Triumphant Return?

Part of me feels that I should join the ranks of those writers putting forth Christmas pieces. Part of me feels that I should talk about the wonders of the season, the joys of this time of year, and yes, even the pleasure of receiving presents. Part of me feels that I should give in on this.

Fortunately, only part of me feels this way.

On the news front, I passed all of my classes. The scarcity of posts this month is due to finals, which were every bit as tough as advertised. All were passed, though, so on to the next quarter. Now that they are done, posts should pick up again.

I have gone back to my old high school over my vacation and visited an old teacher who has different political feelings than I do, and as always we started talking about history and the economy and politics. After one particularly enjoyable conversation he pointed out that he always thought I was more convincing and believable than many, that I did a good job reconciling opinions from different sides of an issue. Mainly what I think he was noticing is my ability (most of the time, at least) to treat respectfully an opinion that I do not hold and in fact with which I vehemently disagree.

After thinking about why I can do that, especially given the fact that many of his political views are so different from mine that in the abstract I have no respect for them, I have reached the only conclusion possible: that the way to respectfully disagree with another person’s point of view is to disagree with someone but to respect the person. On a similar vein, Chesterton talked of the importance of dividing our reaction to sin from our reaction to a sinner, that one revelation of the new testament was that the sinner we were to forgive “unto seventy times seven” but that the sin we should never forgive. This idea carries over, I suppose, into how to treat those with whom we disagree: we can violently disagree with the idea all we want, but should endeavor not to violently disagree with the person holding it.

All of my thought on this, though, comes back to my ongoing effort to understand the proper way to approach relationships with other people, from the general (fellow person, citizen, member of a city/school, etc.) to the specific (friend, family, etc.). Though every such effort comes with a hope for the one golden revelation that will go down in history, I am learning not to expect such an idea. One such idea already exists, what many refer to as the Golden Rule (and no, Aladdin fans, it isn’t “He who has the gold makes the rules”). But that deals with how to treat other people whereas I want concepts for how to view my relationships with other people.

The closest I have gotten so far is a variation on another piece of biblical wisdom (that book stole every good idea I have ever had), this time the one about removing the plank from one’s own eye before removing the speck of dirt from another’s. The basic thought is that before I can approach friends, family, even new people, with a proper attitude, I must have my own house, my own life, in order. A large part of that for me is knowing that I am on the right path to my own future. For the first time in a while, this isn’t a problem, and already I have seen changes in myself.

Another visit since being home was to an old professor. I mentioned my theory about how everyone has a central theme or concept that underscores everything they do: for one of my sisters, that theme is justice. He seemed intrigued by this and started thinking about what his would be. As I informed him that I thought his theme was the simplest and most powerful of ideas, “Life is fun,” he was in the process of saying “I think mine would be that if it isn’t fun then it isn’t worth doing.” This has been another cause of change in my life.

The right approach to the world and to life is not indifference or tolerance or misery, it is joy. The saddest things I have ever experienced should still have been countered by the fact that I get to experience this wondrous thing, existence. Chesterton talked of this being the right view of the world, but another story shows it as well. Fulghum (another oft-quoted author I like) tells a story in one of his books about a man who ends up with the king’s horse and gets sentenced to death, but manages to stay the execution for a year by promising to teach the horse how to talk. When confronted by friends as to why he would promise this, the man says, (paraphrased quote, too lazy to find the book) “I have a year to sort it out. A lot can happen in a year. The king may die, I may die, the king may forgive or forget, we could move, or any of a number of other things. But maybe, just maybe, the horse will talk.”

I love the story for the optimism about the future but moreso for the unstated preference for being alive to being dead. Any person with that attitude toward life and the future must have the appropriate joy for life in his heart. And with this attitude, life is no longer scary. An introvert like myself can engage strangers at a bar in conversation, and each time I have done so I like to think I impressed them but I know they impressed upon me more strongly lessons about how to live and enjoy life. And this word, enjoy, perfectly sums up the proper approach to life: life itself should engender joy in all who have it.

Give Thanks and Remember

A fellow student made an interesting case today that Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday. His logic was that holidays that involve receiving presents aren’t as fun as they used to be whereas for Thanksgiving he gets to stuff himself full of turkey and fall into a tryptophan-induced coma while watching the Detroit Lions lose another game. After all of that goodness—and let’s be honest, that is a pretty great holiday—there remain leftovers leading to what he terms the greatest of sandwiches, the Thanksgiving leftover sandwich: take two pieces of bread and put as much turkey, stuffing, and random vegetables between them as possible, then enjoy. Depending on circumstances of the attended Thanksgiving dinner, this can last for weeks!

This was a good case for Thanksgiving, but there are others to be made as well. Most people are raised being taught to thank people for gifts, compliments, whatever nice thing was relevant. Religions teach thankfulness to whatever deity for the good things in life. Thanking in general seems to be understood by most people as repayment, compensation, another gift given to the original giver. When people give gifts, they like to think that the gifts are appreciated, and the level and detected sincerity of the thanks provide signals of the appreciation. Giving thanks can reinforce good or courteous behavior, can create and strengthen bonds between people, can brighten someone’s day. If these were the only reasons to give thanks, they would be enough.

Giving thanks is, as mentioned, a sign of appreciation. And we can give such a signal regardless of the appreciation. Where once we heard, “Act as if ye have faith and faith shall be given unto you,” now we might say, “Act as if ye appreciate and appreciation shall be given unto you;” in another common phrase, “Fake it till you make it.” Giving thanks can lay a foundation for us to one day feel genuine appreciation, thus leading to more of the initial reasons for giving thanks. Again, if these were the only reasons for giving thanks, they would be enough.

But giving thanks is also a source and expression of humility. Giving thanks forces us to recognize something outside ourselves and to acknowledge that this thing outside ourselves gives us pleasure. Giving thanks forces us to put ourselves, our pride, behind this foreign source of happiness. Giving thanks forces us to prolong our interactions with this outside world. In being forced to do these things we are freed to better experience the world. In being forced to make smaller ourselves we are freed to make larger our world.

Giving thanks helps not merely the thanked but the one who thanks. Giving thanks forces us to make our world more important; it really forces us to make our world more interesting and more enjoyable. We often think of morality in terms of what is best for other people, and it is easy to make the case that giving thanks is best for others. The more surprising and important point is that morality often is what is best for ourselves, and that applies to giving thanks.

Hectic

Every semester has that few weeks where it seems like everything is happening at once. For me, for this semester, that time is now. Partly this is because finals are just around the corner. Partly this is because Thanksgiving break is next week. Partly this is because my second conference in three weeks has me on the go again, and those vacations make me feel as though the normal routine is overly busy.

