince myself that this would give me the 9th best time of all the many 50-59 year-olds in Lake Placid, which is pretty good. So I arrive for sign-up and there are about 150 people there, of all ages and mostly very fit looking. I sign up and they scawl a number on my arm and leg and give me a bathing cap with a number on it as well. Many people are wearing official-lookng triathalon gear and a bunch have wet suits (!) on. At this point it's about 45 minutes until the things starts, so I arrange my towel, bicycle and related equipment, and running shoes in neat (for me) little piles and then spend the next 40 minutes fretting.

I had decided at this point that I was gooing to be that guy in the Olympics who comes staggering into the arena 20 minutes after everyone else has finished and the crowd give him a standing ovation. My wife thinks that's funny and is very supportive of my going ahead and doing this.

So it's finally time to start. We begin with an open water swim. I like swimming in lakes, though the water is often cold. I do not, however, ever try to swim for distance and/or speed. I tried swimming for exercise a few years ago but gave it up quickly. I am, let's just say, a competent swimmer. I can swim. But swimming for exercise is the most boring thing in the world. Swimming is only interesting to the extent that the fear of drowning keeps your mind active, but if you're in a pool that fear vanishes much to quickly to sustain interest. The only exercise I like less than swimming is Stairmaster. Whose idea was this, to simulate walking up stairs? Who likes doing that? I always figure if I dislike doing something in real life, I'm not going to enjoy simulating the activity on a machine.

Anyway, off we go, 150 of us diving into the lake, which is not too terribly cold. I try to go out nice and easy, but with all the adrenaline of the start and the energy required to avoid kicking feet, I find myself pretty winded after 100 yards. This is not good. Swimming laps, you can always pause and take a breath as you turn. Not the case in open water. So I spend the next 300 yards trying to breathe. Now, not being able to breathe is interesting, so I'm not bored on this swim. I figured in advance that I could do breast stroke for a bit if I couldn't keep doing the crawl, but breast stroke is very slow, even if you're good at it, and I wasn't expecting to do 300 yards of it. So once the good swimmers clear out, I start doing the backstroke. It's easy to breathe when you're on your back, but it's hard to see, which is also not boring. I bump into one person, but mostly I notice that the dozen or so people behind me have observed what I'm doing and many of them start doing it as well. I keep churning away and after a very long 10 minutes, I find myself back on shore.

I'm wet and breathing very hard and my wife is cheering me on and random people are saying "good job!" and my daughter is yelling at me not to walk up to my bicycle because everyone else is RUNNING. I succumb to the pressure and trot. I dry myself enough to get my shirt and my bike shoes on and off I go.

Before I signed up for this, I was wondering what to wear. The guy who runs the events told me that triathalon shorts were best. They're like bike shorts but with light padding so you can swim and run in them. I was startled to find out that I had accidentally bought a pair of these a couple of years ago, thinking they were just lightly padded bike shorts. But in fact they are easy to swim in and not too bad for running either, once you get over the fact that you don't wear anything under them. This makes perfect sense, intellectually, but back in the day we called this "going commando" or "freesyle" and I never got into it.

The bike ride was fine. It's a variation of a route that I've done many times before. I know all the hills and know I can do them. There's a road that runs along the Ausable River for about 4 miles and it is probably my favorite place to ride in the whole world. So I'm loving it, but there's always a little voice in my head saying, "This would be great if I didn't have to run 3 miles when I'm done with this." I got through the ride, even the one hill that I despise (it ends at a traffic light so you climb climb climb and then you have to stop.

I arrive back, get words of encouragement and a kiss from my wife and put my running shoes on and I'm off again. I haven't run this route because I don't run. I used to run but I've gained a bit of weight and lost a bit of cartilage in my knees and flexibility in my muscles, so it's not really fun anymore. So all I know about the course is that it goes along the lake, which is flat, and then up Mt. Whitney Rd. I make the assumption that Mt. Whitney Rd. goes up, which turns out to be correct. It's a mile of steady uphill. The nice thing about this is that it's downhill coming back. I've always liked courses that are downhill for the second half. I actually pass 2 people during the run and one person passes me near the finish line and then I'm done.

It took me exactly an hour and 30 minutes (unofficially). The swim took 10 minutes, the ride took 45 minutes and the run took 30 minutes. My daughter is blown away by the precision of this and I'm pleased to have finished. I'm sore and tired but not beyond comprehension. And so I've done it. I didn't wimp out and I even didn't finish last.

Best Thing Ever

How did I not know about this?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/07/technology/personaltech/07basics.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=power%20tools&st=cse&oref=slogin

Olympics!

The Olympics begin tomorrow. The opening ceremonies are tomorrow night. I'm curious to see if I can stay awake until the end. Until a few years ago the ceremony was mostly the parade of athletes and then a display of national pride by the host country followed by the lighting of the torch. Now it's like a long performance art piece, but with the TV people explaining what's going on. If you need TV people to tell you what's going on, it's not very good performance art. Four years ago, any time I heard Bob Costas refer to the "child of hope" or something like that, I'd make involuntary retching noises. I seem to remember there was ice skating involved. Or maybe that was the winter olympics. Man I'm getting old.

Reassurance and incipient disaster

I just read that Mary-Kate Olsen said she had nothing to do with Heath Ledger's death. I just wanted to make one thing clear: neither did I. I presume from the context that they had some kind of relationship, but lacking the necessary background to know that, it seemed like the most random bit of quotery I can recall seeing recently. It reminds me of Chevy Chase on the original Saturday Night Live Weekend Update. "this just in, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead." Same goes for Heath Ledger, may he rest in peace (though I highly doubt that will happen).

I also just saw that they found over 100,000 gorilla's living in a "gorilla paradise" in the Republic of Congo. To quote the great philosopher Don Henley, you call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye.

New Restaurant

Went out to dinner for my wife's birthday last night, to the brand new Parc restaurant on Rittenhouse Square. It's a new Stephen Starr restaurant, and as such has a clear theme. This one is a Paris bistro. Having been in Paris a few months ago, I can report that it is a perfect knockoff. It looks like it's been around for 100 years, even though it opened 2 weeks ago. This strikes me as an interesting job, making something brand new look old. Parts of it, of course, can be accomplished simply by furnishing with old things, including mismatched chairs and bathroom fixtures with age-cracked porcelin. But it would seem like at least something in the place has to be bought new and made to look old.

There were only a couple of things that seemed different to me. First there's the size. This place is immense. It must seat 500 people. It's easily twice the size of any place I've ever been in Paris. The second thing is the noise. I'm not sure that I've ever been in a louder restaurant. My ears were ringing for an hour after we left. The waitress (a third difference is the service was very friendly) had to come to both sides of a table for 4 to take our order and I still only heard half of what she said. The wine steward told me that they'd hired an acoustician to try to improve things. The food was excellent, though, and I'd definitely go back.

I should also mention that the people eating and drinking there (and it was packed, inside, outside and at the bar) were the most attractive group that I've seen in a Philly restaurant. It made me feel much better looking than I really am just being there. When we came out there was an orange Lamborghini two seat convertible sitting at the curb. I'm sure I'd be even better looking if I was driving that thing.

Hello again

Yeah I know I haven't written anything for a while. There's a good reason for that. I really haven't had much to say. It doesn't take much to get my brain whirling, but there hasn't been much of anything since we got back from Chicago. My days wrap around my daughter's health and it keeps everything within a pretty small range of activity.

Running

I want to do a mini-triathalon in a couple of weeks. It's a quarter miles swim, 12 mile bike ride and 5k run. Today I decided to try running a bit. If you're a middle aged guy and you really want to feel mortal, try running after not having done so for a while. I'm not in terrible shape and I can ride my bike all day, but people my age were not meant to run (evolutionarily speaking, people my age aren't meant to be alive, so running probably wasn't so important back in the old days). It just doesn't really work any more.

I used to run a fair amount, but now I decided I should concentrate on being able to run the maximum useful distance for my life. I estimate this to be about a quarter of a mile. This would allow me to run for a bus or a train, get out of the rain in all but the most isolated settings, and escape imminent danger. I don't really know why else I would need to run.

Back Home Again

Just in time for a big thunderstorm and losing electricity for 21 hours. I think lightning struck a tree on our block, which in turn knocked a couple of branches from another tree onto the the power lines. So we walked around the house reflexively and uselessly turning on lights when we entered the room, and when it finally got too dark we went out to eat and to a movie.

Fortunately/unfortunately, there were only a dozen or so houses with no power. For the common benefit I know that's a good thing, but for us it meant that we were pretty low on the priority scale.

In the aftermath, you do what people always do in situations like this. We plan for the disaster that just happened. Even though I've looked into getting generators in the past, I decided we really don't lose power often enough and the consequences are not sufficiently dire to go to the trouble and expense. I'm still not interested in a generator, but I'm all psyched to go to Target and buy a couple of camping lanterns. Candles really don't make enough light and flashlights are a pain to hold for a long time.

Maybe I'll get a whole disaster preparedness kit. Bottled water? Hah! I'm going for the water purification kit. I got a whole pool full of water. Maybe I'll pick up some freeze dried rations while I'm at it. I've seen that stuff at REI. Dried meat loaf and ice cream and that kind of stuff. Looks yummy inside that silver vacuum pouch. First aid? I can be efficient and skip the rubbing alcohol and just get some extra vodka. You can disinfect with it, drink it, or use it for fuel.

