"The nature of light is a subject of no material importance to the concerns of life or to the practice of the arts, but it is in many other respects extremely interesting." — Thomas Young (discoverer of the wave nature of light)
As I get older, it feels increasingly weird to be counting down to things. I mean, before you know it, it's here. And then you look back on the counting-down period, as part of a frozen, static past, and you think "get over it already... it's here and now and lots more besides!" I've always been pretty future-oriented, and that puts me in a funny position vis-à-vis the present. And, by the same token, a somewhat discomfiting one vis-à-vis the past; yet softened by certain pockets of nostalgia.
Since I got on Facebook a few weeks ago, I feel like the internet manifestation of my person has gone over to roost there rather than in and around this blog. For example, the story right now is put in summary fashion by my current Facebook "status": "[my] life is flashing before [my] eyes because [I'm] (a) finding tons of peeps on FB [I] ha[ven]'t seen in over a decade, and (b) about to launch 'My Career: Plan D.'" Yes, Plan D already. Also under the title "Project: Philosophy at Connecticut, or, For Reals This Time."
To sum up, the story so far:
Plan A: Doctor. Never got off the ground, as I could not get into medical school. 42 applications over a two-year period, and not even any interviews. Clearly not meant to be.
Plan B: Chemist. Abortive, as I realized immediately upon starting a PhD program in chemistry that that was not what I wanted to give my professional life to.
Plan C: Science textbook editor. Lasted seven and half years, far longer than anything previously had. But career stalled, and meanwhile I had discovered something I was interested in, and motivated by, enough to get a PhD in.
Plan D: Professional academic philosopher. Intellectual challenges, personal challenges, endlessly fascinating subject matter. Let's get it on.
We're saying our goodbyes to various people now; for example, D met up with some Norwalk Furniture (where she worked years ago) friends last night, we're having dinner with some Austin relatives tonight (which Deidra's parents are driving down from Stephenville for too), and we're having brunch at the Geigers'. We're also saying goodbye to some favorite locales: over the next 9 days we want to get in dinners at Phil's Ice House/Amy's Ice Cream, Matt's El Rancho, and Central Market. (Nice to have an excuse to eat out a lot!) There's a Chuy's up in Round Rock, where the hotel is that we'll be staying the night we move out of our apartment, and I just found out it's actually right next door to our hotel! So that works out nicely.
I took John this last weekend to get his first haircut. He didn't enjoy it much, but it did get cut, and that pretty short too. He looks so "boy"-ish now! He's getting big, too, and tall. Lately he's been bothered by a bout of teething pains, poor guy. But it'll be worth it, as I keep telling him, 'cause of all the things he'll be able to eat with a full set of teeth. :-)
Laurel has long been very particular about things like the visual arrangements of objects in her environment, and more recently she's been getting downright anal. Which is kind of funny in someone of her tender age, but also sometimes kind of exasperating. Like when I'm trying to put her to bed, she has to pull off all her sheets and covers and realign them all just so (and so that the sheets are "smoove," which is also how she likes her socks to be put on—pulled tight so that there are no wrinkles), and then rearrange her animals. And do a number of other bedroom rearrangements, while all the while I'm saying, "Laurel, lay down in bed now, please." Part of this means that she actually feels the need to clean up her room before bedtime, and so I guess it's nice that that comes from within rather than our having to impel her to do so (which is often frustrating, not so much because she's actively disobedient, as she's kind of space-cadety and it's hard to redirect her attention for long). But if she weren't so particular about such a great number of things, that would be easier, too.
I feel like I do complain about her a lot. And we struggle with her hyperactivity and also anger (lately, back-talking is a huge issue). But at other times, she really is extremely sweet, and quite delightful.
My last day of work is 12 days from now. We pack up our stuff 16 days from today. Deidra is starting to "wig out," as she puts it. Hard to believe the big day is so soon approaching. I almost feel as if we're on our way already. The fact that the pictures and curtains in our apartment are taken down and packed kind of helps make that the case.
A good time was had by all in Dallas, as usual, last weekend. On our way back home, Laurel said "I want to go back to Dallas," which she has said at least once before as we were going home from a Dallas visit. She'll be growing up thinking of Dallas as big fun times all around, just like I did! Everything's so much more fun when you're young and unburdened with responsibility. We met up with my uncle Larry, and cousin Courtney and her family, for a parade on the morning of the 4th. Laurel got some pool time in later that day, and that night we went to Northwood country club for a good all-American dinner, and fireworks. It was the first time Laurel had seen them close up, and she was impressed. John clung to Deidra as he watched, wowed. Big day for the kids, and you'll see the result in one of the new pictures I've uploaded.
