Going the Distance

Heavens!  I've done enough whining about running that even the occasional reader of this blog or a casual Facebook friend probably knows it is not my favorite thing.  It is hard to say exactly WHY I don't like running, but it remains a fact that I don't.

However, I have long had the goal of completing a triathon.  It goes back to high school when I read about the Hawaiian Ironman.  Those Ironmen are some tough cookies;  they complete a grueling course which includes a 2.4 mile ocean swim, a 112 mile bike ride and then, to top it off,  they run a  full 26.2 mile marathon.  I was probably 15 when decided that I wanted to participate in an Ironman competition.  This was clearly the folly of youth.  I was not at all athletic.  While I have always loved swimming, I did not take up bicycling until my mid-twenties and as for that running... well, as I have lamented numerous times... I'm workin' on it.  But as a teenager, the allure of the Ironman was so compelling that I resolved that at some point in my life, I would complete a triathlon.

Of course, I was also going to be a Hollywood actress.

Clearly, not all of my high school ambitions will come to fruition.  Nor should they.

But that triathlon has stuck with me.  Even through the soft years of my 30's and 40's.  Even now.   There is something that compels me to push myself to do this and I promised  it would be by the time I was 55.

That will be next January.

I guess it is now or never.

After a month or so of tentative training, I registered for the Tawas Sprint Triathon.  This is scaled down significantly from the Ironman competitions that initially inspired my goal.  It is "only"  a 500 m lake swim, 20 km (12 mile) bike ride and a 5 km (3 mile) run.

I went out for a 5K practice run yesterday.  It was early in the morning, but the sun was already hot and the route I chose had little shade.  Physically, I was doing all right- I was huffing and puffing a little, and yes, it was hot- but really I was fine.  I knew it too, but nonetheless, I really wanted to stop.  I wanted to walk.  I wanted that run to be over. It was really hard for me to just keep running.

I know I am not a very good runner and I don't hesitate to regularly remind myself of that fact while I am running.  In truth, I am not actually fully confident that I CAN complete the triathon, and it is the running that worries me most.  It is  so very hard to persist at something when faced with feelings of incompetence and insecurity.  There is a mental resistance that makes every step difficult, like running through quicksand.

I tried to push these negative thoughts out of my head and  think of other things.  My mind, naturally enough, wandered to the new academic year, which formally begins tomorrow.   I had the opportunity to meet a bunch of new freshmen and their parents during the move-in days last week.  The students are both excited and nervous.  Excited, because they have been waiting forever to be on their own and make their first foray into the adult world.  Nervous, because they are worried about social adjustments and the intellectual demands of higher education.

As I struggled to keep running, I was reminded that many of these students will struggle academically.  Nonetheless, we will expect them to attend classes, listen to lectures, solve problems, write papers, do projects, read and analyze difficult texts, have insightful discussions, and study for examinations.  We tell them they should expect to spend about 10 hours per week on each course they take, and if the subject is difficult for them, it will require more time.   Yes, the harder they find it, the more time they will need to endure that horrible feeling of incompetence and insecurity that I feel while running.  Like me, they will want to stop and spend that time doing something - anything- else.  Of course, as educators we know that there are no shortcuts; if they are going to be successful, they have to stick with it and push through that resistance.  It is a steep learning curve, but as educators, we know that once the students have some level of competence, it gets easier and they sometimes even start to enjoy the subject.

I have a general rule that I don't ask anyone to do anything I won't do myself.  So, I will not ask students to face their challenges with persistence unless I can face my own with that same persistence.

My head filled with these thoughts, I kept running.  I finished the 5K and did not give in to the temptation to walk or rest.  It was all right.  Not so bad, really.  Maybe, if I keep at it, like with many difficult things, I will reach a level of competence where I can actually enjoy it.

It's possible you know.

Athletic endeavors are not my natural strength, although stubborn persistence might be.  I don't expect to get an "A" in triathlon, but I do plan on passing the course on September 8.

Today I am grateful for inspiration that pushes me to do more and think harder, and for the support of those who seem to have more confidence in me than I have in myself.

Illuminating Texts

Every once in a while at Christmas or my birthday, I am the pleased recipient of a beautiful leather-bound journal.  My close friends and family know how I love the idea of writing and keeping a journal-- you know,  the old fashioned kind on real paper-- to record my thoughts and  ideas before they escape  the sieve that is my memory.

But as much as I love these books and appreciate the gifts, I must admit that I have not used them well.  Oh, I start out with good intentions, making a couple of entries, but soon I am overcome with the sense that my silly day-to-day thinking does not warrant a beautiful leather-bound volume.  The leather-bound books seem too special for shaky first drafts and ill-formed incomplete thoughts. A blank word document or even one of the cheap  tape-bound composition books that I buy in bulk during the August back-to-school sales seem more than adequate.  

But what to do with my beautiful journals?

I had an idea while visiting a museum at Shanghai Normal University in China.  The collection included numerous scrolls of meticulous calligraphy copied from ancient texts by Chinese officials and scholars.  If I understood the docent correctly, the scholars copied the texts as a way of preserving the texts, honoring the original authors,and gaining deep knowledge of the content.  The calligraphy reminded me of the beautiful illuminated biblical texts that medieval monks copied, for similar reasons.

Of course, we live in a different world now.  There is no need to preserve any written material by hand-copying.  We've had printing presses for quite some time now and at this stage, most texts are digitized anyway.  An enormous amount of written material is available to us instantly through the wonder that is the internet, and what is not immediately available for free can often be downloaded or ordered within a matter of a couple of hours, days at most. The incredible volume of material published these days coupled with easy access puts us in the midst of an information glut.

No, preservation is not an issue.

In today's educational and technological world, the concept of copying texts to assist in learning seems both quaint and wrong.  Learning by copying is just memorization  and we all know that such "rote learning" isn't "real learning" and that our goals should be to foster critical thinking and creativity.

There is nothing creative about copying.

But, here is where I think we are missing something important.