The First College Visit and a Baseball Game

It's kind of early for this sort of thing, but as long as we were in Chicago we thought we'd visit a couple of colleges. Today we went to the University of Chicago. What a coincidence that it's here! (Like Eddie Izzard says about the Pilgrims, amazing that they left from Plymouth and landed in Plymouth). Pretty amazing place. Wish I'd gone there instead of where I actually went. The tour guide talked for 90 minutes straight and then the admissions woman talked for another hour. It's a terrific school and they have lots of words there.

We ate lunch at a bakery/cafe that's apparently a favorite of Barack Obama. Good stuff.

The game was at the snappily named U.S. Cellular Field. In the baseball stadium biz it's known as the place where the architects that designed most of the great new stadia (that's Latin for ya) made all their mistakes. No sh-t. It's completely characterless and you can't get in the place. If you take the subway to the game (which you should), to enter at ground level you have to walk all the way to the far end of the stadium. After an outcry, they retrofitted it with a raised pedestrian bridge, so you can get in close to the subway, but only from across the street. Very weird. The game was no snappier than the name, but I'm glad I got to see the place.

Ratio and Proportion

I was thinking as I was tooling around the lakefront on my Segway, that one of the problems with taking a trip like this is that the ratio of the time you take planning it and the time you're actually in the place is way too high. We're in Chicago for four full days, but I must have spent more than a dozen hours planning, or nearly a quarter of the time we're here. That seems like a less than optimal work:fun ratio. That's why spontaneity is nice. There's no work in that ratio.

BTAIM, this has been a pretty good trip considering it's 2 parents and an almost 17 year-old girl. On the first night we had an amazing dinner at a place called Moto. The restaurant is famous for its odd preparations and presentations. We had a 10 course tasting menu, which didn't include any of the dishes prepared with liquid nitrogen, but did include an edible piece of paper that tasted like Buffalo chicken wings with blue cheese dressing and celery, a liquified greek salad in a pipette, "road kill" duck with beet puree blood and yellow lines on the plate and black salt gravel, and "cracker jack," a peanut flavored ball with a liquid popcorn center. And it was all delicious.

We've seen Blue Man Group and Second City, all very funny, taken a boat ride and a Segway tour along the lake front, and walked through Millennium Park with its giant silver bean. We're still visiting a couple of colleges, going to a baseball game (unfortunately not a Wrigley Field, the Cubbies are out of town) and seeing some cool modern art and maybe a Frank Lloyd Wright house. It's been a pretty good trip so far.

Travel

Of course, air travel is always somewhat unpleasant, but Southwest does seem to go out of its way to make it less so. Their people tend to act more like people and less like automatons than the other airlines. This has the residual effct of making the people flying with them less tense and better-humored, which is good for everyone. Those of you who know me would probably say I'm a reasonably nice, mellow, tolerant person, but when I'm trying to deal with US Airways, something about it immediately turns me into an SOB. When people are rude to me I have no problem bring rude in return and I arrive at the airport ready for them to be rude to me. Not fun.

Before I forget I have to mention my new favorite warning label. On the plane they give you Cheez-its and peanuts. On the (incredibly teeny) bag of peanuts it says:

INGREDIENTS: Peanuts, salt.
ALLERGY WARNING: This product produced in a factory that processes peanuts and tree nuts.

I guess it would have been more disturbing if it wasn't produced in that kind of factory.

Chicago

Oh my God are there a lot of tourists here! Why? I like Chicago. Been here several times in circumstances ranging from major business conventions to getting off a train after a 12-hour delayed 48 hour trip from Montana and a few more normal occasions, and I've always enjoyed myself. But a tourist mecca? Maybe for people from Gary, Indiana, but international? Cosmopolitan? I never would have figured it.

But why not. It has the best architecture of any city in the United States and there isn't even a close second. In the downtown area, any time you look up there's a treat. Art Deco, Romantic, Modern and Post-Modern. Turn of the 20th century buildings paying homage to the great edifices of Europe and turn of the 21st century buildings paying homage to them in turn. On one corner there's a building with real flying buttresses 40 stories up and across the street a modern skyscraper with rectangular structures on the setback to give a respectful nod to it.

It has good pizza too. And lots of stuff to do and great restaurants and a big honkin' lake.

More details tomorrow.

Driving

Almost had our first real accident today. We cut a left turn too close, swerved to the right (correctly) to get away from the car, but hit the accelerator instead of the break and almost hit a pole. I think everyone does that once or twice when they're first learning, and there really isn't any way to teach someone not to do it. You just have to hope for the best and try to learn to control your panic. That's why insurance rates are what they are.

Some Things Just Don't Sound Right

I have a package of ground turkey in my refrigerator that says "All Natural." I think the turkeys would beg to differ.

Quotable

There are signs around my neighborhood for "The Mother of All Yard Sales." I wonder if the person who made those signs knows who coined that particular turn of phrase. Do you know?

It was Saddam Hussein. During the first Gulf War he called for his troops to prepare for the "mother of all battles." Of course it wasn't really, but Saddam now lives on in our vernacular.

Be Very Afraid

I am embarking on one of the most terrifying journeys one can imagine. I am teaching my daughter to drive.

Let me say from the get go that she is, for a new driver, very good. She's basically careful, sees the road well, brakes and accelerates reasonably smoothly, and takes instruction well for a teenager. However, this does nothing to advance a feeling of calm and well-being.

I have strong opinions about driving and I drive in a way that reflects a particular philosophy. I know this is shocking that I have a philosophy of driving, but there you go. I haven't had an accident in over 30 years so it's hard to convince me that I'm wrong. My driving is based on two facts:

1. The idea of driving is to get from one place to another without bumping into anything. A corollary is that stationary things are easier to avoid than moving things.
   
2. Driving is the single most dangerous thing you do in your life (I think taking a shower is a distant second)

A number of strategies flow from these two facts. Most are based on the idea that you are safest if you can avoid driving with another car within bumping distance. So you don't drive next to anyone, go traffic speed to avoid passing or being passed, drive in the left lane on a freeway, and never count on anyone else to do the right thing.

Following this philosophy, or any other basic driving instruction, is predicated on the ability to drive in a straight line and to execute left and right turns at approximately a right angle. And this is where the adventure begins.

First let's talk about the straight line thing. We all know that the shortest distance between 2 points is straight line and so we should try to drive this way. Road design. however, conspires to thwart this in two ways. First of all, roads by necessity have to avoid things like trees and houses and streams, so many roads have curves. Second, roads are not flat. They are built to "crown" in the center and slope down to the right. This is to encourage water to flow off the road. Gravity therefore continually pulls the car to the right and the driver has to continually guide the car back to the left. New drivers forget to do this periodically, and also have an understandable fear of cars in the adjacent lane, so if you're sitting on the right side of the car, it's best to stay alert. Or wear a blindfold.

Turning is also a challenge. Cars are hard to turn. They're big heavy things and you have to control a whole bunch of things at the same time. You have to turn the wheel enough that the car turns and then recover it before it continues to turn after. This is astonishingly hard for new drivers, and I think it always catches their parent/instructor by surprise.

So we made it through a week of this with only one dent in the car. You have to resign yourself to dents if you're going to allow a new driver to take control of your car. This is why I'm doing this and not my wife. I'm keeping it there as a reminder.

I'll post on this again after we've been on a highway.

Getting to the New Digs

I rode my bicycle from the old school to the new school. It's a bit hard finding an appropriate route, because there are two sections of the route that are designed to be impenetrable. You can't get from Remington Rd. to Wynnewood Rd. without going on main roads somewhere, and Haverford College has no entrance on it's eastern front, so you're stuck with going north or south of it.

Before I go into details, let me add the the obvious best way to get to the new school is by the 100 trolley, which has a station that exits directly to the campus.

From the school you go a couple of blocks up Old Lancaster, then left on Sycamore. Why not just take Highland? In a car it probably doesn't matter, but when you're biking, shortening the trip by a couple of hundred yards saves a minute. Follow Sycamore to Merion Rd. I know there are lots of somewhat famous homes on this section of Merion Rd. We actually looked at a house there where Will Smith was living right before he left for California. He and Jada were just hanging out when we were looking at it. He wasn't a huge star yet, Fresh Prince of Bel Air was just about to come on the air. OMG! That was a long time ago! 17 years I think.

Follow Merion Rd to Bowman Av. and turn left. Go past the elementary school. The road is pretty beat up because of water pipe work, but you can manage. Make a right on Wynnewood Rd. This section is a pain in the butt. It's busy and there's lots of driveways, which are always terrifying for a cyclist because you're never sure if the person pulling out is only looking out for cars. Also, since you're going straight at Lancaster you have to end up in the middle lane because the right lane is right turn only. Bicycles in the middle lane are generally frowned upon by motorists.