But mostly this is because every semester just has that period, and now is that time. I traditionally have been able to keep low stress levels, so in times like this things usually get a little weird for me. I’ve noticed this week, with the busy period beginning, that I’ve been eating a little more than the last few weeks, so that’s something I need to control. However, I’ve decided to try a new approach this year (like always; maybe I should keep track of which ones worked in the past and use them again). This year, the approach is that things that would normally stress me will not be allowed to stress me.

While I’ll be pleased if it does, somehow I think stress-less-ness by fiat might not work.

Although t took four months, the feeling I anticipated finally arrived. I finally had the feeling this week that spending time thinking about new friends here might be unfairly discrediting my old friends back home. I don’t want to use the word “betrayal”, but I did feel a little bad about it. Partly this was from generally thinking about talking to people up here and moving forward with life, but mostly it wasn’t. Mostly, this was from thinking about my upcoming trips home, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and thinking about how I may want to get back north a day early for Thanksgiving and possibly a week early for Christmas to spend time with new friends.

Nothing significant today, try again soon.

The Parts We Play

Here’s a rare second post for the day (couldn’t sleep and wanted this typed).

I always liked acting. Whether it was school plays or musicals, messing around with friends on school projects, even one night when a friend and I were voice-acting the subtitles on a friend’s video game. The video game was a little ridiculous I admit, especially since after about a minute of it he was threatening to strangle us with the controller cord (and we deserved it). I was best and most at home acting around friends, which is probably why of the two plays I did in high school, my performance was better for the one with a small cast of close friends. I suspect that the reason is, for someone who traditionally was an introvert, the energy cost in overcoming my fear of being outcast would exhaust me unless I knew there was no risk of my audience casting me out of the group—friends, for instance. Regardless, I always felt like a more entertaining person when I was pretending to be someone other than myself.

One of my favorite essayists, Robert Fulghum, has an essay in which he talks of the three lives everyone leads. Shakespeare had his “all the world’s a stage” line and the seven ages of man, and Fulghum has the three lives we lead: public, private, and secret. In reverse order of his treatment, secret lives are the ones entirely inside our heads. We not only don’t share these lives with others (even spouses and soulmates), to some extent we can’t. Some of this consists of things like that secret bias we have but try to hide (like mine for women drivers…oops, put this to a lie), but some is like the way we respond to certain powerfully emotionally stimulating things—we can’t share it no matter how we try. Private lives are the ones we share only with certain people. We keep some things secret from most, but share with certain friends. Relationship details, personal thoughts on that coworker/classmate we can’t stand, etc., these things are not meant for public consumption.

The last, which Fulghum rightly considered the broadest, is the public life. This is what everyone else sees when they look at you, though some (the friends) have other information as well. This is how we dress, our favorite conversation topics, how we laugh, and other things of the sort. One definition of introvert is that they spend energy in social situations while extroverts gain energy in them, and if so this is the life that introverts find draining.

I often wished that all social interactions could be scripted. That way, being an extrovert or, more likely and less difficult, being an interesting person (okay, perhaps more difficult) wouldn’t be a function of some things that I couldn’t control but instead would be something I could learn and with my talents, learning was great. But social behavior not only doesn’t work that way, it can’t and shouldn’t.

Chesterton wrote of the two great institutions for preparing one for a social life: the family and the neighborhood (or neighborhood pub, in his case). His logic was that in those settings you have to deal with people who don’t necessarily agree with you on everything (unlike, say, the clubs we voluntarily join), and thus we learn how to get along with other people which is the heart of being a social creature. In both settings, you can’t afford to hold a grudge because of how often you must interact with them: all the time.

Recently I started treating social environments in the same way I used to treat acting. Instead of trying to overcome my fears, I started trying to circumvent them by convincing myself that my public life was just another character to perform. And what I found was that Chesterton, Fulghum, and Shakespeare were right (the first two I suppose were to be expected, but I didn’t think that Shakespeare guy was good for anything). Our secret and even private lives define us. Our public lives are just a shell. As I get more practice with this acting job, I grow more comfortable with it. Though not an extrovert quite yet, I find myself getting excited over the prospect of heading out with new groups of people or starting conversations with people I’ve just met. For the first time in my life, I can see why the extroverts are extroverted. Coincidentally, given my belief that on this planet people are the most important thing, I’ve also had a happier default state (i.e. when not with friends, my happiness level) these past few months, though of course it nothing here has been close to the good times I left behind.

We get told all our lives that we shouldn’t care what other people think. Only recently did I combine that with 2 other bits of advice from television shows: one, from Sports Night, that says we shouldn’t try to get people to like us; and the other, from House, that says indiscriminate niceness is overrated. The combination of the three (though all are obviously too general and thus wrong in some respects) is something that I do believe to be true. There will always be people who like the kind of person you are and people who don’t. I can spend my life trying to trick or convince the latter to like me, or I can just accept that they won’t and not worry about them. That freedom has a lot to do with the aforementioned changes. Perhaps this is a sign of maturity; I fear that I am growing up and will get my “Toys’R’Us Kids” membership card revoked.

Busy times

The last two weeks of my life were spent taking midterms. These are definitely things that I will be glad to never have to take again; first, though, I must get through the next year and a half. To make the story even better, for my first midterm my alarm clock (read: cell phone) turned stopped overnight and so the alarm didn’t sound, and yes, I missed the midterm. Fortunately the teacher allowed me to make it up immediately when I got to campus that day, but then my calculator’s batteries died. The other two midterms weren’t so eventful, but I left them feeling about the same.

After that, though, I got to visit Los Angeles (now the furthest west I’ve been) for a conference and got to see my old coworkers while there. I greatly enjoyed the trip and getting to catch up with them. One of the best parts of my old job was the ability of my coworkers (and me with them) to have interesting discussions about topics that could only be called academic by someone who didn’t know what the word meant, and yet discuss these spurious things in the framework of scholars. We were able to have a few of these conversations again—mostly stuff like analyzing people’s behavior patterns and preferences, things that let us talk about what makes other people attractive and why we like different music and movies, etc.—as well as a few more directly relevant to our work.

On Monday I got to sit down with a professor here who is on the top of the game in the areas in which I have interest. We sat for an hour and talked about things I can be doing now (mostly passing classes and prelims), things I can start doing soon (areas for focus, working along with him), and decisions that, given I will stay in this field (as seems likely at the moment), I will have to make (what specific direction to take research). The meeting went very well and I left with a new group to enter, one focusing on my areas of interest.

Yesterday I went into Chicago to listen to the new chancellor of my old college talk. He answered several questions I had and it seems like he has a good vision for the future of the university. While there I got to meet more people with ties to my old college and it seems like I’m finally close to getting that critical mass of friends in the city necessary to have more of a social life (read: a social life).