No one can think critically and creatively in the absence of knowledge.  Having ready access to vast stores of information is not the same as having knowledge. Knowledge is information that does not have to be looked up- information imprinted into our brains.  Information itself is not particularly useful until it is transformed into knowledge, a process that requires active attention, review, and internalization.

I call that transformation learning.

For me, learning is facilitated by writing things down.  Not underlining. Not highlighting.  Writing them down.  If it is a scientific or scholarly work, I make notes in my own words, perhaps quoting particularly concise phrases or key concepts. In these cases paraphrasing confirms understanding.  These are just notes, kept at various levels of organization in my cheap composition books.

When text is fiction, poetry, or ancient, I copy the exact words of the author or translator.  This practice allows me to internalize the the cadence and imagery and begin, hopefully, to know the work.

So, even though I have really bad handwriting and do not know any form of calligraphy, and even though it is out of fashion from a educational perspective, I use my leather-bound journals for copying texts, both ancient and modern, in order to honor the original author and gain a deeper knowledge of the work.  Just like the Chinese scholars.  Just like the medieval monks.  Well, not quite.  There is that little issue of illegible  handwriting!

In the process, I have discovered and rediscovered some wonderful words. I have been relearning T.S. Eliot's Preludes and other poems.  Langston Hughes, Psalms.  Words that are worthy of the beautiful journals into which I transcribe them.

Here is a fun little poem I came across on  our return trip from the Stratford Shakespeare Festival last Sunday.  The poem is by E.B. White, author of my first favorite chapter book (Stuart Little) and the wonderful tale of another clever spider (Charlotte's Web).  It is called Natural History.

Natural History
(A letter to Katherine from the King Edward Hotel, Toronto)
The spider, dropping down from twig,

Unwinds a thread of her devising:
A thin, premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all the journey down through space,
In cool descent, and loyal-hearted,
She builds a ladder to the place
From which she started.

This I, gone forth, as spiders do,
In spider's web a truth discerning,
Attach a silken thread to you
For my returning.



As my family has been scattered over the globe this summer,  I am grateful for the silken threads guiding us all home.

Miracles Emergent

The facts:

Sunrise on Lake Huron.  

I am not a morning person.  Never have been.     I have tried to shift my internal clock to better accommodate the demands of my working life, but except when I am assisted by jet lag, I can’t seem to do so.  I tend to stay up too late and am sleepy in the morning.  For me, mornings are bad.

I have never enjoyed running.  I have tried many times to develop a more amicable relationship with the sport, but it is just not my thing.  For me, running is bad.

But, strangely enough,

Running at 6:30 in the morning is glorious. 

I get up, run in the cool morning air accompanied by the ever goofy ZigZag and I love it.  Not only that, I feel great all day long.

Huh?  Say what?

It’s like a miracle.

I have often remarked that as a scientist, I don’t believe in magic, but that I do believe in miracles.  After making such a remark, I deftly avoid further discussion of what constitutes a miracle, although a backwards look through this blog provides a few hints.  For instance, I talked about the miracle of how ordinary rhythms and rituals ground us and help keep us centered.  I also talked about the miracle of how a a couple of regular people can create a  new and perfect child and how a mass of undifferentiated cells somehow becomes a highly organized living organism.  I was talking about human life, but really, earthworms are pretty miraculous too, when you stop to think about it. 

Another time I wrote about the miracle of contentedness that I feel on a summer day, like today.  I feel an overwhelming sense of  well-being while sitting on the back deck, fresh brewed coffee in hand, dog and cat asleep in the sun, flowers in bloom, with birds at the feeders.  Conversely, when the weather is awful-- bitter cold, driving rains, or blistering heat-- when I would not want to be outside for very long, even though I love being outside, I look around my warm and comfortable home and am glad for the miracle of a safe and secure life.  I am very aware that for most of the world’s people, this miracle is beyond reach.   I feel both grateful and a little guilty for the miracle of my good fortune. 

I see miracles in the generosity of people who volunteer their time or other resources selflessly to help others.  I think about inner city after school programs,  community food banks and so on, often run by people who simply want to make things better for others.    I think it is a miracle when, in the face of all the things that could go wrong, things go right.  I think it is a miracle that there is life, joy, satisfaction, and happiness because there is no guarantee that those things have to exist.

I have another definition of miracle that is perhaps somewhat related, but not directly.  This is when things combine in unpredicted and unpredictable ways to create something new and radically different.  I learned recently that this idea has another name—strong emergence.  The idea is that the whole is not only greater than the sum of the parts, it is fundamentally different than the sum of the parts.

The concept of strong emergence is not accepted in the sciences; it is seen as too magical and is contrary to the premise that the physical world behaves predictably, at least on the large scale.  Science relies on the idea that we can observe, understand, and predict the workings of the universe.  (To any scientists reading this, I am not forgetting the indeterminacy of quantum physics, but rather thinking on a macroscopic scale).  Scientists fundamentally believe that if we know enough about the parts, we can predict the outcome of their interactions at least statistically.  I think that in the realms of the physical universe that is true.  For example, the properties of water ARE predictable from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen even though water has little in common with its constituents.   Certainly, it would have been difficult and even unlikely for scientists to predict, a priori, the properties of water from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen.  But difficult or not,  it COULD have been done and in hindsight, it is clear how water’s properties emerge from those of hydrogen and oxygen.   When things get much more complex, like biological systems, it seems impossible to predict how the same building blocks could lead to the known diversity of life.  But, I don’t think it’s impossible.  Impossibly difficult maybe, but not theoretically impossible.   

Where the idea of strong emergence feels right to me is in the area of human perception and creativity.  In the prologue to this excellent biography of Richard Feynman, titled “Genius,”  James Gleick quotes Mark Kac, a Polish mathematician, who worked with Feynman in the early 1960’s.

"There are two kinds of geniuses: the 'ordinary' and the 'magicians'. An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians… Even after we understand what they have done,  the process by which they have done it, is completely dark. Richard Feynman was a magician of the highest order.