Once you cross Lancaster there's not as much traffic and even though it's still a 4 lane road, your main concern is what are technically referred to as depressed storm drains. These storm drains are not depressed enough to harm themselves, but they're pretty good at harming you if you ride a bike over them. Follow Wynnewood Rd. for about a mile and then turn right onto County Line Rd. From the vantage point of County line Rd., it is difficult to discern any difference between the two counties. I guess this is one of these places where your neighbor goes to a different school from you. County Line Rd. has not been repaved for a long time, with the overall effect of simulating a gravel road. You can't go 100 feet without hitting some kind of patch or hole in the pavement. But you do get to pass Carlinos and a "multi-color hair salon." Not sure what that means.

Make a left on Ardmore Avenue and head down to Haverford Avenue. Here's where Haverford College is in the way. Fortunately, Haverford Av., though busy, has a center lane for left turns only. Since there are pretty much no places to make left turns on this stretch, this means that cars can pass you easily. Once you're past the college, defy the temptation to make a right on College Av. and go to the next light, which is Buck Rd. I'm sure nobody really wants to see a buck on Buck Rd, but that's okay because you then make a left onto Old Railroad Av. and I don't think anyone wants to see an old train there either.

Follow Old Railroad until you reach the intersection with another incarnation of County Line Rd. If my trip was any indication, during this stretch you will encounter a short but drenching rain shower. At the intersection go soft right onto some little street that takes you over to Byrn Mawr Av. It's more direct to go on Haverford Av, but the intersection of Haverford and Bryn Mawr was cleverly designed such that it is impossible to make a left turn onto Bryn Mawr Avenue, which is where you need to go. So go up the little street and make a left onto Bryn Mawr and go through the light, past Wawa on the left, and then the school is on the right.

Coming back is essentially the same, only backwards. The Haverford Avenue section is 2 lanes in this direction and seems to always be more heavily trafficked than the other direction. This state of affairs seems counterintuitive to me. You'd think that everyone would eventually end up on the eastern side. The best part of this section is that it's downhill.

When you're riding, there's always a time and place where you wish you had a motor. On this trip, it's the ride up Sycamore from Merion Rd. to Old Lancaster. It's not steep, just long and steady.

The trip took me 26 minutes. I don't really know how far it is, but I'm guessing my average speed is around 12-13 mph, including stops, 15 mph when actually riding.

Know Your Consumer Products

Benefiber is a fiber supplement.
Benecol is margarine.
Beneful is dog food.

The Daily Dilemma

Nap or coffee?

Learn Something Every Day

I often say this to students who ask "are we learning today?" I find this a surprising and peculiar question, but I always respond that we should all try to be learning all the time, even if we're just fooling around.

So what did I learn at the hospital? The biggest thing I learned is that medical care at a big hospital is like a game of telephone. Quality and consistency of care are completely dependent on how well each person passes on information to the next. If you have a nurse who doesn't write something down or forgets to mention something, the next day you might not get fed. In the course of a 17 day stay, there's a combined oral and written tale that's collaboratively created and retold to later generations and this seems to me to be the weakest part of the system. That's why you need to advocate for yourself- not because anyone means harm, but because they don't know anything if the person before them didn't say so or write it down.

I learned that there's such a thing as an extern that is different from an intern but not really.

I learned that it's possible for a hospital responsible for feeding hundreds of children to run out of pizza. And veggie burgers. At the same time.

I learned that the more comprehensive and well-documented a treatment plan is, the greater the opportunity for personal style to play into how it's implemented.

I learned that Lost really was a good show.

I learned that if you have lots of electrical circuits and therefore lots of circuit-breakers, it's a very good idea to label every outlet with its circuit number.

And I learned that it's very nice to have a nourishment room nearby at all times, because everyone needs some nourishment now and then.

Normal?

For those of you following at home, my daughter is out of the hospital and home.

George Carlin

I'm really sad today because George Carlin died. Maybe it's kind of stretch to say he was an "influence" on me, because I'm not a comedian or even a humorist in the way people usually think about it. But as a person for whom humor is a defining characteristic, he was among my strongest influences. He considered himself a writer first and performer second and his books are funny, but his delivery made the material even better. I think he did audio versions of his books. They're not as spirited as his stage act, but still worth listening to.

He's probably most famous for his "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" bit, which is still funny, mostly because you still can't say most of those words on TV and almost everyone uses and hears every one of them every day. It's not the words that are funny, but what it says about the strangeness of our society that they're "kind of" taboo. Can you think of anything else that's kind of taboo? Seems pretty oxymoronic to me. Or maybe just moronic.

Carlin was an angry iconoclast, and he had an ear for language that was unsurpassed, even among observational comedians. There are plenty of obituaries and "appreciations" out in the newspapers and online, but all I want is to see a marathon tribute of his HBO specials, to trace his evolution from stoner humor to social commentary to the plain old "Did you ever notice..." stuff that he did better than anyone. Comedy Central did a ranking of the top standup comedians of all time, which is an incredibly stupid idea, but any list that has George Carlin between Richard Pryor (ranked #1) and Lenny Bruce (#3- before my time so I don't really know) turned out okay. Pryor, by the way can be seen in a couple of concert movies that are still spectacular if you don't mind hearing the f-word every 10 seconds or so (you get used to it after a while).

With all the bits that were repeated in the obituaries, I didn't see one of my favorites, where he riffs on "Save the Planet." He goes on about how it's not the planet we're trying to save, it's us. The planet will be here long after we're gone and maybe the our part in the great cosmic plan was just to come to the earth for a period and to leave the earth with plastic.

I will miss George Carlin and I'm glad I can still hear his voice in my head.

An explore

I think the phrase "going for an explore" is from Winnie the Pooh, but that's what I did for a few minutes. My destination, the mythical Connely Center. I was only interested in this place because any time I ask about about where I can get something, more soda, a cup of non-McDonalds coffee, DVDs, they tell me to go to the Connely Center. From where I am now, that requires either an escort with magnetic card or two elevator rides. It's not busy now, so I figured the elevator part wouldn't take too long and I was right.

The Connely Center looks kind of like an airport lounge without a bar and 8 TVs with CNN on. And airplanes (though there is a heliport on the roof). It was empty and quiet, but, like airport lounges, would clearly be loud and uncomfortable if there were more than a half dozen people in it. It does have the elusive fully equipped coffee machine (there are other coffee machines but no coffee to accompany them), which I will check out and report on in the morning. I already feel a bit of performance anxiety, because there are lots of signs saying there's video surveillance. For the moment, I settled for a can of soda, since the Nourishment Room is all out.

What You've All Been Wondering...

Is whether all the doctors and nurses are hot and have significant and poignant conversations at every turn. Or whether I'll be able to watch another medical show after I'm out of there.

This particular hospital seems to be run almost entirely by women, though the occasional male doctor or nurse appears to stir things up a bit. Depending on your point of view, this would either virtually eliminate any drama or perhaps create drama where none really exists. The nurses are pretty in about the same proportion as people anywhere are pretty. The conversations, however, are more like what you hear between the checkers at Acme than anything on TV. When's break? Where are you going for the weekend? The boss (or in this case, hospital bureaucracy) is a pain in the butt. I've got too much work. I don't have enough to do.

Since life in a hospital has absolutely nothing to do with TV hospitals, I don't think I'll have any trouble with medical shows. Life in the hospital reminds me of what they say about being a policeman- 99% boredom and 1% pure terror. We haven't really had any terror, but I've been doing nothing for 99 or even 99.9% of the time, then occasionally some issue comes up that requires a bit of brain power. Otherwise, it's like having a total vacation at the most boring, uncomfortable place ever. And (for me anyway) without the beds. I used to like sleeping on the couch, but not anymore.

Non-Medical Hospital Update

The Icee machine is fixed after suffering a painful-sounding seizure a couple of days ago. Even better, whoever fixed it also brought big Icee cups with those cool dome lids. My tongue is now bright orange.

The TV in the MPFL generally has FOX on during the day, and from 2 PM until now it has had one of those pseudo courtroom shows on. It's Judge Judy now, but there was an older African-American judge on from 2-3 and a younger Caucasian judge from 3-4. Judge Judy is, predictably, a woman. The plaintiffs are indistinguishable.

Since we've been here we've been following something they've called a "protocol." At one point when I was complaining about the lack of flexibility in the protocol (as far as the patient is concerned, of course, the hospital itself has total flexibility) the representative they sent to talk to me said, "Well, it's not so much a protocol as guidelines." I'm presuming most of you have seen Pirates of the Caribbean and I can assure you it took tremendous effort for me to not burst out laughing.

So we have an accord.

Unintended Consequences

I used to hate it when there were phone numbers like 1-800-CAR-RENT, but now that I text message a lot it doesn't bother me so much.

The Multi-Purpose Family Lounge

So I investigated the MPFL and today its purpose is to house me while I grade papers and for the staff to keep their lunch in the refrigerator. No other family members entered during my tenure there. The TV was on, with lots of pictures of Tim Russert, who I guess is especially big news for TV people because he was a TV person.

A New Room

Today I found the Multi-Purpoase Family Room. I'll let you know what purposes I find for it later.

I can see outside!

We've been in several rooms so far, but this is the first one where I can actually see outside, kind of. I can see the sky at least, and I can see a building across what I thought was a courtyard until a man in a hard had casually walked past my 5th floor window this morning. Tempted as a was to snatch the curtains back and make a scary face, I refrained. Becasue this is a nice, new room I feel like I should behave

Watched "Little Shop of Horrors" on video last night. The score is really reminiscent of "Hairspray," or I guess it's the other way around. I remember seeing it off-Broadway many years ago. It's still fun.