So today I finally get to rest. No homework is due tomorrow, no events are this evening, no meetings or conferences are scheduled tonight. Who knows, I might even get some sleep tonight.

Thank goodness I have 3 siblings, not 13.

A famous scholar once said, “Never give up; never surrender.” I failed to heed that advice, and now I get to suffer the consequences.

Justice is one of those words that everyone understands and no one can explain. Mixed in with the term are notions of getting what one deserves, of fairness and equality, and of worth and value. More fundamentally, mixed with our understanding of justice is the concept of right and wrong. All of these things, again, are things that everyone understands but no one can explain. We all try, and when we do we say things that seem deep and sound truthful and meaningful and yes, even profound sometimes. But ultimately, after all the words have finished and all the talking is done, we still feel that we haven’t captured everything that these seven letters describe.

No attempt is made here to define justice; I have learned not to wade into some topics. But if I had to define justice, I know who I would ask for an explanation: the older of my two younger sisters. She is almost certainly the only other person on this planet who has a more accurate list of my misdeeds as a child than my parents; I would almost be willing to say that she has a more accurate list than I do. A large part of that is because most of my misbehavior was against some subset of my siblings, so she always got a good view. But more important than that was that I, like many children, was slow to apologize for my actions. She never let me get away with that. Whenever I tried to ignore my actions and move on, she would hold it over my head until I apologized.

To this day I would almost guarantee that on a list of her top ten memories involving me, one of the top three involved my accidentally (or intentionally if you listen to her side of the story) closing a van door on her finger. She shows off the scar every chance she gets. But more important is that she knows the details of that day better than I do, though I must admit she felt the pain, not me. Growing up she was always the most stubborn in her anger with the rest of us siblings and with parents as well. But as I look back with 20/20 vision now, it is quite easy to see that she was the most upset when she felt she was being wronged, being treated unfairly, not getting what she deserved. Though I won’t put them on the spot, I think even my parents would admit that sometimes she was right; in fact, I know they would, as the phrase I will forever remember from my father’s repeated uttering of it was the phrase, “Life’s not fair.” They had their reasons, and she will someday grant that they were good reasons; but justice, justice was what mattered to her.

My sister has faith, has belief, perhaps more strongly than anyone I have ever met. Not just belief in God; many people, the rest of my family and I included, have that. Not in herself, though with the many blessings she has received she could easily fall into that trap (even if she is the fat, ugly, bad-haired sister). She has faith in justice, as I have mentioned. But she also has faith in other people and their senses of justice. All of these things combine to give her, not the total confidence of the morally bankrupt, that confidence arising from a conviction that nothing matters but oneself; but the sublime confidence needed to stand up for one’s beliefs, the sublime confidence of one who knows something that others do not. And for her that extra bit of information is that justice can win, if we will stand up for it. I just wish she did not have to stand up for it against me so often.

On the lists of the great pioneers of justice her name may never appear. On the list I keep it graces the page with all of them. She decided that teaching was for her and is just getting started. Since junior high school she has known this was to be her path, citing her love of kids and school. But I think on a deeper level even that is evidence of this sense of justice, since what better place for a champion of justice than a classroom where not only do you teach children justice for the future but in being a good teacher (and she is and will be a very good teacher) you can close gaps between children at different levels and give everyone the opportunity for a better future. Everyone deserves chances, and she gets to help ensure that her students get them and can make the most of them.

G.K. Chesterton a century ago lamented that humility as one of the seven heavenly virtues had been reversed to the detriment of mankind. He said that humility was supposed to mean that while man was to be sure of his aims he was doubtful of his efforts; instead, he said, it had come to mean that people were quite sure of their actions but never certain of their aims. Humility was to him the spur that drove one to work harder but had become the pebble in the shoe that makes one stop altogether. The charge was true then and is true now; the times in my life where I have found myself lost were the times when I later realized I was most sure of my actions and least sure of my aims. This proper humility is something I lost and fight to recover every day. But every such later while looking back on the times I was lost, I have struggled with that sin so far from humility’s antithesis of pride: jealousy, for a girl so close to me in so many ways but so different in having found this humility in her fervent belief in justice and in mankind’s better angels. This tops the list of the many things that make me proud to have her as a sister. Family members are required to love one another unconditionally; it was just a pleasant surprise to be graced with a sister I could admire as well.

The best we have within us...

Mankind, look upon your creation and weep.

Every so often mankind does something so incredible that the question must be raised: have we achieved all that is possible to achieve? This question has been asked for such great creations as sliced bread, the polio vaccine, and dollar mug night (or insert favorite drink special here). Each time mankind has progressed further, and moved on to the next great invention or discovery. But each time there is a question mark, a pause, a reevaluation where we wonder anew if the limits have been reached. And each time that we stop to ask the question we have gotten that much closer to such a limit, making the question that much more relevant.

Today I have found evidence that we must ask this question again. According to my research, in the 1800s scientists made hoof and mouth disease a thing of the past (editor’s note: “research” was watching Blazing Saddles). The 1960’s saw the creation and popularization of doomsday devices with the power to end all life on the surface of the earth (ed.: Dr. Strangelove). And scientists have returned life to the deceased, giving us reason to believe death no longer must hold sway over man's destiny (ed: Young Frankenstein). Each time a legitimate case could be made that we can go no further, but each time we did and the results have been amazing. Aeroplanes, locomotive trains, and automobiles, to say nothing of this thing I hear of called the “personal computer”; I’m not sold on that last one, but we’ll see how it goes.

But today we sing praises for the pinnacle of human achievement. Today we survey the whole of human history and say to our ancestors "Yes, it was a struggle. Yes, we lost many in the wars we fought for this. Yes, we lost many in the peace still fraught with danger, for this. Yes, we waited generations for this. Yes.

‘But look now on our accomplishment and weep. Weep with joy, for the realization of our dreams. Weep, for your destruction and your salvation. Weep, and be born again into the glory of the future."

Yes, we have done it, satisfied all of mankind’s greatest hopes and dreams.

For today, I finally found it: Vanilla Coke Zero. The rest… is history.

Promise made, promise kept

So a week or so ago my youngest sister (who, having learned my method of avoiding choosing a favorite sibling, referred to herself as “your favorite almost-19-year-old sister”) extracted a promise from me that in exchange for baked goods that were to be shipped to me, I would dedicate a post to her. The moment of weakness seems even more absurd when the promised goods never materialized. I will, however, uphold my end of the deal if for no other reason than to make her feel guilty and possibly forget all those times I didn’t come through for her in the past.