Yesterday, we celebrated Laurel's fourth birthday! Since the house is already crammed with boxes, and we're getting ready to go out of town for the weekend, D made the wise choice of just meeting up with some friends at the park and having cupcakes instead of a bona fide "party" at our place. And Laurel got some presents yesterday too. :-)
At four years old, Laurel still, frustratingly, wets her pants most times she has to go. As she's been doing all along, she basically treats everything as a diaper, and only says "I have to go potty" after she feels wet, whatever the threshhold of wetness is for what she's wearing—diaper, pull-up, or panties. I've tried explaining to her till I'm blue in the mouth that the purpose of going potty is to keep her pants dry, before she gets them wet, but the notion just doesn't seem to take hold. It's mainly around the house that she does that, so maybe when she starts spending time at Pre-Kindergarten three days a week this Fall, she'll get more practice acting like the "big girl" she is.
We're off to Dallas for the weekend for the 4th weekend, for a last visit with my relatives there (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) before we move out of Texas (in just a few weeks now!!). We'll go to a neighborhood parade tomorrow morning, and see fireworks at the country club tomorrow night, along with whatever else is going on that weekend. For the 4th in Austin, there's no good place to watch fireworks except at the ridiculously mobbed Zilker Park, so it'll be nice for a change in that.
...from yesterday, we will be on the road to Connecticut! Deidra's packing is coming along pretty well. I've said it before, and I'll say it again—I am very much looking forward to moving to cooler climes. And real seasons, colorful autumns, and snowy winters. It will be a great experience for both Deidra and I to live on the east coast where we've never lived before, too.
And for some reason I haven't been emphasizing the whole reason for our moving, perhaps because it's somewhat obvious, but I suppose I should expand on it. Because most of all, I am very much looking forward to going into philosophy academically. I'll be constantly around similar geekily-inclined people with whom I can have all manner of philosophical discussions (which I almost never get to do now), learning directly from real live philosophy professors in person, learning how to teach the subject I love and impart the thrill of discovering new insights... I'm going to be like a kid in a candy store.
We didn't find a place right in close to Storrs where the UConn campus is, but it's still close enough to bike: 14 miles from home to campus. So I'm looking forward to getting a bicycle after we move, and commuting regularly with it, on days when the weather isn't horrible. It's a pretty good ride of probably at least 45 minutes, so it'll provide me with some much-needed exercise, as well as save on gas. It'll be lovely countryside to bike through, for any reason, too. I'm looking forward to that—I haven't been on a bike since my brief stint in the chemistry doctoral program at UT, 8 years ago, and have missed it. I'll have to work up to it, though. D might get a bike too, and we can all ride around together! Those infant bike trailer things they have now make me nervous, though...
A friend, with our upcoming big move in mind, recently sent me a link to this interesting article about the effect of 'place,' and about what various cities seem to 'say' to one. Austin's not mentioned, but I think what Austin 'says' to one is "you need to be more hiply offbeat, and self-consciously proud of it too." (Gets old after a while, really.) Either that, or "why aren't you a yuppie single with disposable income with which to party it up? Everyone else is..."
John can now stand and walk several steps if we hold onto his hands. He chuckles as if to say, "Hey, look what I'm doing... this is different." Some practice with that every day, and he'll be toddling!
Oh, by the way, both Deidra and I have gotten on Facebook in the past week. It's pretty addictive adding all those little widgets to your page; and so much nicer than MySpace, which I friggin' hate. It's also a really neat way to hook up with people you may not have seen for a while. I found, and "friended," several people I haven't seen since high school! I think to our culture, with our lifestyles, something like Facebook is really quite a boon. Sure, it's just cyberspace (gosh, that term sounds so nineties!), and therefore "virtual"—but not thereby "fake". It really is better than nothing, since we're just not going to see all the people we want to keep in touch every day, or even every year.
John can now pull up to a standing position quite routinely, as pictured here, which we're impressed by. He does it a lot in his crib. Cruising, and then walking, will be right around the corner!
When he crawls, he often likes to get an object in one hand and slide it around while crawling. I guess it makes crawling a little more efficient, to turn one hand into a skate!
John's hair is getting pretty long, down around his ears and the back of his neck. Deidra was talking about cutting it, but I think it looks so cute! When we're out, some people do seem unsure as to his gender, though.