Hospitals Suck

Nothing personal, mind you. This is a perectly nice hospital, as hospitals go, but as a species, they're awful places. With an occasional exception, all the crappy cheap motels I've ever stayed in are more pleasant places than the nicest hospitals.

For one thing, there are sick people everywhere. I know that's not a coincidence or anything, but you see people being wheeled around in beds or attached to IVs and then when you see someone in a gown just walking around you thing to yourself, "ooh, what's wrong with that one?"

I'm not sure that you ever really get used to being in a hospital, but you do learn to navigate it. I know that you can get free coffee at McDonalds. I know how to get to park in the closer parking lot when you're not really supposed to be there, and the quickest way to get here from the further parking lot.

On the other hand, how do you navigate having an aide sitting in the room while you're sleeping who listens to gospel music loud on headphones and mutters "Amen" under her breath all night?

On the other hand, you do get to see signs like "This room for pumping mothers only." And there's an Icee machine in the nourishment room on the 5th floor.

Trash Talk

It's hard to throw something away in a hospital. In our room there are 3 color-coded bins that say General Waste, Infectious Waste and Soiled Linens, plus there's recycling for cans and bottles. It reminds me of Penn and Teller's show on recycling, where they demonstrate people's desire to recycle by asking if they will comply with increasingly complex and ridiculous rules, (e.g., "This container is for slightly used tissues.") and people always agree to go along with it.

The other thing I noticed is that there is not a box of tissues to be seen anywhere. I'm presuming this is a way of being more sanitary, but how and where you're supposed to blow your nose is a bit of a mystery.

Aimee Karaoke

If the embedding isn't working, try this link: Aimee Karaoke

Levi Karaoke

Don't have the entire song, but this certainly gives a good flavor of the performance and whole scene.

If the embedding doesn't work, try this link: Levi Video

?

Not sure why, but Blogger won't let me delete the duplicate post.

Hospital Blogging (No medical information included)

Hospitals are peculiar places. You go to the emergency room, they determine whether you are going to (a) die no mater what they do, (b) live no matter what they do, or (c) could go either way and could use some assistance making sure it tips the right way. You get the best care if you're in category c, as I can attest from the times I had chest pains. You always get taken care of quickly if you have chest pain and you always get helped very slowly if you have a broken finger. It's called triage, so if you want fast service in an emergency room always say you have chest pains. Just like if you want to get through to PECO just say you smell gas.

Once you're in the emergency room the same rules apply. Once they know you're not going to die, you might as well not be there. In the chest pain example, I got test test test test and then hours of nothing until they told me I could go. They never figured out what was wrong with me, just that I wasn't likely to die in the next 24 hours. My regular doctor figured it out the next day in about 5 minutes and it wasn't anything serious.

During this particular visit, this led to us sitting in the emergency room bed for 2 1/2 hours waiting to go to our actual room. Then we moved to the 5th floor and just as we were getting settled, again up to the 6th floor. Once you're settled, get ready for a series of petty annoyances, getting poked, prodded, measured and to be asked for various bodily fluids.

My favorite thing about this place is the Nourishment Room. I think every place should have a Nourishment Room. In this place the Nourishment Room is kind of like the snack room at my fraternity, except with way more formula and frozen breast milk and not nearly as many chips. Cereal, peanut butter, milk and juice, that kind of stuff. Everything neatly labeled with a label maker.

Nourishment Room is typical of the odd kinds of signs you see in hospitals, like Bed Management Office, but my favorite sign here isn't hospital specific. It just says, "This Door is Closed."

Senior Trip, Day 3

Or should I say day 2, continued, since day 3 started only a few hours after the chaperoning business concluded during the night.

The weather was pretty lousy, so we decided not to go to Dorney Park and to just stay at the resort for a few more hours. Because we had to get out of the rooms, everyone dumped their bags in Governor's Ballroom C (I'm sorry, I think I can say with absolute certainty that the governor has never held a ball here and even if he did he would have used the much grander Governor's Ballroom B or perhaps the mythical Governor's Ballroom A, which we never saw) and then moved on to whatever indoor activities were available in the morning. As best I could see, that mostly included, bowling, arcade games, signing each other's yearbooks, or the always-popular, waiting to get served at the restaurant.

The restaurant really reminded me of when we went to Paris and 2 747's arrived and there was one immigration officer there to process all 600 people. Imagine that a plane might show up at the airport full of people! Imagine that people might show up at a hotel coffee shop at 9AM and want breakfast! Forty minutes for a toasted bagel and half a grapefruit. This yielded a visit to the hotel desk to say that we couldn't check out in time because of how long breakfast took.

In spite of Ballroom C's lack of character, it was nice to have someplace to hang out and I was able to do some of my least favorite work, that being making up incorrect answers to multiple choice questions. This is more subtle and difficult than you might believe. You can't ask the question, what's the vertex of y = x^2 + 6x + 8 and give and answer of 17. It has to be something that could possible (the smiley-face graph aside).

It got boring enough that a bunch of students joined in the morning BINGO game. And yes, bingo is just as exciting as you remember. The highlight was the special game where you had to fill your B row and your O row and when you won you had to stand up all call out "I have BO." For some reason, by the time that was over, most of the students had left. Do people even know what BO means anymore? That term, if you can call it that, was invented by an ad agency in the 1950's to sell a product called Ban deodorant. I'm not sure if they still sell Ban

Then it was time to gather on the buses and head home. We watched "The Goonies," which was fun. And then it was done.

At the risk of sounding mushy, I love this group of seniors. I've never met a group of kids that I've been this fond of. I would have loved to have friends like them when I was in school. So taking a trip like this was absolutely the highlight of my teaching career. I wish I'd been able to spend more time with certain people, but I'm hopeful that I can keep in touch with them.

I'll keep in touch

As some of you may know, I'm dealing with a bit of a family emergency, so I haven't been able to write/upload, but I will keep in touch about what's going on. Things are okay for the moment.

Update

I've got the karaoke video in my computer and will upload it to youtube tonight. I'll e-mail a link and post it in the blog. I'll probably have a day 3 review and parting thoughts done tonight too, depending on how late I'm out at graduation.

The rest of Day Two

My favorite sign of the day:

NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY. PLEASE SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I’ve seen plenty of “swim at your own risk” signs, but none of them really sounded like invitations to do so. In any event, it’s nice to be polite.

After dinner, most of the kids gravitated toward karaoke. I’ve successfully avoided karaoke for most of my life, but it was really fun to watch kids I know get up and perform this ridiculous stuff. There was a pool party going on at the same time, so every time on of our kids was singing everyone would pile out of the pool and into the hallway, wrapped in towels. Two of our kids made it to the final round, one of whom sang “Hey Jude” (inexplicably, the 7 minute version with all the na-na-na’s) with background vocals by his fellow students and the other sang “Summer Loving,” again, with the boys singing the “wella wella wella” part and the girls doing their “tell me mores.” By this time, there was about ¼ inch of water on the floor and everyone is dancing and sliding everywhere. Ultimately, one of our boys won and celebrated by sitting on and falling through a glass-topped table. It was really quite spectacular.

Then it was everybody back in the pool for some beach ball volleyball until midnight, when it was time for ice cream. Predictably, this did not aid in settling everybody down and going to bed. It was a smaller crowd in the hallway, with lots of people signing yearbooks, playing music or cards, or just talking. Then the security guard came and it was time to insert everyone into their rooms.

Let me take a moment to discuss the whole chaperone thing. I’ve chaperoned the school ski trip for the last 3 years, but aside from that I’ve never participated in any of the out-of-school activities that take place around here. It never would have occurred to me to do this if it wasn’t this particular group of kids. I know they wanted me along because they like me, but I have this sneaking suspicion that part of it is that I’m not really inclined to be strict. Maybe it’s my own general issues with authority (I am a child of the 60’s remember) and maybe it’s the giving people the benefit of the doubt thing, or maybe (and I certainly hope not) it’s because I hope people will like me more if I’m “nice,” but I’m not exactly Mr. Discipline.

This puts me in a ticklish position from time to time and brings up the occasional slight discomfort about just what is my relationship with the kids. I’ve thought about this a lot, probably more than I should, because there are a bunch of kids that I relate to as if they were friends, at least when I’m not grading their tests. And it’s my nature to always want to know exactly where I stand. I speak openly and honestly about my life and I think they respond in turn. But we’re not exactly friends in the regular sense of the word. I guess maybe I’m like an uncle. Most everyone has a uncle they like. More fun than a parent, but still an adult. I’ll go with that for the moment.

So the kids go to their rooms and Uncle Frank and the rest of the chaperones do a head count. The security guard settles into his chair and we go in to our rooms. At 2:15 AM, I get a phone call saying “This is the manager and could you please come outside?” These aren’t really the word one wants to hear. What’s up? Well one group of boys is trying to run over to the girls’ room and another guy was running around the hall with a lampshade on his head. So part of me is thinking “Lampshade? That’s kind of refreshingly old school. So chiche’ it’s not cliché.” And part of me is thinking, “Whoever it is I am so calling him 60 Watt for the rest of his life.” And part of me is really irritated.