Growing up I was a very solitary person, in the sense that most of my enjoyable activities were one-person things: reading, watching television, video games, drawing, and all of those all over again. That suited an introvert quite well, though, so it was never troublesome for me. As the years went by, though, various people started letting me know in different ways that even if social activities were things I needed to build energy to face, I did need to experience them. Parents trying to get me out with friends, or sometimes just to get me friends; random classmates, likely feeling guilty for usually only talking to me to ask for homework help, periodically asking me to spend time with them and their friends; the obligatory school social events that everyone was expected to attend; all of these started to let me know that maybe I should learn how to get along with people. Yet for all that these people taught me to identify the skills I needed, they didn’t teach me how to obtain them.

The first person to pierce the bubble was my littlest sister. In what has to be the most damning indictment of my childhood, this started with her watching me play my video games. She would come in and sit on the floor or climb on my (usually unmade) bed and we’d prop our feet up on my chair, and we would sit for a few hours as I tried to beat a game and she would basically cheer for me. At first I figured she was bored, that she needed something to do; watching the games had to be somewhat fun for a young child. Maybe at first that was true, but with the added “wisdom” of a decade for hindsight to clarify I can’t help but think that the real fun came from sneaking around the defenses of this confusing creature, the older brother.

The better a person knows and trusts another person, the more relaxed the person is around them. We all have multiple levels around which we construct our public persona, and that public persona may not correspond at all with the inner person. One of the things I envy most in a handful of my extroverted friends is the ability to drop their guard with anyone; I have never had that and am coming to grips with the fact that I never will. And even though as that awkward teenager I already had walls built, I didn’t feel threatened while playing a game in my room, even if this strange person was in there with me. And because of that, though my attention was divided, my sister got a better view of who I am (or at least was at the time, if that has changed) than almost anyone else.

But even having learned how great it can be to get to know someone that well, I got the better end of the deal. The walls were and are still there, but the more you leave them behind the easier it gets, and in spending time with my sister I learned what it was to have a good friend. More importantly, since she was a family member, I learned that friends will fight and be angry with each other, and perhaps feel sad or embarrassed because of each other (I’m guessing I embarrassed her more than the other way), but that need not end a friendship. And I learned (from both her and my other sister) that not even girls can understand other girls, so I should stop trying--useful knowledge.

Though it was initially just the games, eventually she would spend more time around me. We’d swim and play in the pool together. We’d fake wrestle at the top of the stairs (yes, we had to choose the most dangerous place; it was more convenient, being right outside our rooms) and wait for the dogs to run up and jump in the mix before we both devolved in laughter and resigned ourselves to have dogs lick our face for a few minutes. When I could drive, I would take her around town, especially during summer to head out and get snow cones. In time, I would find other friends. I grew into the pretentious teenager phase and started drifting away, then I grew out of that into the pretentious college student phase and the drifting continued, then I grew into the pretentious graduate student phase and I have no idea when that will end. But in spite of that, or perhaps because of that drifting and not getting to see her as much anymore, I still get the ridiculously goofy grin when I first see her, and it grows even bigger when I surprise her and get to see her recognize me and go from usual to excited to see me in about a second flat.

One of the moments in my life of which I am most proud was when, as a junior high school student, my sister had finally started whatever fake version of dating takes place around that age. She was cute and somewhat popular and probably could have had her pick of the school. But she had chosen the kind of goofy smart kid in the class, and she told me he reminded her of me. That didn’t last, and no one would have expected it to have lasted. And maybe one of the reasons it didn’t last was because he wasn’t good enough for her (he wasn’t, though admittedly I am biased against everyone on this matter). But I can’t think for too long about that without thinking of a shy boy about that age who hadn’t deserved his littlest sister’s affection either.

Back to school again

One lecture of each class is enough to assure me that, for two of my professors at least, I can resume my favorite note-taking game: writing down the jokes made in class. Classes are made easier when professors have a sense of humor and a personality that shows when they teach.

In other news, September means that new seasons of television shows are starting. That said, based on my schedule so far, I’ve spent more time watching old episodes of shows than new ones. Some have always been favorites: House, Law and Order, Scrubs, South Park, to lesser extent Futurama; others are new and growing on me, namely NCIS and CSI: NY. Both were given a chance because they feature actors in other good shows or movies: Mark Harmon of NCIS was on a few episodes of the West Wing (and was a great character for the few episodes he was there) and Gary Sinise of CSI:NY was in Apollo 13. Both shows are driven by these two, the leaders of groups in the titular organization.

Side question: why does someone act [i]in[/i] a movie but [i]on[/i] a television show?

So far I have refrained from making a judgment on the current credit and banking situation, in terms of what are the causes and the solution. Suggestions have ranged all over the map, from needing more regulation to needing less or no regulation; from a government intervention such as the $700B deal to letting the market correct itself; and even a suggestion that we punish those thieving executives by putting CEOs of companies accepting bailout money on a federal salary schedule to keep them from raking in money in the deal. I have refrained because I don’t want to preach the free market gospel too much [though it ranks in the top 5 of importance when it comes to gospels I have read (number 5, to be exact)]. I know my basic position but won’t post it for now. I’m trying to come up with a coherent way to describe my thoughts on some of these things, and when I have come up with one (not typing this while watching The Colbert Report might help) I will post it. As a preview: bailout bad, less regulation good (especially less forced sub-prime mortgages), and despising wealthy CEOs bad as well.

Getting settled

Friday saw the math “boot camp” come to a close with a two-hour exam, and since I’ve been out of the student life for a little while now I took it, though optional. That brought my preseason to a close, with the regular season starting on Tuesday. In celebration of this, as well as mourning for the last free days we’d have for months, a group of about 10 of us went into Chicago Friday evening. The trip was nice, and gave most of us a chance to try out our free passes to Chicago’s “subway” (it’s in the open air, so should it be “superway”? I don’t know.).

Other than that there has just been more settling in to the new place and new town. Evanston has been good so far, and Chicago seems fun as well. The whole moving process has gotten me noticing the small differences between places I’ve stayed. Wal-Marts not being palaces is one of those differences, an easily noticeable one for an Arkansas native. But much more fun, and one I couldn’t track in Cambridge due to my lack of a television, is noticing the local business commercials. A great friend of mine used to drive his girlfriend crazy (and amused the rest of us) by reciting part of a furniture commercial. Then there are the fun jingles that some local marketing expert writes and that no person with any self-respect would sing seriously (which is why they find those great out-of-work acting talents, who have none). Two local commercials have a tie over the best jingle here: a store called Menards, with a jingle that has much better staying power in the mind because there is only one line of words in the jingle, “Save big money at Menards”; and a flooring store called, I believe, Luma, where a young married woman plays a guitar while sitting on the steps and singing to her floors (much to the amusement of her husband, who is watching a television show that I’m sure she didn’t find entertaining).

That’s all that I have for this week; maybe next week I’ll take some pictures of campus to post.

Random thoughts

In lieu of posting something meaningful and worthwhile, here are random thoughts that have been bouncing around my head lately.