He loves to eat, and likes to be able to feed himself whatever he's eating. So we find that if he doesn't have something on his high chair tray to work on with his own little hands, and we try to spoon-feed him, he'll try to grab the spoon, which can make things difficult!
John still takes two naps a day—he probably sleeps 15 or 16 hours a day. It's hard to remember when Laurel took two naps, because she doesn't take any now, and hasn't for at least a year and a half. It sure would be nice if she did, but except in extraordinary circumstances, she just won't. She gets tired and will lie down as if to take a nap, but then after less than a minute, pop back up and announce "I'm done with my nap."
Unfortunately, when John squeals, Laurel likes to chime in by screaming even louder. Really aggravating, as you can imagine, and our repeated pleas to her to cease and desist have availed us not. She's kind of out of control in general, and hard to handle. It's a struggle.
But here's a cool little thing I happened to happen upon at YouTube (you should visit the guy's website, too):
I'm really feeling ready to leave Texas right about now. As if just to pile a whole summer's worth on us by the time we move, the summer scorch started up early this year. I think for about a month straight now, it's gotten up to between 96 and 100 every single day, with very little rain. I mean, look at this:
When it gets like this, it's just too hot to even go outside. I hate that. As you may have heard, though, southern New England had a crazy heat wave recently where it got as hot as Austin—and most people there don't have A/C! (Usual highs are just to the 80s in the summer.) They may as well get that out of the way before we get there, though. ;-) Yeah, I for one am done with the Texas heat. Even Austin, Lord bless it, is starting to feel a bit "old" to me by now—as I may have mentioned before, I've now lived here nine years, as long as I lived in Whittier, southern California, and as long as I've lived in any one place. Yes, Connecticut will be a welcome change, as will beginning the institutional road toward becoming a professional philosopher.
It's a bit harder for Deidra, of course, since she's lived in Texas essentially all her life, and at least half that, in total, in Austin, and has all her family in-state. But she's ready for an adventure, too, and is thankfully quite supportive of my desire to follow my calling. Deidra started the gradual task of packing a few weeks ago; she's taken that on since she's keeper of the home "stuff" and does the interior decorating and all. So far I'm helping by putting Laurel to bed a much larger proportion of nights than I had been. I'm sure we'll come up with other ways to make me useful. :-)
As for the weeklong road-trip to Hampton, I've got the route planned out by the day, and have made reservations at four La Quintas and a Hampton Inn: Round Rock, TX; El Dorado, AR; Memphis, TN; Charlottesville, VA; New Britain, CT (we'll also be staying two nights with my aunt and cousin in Hayesville, NC, right at about the halfway point). My first thought was that we actually shouldn't tie ourselves down in advance to a particular destination each night (except weekend nights), but then I really don't want to go around searching for a place at the end of a long travel day if what I'd had in mind does turn out to be full when we get there. The 400+ mile travel needed for most of the days was starting to worry me a little (like, with two young kids and multiple stops, would we be able to make it that far in a day) but then I went to see how long the first of two travel days was when we drove to Taos Ski Valley a few years ago—from Austin to (smelly and noisy with manure and trains and NOT recommended for an overnight stop) Clovis, NM: almost 500 miles. We made it there after sunset, but we hadn't left the house until, like, 10:30 or 11, as I recall.
We're going to get a pair of walkie-talkies to stay in close communication between the car and Penske truck. And I found a real cheap pair of external speakers for my iPod so I can jam the tunes down the highways without cutting myself off from the walkie-talkie (hopefully the sound quality of the speakers will be halfway decent). "The boys" will be keeping me company in the cab, hopefully getting used to camping out there, and D and the kids will be jamming along in "Babette II," our 1999 Buick Riviera. Laurel will have our portable DVD player, and John's car seat is now turned around to face front, so hopefully he won't get bored looking at stuff and will be able to nap well.
Gosh, the big day will be here before we know it...
In my continuing effort to catch up to the 21st century, I've finally joined Flickr. I find the interface for managing photos somewhat convoluted and unintuitive, but it's definitely a step up from uploading to an image server and then copying and pasting URLs. There's a bunch of new pictures I've put up on my Flickr account. Enjoy!
John's getting an exuberant little personality not unlike Laurel's. Sometimes when we're making faces to him, he wrinkles up his face back to us. We're trying to teach him to wave, too, which may be just about to catch on with him. Deidra told me that earlier this week when she was at the grocery store with the kids, John saw some bananas and said "na-na." We say "banana" to him when we're feeding him one, so he seems to have picked up that word! I think that might be his general term for food, too, because he tends to say it at any mealtime.