Kac calls this magic; I call it a miracle.  Epistemologists call it strong emergence.  Whatever, it is the unpredictable, non-understandable, emergence of something radically new.  The ideas don’t come out of a vacuum, but the type II genius, the ‘magician,’ draws connections in ways that no one else can.  It is the difference between mere excellence, to which many can aspire with ordinary talent and extraordinary hard work and the miracle of real genius. 

The miracle of strong emergence creates soul-nourishing awe from the mere pile of rocks and pool of water that are Mount Hood reflected in Mirror Lake, especially if you are there to breathe the sweet air and feel the warm sunshine.

And, strong emergence is at play when a no-good-awful-sport like running at a terrible-horrible-miserable time of day like early morning combine to create a splendid experience.

It kind of makes me wonder if parsnips and liver might be tasty when combined together.

Nah.  There are limits!

Today I am grateful for the sunshine after a lot of badly needed rain.  I was glad for the rain, but my mood soared today when the sun came back out.

Shabbat

I was suffering from a severe case of missing-the-kids, so I was delighted to find that Eric was free for dinner last night.  Al and I drove to Ann Arbor to meet him and after a delicious Mexican dinner, the three of us stopped by the Wolverine State Brewing Company for a brewski.  If you know me at all, you know that I am much more a wine girl than a beer girl, but I do make exceptions.  Anyway, over beer, our conversations ranged far and wide, but at one point, I told the boys that I really wished that I could set aside one day each weekend to unplug, to refocus and to live slowly-- thinking, reading, writing, maybe doing some photography.  To spend time on the things I love but usually push to the back burner as the demands of our busy lives take precedence.

Nodding, Eric said, “What you want is a Shabbat.”  I looked at him quizzically, and he said, “You know, a Sabbath.”  I actually do know that Shabbat is Hebrew for Sabbath, it just hadn’t occurred to me that I wanted one.

It seems like such an archaic idea.  Even quaint.  It has been a long time since we, as a society, have recognized a Sabbath as a significant part of our culture.  I am old enough to remember when most stores were closed on Sunday,  and a few, on Saturday, in recognition of the Christian and Jewish Sabbaths. Today, we can get pretty much any thing at pretty much any time; we have created a culture of convenience. Our  24/7 mentality  gives us very little downtime.

I don’t know about you, but I crave downtime once in a while.  Not so much blob-on-the-couch downtime, but high quality downtime, time apart from my day-to-day distractions and demands, time when I can take a deep breath and just think.  Time when I can hold an idea in my head for more than a few seconds, long enough to see it from different perspectives and let it develop and grow. 

A few weeks ago I declared my first and so far, only, “No-Surf Sunday;” I did not check email, Facebook, or any other internet site from 9 am until 9 pm.   I managed to stay away from the computer that one day, but not again since.  Not even today as I write about the need to stay away.

I think Eric is right.  I need a Shabbat.

Al has a different take on this.  He thinks I need “Funday Sunday” where I get to define fun anyway I want.  Of course, he knows that I am likely to define it in terms of doing the things I don’t normally make time for- reading, writing, photography, and so on. 

Whatever you want to call it, I took today as sort of a trial run. Among other things, I did some reading, wrote this blog, explored the difference between satisfaction and complacency, listened to Sidney Bechet, made focaccia bread and cherry crisp, walked the dog, and resisted the urge to run errands or go shopping.

(I am definitely not a recreational shopper, but I do have a weakness for office and school supplies.  I keep hinking my Sunday experiment would be improved with new notebooks and  pens.  After all, maybe  new thoughts would flow better through new pens into unsullied notebooks.   And maybe I need one of those lap desks so I can record my thoughts in comfort wherever I happen to be sitting. 

Ok. Maybe not.)

Shabbat or Funday Sunday, I think Eric and Al may be saying the same thing.  Either way, I think I have been given explicit permission to claim Sundays as my own.  For this, I am grateful.  Just for the record, I plan to take full advantage of it!

I mainly resisted the lures of the internet, but not entirely.  I dropped in on Facebook briefly and came upon a post about the horrible mass killing in Wisconsin, the second in as many weeks.  I don’t understand this violence.  I just don’t understand.

Are we there yet?

Yes!  It is July 31st and this completes my promise to post every day in the month of July.  As I lamented, more than once, it was sometimes a challenge to keep myself motivated but having Nancy blogging alongside helped enormously.  So did your Facebook "likes," emails, and posted comments. I am glad I did this; it shook some ideas loose in my head and left some record of the month of July which otherwise might have dissipated into oblivion like a wispy fog of warm breath on a cold winter day.

But, to be honest, I am also glad that the month is over and I am done with daily posting for a while.  I have a lot of other things to do, especially as the next academic year approaches.  As regular readers of the July posts know, I have been gone quite a bit since May and it seems like the summer slow down characteristic of university life has not yet begun.  Maybe you can imagine my dismay when a faculty colleague commented today that we will begin the fall semester 'welcome back' activities in just 2 weeks!  I checked the calendar; she's right.

YIKES!  How did that happen?

This post is both the end of my July daily posting promise and my 100th entry on the Extra-Ordinary Ramblings blog site.  This represents another sort of milestone, I guess, and like the impending start to the school year, it took me by surprise.  Somehow, through all my fussing and complaining and teeth gnashing and fighting with myself over the last couple years, not to mention the constant clamor of  my twin internal critics, Agnes and Agatha, I have actually posted quite a bit of material.  And I humbly confess that I even like some of it.

I don't know about you, but I squander a lot of energy fighting with myself about doing things.  If I made New Year's Resolutions, I should really resolve to just shut up and do what needs to be done. To get over myself and get on with it.

So, here is a mid-year resolution:

A few days ago, I posted about the possibility of participating in the Tawas mini-triathlon.  Completing a triathlon has been a favorite fantasy of mine for a long time.  This morning, I  decided that I am going to do it.  That's all.  Just do it.

I got in the Ryder Center pool today and did a slow, steady, and arm-aching 600 meter swim.  Yes, I have some work to do before I'll be ready for that triathlon, but it was ok, even pretty good, once I got my goggles to stop leaking.

The biking shouldn't be a problem; it is by far my favorite summertime activity.