-- I’d rather not venture into politics, but I keep hearing about how great a speaker Barack Obama is and I just don’t see it. I didn’t think Bill Clinton was a good speaker either, though everyone said he was, but I think he (during his presidency and shortly thereafter) was better than Obama is. We know McCain isn’t a good speaker, and we know Biden rambles, so the only one who might be a good one is Palin (haven’t heard her speak yet) and I don’t have much hope of that being true.

When I say they aren’t good, I suppose I should clarify. McCain is terrible. He only sometimes gets a point across, and does it without meter, without passion. Obama and Clinton at least get across the point and sometimes hit a great line or speech. But neither is a Churchill, a Reagan, a JFK, or even an FDR. And yet, based on what people keep saying, he’s better than all of them.

-- Something feels wrong about having to wear pants and a jacket during the first few weeks of September. Winter gets fairly cold back home, but fall won’t start until at least midway through October. I guess this is a good fact to keep in mind for the upcoming years.

-- Why couldn’t Tampa beat the Saints? Seriously, guys.

-- A few classmates and I were talking today about why economics graduate programs (and others who force students into economics graduate classes) are the only ones who have a “boot camp” before the program starts. The only thing we can think is that economics is one of the few disciplines where undergraduate and graduate level work have such a large disconnect between the expectations for student knowledge in a related field (mathematics, for us). Can anyone think of others?

-- I've encountered adjustable chairs that always fall to the lowest height before, and that made me assume failing to overcome gravity was the default flaw in these chairs. The one I have now does the opposite--if left alone, it always returns to the highest setting. Every time I sit in it, I get confused because of my expectations.

-- Am I the only one who loves watching Peyton Manning commercials? My new favorite is of course the Oreo "Double Stuff Racing League" commercial that also includes the Williams sisters of tennis, specifically the part where Peyton announces that for himself and Eli, "it's on like Donkey Kong." He seems to have a great sense of humor (judging by his other commercials), and I can't wait to see him on TV when he retires from the NFL.

Back to school

I got moved in to my place in Evanston today. Although it wasn’t quite what I was expecting, after my parents helped clean and organize everything (which will last maybe a week) it feels like home. I think it’ll work out. The bad news is there’s no living room area, so if someone wants to visit me and stay here, the floor is all that I have to offer.

After spending a year out of school working for a living, I am trying to ease my way back into this school thing. The good news is that, by getting used to putting in an 8-5 or 9-5 (depending on the day, the location, my lunch plans, etc.), I have gotten used to being doing things all day long. This means that during the breaks we’ve had so far I’ve gone to the next room and started working on the problem sets, and that aside from the fact that the teacher of the last class is, well, not a great lecturer we’ll say, I haven’t been so tired of thought that I’ve stopped paying attention. This bodes well for the rest of the program.

On top of these things, I’m trying to finish a few extracurricular projects. I enjoyed listening to one of the instructors talk about how most papers written these days are coauthored papers, and how when we start writing papers in the third year we’ll probably write with coauthors. I was amused because I’m already working on 2 papers (and finished my part of a third and am starting a fourth analysis that could become a paper) with coauthors. One of them won’t get published in a great journal, but it will get published somewhere and that’s what matters. The second, I’m not sure. We’re definitely contributing to the body of research, but it depends on how well we can do the analysis. I don’t have all the data yet, so I don’t know. The third, depending on how we can solve a few issues, could go to a really good journal, and that’s the one I’m working on the most right now. So needless to say, I know what he’s saying.

I imagine that I’ll try to get out and into the city some this weekend, but that will depend on my ability to connect a laptop to my TV and watch a certain football game. If I can, I will definitely be watching that. Sunday, of course, is for church and football, most likely at Buffalo Wild Wings.

Well, that’s all for me right now. Here are some pictures of my setup. Other than the dresser, bed frame/box spring, and desk, which were provided, if it looks nice or clean, my mom did it, and if it looks functional, my dad did it. If it looks like a TV, computer, or video game, though, that was all me.

That’s not a good thing to claim? Oh well. Enjoy!

And then there was one.

Week, that is. As in, there is one week left before I leave Boston and head to Chicago.

I missed posting this past week, mostly because I spent my spare time working on some projects when I might otherwise have been typing posts. I say this not as an excuse but as an explanation, the difference being excuses are meant to absolve guilt with the implication that the guilty party regrets their actions, whereas I’d probably do the same thing again and again if in the same situation.

That said, what have I learned and experienced lately?

--Until last week I had never seen a college student dressed as Abraham Lincoln (complete with suit, top hat, and beard) ride a Segway across a bridge. Now, I suppose I can only say that I’ve never seen it with a boat underneath a train underneath said lookalike underneath a plane, but that’s only because he was one bridge over from the only place in the USA where that actually could occur.

--Not having much social activities has let me get out jogging again, and I’ve gotten my standard trek down to about one hour to run 5 miles. I’m fairly pleased with that.

--I wandered out around the city this weekend and rode to the top of the Prudential tower. Though the restaurant my family went to in Vegas was higher, at 107 stories, the restaurant and bar on the 52nd floor here did still offer some nice views of the city; I attached some of them at the end of the post.

--The animated Clone Wars movie was terrible. As an irredeemable Star Wars fan my hands were tied, so last Saturday I walked into town and watched it. The basic concept was alright, but like every movie kinda meant for kids, there is at least one character (in this movie only one, but that was one too many) that is completely unrealistic insofar as behaving like someone their age should. In this movie, the child lead is intended to illustrate that kids can do the same things as adults. Not to sound too much like Maddox, but no, they can’t. Kids aren’t adults. That’s why we have those words for them, indicating they are different from that other group. Hollywood, stop thinking that to make a movie a winner with kids, you have to make the kid role in a movie completely unrealistic. Instead of making them wittier and smarter than the adults, make the boys love sports and the girls dolls or something (that’s not PC but oh well). Kids might believe and understand those characters. Adults might, too.

That’s all I really have for now. My plan will be to not consistently make people wait a whole week or more for posts, but who can say, right? I’ll post again soon, I hope.

Another Day, Another Journey

This past Saturday I resumed my meandering ways and got out into the city to visit some places I had marked on my to-do list; in other words, I visited the Sam Adams brewery. I did other things as well, but let’s start here, where in fact I started.

The brewery is located southwest of downtown Boston (in Jamaica Plains if any of you know the city). I rode the T (from MBTA, Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority; it’s what everyone calls the subway) down to the nearest stop and wandered the streets until I found it. After waiting for an hour and a half because the tours are quite popular, I got to wander through the brewery. The Boston site is actually the smallest brewery they own, with larger ones in Cincinnati, somewhere in New York, I think, and a new one somewhere else (maybe North Carolina?). They may have more also, I can’t recall. The others are used to produce their products for mass consumption, while the Boston site is for R&D. The guide we had basically said that this meant they use it to refine and sample new formula ideas, to brew competition beers, and when the tanks are empty the employees can sometimes just come up with their own ideas and give them a try, presumably with the understanding that anything great will be the property of Sam Adams.