We fan out into the boys’ rooms and my line is, “I don’t even want to talk to people I like at 2:15 in the morning and certainly not hotel managers” and I basically tell them I really don’t want to have to do this again tonight and yes I did think that this and all the other ideas they didn’t do were pretty funny, though not in this context. And then I go to bed and fall asleep sometime around 3.

Metablogging

It’s a little disconcerting, albeit in a good way, to have a bunch of people running up to me and saying “I can’t wait to read about this on your blog.” It gives me performance anxiety, since I always work under the assumption that NOBODY reads what I write. I mean, I’m always happy to hear that somebody does, but I never count on it. So do I need to make it extra special good? Do I need to accurately reflect the spirit of the senior trip? Well, no, because the trip wasn’t about me and my take on it is not an insider’s take. I wasn’t in the room at 2AM deciding what pranks to pull on the security guard. But I’ll certainly reflect my own feeling about things, and I'm hoping that that's really what everyone wants.

Senior Trip, Day 2 (part 1)

I was half expecting to wake up to a soccer ball slamming against my hallway window, but I woke up before most of the kids. I know some of them were up early, but some of them were not up in time to make the 12:30 check-in. Teenagers are funny things.

First I'll write about what I did, though that's not really the point of this. My roommate and I went for a walk and rented bicycles for a few minutes. Then we had lunch and everybody set out for their afternoon activities. I spent most of the time at the beach. I kayaked out to the middle of the lake and just sat for a while, then met up with a couple of students and paddled around with them and finally back to the beach. I really should have napped, but I can say that almost anytime. I also probably should have gotten work done, but what the hey, finals, shminals.

Evening was dinner and Phillies game on TV and a pool party and karaoke and ice cream and finally more hanging out in the gigantic hallway. Sounds like your basic resort day. And so it was.

So a few words about the resort. Nothing terribly surprising. The bicycles we rented were a mess. Mine had no air in the tires and my colleague's had the chain off and stuck in 2 different places. The person renting the bike was mostly in charge of mini golf. She knew enough to point us to the bicycles, say"they're in here" and hand me an air pump. In general the staff isn't exactly surly, but they're not exactly bubbling over with the "what can I do to make your stay as good as it possibly could be" spirit. I don't think there are all that many other people staying in this place (and it's huge) and you'd think they might like to take care of the guests, just to give them something to do. Then again, one employee told me he gets paid $7 an hour and at that rate, who really cares?

The bathrooms require a couple of comments. First of all, I always appreciate it when bathrooms are labeled "Ladies" and "Mens." Life already has far too may apostrophes. Second, they have these high powered hand dryers in some of the bathrooms that all but peel the skin off your hands. Much more entertaining than drying your hand ought to be and completely underutilized as toys.

The resort has the usual complement of snack bar, coffee shop, pizza place at the beach and nice restaurant, although the nice restaurant may be mythical. The snack bar is very dark and looks closed even when it's open. The pizza place looks open even when it's closed, which seems to be almost all the time. The coffee shop has decent food and what may be the slowest service I've ever experienced. I guess I'm used to business hotels where the management figures that time is important to the patrons and staffs accordingly. The average wait time for breakfast, 30 minutes. For lunch, 40 minutes. This does not factor in the people who were there for shorter periods but left because nobody came to take their order. I had a sandwich called an SOB. This stands for "South of the Border," but it's odd in that there is nothing else in the hotel that even hints at a sense of humor.

Senior Trip, Day One

The day divided neatly into 3 parts. Paintball, pre-dinner, and post-dinner. I like to do many things and paintball is one of the few things I have never had even the slightest desire to do. I wasn't alone in this inclination so the bunch of us sat around a little pond doing ain'tball for what seemed like hours but was in fact, well, hours. Finally, after we'd been sitting around for about 3 hours we talked the bus driver to drive us into the adorable little town of Jim Thorpe, PA, a few miles back. We had ice cream (I had a root beer float, though one of the students reminded me it's the ice cream that floats). On the way back one resident overheard our conversations about Jim Thorpe and went on a tirade about how horrible it was, that the town had nothing to do with Jim Thorpe himself, that his wife "bought" the town and made them change the name (from its much more attractive name, Mauch Chunk) and then became a kind of out of control trollop. Then, a driver yelled at a bunch of us for crossing not at a crosswalk, so the town was dubbed Angry Town.

After a not-too-long bus ride, we arrived at Split Rock Lodge in Lake Harmony, PA. I've been in places like this before. It's a full-service resort on a huge plot of land with a bunch of condo complexes around a main lodge/activities building. The condos are usually time shares and people rent a condo or a room in the lodge and partake of the myriad activities available. In tune with my prior experiences with this kind of place, the lodge is reasonably pleasant, slightly run down and functional, and the activities are mostly second-rate, but they're there. They have a way of looking like they were built in some bygone era, whether it's the 50's the 70's or the 90's. I'm sharing a suite with another teacher and we have 2 little bedrooms and a not-unpleasant living room with a kitchenette. In the entire suite we have 2 windows, one is a skylight in the living room that I just figured out how to open and the other is in my bedroom and opens into a 25 foot wide hallway.

The hallway is a natural gathering place for the kids, which is kind of nice. After dinner, all of us chaperones (I'll touch on the whole chaperone thing later) went for a walk around the property until we realized that we'd managed to get every chaperone 1/2 mile away from the lodge at the same time, so we toddled back. Some kids swam, others played ping pong, and whatever else. Eventually, some went to sleep (paintball is apparently very draining, and so, I can say with certainty, is ain'tball), and the rest of us hung out in the hallway, watched baseball or a seemingly endless hockey game on tv, or some combination thereof.

As chaperones, we have to go to bed last, which in this case means 1:00 AM. So we all participated in the hallway activities. It was kind of like a coffee house without tables and chairs. Or coffee. I can't speak for the other faculty, but I played Apples to Apples, listened to and played guitar, told kids to stop picking up other kids and whirling them around, and talked talked talked. Let me be honest and say that as a species I don't think teenagers are the most interesting of people. I agree with my grandmother-in-law who proclaimed teenagers to be inherently the most conservative people in the world because they all dress alike and act alike, but with this particular group I have to diverge. I think it's because the school is so accepting of different kinds of kids, and the kids are generally nice to each other, there's a terrific diversity here and I'm never bored talking with the kids in this school.

We got the last stragglers into their room at around 1 and left them in the charge of an unusually serious security guard, who was ultimately rewarded for his efforts by having his chair stolen while he was making his rounds.

More to come...

Wall to wall

Euphemisms are fun in general, and I've always enjoyed those for artificial hair. Hair piece is the most obvious and least interesting Toupee, from the French for "top" has jaunty, kind of Eurotrash feel to it. Wig is just kind of a funny word and has the fun association "wigged out," which I'm not sure if it comes from the kind of wig you wear on your head, but it's still a good and useful description of someone who's unhinged. But my favorite is rug. That evokes some terrific mental images. I saw a guy today who could have been the inspiration for that one. It really looked like he was wearing a rug made out of human hair on top of his head. I always wonder if someone wearing something like that thinks they're fooling anyone...

It's Not Their Fault, It's Our Fault

It's one thing for the kid to come downstairs at 10:15 as you're about to watch a DVD and tell you that she's forgotten that she needs to bring a sword (okay, a pretend sword) into school tomorrow and could it be 2 feet long and painted silver. It's another thing entirely to say "yes." Not to mention going online to find a picture of the appropriate kind of sword. And we wonder why out kids feel entitled.

Memorial Day

Based on the noises I'm hearing from the surrounding backyards, I don't think it would be a very good idea to get out on the road tonight...

Supermarket stuff

I walk around a supermarket and my marketing sixth sense takes over. "Why is this here?" "Who buys this stuff?" or simply "Huh?" Today I was in the bread aisle, and let me say that I find the whole concept of a bread aisle mystifying. Why we need six different brands of soft whole wheat bread and over 40 kinds of bread in all (and this does not include the bakery section of the store where there's another couple of dozen) is beyond me. That's a lot of water, flour and yeast.

Anyway, today I was drawn to a brand of soft whole wheat bread called "Hearth Farms." I've always like the "hearth" thing on bread. "Hearth-baked." Yeah, well a hearth is an oven and I'm not sure where you'd be baking that bread if not in an oven. Not quite as good as "fresh-picked." Of course it was fresh when it was picked, but I'm interested in what it's like NOW. Anyway, companies like to put "hearth" and "farm" on their labels, because they have a good wholesome feel about them. But what in the world is a hearth farm? Is it a pastoral field full of ovens? And it sounds like there's more than one. I need to find out.

Looking for Fun

The trick for staying happy, it seems to me, is to not let life get in the way of having a good time. It's not always that easy, when things are busy or stressful or downright unpleasant, to remember that the fun is still there. All that might have changed is your ability to recognize and participate in it.

In that regard, I was given a hand today by a bunch of students who dedicated this year's school yearbook to me. I don't feel like I go out of my way to seek approval, but I put a lot of effort into making every class I teach special in some way, and to make a real connection with my students, whatever the hell that means. There are times when that's easy and and times that it's extremely difficult. With this particular group it was never difficult and it's nice to know the feeling is mutual.