In general, the sounds he makes keep getting more diverse. And like little boys do, he likes to imitate sounds, which is pretty cute. If I make a funny noise, he smiles and looks at my mouth and tries to imitate it. And if I blow gently in his face, he blows a raspberry back at me.
He's only in about the 25th percentile of weight and length, still, so the consequences of an early birth seem still to be felt. At his one-year pediatrician visit, the doctor told Deidra we need to daily exercise his legs by standing him up against things while we support his torso. One new thing he's just started doing is lifting his knees off the ground and pointing his bottom up, so he makes kind of an inverted V with just his toes and hands touching the ground.
This morning, Laurel made an interesting observation. She said, "We're being held by this house. This house is holding us so we don't fall outside." Whenever we're on our way somewhere, or have just arrived, she asks "Where's _____?", which is usually wherever we're coming from, such as "our apartment," "Target," "the church," "the gym," etc. The general principle at work, it seems to me, is that she's trying to orient herself with respect to the larger world in which we live and move and have our being.
We have finally weaned Laurel off the pacifier, it would seem! She only used a "passy" at night, but was pretty attached to it then, so it's a big step, and kind of a relief to get her past that stage.
A lot of the music I listen to (jazz and classical notwithstanding) is just what I listened to back in high school: bands clustering around the "shoegaze" genre. (The only major additions I've made since then is Yo La Tengo and "post-rock".) And I continued to buy mainly cassettes up until 11 or so years ago, and those just don't play on an iPod. So over the last few months I've taken advantage of online torrents and such to download digital versions of music I still only own on cassette. It's a nice way to finally digitize the ol' pantheon without breaking the bank. And putting all of the back catalogs of such as Catherine Wheel, Ride, Lush, Curve, and Swervedriver that I had neglected for a while back on rotation, it's striking how much I still dig it all, in a big way. My torrenting has even unearthed a whole mess of B-sides and rarities that I never had before in any form. Good times.
All those bands had their peak in the early 90s and then fizzled out in various ways. But there seems to be a trend toward some of these great bands reuniting and touring, and Swervedriver is one of them. I never got to see them back in the day, so I was very happy to be able to go see them in Austin last night at Emo's. For a band that's been defunct for a decade and only very recently touring again, and with no new album to support, the show was incredibly well attended. I was heartened to see all the fans come out of the woodwork. The band has put gobs of live recordings up on their website, which are just awesome, so that made me even more excited to see them live. They just burn it up. Their signature anthem, which sums them up quite well, is "Son of Mustang Ford".
I'm digging the loud, punchy, gauzy, enveloping sounds of such as Swervedriver these days, but the earbuds that came with my iPod have caused complaints from people in neighboring cubicles at work. I wasn't real happy with their sound, so this gave me a good excuse to get some new ones. I got a pair of Sony in-canal earbuds, and they're brilliant. By far the best headphones I've ever owned. (And I haven't historically been a fan of earbuds.) They have form-fitting silicone ends that basically work just like earplugs, making it beautifully block out exterior noise, which is great on the bus. And no "leakage," so I can crank it without worrying about bugging people around me! The bass response is incredible for such tiny things: I actually have to compensate on my iPod's EQ by putting it on "Bass Reducer." Finally getting some quality earphones has pushed music enjoyment up to another level. Mmm-mm.
I've only been listening to the post-rock band Mogwai since last year, but they've become one of my very favorite bands. I just never seem to get tired of them. The dynamic range and richness of sound that Mogwai achieve with their music is just scrumptious, running the gamut from guitar noise to gingerly-strummed quietude (sometimes in the same song). There is never a time when they fail to hit the spot. Reverb'd guitar, warm and chordal bass, awesome drumming, unique electronic textures, piano, Fender Rhodes keyboard sounds, oh my goodness yes.
And since I'm soon to be an east-coast denizen, I'll get to see Mogwai live at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in September in the Catskills! It's a whole weekend, but I'll just be going for Sunday's headliners, which will be well worth the price of the whole weekend. Sunday's roster, which is the most incredible lineup of bands I've ever seen, has been curated by the recently-reunited My Bloody Valentine, another classic early-90s shoegaze band, which is in a class of their own as far as influence and notoriety. So I'll see them, Mogwai, and the reunited original-lineup Dinosaur Jr., all for the first time, andYo La Tengo! This'll be my eighth time seeing YLT, as I just saw them earlier this year at SXSW. Also playing are the Lilys—which are kind of a My Bloody Valentine clone, so it's funny MBV picked them—and Mercury Rev. I haven't heard any Mercury Rev before, but from what I've read it sounds like they would be good to see.