We got to taste the barley and smell the hops they use for some of their brews, and then a complimentary glass and two free tastes of their products. We got the Boston Lager, their main brand, and the Summer Ale, their current seasonal. While getting to drink samples of these, we got told some of what the employees of the brewery do in the course of their jobs. I just don’t know if I could show up to a brewery and start tasting beer at 10:30am every day to make sure the product on the market is up to specs.

Wait, did I just type that?

I also got to try 2 concepts for a new product that they have. One was a coffee flavored stout (dark beer) that I believe was appropriately titled Coffee Stout, and the other had a hint of blackberries and was, also appropriately, called Blackberry Ale. How do you think they came up with the names? The tastes were set up so the tasters could vote for the one they liked better, so I voted (secret ballot, thank you very much; I voted for the Coffee Stout, though).

After that I went to the Museum of Science (it might have a real name but I don’t know it) where there was an exhibit on baseball. I was like a moth to a flame; once I saw the ad for it a few weeks ago a visit was inevitable. The exhibit (and the whole museum) was alright, mostly set up for younger people to try and get kids interested in baseball (and science, respectively). The one nice thing they had was a 60’6” cage with a padded wall painted with the plate half of the battery on one side and a radar gun. So I threw. Caveats:

1) I didn’t get to warm up.
2) I wore flip flops, so I wound up throwing barefoot.
3) I was wearing khaki shorts and a button up shirt, so I had a suboptimal range of motion.
4) I am a wimp.
5) I didn’t get to warm up (maybe if I repeat it you’ll forget #4).

Anyway, everyone gets three throws, and with a wide variety of ages, from kids barely into live pitching (who got to throw from closer) to people who were actually adults (I don’t count me as being an adult yet), most of the people were bouncing one of the floor, one off the ceiling, and the other would hit either the radar gun which was off to the side or the back wall about where the batter’s head was painted. Regardless of speed, they weren’t going to get anyone out. As it turns out I wouldn’t have gotten anyone out either, but that was due to the speed component of velocity and not the direction component; all three of my throws hit the painted catcher’s mitt. The highest velocities I saw there were two teenagers who bounced every throw; one hit 62 for his best, the other reached 59. I was third for the time I was there, hitting 49, 50, and 51 for my three throws. If I had been warmed… I’m just saying.

After that, I went to a location recommended by the Florida folk: the Bull & Finch Pub. This is the pub used as the inspiration for Cheers. I had a few beers and ate dinner there, and it was decent and reasonably priced. I didn’t get any Cheers gear, but that’s only because I don’t know the show that well and I’m not really that kind of souvenir person.

So that was the weekend. The head of the program employing me is finally in Cambridge from his summer visit to the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, so I’ll be getting busier in the upcoming weeks (note: I am considering that a good thing). He has mentioned the possibility of continuing some of my current responsibilities even after I leave Cambridge, so I may have an easier time than I thought keeping in this circle.

That’s all I have for you today. What’s new with everyone out there?

Oh, here are a few pictures for everyone.

This one was for my brother, who should be amused. If not, he’s wrong.

This is the Museum of Science (it stretches across the river) as seen from the Longfellow Bridge to its south. Yes, that is a baseball design to symbolize the exhibit. Yes it’s awesome.

This is the exterior of the Bull and Finch Pub (Cheers).

This is the yellow flag that flies outside the Bull and Finch Pub to ensure everyone knows that they should enter.

It’s been a while.

I promised to myself that I would update this once a week or so, and the way that I would make sure to do that was to make sure to post on whatever fun activity the weekend held for me. Since the weekend is my chance to get out and explore, my weekends should be fairly busy and thus post topics would abound.

This plan fell through this past weekend, though, as halfway through my wanders around Boston rain seemed imminent. I started walking back home to try and escape the rain, but alas it was not to be and my journey ended completely soaked.

So nothing really interesting to report from MA this week, unless people are just dying for my reviews of some of the local restaurants or interested to know about the route I’ve been jogging lately. No offense, but I wouldn’t want to learn about those things from my friends so I won’t force those on unwilling readers.

So there it is. Not all of these can be masterpieces (or, for the more critical reader, not any can).

Art, for art's sake!

Nice to see my brother’s unorthodox pragmatism at work. (See here for details.)

I followed another suggestion by a former Massachusetts resident and went to the Museum of Fine Arts on Saturday. Owing much to quiz bowl I’m sure, I have always loved art museums (so long as it isn’t modern art; ugh) and so it didn’t take much prodding for me to want to go to this one.

I managed to get there the second-to-last day they had a visiting exhibit detailing Spanish art during the reign of Philip IV (or was it III? I don’t remember, but I think it was IV; this is why I wasn’t the art person on the QB team). Basically, this was from El Greco to Velasquez. There were a lot of great pictures by them and other artists that I had never seen, but I didn’t need quite so many side-commetaries on the audio guide that discussed Catholicism (the Inquisition, Counter-Reformation, and sometimes even the impact these things had on art commission!). Then again maybe not everyone knows enough about my faith, so who am I to complain?

In all the other sections visitors are allowed to take personal photographs so long as the flash is disabled. So I did. Some highlights are below. The best piece permanently in the collection, though, was a John Singer Sargent piece called The Daughters of Edward D. Boit. An online image of it can be found here.
(By the way, if you like art and have never spent even one whole evening searching through Mark Harden’s Artchive , then you are lying about liking art. If you can’t waste an evening looking through there, no one can help you appreciate art.) Imagine this painting about 6 feet on a side and you’ll understand what it was like to see it in person. The audio commentary on it was pretty good, but rather than ruin the MFA’s racket I’ll just say one of the commenters said it was among the 6 most emotionally complex paintings in American art history in his opinion. I have to agree.

After the museum I went to a restaurant, the Barking Crab, that had been recommended to me by my friend Laura. I sat at the bar next to a group of five that just ordered tons of food and a few of them were willing to chat with me about the city, giving me advice on things to do (namely, places to take a girl to impress her. That’s valuable coin for a 24 year old.). They also shared a crab leg with me, giving me my first real taste of crab meat. Had they done this before I ordered my chicken sandwich, I might have gotten the crab bucket instead. Then again at $30+ for 5 legs, I might not have gotten it. My sandwich was really good too, though, so a big plus to Laura for the suggestion.