Running, .... well.  Yes.  About that.

Suffice it to say that biking is much better than running.  This is not just my opinion; I  have indisputable proof.  Michigan has lots of paved trails for bikers, runners, roller-bladers and in the winter, cross country skiers.  When we go to the Pere Marquette Trail, or the Saginaw Valley Rail Trail, or that especially beautiful trail that runs for miles and miles along Lake Michigan, we see lots of other people out exercising. And there is a very noticeable difference in the demeanor of the bikers and the runners.

 The bikers ALWAYS have great big happy grins on their faces and greet others with a delighted "Great day for a ride, isn't it?"

The runners, on the other hand,  tend look like they are completely miserable; they grimace and frown, and seem like they are counting the steps until the end of their ordeal. They rarely acknowledge a passer-by, let alone offer or respond to a cheerful greeting.

You have to admit that the difference is compelling.


Here is where that mid-year resolution comes into play.  I am going to shut up about how much I dislike running and just do it.  I am not a fast runner, but the 5K run will take me just a little more than 30 minutes.  Like 35.  That's all.  35 minutes.  How bad can it be?  It's only 35 minutes.


And like the July promise and 100 blog postings, if I just keep at it, I'll be fine. The job will get done.  And I will be so happy.

I have expressed gratitude for 100 things since I started writing this blog, and tonight I will just reiterate my constant gratitude for Al, Eric, Ellen, extended family, old friends, new friends, and my friends yet to come. And ice cream.  I don't think I've mentioned ice cream!

Against all Odds

Did you ever stop to think and then forget to start again?
                                                                     - Winnie-the-Pooh


It is the 30th consecutive day that I have posted to this blog.  There were some days that I felt tired and uninspired.  There were plenty of days that I was tempted to abandon my July promise to write everyday.  In truth, writing everyday probably IS too often, especially when I am working and traveling and all that.  But, I also knew that if I gave up, I would 'forget' to start again.  So I just plowed on.  Sometimes uninspired. Often out of words.  Sometimes out of ideas.

And it got better.

At least sometimes.

Tomorrow is both the end of the July promise and my 100th posting to this site. Wow! Maybe if I read all this stuff, I'll find a thread worth pursuing as I drop back to a weekly posting schedule, which I intend to keep up for a while.  Hopefully, a long while.

Last November, my coblogger-in-crime and I posted quick daily observations to a another blog that we share, called Finding Joy.  I was scanning that site for ideas and I came upon this entry from November 4, 2011.  The day I originally wrote it, I was in Montreal for a conference, but I had a similar existential mid-night  mini-crisis in San Francisco on Saturday evening.

It was 3 a.m. and I awoke to these thoughts.

I pray because I am so small.

I am one person in 7 billion on a planet that revolves around one of the 300 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy which is one galaxy in about 170 billion galaxies in the universe.

I pray because I am so small.

I contain about 63 kg of the estimated 3.4 x 10^54 kg in the universe.  As a percentage, that represents 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000018% of the mass of the universe.

I pray because I am so small.

My mass is so inconsequential, my existence so unlikely that if I were a statistician I would say with great certainty that I don't exist.  But I do.  I breathe.  I love. I laugh.  I work.  I play.  I find joy.

I pray because I am so small.
And so very grateful.

Hmmm, I think I need to lay off the chili burritos before bed!  

(Here is a link to a significantly funnier take on this idea.)

Let the games begin

Al and I are not tv-teetotalers.  We just don't have it in the house.  

For many years, we had our phone, internet and TV bundled in either a cable or satellite package, but last winter we realized that entire months would go by that we never used the television service.  We like to watch movies, but television has never been a habit for us, so we decided to restructure the internet and phone providers and ditch the television altogether.   It made sense.  

We really haven't missed TV,  but I know there are some times we will, notably, in March when we want to cheer the UConn women Huskies tovictory in the NCAA women's basketball championships.

And, every 2 years when the Olympics occur.  It was actually the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo that motivated us to buy our first color television. Before that we had a little 13" black and white TV and it was hard to tell one downhill skier from another.  

It is a little odd that we miss watching sports.  We like to ride our bikes, enjoy a friendly volley on the tennis court, and tolerate running, but we are no means competitive athletes.  But there is something incredibly inspirational about watching the best in the world strive to be even better.

The Watercube in Beijing where Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals!

I was looking through my high school year book recently and found the autograph of one of my friends that said, "Best of luck to someone with a double dose of the Puritan work ethic."  If I have a double dose, these athletes have a giga-dose of that ethic.  Think about it.  Sprinters train for years to run a 10 second race where the difference between triumph and defeat is about 10 milliseconds.  Gymnasts repeat their routines thousands of times, but a small slip, an extra hop or step out of bounds will cost them the medal.

I am glad that in my work, my margin of error is a bit more forgiving.

Fortuitously, I was in San Francisco when the Olympics began,  so I got to watch the opening ceremonies and a few of the early events on the TV in my hotel room.  The opening ceremony was quite a spectacle and it was both exciting and moving to see the parade of thousands of athletes from over 200 countries, including the first women competitors from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and the South African runner, who despite being  born without lower legs, competes at the Olympic level with prosthetic limbs. 

I imagine that Sir Paul McCartney is pretty cool about performing these days.  He's done a few concerts in his day, you know, and  I doubt if he loses his composure often. I found it  more than little touching that when he began to sing "Hey Jude" after the Olympic torch was lit, he seemed to get a little choked up, although I must say it is not apparent in the YouTube video.  I was not the only one who heard it; the NBC commentator made note of it as well.  In any case,  he recovered quickly and of course, everyone joined right in.  There was energy and joy on the faces of the athletes as they danced and sang along, that I could feel, even several thousand miles away during a rebroadcast shown on a TV screen.  Imagine actually being there!

I have had the incredible good fortune of seeing Sir Paul perform live twice- once in the Palace in Auburn Hills, and once in Comerica Park in Detroit.  His music and persona ignite joyous energy in the crowds and soon everyone is singing and dancing to his familiar songs.  Paul McCartney is not a musical genius, but his music has brought joy to millions.  Not many people have that kind of impact.