Movies

I've seen 2 movies in the last week. On Mother's Day, we all went to see "Young at Heart," a documentary about a senior citizen's chorus from Massachusetts whose repertoire includes such old favorites as "Should I Stay of Should I Go" and "I Wanna Be Sedated." Very funny at times, but sad at times too, and though the old people and the guy who runs the chorus are great, the narrator is kind of irritating. I'd still recommend it though.

On Saturday, we saw Iron Man, which was just a blast. I've always liked Robert Downey Jr., and he's really in his element in this. The suit and the technology are to die for. At one point when he's working on a impressive and very cool-looking computer system, Ronnie nudges me and whispers "My birthday is in 2 1/2 months." The action scenes are great and don't go on forever so you never get overloaded and it's very funny. I felt like I was dragging Ronnie because it's an action-adventure kind of thing, but she enjoyed it to.

Father's Day is Coming!!!!

I got my first "get this for father's day" e-mail ad today. It was for coffee, which actually isn't a bad idea. At least I drink coffee, even occasionally the coffee from the company that sent me the e-mail. It's better than the whole aftershave/golf/car/toolbox thing. I barely shave, don't golf, don't care about my car as long as it runs and don't have a toolbox or a single power tool. Of course, this means that most of the ads on TV programs targeted to men (i.e., sports) are useless for me.

The whole mother's day/father's day thing is ridiculous to start with, though it does give a nice boost to the greeting card companies, who invented them as "holidays." The only upside is that you always get to answer the question "Why isn't there a children's day?" with "Because EVERY day is children's day."

Whether There Will Be Weather

Yesterday I wake up and it's dark and water is falling outside. Today I get up and it's bright and it couldn't be more dry. This is why I want to be a weatherman when I grow up.

Welcome to the 21st Century

I know a decent number of kids who have two mommies. In a couple of cases they're separated. This makes for a pretty awkward Mother's Day, don't you think?

Free Verse

Opening up City hall
Enthusiasts find rewards in their backyard orchids
Bakelite jewelry and rare Warhols
If it's worth doing it's worth doing right
Hurt arm doesn't get in way of his feet
Harassment needs to be addressed
Banish the blues with color
Life is "crazy crazy wonderful"
Get everything in writing

Headlines from the Home and Design Section

Don't put all your eggs...

I'm occasionally surprised by the kind of everyday math facts that people don't know. Most people (though not all) do know that there are 12 in a dozen. Not too many things are bought by the dozen: donuts, bagels (but they give you 13 usually), and of course, eggs.

I have a nice paper carton in my refrigerator with a dozen eggs in it. This drives me crazy, because I also have an egg holder in the refrigerator with exactly one egg in it. Why do I have both? Because the egg holder has exactly a dozen spaces in it. I'll give the designers of the refrigerator a break and presume that they didn't do this with the intent of irritating me, but the other alternative is that they designed the thing without thinking about how it would be used.

This is a common fault in product design, where the emphasis is on features rather than benefits. The first is about the product. The second is about the person using the product. In this case, some guy thought, "Okay, you get eggs by the dozen, so we'll put a dozen spaces in the egg holder." That's a feature. Thinking about it as a benefit you would think, "People use this to store eggs. People buy eggs by the dozen and they probably buy a new dozen before they're completely out of them so I'll put 16 spaces in the egg holder."

Not so hard, but clearly harder than it looks.

Political Spew

I had a kind of disturbing political conversation today, so I need to vent a little.

The person I was talking to said that they were concerned about Obama winning because they had Jewish friends who normally voted Democratic but would vote for McCain if Obama were elected, because they didn't think Obama would support Israel. For these people I have one calm, well-reasoned question. Have you lost your minds?

By what calculation do you think Obama wouldn't support Israel? Because he's a closet Muslim? Because his Christian preacher made some controversial remarks? Do you really think that the president of the largest democracy in the world would turn its back on its closest (maybe only) democratic ally in the middle east? By going down this road you are buying into the right-wing propaganda and their framing of the issue. You're saying that the current approach is the only one that will work. Is this true? Just look at all the wonders Bush has done for peace in the middle east. Let's have more of that, yeah! Do you really truly think that a hard line attitude is going to keep Iran in check? I can't believe that smart people can actually believe this nonsense.

And of course by voting for McCain you're buying the entire right wing package in the process. Want some more radical anti-choice judges? Pollution? Rich made richer at the expense of the middle class and poor? Accelerated global warning? Uninvestigated corruption? Increased spying on US citizens? Endless preemptive wars? The same stuff we've been getting for the last 8 years? Yay! Go for it!

All I can hope is that people who say this kind of stuff come to their senses when the actual choice is presented to them. For the moment it makes me ill.

Izzard

"Flies and locusts I understand, but frogs? Frogs are not a plague. They're just too many frogs."

"Why does 'Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's ox' make it into the top 10 laws of the world? What's wrong with that? You see that ox over there? I'm not going to kill it. I'm not going to steal it. I just really, really want it."

Ha

I just saw Eddie Izzard perform and my whole body aches from laughing so hard. The man is a genius.

Yankee Stadium

I was at the Yankee game yesterday and I have a few observations.

1. Yankee Stadium is a shrine and they should never even dream of tearing it down.

2. Yankee Stadium is a dump and the sooner they demolish it, the better.

3. You can buy a beer that costs $12.50 at Yankee Stadium.

4. They really ought to have somebody there selling sunscreen. The weather was much sunnier than predicted and I got toasted.

5. Apparently, it's not important that you be able to walk all the way around the stadium at the end of the game. It's preferable to have a fence in the middle so that if you try to walk from the first base side to the third base side you find yourself crushed into a dead end.

6. New Yorkers can whine about almost anything.

7. You can move away from New York for 20 years and still remember how to work your way through a crowd around the stadium and in the subway.

Odd

We have an Irish cleaning person and she has a very thick accent that sometimes makes her very hard for me to understand, but when she writes something down it looks just like regular English. Just how does that work?

Gone in 90 Seconds

The last 2 days were oddly reminiscent of the Asheville trip, in that there was lots of fuss in the run up to travel, but everything ended up being pretty much routine. I went to Connecticut to see my mom and dad. My train was at 9:18 and I normally leave the house at around 7:40, drop my daughter at 8, and get home around 8:20. I expected to stop home and organize myself, then head to the station, but I grabbed the important stuff as I left, just in case. As it turned out, today was a case. Lincoln Drive had several accidents on it, which led to delays in both directions and assorted traffic going everywhere trying to detour. As a result, we didn’t get to school until 8:20, but I wasn’t worried because I still had an hour and I could have walked to the station in an hour.

Needless to say, it was impossible to get back to the city, and as I headed toward the last refuge of the vehicularly challenged, Germantown Avenue, at 8:50, I called Amtrak and changed to a later train. Then the miraculous happened and the traffic disappeared and I was suddenly sailing toward the station at 9. At this point, I’m in serious grumble mode, because I know I’m going to arrive at the parking lot at around 9:12 and be in time to either just make or just miss the train. So I figure I’ll call Amtrak, wait on hold for a few minutes, and by the time I get an agent I’ll be there and know whether or not I’m on time.

As I write this it sounds preposterous, because it is, but it actually worked. I pulled into the parking lot and just as I crossed over to the station an agent picked up, as I entered the station at 9:15. Changing the reservation was delayed because he misunderstood the spelling of my name, but it got changed over at 9:17 and I got my tickets and as Iwalked down the stairs to the platform I could see the train was pulling into the station. I am not exaggerating at all.

Oh, and by the way, traffic reports suck.

Then on the way home, I get a late start and feel like I have a very slight chance of making my return train, so I call Amtrak once again and ask if I should change reservations again, but they say there’s plenty of space on the next 2 trains and to just do it at the ticket office. Plus the train is running 3 minutes late. I rush to Stamford. I know that every Amtrak train to Stamford is 5 minutes late. I think this is because they routinely schedule a commuter train at the same time as the Amtrak one and they don't want them to bump into each other. So I’m closing in on the station and I see that it’s 5 minutes past train time, and again go into grumble mode, but then I look at my cell phone and see that the clock in the car is 5 minutes fast. I drop off my car, sprint up to the ticket office, which looks closed. I peer around a curtain and see a woman reading a book. It’s the ticket agent. She says, don’t worry, you still have a couple of minutes. I get my ticket, go down to the track, and this time the train appears as I take my place on the platform.

So it was all routine. I made 2 trains with a combined total of about 90 seconds to spare, but I’m home.

Education in the news

My father pointed out to me an article in the New York Times about a Korean school where pretty much all the kids go to Ivy League schools and average over 2200 on SATs. He somewhat halfheartedly seemed to be suggesting that there was some merit in their approach. Here's the article, but to summarize it's about 2 elite schools where the students do pretty much nothing but work for 6 AM until at least midnight every day.

Honestly, I find the whole thing disgusting. Aside from the 17 hour days that these kids put in, the focus on Ivy League as a brand name that's desirable as a something to affirm your sense of self worth is almost as disturbing. I've got nothing against hard work. I demand it of my students and of myself, but this just seems wrongheaded in every way. Is this the point of education? Maybe I'm missing a subtext that Korea is a place one wants to escape and that this is an ideal way to do so. Or maybe you can argue that this is kids' work, to do nothing but study until they are old enough to do other work. You can argue that, but you'll never get me to agree.