That’s mostly it for me. Other than Saturday, the only sunny days in the past week and a half were Friday and today, so of course after work I went jogging to enjoy the weather. I don’t know why I feel the need to jog, seeing as (for example) I walked a total of somewhere between 11 and 13 miles on Saturday while visiting these places (cheaper than the subway and good exercise, though the subway is a great deal here).

Everyone please keep my friends Blake and Travis in their thoughts/prayers this week. They both just finished law school at the UofA and are taking the Arkansas Bar exam tomorrow through I think Thursday or Friday. Man, am I glad I don’t have a professional exam after I’m done with grad school. Other than that whole dissertation thing, I suppose. And comps. Damn, maybe I’m not getting off so easily.


Without further ado, the images and my thoughts. I put the famous artists (or at least the ones I remember from quiz bowl; isn't that enough?) on this post, plus one sculpture I liked.



Claude Monet, La Japonaise. The plaque said he was making fun of a contemporary French fetish for Japanese things. Having friends who have something similar, I couldn't help but love this picture.



Preston Singletary, Raven Steals the Moon. I don't usually like anything made after maybe 1940, but this is from 1963 so go figure. I just love the smooth, finished look; the detail on the moon portion; and the contrast between the heavy, dark presence (via the red and black) of the raven, and the ephemeral, light presence of the moon. The long, sleek raven's head gives a sense of motion, much like Constantin Brancusi's Bird in Space, but I dislike Brancusi's work because it only tries to suggest motion. Brancusi's work lacks the form of a bird, whereas Singletary suggests motion without sacrificing form. Form is a very important part of art.



Jean-Antoine Watteau, La Perspective. I always remember not remembering Watteau in quiz bowl, and true to form I couldn't remember what I couldn't remember him for having done (in the words of Sports Night, that was a truly spectacular sentence). True to form, I had to look up that he was a (French) Rococo artist. This isn't one of his most famous works, but I saw the name, remembered the past, and took the shot.



Rembrandt van Rijn, Reverend Johannes Elison. Rembrandt painted this. There's your exposition.



Gilbert Stuart, John Adams. Stuart is considered one of the foremost portrait artists in American history, and he can be considered without American peer in the Revolutionary War era. Given that this is Boston, the Adams family should be expected to be found here, and so it is. A former president and founding father painted by one of the best American portrait painters? Yeah, I needed a copy.

Odds and Ends

Unfortunately for my desire to get out and into Boston more, rain has persisted the past few days. In fact today was the first sunny day all week, so of course I spent it in an office and then going jogging instead of getting out and really enjoying it. Alas and alack.

So that said, I haven’t got much to post. I moved into the studio I’ll be using for the last 2/3 of my stay in Cambridge, and I’ve got some pictures of it. The room is fairly large and the futon is fairly comfortable, making my only complaint the lack of an air conditioner.






As for work, I’m finally spending most of my time doing things other than data collection; I’m getting to do actual statistics (read: economics, as that’s what it’s turning into). That makes me feel both better for my employers for getting value for what they’ve employed and better for myself as it makes it more likely something worthwhile will come out of my stay (such as perhaps another paper on which to put my name? We’ll see…).

So with nothing much to say I decided to post something I wrote 2 years ago and just found again. I heard again a song from a few years ago about putting yourself in another person’s shoes and decided I had just heard that phrase once too often. My personal diatribe against is as follows.

One of the great equalizers in moral arguments is that it is impossible to understand another's decisions unless we walk a mile in their shoes. As generally seems to be the case in such arguments, this platitude is used especially to excuse the morally questionable decisions that another person makes. The reasoning behind this platitude is that if we found ourselves in the same situation as the person in question, then we would have at least considered as a possible course of action the very thing we are decrying as immoral.

The problem with this argument is that we are always asked to walk the mile that has them in this trouble, in the precarious position; more often than not, could we choose a mile to walk in the person's life, we would choose to start before they got themselves into the trouble most likely by another action we question. And this is the argument's flaw—it asks us to grant as a hypothetical premise that we failed to follow our code of morality, and then asks us whether we could deny that breaking our code of morality is a reasonable option.

The argument is supposed to show that morality is non-absolute, that in certain circumstances even the strongest adherent to a moral code can admit it (unfairly, to the arguer's eye) restricts our choices. What it actually shows is that we will be much less limited in the future if we only bind ourselves now to our moral code. Asking, for instance, if a girl should be allowed an abortion because she got herself pregnant and having the baby would ruin her life can be circumvented entirely if we teach her to follow a morality in which sex comes after she is in a position to care for the potential child. Asking if I should harm someone to help me escape after I rob a store can be circumvented entirely if I am taught to follow a morality in which I do not rob stores.

Chesterton spoke of moral codes as a set of walls, as did many of his contemporaries. But where they referred to the confining walls of a suffocating moral code, he recognized them as the invigorating walls of a liberating moral code. We are children playing on a cliff-top, he said, and we build walls that we may relieve our fear of falling. Liberate us from these walls, then, and you risk liberating us from our freedom. For the walls shelter and protect us, defining a place where we might with furious passion live our lives to the fullest. But if the walls are removed, so too is the furious passion. We become, instead of children playing lightheartedly in our place of safety, a huddled mass edging back from the cliffs afraid that we might fall.

In this modern time we hear grand and glorious, perhaps vainglorious, exaltations of liberty and freedom, and the speakers of these statements entreat us to move to unbridled liberty, the cure-all, the elixir of life, the silver bullet of their philosophy. But this freedom of action is bound by the necessity of feeling the consequences of these actions. These consequences can be avoided very simply by avoiding the actions that cause them. The morality decried as restrictive and primitive by these champions of liberty does indeed limit what we may do; but by limiting what I may do I free myself of what I must feel.

Freedom costs a buck oh five (or $15 for audio)

On Saturday this past weekend I took the advice given by both some family friends and my old department head and I went on the Freedom Trail. The trail is a walking path throughout the city of Boston that carries one to various sites related to the Revolutionary War (RW), hence the name Freedom Trail.

There are two options: guided tours, led by a person dressed in RW-era clothing; and an audio tour that can be rented and enjoyed at a personal pace. Always feeling embarrassed for people dressed as though they lived 200 years ago, especially if they try to impersonate someone who did (look, Mr. Ben Franklin/George Washington/Samuel Adams impersonator, it’s never funny to ask what this newfangled “electricity” or “telephone” is; it’s just sad and embarrassing), I went with the audio tour for an extra $3. I could have it out for up to 8 hours so long as I dropped it off at the last location (apparently some people give up halfway through; losers), but I walk a little quickly and didn’t feel like wasting an extra $30 for a rushed tour of some of the buildings. My only complaints were 1) I should have brought a water bottle; 2) I shouldn’t have worn flip-flops to walk the 2.5 mile journey (notice a pattern?), and 3) the audio guide had way too much Edward Kennedy, in terms of his talking on the guide or his being talked about on the guide.