It us much like those Olympic athletes, who bring joy and hope to people all over the world.  By doing the impossible, they remind us all of what is possible. 

Good luck to all the Olympic athletes!

My original plan for today's post was to write about the indignities and hassles of air travel.  But, then I thought about it.  Today, in just 8 hours, I traveled 2500 miles safely.  This summer, our family has safely journeyed great distances, in remarkably short amounts of time.  And this evening,  I observed airline personnel deal patiently and compassionately with a upset and disruptive mentally-ill passenger, finally resolving her problem as best they could.  So, despite annoyances here and there, I am grateful for the airlines and the service they provide.

I dust the dust.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned a book titled "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler and Charles VanDoren.  This book differentiates reading skills based on the type of book and the goals of the reader.  For example, the authors present a set of simple rules to improve analytical reading of expository (essentially non-fiction) texts.  Their rules require active participation in the by the reader-- asking questions of the text, finding answers, identifying the unified whole, the parts that compose that whole, and so on.  Reading a novel or a poem is quite different and the authors talk about being receptive to the effects of imaginative literature.  The reader is still active, but to quote Adler and Van Doren,  "It is a sort of passive action, if we may be allowed the expression, or, better, active passion."

Well, I am not in a position to allow or disallow the expression, but that sentence sent my brain aswirl.  The authors go on to clarify their point, that "we must act in a way, when reading a story, that we let it act on us."  Ok.  I get the idea.

But, think about those words active, action, passive, passion.

Clearly, someone that takes action is active and someone that is active takes action,  by definition.

But is someone with passion passive?  Does someone who is passive have passion?  Is fire ice?  Is ice fire?

I didn't think so.

This led me to look up the etymology of the words passive and passion.  I wondered if it was accident of linguistic evolution that these two words sound similar but actually come from different origins.  You know, like ZigZag and Pippi look a lot alike, but are unrelated.  But no, passion and passive are two branches of the same  tree.  Both words come from the Latin word pati- which means to suffer or endure, which in turn comes from the earlier Proto-Indo-European root pei- which means to hurt.

And now that I think about it, that makes sense. 

Some say the world will end in fire

Others say in ice.

And either way it sounds painful.

I wondered if there were other examples of words that come from the same root, but have opposite or seemingly contradictory meanings.  I did a little research and found that such words are called contranyms and there are lots of examples.  For instance:

I had to dust the counter after dusting the cake with powdered sugar.  (Since it is me, I probably had to vacuum too!)

I sanction sanctions. (Like the ones received by Penn State in the Sandusky/Paterno debacle)

So, whether I sanction or sanction Adler and Mortimer's use of the expression "passive action,"  I certainly acknowledge that English, and I imagine all languages, are rife with ambiguity and inconsistency.  Just like the people that speak them!

Tonight I am grateful for the opportunity to visit with extended family!  It was wonderful to see my niece and nephew and their other halves.

How to Read

Here is a routine exchange from  my chemistry classes:

Student:  Dr. H, can you go over problem 38?  It’s a really hard one.

Me:  Sure.  Let’s take a look.

I flip to the back of the chapter and find the problem in question.  It is towards the end of the problem set which generally correlates with increased difficulty, at least as perceived by students.    

I begin by reading the problem aloud, occasionally making some notes on the board, pausing to give each phrase and detail a few seconds to sink in,  and when I am done I ask, “So what do you think?  Where should we start?”

Student:  Wait a minute.  Isn’t that  pretty much like like the problem we solved in class on Tuesday?  Couldn’t we solve it the same way?

Me:  Yup.  Let’s go ahead and try that.

So we set up the problem, maybe wrestle a little with the math and when we are done, the student says,  "That wasn’t  as hard as I thought it was.” 

This scenario has been replayed frequently, with almost no variation, in every chemistry class I have ever taught, from the introductory to the most advanced classes.  Typically, students think that it is the chemistry and math that are difficult when in fact, the problem is often just reading.  These kids are not bad readers; I suspect that they read non-technical texts very fluently.    They just haven’t mastered the skill of reading dense, rigorously precise scientific writing.  When I help them parse the information and extract the key points, they frequently know exactly how to take the next step.

I am reading a book called, oddly enough, “How to Read a Book” by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren.  The title amuses me because if I really needed to learn how to read a book, I couldn’t learn to read a book by reading a book called “How to Read a Book.” (Ok, I admit that little bit of wordplay was a bit self-indulgent.  In truth, if I really needed to learn how to read a book, I couldn’t learn to read a book by reading ANY book, not just that one.)

Anyway, Adler and Van Doren make the point that we stop teaching kids to read in sixth grade which is when most students can read narratives fairly fluently, can extract the meaning of unfamiliar words from context and can obtain information from straight-forward texts. Adler and VanDoren argue that we  don’t teach high school students  to read complex texts analytically for understanding.  Yet, authors of college level textbooks expect them to do just that.   In arguing for better reading instruction, Adler and Van Doren write

“We must become more than a nation of functional literates.  We must become a nation of truly competent readers, recognizing all that the word competent implies.  Nothing less will satisfy the needs of the world that is coming.”

A pretty serious indictment of education, if you ask me.  Interestingly, this book was first published in 1942 and re-released 30 years later.   We certainly aren’t doing a very good job today, and I guess it wasn’t that much better back in the good old days.

I do think Adler and VanDoren are correct and agree that it is important to teach students to approach different kinds of texts differently.  Reading a physical chemistry book is just not the same as reading a novel, which is different still from a historical treatise or an epic poem.  The same book can be read differently for different purposes.  Reading is not a single skill and people can be very good at reading some kinds of books, but lack the skills to effectively read other kinds. 

I have been enjoying “How to Read a Book” and have found it very useful.  I have gained a few new skills and attitudes towards reading and best of all, I am better prepared to help students develop their analytical reading skills in my science classes. 

After all, they pay hundreds of dollars for those books—they should be able to use them.

Maybe textbooks should come with instruction manuals. Instruction manuals that DON'T need their own instruction manuals.