The article features an admission by the headmaster at one of the elite schools that American schools probably do a better job at educating the whole person, as opposed to pure academics, and I guess this is the point. What is the objective of the schooling exercise? Let's keep in mind that schools serve no present positive purpose (I know people do research at schools, but that's not what I'm talking about). Schools are a classic investment model, where you invest early to achieve desired returns later. I think that with these kids, the desired returns are new doctors and lawyers and university professors. This is a reasonable goal, but I don't think I want any of these types of people teaching or protecting the health and livelihood of my own kids.

One of my frat mates was a guy who studied night and day because he was determined to be a doctor. Watching him, we all thought about what a nightmare it would be if you found yourself in the emergency room one night and this guy was your doctor, because we knew that outside of academics, the guy was an idiot. If you were choosing a professor for your English Literature course, would you pick the one who had spent her whole life studying and practicing for tests and keeping her academic performance at the highest echelon and so had impressive degrees? Or would you prefer the one who took a year off after high school to kayak across the Amazon? Who will be better equipped to put material in context? Let me wrap up with some David Byrne lyrics:

Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what you want them to...

...Facts are getting the best of us
Facts are nothing on the face of things.

Life has facts, but life is context. Sorry to borrow insight again, but in A Fish Called Wanda, Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) insults Otto (Kevin Kline), calling him an ape. "Apes don't read Nietzsche!" he replies and she retorts,"Yes they do, they just don't understand it." The world needs people who understand things, not people who know things.

Rambling Man

Today was oddly reminiscent of the Asheville trip, in that there was lots of fuss in the run up to travel, but everything ended up being pretty much routine. I went to Connecticut to see my mom and dad. My train was at 9:18 and I normally leave the house at around 7:40, drop my daughter at 8, and get home around 8:20. I expected to stop home and organize myself, then head to the station, but I grabbed the important stuff as I left, just in case. As it turned out, today was a case. Lincoln Drive had several accidents on it, which led to delays in both directions and assorted traffic going everywhere trying to detour. As a result, we didn’t get to school until 8:20, but I wasn’t worried because I still had an hour and I could have walked to the station in an hour.

Needless to say, it was impossible to get back to the city, and as I headed toward the last refuge of the vehicularly challenged, Germantown Avenue, at 8:50, I called Amtrak and changed to a later train. Then the miraculous happened and the traffic disappeared and I was suddenly sailing toward the station at 9. At this point, I’m in serious grumble mode, because I know I’m going to arrive at the parking lot at 9:12 and be in time to either just make or just miss the train. So I figure I’ll call Amtrak, and it takes them a long time to get a live person on the phone, and by the time I get an agent I’ll be there and know whether or not I’m on time.

As I write this, it sounds preposterous, because it is, but it actually worked. I pulled into the parking lot and just as I crossed over to the station an agent picked up, as I entered the station at 9:15. Changing the reservation was delayed because he misunderstood the spelling of my name, but it got changed over at 9:17 and I got my tickets and walked down the stairs to the platform as the train pulled into the station.

Oh, and by the way, traffic reports suck.

My visit to North Carolina

Whenever we set off to go anywhere, my late, great friend Richard would always announce in faux Evening News tones, “What began is a simple trip to the grocery store ended in tragedy today for two youths whose car jumped the guardrail and plunged"… or some such thing. I never take a safe trip for granted.

So here’s my report on the trip, picking up from my fun at the PHL airport.

Got to Greenville-Spartanburg airport, right next to the BMW factory. They have a visitor center, but I skipped it. My favorite sign along the way was on a truck for Ingles Supermarket. It featured a picture some tortilla chips with smiling faces on them, and the words, “Nacho typical supermarket.” I have no idea what they’re getting at.

My friend Bennett is a lanky fellow with reddish blonde hair and a large and distinctive beard. He hangs wallpaper for a living and is married to the math chairman at the local college. We met working at day camp at our local town park and became fast friends over mutual enjoyment of sports and music, and he’s a person that it has always made me feel good to be around. He is a voracious reader and the walls of their house are filled with books in every room except the kitchen (actually, I didn’t see their bedroom but I’m guessing there are books there too).

Asheville is a terrific small city in the mountains of western North Carolina. It was built up mostly in the early 20th century and has many fine art deco buildings. The downtown is almost completely free of chain stores and features lots of galleries and restaurants and music clubs, tucked in among the occasional office building. I’m not really sure what the economy is based on, but there are a couple of colleges and lots of college students and street musicians milling around, even on a weekday night.

My one full day there we went to a place called Chimney Rock Park. A couple of pillars separated off from a palisade and created a striking skyline overlooking a lake. You can hike from the bottom of the palisade or drive to a parking lot or take an elevator (!) to the top. We climbed, of course. It’s about 1/3 mile vertically and between 2 and 3 trail miles featuring a memorable number of wooden steps. After you get to the rock, you can hike along the top to a waterfall and cool yourself off in the stream before it plunges over the edge. We wondered how the fish got up to these little pools up on top of a rocky ridge 2000 feet above the main river below.

Then you go down 100 feet or so and make your way along the face of the palisade with sheer rock above and below. Very cool. Then the long but easier climb down. This is a place well worth visiting if you’re ever looking for a weekend getaway. There’s a nice lake a mile away and beautiful country everywhere.


Dinner and a long night of talking about all kinds of things followed. It’s rare that I get the chance to relax and open up. I guess it’s rare for everyone. I was sad to leave the next day, but it was well worth making the trip.

BFF

I just completed a visit to Asheville, North Carolina (actually in a small town outside) visiting my best friend from high school and his wife, whom I have known since she was in high school. It’s a little freaky to think you’ve known someone for 37 years and I’ve probably only seen them a half dozen times in the last 10 years. It is, however, very comforting to spend the time together and realize that you are still on the same wavelength and still simpatico after such a long time (I haven’t seen them since my 50th birthday, 2 ½ years ago). This is the first time I’ve come down here to see them, as opposed to their coming to see me, and the first time it’s been just us, as opposed to being part of a group.

Friendship can be a funny thing as an adult. You make friends easily as a kid, but it gets harder as you get older and your lives become more separate from those of your peers. You really have to make an effort, and I don’t feel like I really make that effort often enough. I’m not anti-social, but I’m not very social either, and I don’t spend nearly as much time with friends as I’d like to.

Travel Day

I know that people write lots of stuff about airports, but for someone who is easily amused they provide oodles of entertainment. I’m traveling solo today, a rarity now but extremely common back in the day, and I’m glad, because I rushed around enough to totally muddle my brain and allow me to do pretty much everything wrong on my way in.

First, I didn’t check the gate, so I parked at the absolute worst terminal. I could have moved, but I’ve heard so many horror stories about security lines that I decided not to. I had to go from Terminal B to Terminal F, which are about 2 letters apart. I thought I’d just walk my bags over there, but as soon as I went through security I was reminded that I’d brought a bottle of wine as a “come with” gift, and you can’t bring that through security because…well, because I don’t know, but you can’t. So the security agent led me back out through security (the line is much shorter in that direction, by the way) and suggested I check my bag downstairs while comforting me by telling me that what I did wasn’t nearly as stupid as the guy who had a $500 handgun in his bag and had it confiscated a few days ago.

I checked my bag and went through security again, got some coffee and decided to walk to terminal F, but the sign on the walkway said I’d have to clear security again when I got to terminal F, and I really didn’t want to take my shoes off again, so I took the shuttle bus. It’s a huge bus, plenty big enough for me and the other woman and the driver, and almost, but not quite, too big to maneuver around the airport. When you take the shuttle bus you get a close-up view of the workings of an airport. We passed what looked like a huge dome tent that had a complicated-looking bag belt. I imagined my poor bag trying to navigate it. Then we passed a large locked bin with a sign that said Satellite Accumulation Area, and I was not able to conjure up any idea of what might have been accumulated inside it. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t satellites, though.

Finally at Terminal F, I find a place to plug in my laptop (hint: think like a cleaning person), but find that it’s $7.99 for Internet access. Awful. So this is being post-posted.

Arrived safe and sound in Greenville-Spartanburg, SC, where they have free Internet access.

Naycation

This is the least vacationy vacation ever. Kids are in school, so I can't sleep in. Busy all weekend. Not much relaxation. Actually, I'm going to visit friends in North Carolina for a couple of days, so that should be a nice respite. Maybe I'll get some sleep too.

I heard the best thing ever on the radio today. A woman called in to a sports talk show and said it always drove her crazy how some kids would blink and flinch when the ball came at them, so when she had a baby she bought a foam rubber ball and once the baby could sit up she started regularly throwing it at his head, so that he'd get used to it. Isn't that brilliant? I bet this could work for other things too. Maybe you could condition your kid to not be afraid of bugs and snakes and things like that by surrounding him with them from the day he was born. Of course, it's hard to know in advance if you're getting them used to it or scarring them for life, but what the heck. People are funny.