To ensure that you can find your way even with the tour, the city has created a path through the sidewalks, a red-line on the sidewalk that leads you along the way. This, in conjunction with a map, keeps one on the path and points out the next audio item. At one point the path goes over a bridge, so I had to take photos of the bridge it went over to show my sister, who has had to drive over one like this. The experience is a little scarier when you are on foot and can feel the grate shaking as cars, trucks, and busses speed by on the “road” portion of the bridge.



I don’t want to go into details too much, because I hope everyone who visits will go on it and enjoy it themselves. I’ll show a few pictures of the sights at the end of the post. Afterwards, I walked most of the way back to the start because (I’m an idiot? Come on, I know you thought it; so did I) I didn’t know where any subway stops were and I wanted to try some suggested food. Accordingly, I went to an area in the harbor where 2 suggestions had been made, the Daily Catch (by my old boss) and the Barking Crab (by my old office-mate, Laura). After flipping a coin, I went to the Daily Catch (sorry, Laura; your places are on for these next few weeks, though). I got to try grilled swordfish for only the second time in my life, and it was even better than I remembered.

So that was Saturday. Sunday I went to church, watched The Dark Knight, and then did some weekend work to make up for a foolish mistake I had made during the week. And that was my weekend.

I can make it anywhere...

If we define "making it" as surviving my visit and having enjoyed myself, then yes, Mr. Sinatra, I can make it anywhere. This past weekend I bussed down to New York City to hang out with a friend and had a great time.
My personal thoughts on city life can generally be summed up with "it's not for me." I've always felt that the city adds complications to life that are best avoided in suburbia, where I've basically always lived. Having spent a few days in that city and adding it to my time in London, though, I'm starting to reevaluate that. I still prefer the freedom that comes with living in suburbia, and I somewhat paradoxically think everyone should live like that, but I can see why people enjoy the city and desire to live there.
Describing what all we did would take more time than I feel like. We hit sights and ate good food and generally enjoyed ourselves. But more than just the things we saw (and yes, photographed), the really fun parts of the trip were hanging out with my friend and some of his. I've long thought people and their interactions with one another are the most important worldly thing, and so meeting new people and getting to know them is always a pleasure (an unexpected sentiment from an introvert, but there it is). Especially nice was getting to meet someone else who will be at NU next year; now I know in advance someone with whom to just relax and have a good time.

Fenway Park

I finally got out to a ballgame at Fenway earlier this week. On Tuesday I watched a great game, Red Sox against the Twins. I say a great game; it was really very boring until the 8th, when the Red Sox got a few men on base, punched in a run, and then Manny Ramirez came to the plate and deposited the baseball into an account over the center field wall to tie the game.

The park was obviously "historic" (i.e. old), but in spite of it is still a great park. I sat beyond the right field wall in what I was told were the worst seats in the ballpark, but aside from a girder that blocked a tiny portion of the view and none of the action I thought the seats were quite nice. I've included some pictures on here of the view I had.

The other thing worth noting is the crowd. Having been a college fan the past few years, I've grown accustomed to being involved in the game (and given my friends, I really mean "involved"). Most pro parks I've visited are generally kind of quiet for most of the game, and there were stretches like that on Tuesday. But overall I was quite impressed at how much the fans were involved. I've been told that it's been called a playoff atmosphere during every game, and I can really see it.

I have another month and a half, and if I get a chance to head out over a weekend I plan on getting a wider variety of shots (and more importantly, watch more baseball). Perhaps you will see some more of them. That said, I need to get going to catch a bus to NYC and visit a friend. I'm sure I'll have some photos and comments after the weekend.

Fenway Photos:

One Week Review

Though I hesitate to say that I am wiser, more knowledgeable, after only a week, I’m still going to make you people listen as though this is a milestone. And maybe it is.

So, without further adieu, things I’ve learned in the past week:

1) My family is crazy.

Just read the comments sections to understand this one.

2) Big cities like explosives.

The fireworks display put on by the city of Boston was phenomenal, more fireworks than any other single celebration I’ve ever seen (though Epcot for a celebration at midnight on Dec. 31 was close). There wasn’t much wind, though, so about half of the show was viewed like cloud-to-cloud lightning (there you go, Pat): parts of a cloud sometimes got brighter than the rest (and some of those flashes were colored). It was interesting, though I suppose I would have preferred to see those parts of the show.

3) Variety is the spice of life…

But sometimes you want something you’ve always had. There are restaurants from many different cultures here, and I’ve enjoyed getting to have Indian food again, some good Thai food, Mexican (though they didn’t have salsa, stupid salmonella), and fish and chips which I suppose is technically British. All that said, the best two meals I’ve had since getting here were Thai food (with sweet chili sauce; ooh that stuff is good) and a cheeseburger at a corner pub just half a block away from where I’m staying. What were two of my favorite restaurants in AR: a hamburger joint in Fort Smith and a Thai place in Fayetteville. Sometimes, all you want is what you’re used to.

4) Practice is useful.

In this case, practice means living away from friends and family, from my comfort zone. I’m starting to get used to this, which makes grad school look a little more manageable. That being said, I’m sure the solo life up there will be different than the one down here, so maybe this isn’t much practice after all.

That’s it for musings after week 1. I did, by the way, come up with another thing to do while I’m here—visit the Sam Adams brewery. We’ll see what else there is.

Greetings from Cambridge!

I have arrived (safely, for all of you who told me to have a safe trip, as though there’s any way I can ensure the pilots who fly planes I ride will fly safely) in Cambridge, MA, to begin a 2 month stint as a research assistant for a Harvard professor. Two days in I have begun to get a feel for the city and am nearing the point when (at least around this campus) I no longer need to carry a map.

My room for the first half of the stay is nice, a room in the landlady’s house that she rents to boarders. Nothing large, though larger than my last room, but it suits me well.

My office is also nice though small, and is located in the Taubman building of the Kennedy School of Government. I’m not quite used to this whole “one monitor” thing they have going on—do people still do that?—but the co-workers are friendly, the area (at least for summer) is quiet, and the work is interesting if slow-moving.

Apparently my first cousin once removed (according to an unimpeachable source on family relations—my mom) lives in Cambridge. I say apparently because I don’t know what it takes to be a first cousin once removed. We’re going to meet for the 4^th of July and take in a fireworks display.

At some point I need to figure out all of the things I want to do while I am here, and the sooner the better so that I can begin to research how to do them. Among the highlights:

1) Fenway Park (shocking, I know).

2) If possible, Cape Cod league baseball (see a pattern?)

3) Boston Tea Party ship

4) Old North Church

5) Fenway Park (I couldn’t help it).

If anyone has ideas, let me know.