Yes, so many books.  So little time.

At the end of “How to Read a Book,” Adler and Van Doren provide a chronological list of  books by 137 authors that they feel are worth the effort of close and detailed reading.  This is a daunting list that begins with Homer, ends with Solzhenitsyn and includes multiple books by most of those 137 authors.  They are up to author number 22 before they even get to the Common Era!  I think of myself as being a little more than a “functional literate” but I haven’t read all that many of their recommendations.  Still, I don’t think I’ll  take on their list anytime soon.   I am at a conference, and today alone, I heard about six or eight books I really want to read.   Plus my own backlog.  Maybe I’ll get to Homer when I retire.  At that rate, I should get to Solzhenitsyn about the same time that I get to the Pearly Gates!  Good thing the last edition of “How to Read a Book” was published 30 years ago; otherwise the list would never end.

In fact the list of great books will never end and for that richness of human expression  I am indeed grateful!

Thanks for stopping in

Thank you for stopping by. Unfortunately, our usual programming has been canceled because the author of this blog is dead tired after a long journey to the west coast that involved weather delays, missed connections, and a late arrival to her conference,  which just ended for the day.

Because she has been up for almost 21 consecutive hours, she is experiencing a decided lack of brain activity and a clear need for sleep.

Please come back tomorrow when we expect to return to our July schedule of posts, which will be shifted to Pacific Daylight Savings Time.

Belated leap day contemplations

I had no ideas for tonight's post.  I thought about it while I cooked dinner, but I came up blank.  I thought about it while we walked the dog, but that didn't yield any great ideas, or even good ideas, either.  So, I opened a file in my "writings" folder called "essay_ideas.docx." which, as the name suggests, is where I store vague ideas, loose thoughts,  rough drafts, opening paragraphs, and so on that might be useful for future essays or blog posts.  I came across this, which was obviously first written on March 1, 2012, the day after Leap Day

Statistically speaking, there was only a 25% chance of yesterday.   75% of the time, we would have gone directly from February 28 (this past Tuesday) to March 1 (today, Thursday).  In most years, we would have been able to skip right over yesterday.  For me anyway, yesterday was a fine day, and certainly not one I would have chosen to skip even if I'd had a chance. 

That got me thinking, which as many of you know, is a dangerous thing.  And fortunately, fairly rare!  But anyway, I asked myself what days I would skip if I could.

My first response was that I'd skip those awful days when really sad things happened.  Here are a few:  January 16, 1983, January 13, 1998, October 27, 2008, and February 23, 2009.  Those were the days that Al and I lost, first, our fathers, then, our mothers.  I could have done without May 6, 2010.  That was the day of my major car accident.  Those are the sorts of days that immediately spring to mind when I think about skipping a day, here or there.

But on further reflection, I don't think those are the days I'd skip.  Losses are an inevitable part of life.  Sad, yes, but in the end unavoidable. 


I think the days that I would choose to jump over are those that I squandered.

That is where it stopped.  I don't know what I was thinking about last spring, but this is how I finished the thought tonight.

A bit of advice from Ben Franklin, who had lots of it 

There have been plenty of days that I'd like to skip, or better yet, re-live because I just wasted the time, neither working nor relaxing.   I consider myself a pretty hard worker, but I don't consider relaxing a waste of time.  I consider it essential to keeping the ideas flowing and the brain balanced.  So, having fun and relaxing isn't a problem.  What wastes time is letting it slip by, neither using  it nor enjoying it.  This is a common Saturday phenomenon for me and it drives me crazy.  There are a million things I could do, and I do none of them.  I am not exactly sure where the day goes, but zap!  it's gone.

Then there are days I'd like to skip because I let squandered a lot of energy being "busy" without really getting anything done.  This one is insidious and it is often difficult to tell when it is happening, because I feel like I am working and accomplishing things. I even feel important. In reality though, I am running in circles, much like my puppy in the backyard.  Chasing my tail.  Running after random squirrels.  Trying to catch a butterfly.  Wearing myself out and getting nowhere.  There are times when this sort of random motion is necessary to identify a direction,  but sometimes I let myself believe it is the direction itself.  I suspect I am not alone.

There are days that I'd like to skip because I squandered good will or friendship.  Those are the days when a simple act of kindness or a gentle word could have made all the difference, but apathy, indolence, or even worse, self-centered pride, got in the way and I squandered an opportunity to build a relationship or maintain a friendship.  These are the days I most wish I could skip or re-live.  The days where a little more effort from me might have significantly helped someone else. 


The days that I wish I could skip are not the days where the inevitable disappointments of life arrived on my door.  Those things are out of my control.  The days that I would skip are the ones that could have been different if only I were paying attention and making the effort, the days when I could have made a difference, and simply failed.


I am grateful for today's rich experience of teaching at a middle school math camp in an inner city school.  There were challenges, but there were joys.  And most of all, there is enormous potential that should not be squandered!

Bucket lists and other cookies

"September 8.  Tawas.  You in?"

Tawas is a lovely community on Lake Huron about 90 minutes north of here.  It is a beautiful place to go boating, or have a picnic, or a beach party,  or a dinner on the lake.   However, I was not being invited to go boating, or to  a picnic, a beach party, a dinner on the lake, or anything civilized like that.

Instead I was being goaded into fulfilling one of my bucket list items-- to participate in a mini-triathlon.

I have been threatening to do this for several years.  I have made a commitment to myself to complete a mini-triathlon before my 55th birthday.  My friend Josh, a faculty member in the athletic training program, who, by the way is at least 20 years younger than me, is holding my feet to the fire, so to speak.

I really had good intentions of completing  the mini-triathlon this summer.  But I have been traveling so much.  And I have been very busy between trips. And it has been hot.  And the kids were here.  And I have been blogging.  And ....

The reality is that I have run exactly twice, and that was back in April.  I have ridden my bike a bit more, but not really all that much.  I brought my swimming gear to work with the intention of going to the university pool after work, but my office is as far as it got.

