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.