Chaos

Edward Lorenz died a couple of days ago. If you thought that the only contribution a meteorologist could make to the world was reminding you to take an umbrella to work, Lorenz is proof otherwise. You've probably never heard of him, but you're aware of his work. Here's a short version of the story:

Lorenz was running a weather simulation programs on a computer. At one point, he wanted to take one of his earlier simulations and re-run it for a longer period. This was 1961 and computers were pretty feeble, so he had to reenter all the data. A couple days into the simulation, the weather pattern of the 2nd run diverged and took a completely different pattern from the first. It should have been identical. In trying to find out why it wasn't, Lorenz re-checked his numbers and found that the printouts he used to re-run the model had rounded the data to 3 decimal places, while the original data input was to 6 decimal places. Even though the change was less than .1%, this was enough to completely change the results (there's a rounding lesson in here, BTW). Further exploration led him to postulate the so-called "Butterfly Effect," that it was impossible to accurately predict long-term weather because a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could ultimately lead to a tornado in Texas.

These findings led to an entire area of scientific exploration called chaos theory. Aside from demonstrating that it would be impossible to accurately predict weather (you'd need to know an infinite number of inputs simultaneously), it extends to any complex system (so pretty much everything in nature) in that small changes can cause significant and unpredictable results.

So if you think your life is chaotic, this is the guy you can thank for it. Not really, but if we wonder why it's so hard to really understand relatively things, Lorenz is one of the people who can give us insight.

Debate

I didn't watch the so-called debate tonight. I just saw clips and read excerpts. From what I could see, this debate was to debate what reality TV is to reality. Somewhat related, but not in any substanitive way. Flag pins? Weather Underground? Who cares?

To me, this underscores why Clinton needs to drop out of the race. Not because she isn't a good candidate. She is, but statistically she can't win, and it's going to be hard enough for a Democrat to win in the current vapid, right-wing-dominated media environment without them bashing each other (although it's mostly Clinton bashing Obama) using Republican talking points.

A few random thoughts

Until recently, I was unaware that it was possible for a person to ride a bicycle for 18 miles and whine the entire time.

Tax day is always like a little party at the post office, except for the actual party part. It's a remarkably cheerful scene around here. If you go down to the main post office at 30th street, there's live remotes from radio stations and all kinds of promotional stuff going on, and it's open until midnight, so the good times just keep on coming.

The biggest marketing event of the year is in progress now. I'm speaking, of course, about the Starbucks relaunch. Starbucks is a business classic tale of success leading to overexpansion leading to decline. In all of these stories at some point someone notices that something's gone off the rails and frantically tries to get the company back on track. That's what's going on with them now and we won't know if it'll help for many months. At the moment, all I know is that they're ditching the green logo on the cups (are they going to make their signs brown too? Ugh.) and everything has the word "fresh" on it. We'll eventualy see if there's a strategy behind this or if they're trying out lots of unrelated things to see what works, though that's usually a recipe for disaster.

Brooklyn again

We went to see our friends in Brooklyn again. They had blankets this time (apparently, their daughter had used them to make a large tent in her room last time), but it was pretty warm anyway. Park Slope is a great area. I think I lived there briefly, and I went to school there for kindergarten and first grade. We went out to buy some food for dinner and I held my friend's dog while he went into the cheese shop. Really first class people watching, with the classic New York scene of two guys walking along the street, hair, face and arms completely painted, one in tiger stripes and the other in rainbow tie-die. Of course, nobody even gives them a glance as they walk by. What a city.

The play we saw, Sizwe Bansi is Dead, is an apartheid era South African play, which I first saw in London in 1974. It was more powerful back then, with apartheid still in effect (it didn't begin to change until the late 1980s) and Nelson Mandela in jail (again, until the late '80's). It's a bit of a relic now, but still an interesting study in what makes up one's identity. A quick synopsis: an illiterate black man, Sizwe Bansi leaves a dessert town where there are no jobs to try to get work in the nearest city. He lacks a permit to work there, and the police stamp his "dom book" (internal passport) that he must return to his home. Before leaving he goes out drinking with an acquaintance and they happen upon a dead body in an alley. They take his dom book, which has the proper work permit. So Sizwe must decide if he wants to stay and work, but give up his identity, or go home. And it's funny!

Identity is always a tricky area to tread into. I have no attachment to my name at all- I don't think it's really part of me. So what constitutes my identity? Is it what people think of me? I'd hate to think that the essence of one's self is externally imposed. And on at least some level I don't really care what most people think about me, because I'm pretty sure that most people don't spend any time thinking about me.

Is it what I think about myself? We all know our share of people with a pretty significant disconnect between what they think of themselves and the kind of person that they really are. Is it a kind of objective judgment of your actions? Your intentions? Your upbringing? The moral choices you make? I've chosen to try to be a particular type of person and have figured out a pretty consistent way that I think I can accomplish that. But I'm naturally kind of introspective and I was a psychology major and had my share of therapy years back, so maybe I'm better equipped than most to create an identity for myself.

So how about everyone else? I have no idea what constitutes identity to even my closest friends. Do they even think about it? It's not the kind of thing you discuss over dinner. So I guess the play was worthwhile if it got me thinking this way.

Voice Mail

As long as I've been using voice mail and its prehistoric ancestor, the answering machine, it's still a little odd to call your house and have yourself answer the phone. And before you say that that's ridiculous, everybody knows it's just a recording, then why do 90% of the people who leave messages do so as if they're talking to me? There's nothing wrong about any of this, it's just not natural, that's all.

Politics

The most interesting aspect of the campaign to date (putting aside the astonishing fact that the Democratic nominee will be either a black man or a woman) is the discovery that evangelical Christians are not this monolithic force that's concerned solely with abortion and gay rights. There's a front page article in today's Inquirer that mirrors what I'd heard from other sources, that younger evangelicals, though concerned with abortion and gay rights, are more focused on poverty, health care and the environment, saying that these are really more important parts of Jesus' teachings. I always wondered about this; why, when Christian doctrine is so rich and diverse and potentially such a force for good, that it's been hijacked by a few people with big microphones and political ambitions. It looks like the pendulum may start to swing the other way. We may have President Bush to thank for this, with his wearing his Christianity on his sleeve and while promoting policies that are contrary to the most important parts of Chritianity. We'll have to see.

Music Question

How does a band keep its vitality? I was listening to an ad on XM for an R.E.M. special where they’ll play songs from their new album. I was a little late to catch on to R.E.M., but at their peak they were pretty special. “Automatic for the People” is one of my favorite albums. But it’s clear from their last couple of releases and listening to the little clips on the show that they have nothing new to offer. It’s a conundrum. You’re good because you have a unique sound, but after a while you have to evolve or die, and evolution is fraught with peril. If you change too much, you run a real risk of losing what made you attractive in the first place and you turn off your most ardent fans. But what happens far more often is a kind of incremental change, where I’m sure the band really feels like they’re doing something new but within a familiar milieu. Unfortunately, to even a discriminating listener it all starts to sound the same. R.E.M. is dealing with exactly that. The differences are so subtle as to seem nonexistent, although I’m sure R.E.M. feels otherwise.

It’s a rare artist who escapes this trap. Prince and Paul Simon come to mind, but even bands for the ages like the Rolling Stones or megastar singer-songwriters like Bruce Springsteen start to sound recycled after a while. Prince has proven to be an absolute master at reinventing himself, aided by the prolific volume of material he creates. From what I know about him, he has hundreds of songs to chose from for any album. Paul Simon, who’s been around a lot longer, has managed to adapt his sound to a number of styles that are distinctly unlike his own. “Graceland,” which he created while immersing himself in South African music, is a masterpiece because he miraculously manages to fuse his own subtle wit and ear for a hook with the joy and soul and exuberance of South Africa.

So I’ve asked the question, but I don’t feel like I’m anywhere close to an answer. Aside from both being very short it's hard for me to come up with anything Prince and Paul Simon have in common.

Prom

I never went to a prom when I was in high school. I usually blame this on our moving when I was in 10th grade, leaving me to try to establish myself socially with a bunch of kids who’d known each other since first grade. But the truth is that I was too shy and introspective to ask anyone, including one girl that I actually liked who clearly wanted me to ask her. Don’t ask me to explain why; I don’t know, it’s a mystery. I had a girlfriend that I met in the temple Youth Group when I was in 10th grade, but she moved to Chicago and I ended up sitting both the junior and senior proms out. I hung out with a group that was nerdy enough that most of them didn’t go either, so it wasn’t completely devastating, but the fact that I remember details makes one think that it felt significant.

Back to Blogging

There's an old fable about a frog and a scorpion. The scorpion wants to cross a river but can't swim, so he asks a frog. The frog say, "No way, you'll just sting me and I'll die." The scorpion says, "That's ridiculous, if I sting you I'll drown, so what are you worried about." The frog mulls it over and decides he'll give the scorpion a ride. Halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog. "Why did you do that", says the frog as they begin to sink, "now we'll both die." The scorpion replied, "It's my nature." (BTW, extra points for telling me what movie that story figures prominently in- no, it's not a Disney)

A lot of old sayings are pretty annoying, whether or not there is any truth in them. I always found myself particularly irritated by "Tis better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." I suppose there's nothing wrong with preferring to have some light, but what's the point of cursing darkness? Darkness is dark; that's what it is, and cursing something for its essential nature is just stupid. I find myself walking out of the classroom muttering something about the f-ing chalk all over my hands, but chalk is chalky. If it doesn't get on your hands, it's probably not going to do such a hot job on the blackboard. Can't blame paper for the mess on my desk either.