Without explicitly saying it, I clearly had given up on my promise to 'do' the triathlon this summer.  Does it really matter if I do it before my 55th birthday?  Wouldn't doing it at 55 be just as good?  I mean, it is the difference between being less than 55 and  being less than or equal to 55.  Small detail, no?

But,  then Josh told me that he plans to compete in the Tawas event in September.  


And, that made me think.

It is only a 5 K run, a 20 K bike ride and a 500 m swim.  That isn't so bad.  Right? I mean, just tonight we went for a 33 km bike ride and then took the dog for a 3.3 km walk.  With a little training, I could do a triathlon, right?  I never said I want to WIN a triathlon.  I said I wanted to COMPLETE a triathlon.  I may crawl across the finish line on all fours but....

Stopped for a cookie on the MS150.

Al and I usually do the Western Michigan MS150 bike ride in early June.  This year it conflicted with my trip to China, so we are riding in September instead.  Whenever I tell people that we ride 150 miles, they think that sounds like an insurmountable task, even when I explain it is a two day ride.  But really it isn't bad at all; in fact, it is fun.   The MS150 organizers take really good care of the riders, offering cookies, fruit, water and gator-ade at frequent intervals along the ride.  I don't think of each day as a grueling 75 mile bike ride, I prefer to think of it as 7 cookie stops separated by 10 mile bike rides.  That doesn't sound so difficult, does it?

Do you think the triathlon provides cookies?

Today I am grateful that Ellen made it back to Japan and is settling in for the rest of the summer.

Thank you, Sally Ride

…this nation should commit itself to the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon…

                                                                   -J. F. Kennedy, May 1961

Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, died today of pancreatic cancer, at 61 years old.  She was a pioneer and I would have given almost anything to be her.

That is me on the right-- with the helmet.

My very first career goal was to be an astronaut.  I remember watching the launches of the early Mercury and Gemini rockets on our big black and white console TV.  John Glenn was my first hero.   I was a child of the 60's, growing up under the influence of JFK’s grand vision to reach the moon.  It took NASA until 1969 to achieve that goal but my friends and I spent the summer of 1961 traveling to the moon every day.   I suspect my dad, hardly a proponent of feminism, bought this space helmet and built this  “control panel” complete with switches, lights and dials for my older brother, but nonetheless, I knew I too was destined for space.  A couple of lawn chairs completed our space ship and we needed nothing else to fulfill JFK’s master plan. I was a three and a half year old little girl, and these excursions are some of my earliest memories. 


The space program inspired my interest in science which lasted throughout my childhood.  Fickle, as children can be,  I next wanted to be a geologist.  While other little girls collected Barbies, I collected rocks, but by  high school I had all but forgotten about my “childhood” interest in things scientific.  I hated high school chemistry and math, probably because of a couple of genuinely bad teachers in those subjects.  If someone had told me, while I was still in high school, that I would end up as a research chemist, I would have thought they were eating some pretty crazy mushrooms (it was the 70's after all!)

So, I explored other options- music, writing, education- in fact, all things that interest and inspire me to this day.  But, I kept coming back to science. As a woman,  I was a bit of an anomaly 1970's and 1980's and in the early days of my career, it was not at all unusual for me to be the only pantyhose in a room full of pinstriped suits.  Things have changed.  Women are still underrepresented in engineering but are approaching parity in many of the sciences. 



We have the Sally Rides of the world to thank for that.  She endured a lot of pretty stupid people asking pretty stupid questions and handled them with grace.  ("Will you wear a bra in space?"  Seriously, someone asked her that!)  She inspired girls and to this day, as a astrophysicist (with an English double major), and an astronaut she still inspires me.

I thank you, Sally Ride.  We all do.

Today I am grateful for the  trailblazers, who remind us not to be limited by externally imposed standards.  More is possible than we can ever imagine.


 Space travel (the real thing, not science fiction) still captures my imagination and images from space can bring tears to my eyes. 

A very merry unbirthday!

A very merry unbirthday to you, and you!

Today is my unbirthday, and Al's too.  It is probably your unbirthday too, but it is a special unbirthday for us.

While it is an unbirthday for us individually, as a couple this is our birthday.  Or rather, our average birthday.  Today, we are (on average) the same age- 55 years old.

A picture taken just after our 52nd average birthday.

I don't imagine that too many couples celebrate their average birthday, and we never did either until this year.   We thought of it last January, which is when our actual dates of birth fall.  The problem with our January birthdays is that we rarely feel like celebrating them anymore.  There are a lot of reasons.

For one thing, both of our dads died in the middle of January.

But I think the main reason is just the time of year.

Starting with Thanksgiving, we celebrate

• Thanksgiving
• Christmas (with its many social engagements that run from December 5 through December 25)
• New Year's Eve
• New Years's Day
• Our wedding anniversary
• My birthday
• Al's birthday

and that only brings us to January 26th (or 25th depending on whether you celebrate the day he was actually born or the day that is on his birth certificate, a paradox to be explained in a future post).   Right on the tails of all of that celebration is Valentine's Day.  If you go back just a couple weeks in the opposite direction, you run into Ellen's birthday and Halloween.  And I didn't even mention the anniversary of our first date!

Beginning with Halloween and running until Valentines Day, we have so many celebrations that our birthdays sometimes seem like just one more thing we have to do.  This year,  we really weren't in the mood.

Fortunately for us, the kids were in the mood and invited us to Ann Arbor for dinner.  They cooked a delicious meal and even made us a birthday cake.  It was wonderful, exactly what we needed.

But still, we had the idea that we should spread out the parties a little bit and celebrate our birthdays in summer. We thought about recognizing our half-birthdays, but we decided to celebrate the day that we are "on average" the same age.  This date falls halfway  between the day Al was born and the day I was born nearly a year later.   Last spring sometime, Al did the calculation and determined that date to be July 22.   It is our "average" birthday.  Awkward name, but better than "mean" birthday which just sounds ... well, mean.

To be honest, we kind of forgot about it.

Lucky for us, serendipity made her appearance again.  Today we celebrated our average birthday, complete with presents and cake, and didn't even realize it until I sat down to write this blog!

My average birthday gift was a new coffee maker.  I take my coffee pretty seriously so this is very cool.  I got it today because this morning, the old one went on the fritz, built up some pressure somewhere, and spewed coffee and grounds all over the kitchen. Twice.  I spent a good 45 minutes cleaning up the mess BEFORE I had my first cup of coffee. And it was not just today, this has been an intermittent problem for months.  My patience  ran out and I might have been just a little grouchy. So, I  did some internet research and found a new one that promises to be practically perfect in every way.  Happy birthday to me!

Recently, Al has become much more involved with music.  He is a drummer in two very active bands and loving every minute of it. Both bands are working on a lot of new music and have several gigs coming up. He needed some new equipment and recently bought himself some new gear.  Happy birthday to him!

And by sheer coincidence, I decided to try a new cake recipe today, made from the delicious fresh cherries now available in Michigan. So, not only did we accidentally receive "average" birthday presents, but we had an "average" birthday cake.  Yum!

Here is the recipe in case anyone wants to try it while the cherries are fresh and wonderful!  You could have it for your unbirthday!

Too bad we forgot the candles!

Cherry Walnut Cake
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
2 cups pitted cherries, sliced in half (I used a mix of Ranier and Bing cherries)

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Grease a 9" springform pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.

Combine the eggs, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl and whisk until light.  Stir in chopped nuts.   Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together and fold into the egg mixture.

Gently fold in the cherries and spread in pan. Sprinkle the top with sugar (raw sugar is nice) and bake for about 45 minutes until the top is golden and a toothpick comes out clean.  (The original recipe gave a longer cooking time, but 45 minutes worked for me.)


Today I am grateful for life's little surprises!

Shaking it loose

A facebook friend shared a link to this cartoon the other day.  As a science-geek type as well as a yoga practitioner, it gave me a good chuckle.

Yoga practitioner-- that sounds impressive, and perhaps overstates my abilities. What I really mean is that I have taken a few dozen yoga classes and know my up-dogs from my cobras, and while stretched in pigeon pose, I long for child's pose.

I am certainly no expert at yoga, more of a rank amateur.  Each semester, yoga classes are offered to the university community  and I sign up and  attend as often as I can.  I join a lot of my friends who are also yoga enthusiasts, albeit at different levels of accomplishment.

Some of my friends like the stress reduction.  I don't know how they do it, but they manage to clear their minds and navigate to a blank page.  That is not my experience.  While I have been known to doze off during shavasana (photo below)  at the end of class, I don't often find yoga mentally relaxing.

I like yoga  mostly because it improves my balance, my strength and flexibility.   I can see a real difference in  core strength and  I can feel those poses stretching both muscle and joint to improve my range of motion.  Yoga builds strength and physical control while simultaneously loosening me up.   And, being in a class lends enough accountability that I stick with it and don't get lazy.

Now that I think about it, my motivations for yoga and blogging are exactly the same.  Like yoga, blogging improves my balance, my strength and my flexibility. Writing this blog stretches me to write everyday using a style and a vocabulary different from the writing I do as either a scientist or as an administrator.  It improves my range of linguistic motion and verbal control while simultaneously loosening all those words and ideas that otherwise get tangled into knots in my brain.  And, putting the words out in the world where others can see them lends enough accountability that I stick with it and don't get lazy.

And, in yoga and blogging, you only have to stretch as far as you feel like stretching.  And today, I guess that is not very far.

And now it's time for some shavasana.

Namaste.

Today I am grateful for opportunities to get together with good friends and their families.  Multi-generational, multi-contintental joy!

Pre-determined choices

The debate over free will has been waged for millennia. The issue of whether humans, or for that matter, any sentient being has the power to freely choose among a range options has religious, ethical and scientific implications.  It is one of the few debates where scientists and theologians both argue both sides.  It leads to discussions of an omnipotent God, immutable laws of physics, accountability, and moral standards.

It is a fascinating debate, made somewhat less abstract by recent neuroscience data obtained while subjects think they are making decisions.  Patterns in brain activity allows scientists to accurately predict the subjects' choices BEFORE they themselves are aware of those decisions. That is pretty interesting, but to me it just suggests that there is a lag between the decision making and the cerebral processing of that decision.  We process a lot of information without conscious awareness, so this doesn’t seem surprising.  You know, like when you can’t think of someone’s name until you stop trying, and then it just pops into your mind. 

Which way should I go?

We make a lot of choices every day, or at least we think we do.  And the conventional wisdom is that we are happier with more options to choose from.  Why else would we have semi-sweet, bittersweet, milk, white, and mint chocolate, available as mini chips, standard chips, chunks, and jumbo chips, distributed by Hershey, Nestles, Ghirardelli,  and your generic grocery brand.  That is 80 choices right there.  OF CHOCOLATE CHIPS!  We must be very happy with all those alternatives.

Of course, some would say that we have no option at all, that choice is an allusion.

Omnipotent God, immutable laws of physics and neuroscience notwithstanding, I have a hard time believing that my chocolate chip choice is pre-determined. 

But what do I know?

There is a problem.  I don’t know about you, but I feel like I have to weigh the pros and cons of each option and make the best possible choice.  And, once I decide on the Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate Chunks, I tend to second guess myself, so that instead of enjoying my choice I wonder if I would have been happier with the Ghirardelli bittersweet. It seems to me that when there are too many choices, it is hard to feel fully satisfied.    Decisions about chocolate chips are totally inconsequential; the angst caused by too many options is much more intense when the decision actually matters.

I try not to belabor unimportant decisions but I do think a lot about the significant decisions I make. Instead of second-guessing myself about making the optimal choice, I am guided by a simple question, “Is this who I want to be?”  If so, then I move on.  If not, then I try to choose differently.  It is a pretty simple operating philosophy, but it feels right to me. 

Of course, I probably didn’t actually CHOOSE this philosophy.

But then again maybe I did.

Today I am grateful that Al and I (or omnipotent God or immutable laws of physics) made the decision to take ZigZag for a walk.  It was an absolutely beautiful summer evening in Michigan.