It will be just monumental to see all those bands on the same day—so I do hope the schedule doesn't force one to choose between them!
This has been making the rounds of the Christian blogosphere for a couple of weeks at least already, so you may have already ran across this...
I got this from our pastor (to which I tip the hat), Rev. Cassidy's, blog and I'll just quote the post because I couldn't say it more concisely (really).
At the base of our cellular structure is some biological 'glue' that quite literally holds everything together. That substructure/scaffolding/glue is called Laminin.
So what would something that holds everything together look like? Stunned? Me too. At the core of creation - at the heart of our physical being, holding us together - is the cross.
"Christ is before all things, and in him all things hold together."
Colossians 1
That's indeed startling. It's not that far removed, it seems to me, from the vicinity of "divine skywriting" or some such.
I get the impression that the structure of laminin is a pretty recent discovery, but if so, that's surprising for something so biochemically fundamental.
Two thoughts, each based on the assumption that this isn't some amazing coincidence (that it is coincidental, even given the truth of Christianity, is after all within the realm of possibility).
First: The presence of the cross in our biochemical makeup could be taken as proof-positive of the strongly Calvinist doctrine of supralapsarianism—that the whole sequence of the Fall of man, its consequences, and remedy, were explicitly preordained in God's mind prior to all of those events. (Assuming, of course, that the biochemical makeup of humans did not change ad hoc post-Fall in order to incorporate a cross-shaped component.) In other words, free will, at least in respect to those doctrines, would seem to be out of the picture entirely. I wouldn't tend to be supralapsarian (Deidra disagrees with me on this), but this gives one food for thought.
Second: I would think that laminin would be present in the bodies of a wide variety of animals, not just humans—it's probably safe to assume that all mammals have them, for instance. So, its presence underscores the evolutionary link between humans and other animals. Something like 98% of our DNA is identical to that of gorillas. No matter what turns out to be the case, the special-creationist can just say "well, God just made it that way," but that's just to sidestep the point. These empirical homologies are exactly what we would expect given a common evolutionary lineage and the cladistic relationships between organisms that result. The case of laminin certainly doesn't present anything unique on this front. But if it's theologically important, then young-earth creationists should take a hint from laminin's presence in a wide variety of organisms besides humans. The hint points strongly toward the fact (which should be recognized anyway) that unified biological lineage among animals on the one hand, and our own animalhood on the other, jointly pose no (i.e., zero) threat to the specialness of humans vis-à-vis our relationship to God. ("But doesn't the very idea of evolution by definition exclude God?" Contrary to popular belief, no, it does not.)
Here's the more general, and straightforward, argument that shows why Christians should not feel at all threatened about evolution:
The very large extent to which our genes are the same as those of nonhuman primates is an empirical fact, and a biological one.
None of the content of (1) alters the "boringly obvious" (h/t to Peter van Inwagen, in "Genesis and Evolution," for the apt phrase) fact that humans yet differ immensely in other ways from any other animals: language, technology, art, religion, et al.
The mere fact of evolutionary descent is a biological theory that perfectly accounts for exactly such things as (1) and says absolutely nothing per se about (2) (ancillary theories about more complicated social selection notwithstanding).
Conclusion: If (1) does nothing to undermine (2), neither does (3) do anything to undermine (2).
But that's another soapbox, from which I'm content to leave at that for now. :-)
On Saturday Deidra and I celebrated her birthday, dropping off the kids for the evening with D's good friend Teresa while we painted the town red. When you have young kids, it is extra nice to get away. We went to Mars restaurant (the day before the Phoenix's momentously successful landing on the restaurant's namesake, coincidentally!), one of our local favorites, before taking one of our last visits to the Elephant Room to take in the very cool Just Released. We'll miss the ER, but are comforted to know there is a lot of live jazz up in Hartford and Providence, not to mention Boston and New York. Good thing we're not moving to Dallas or something, ugh! (with apologies to my extended family there)
Desiring something to do on Memorial Day indoors in the present beastly heat, we'd been thinking about going to the Austin Children's Museum, until I found out it's closed on Mondays (as museums often are). So instead of that, we did another thing that's good to do in the beastly heat, and that's go swimming. We took the whole family to our apartment complex's pool for our first swim this year, and John's first swim there at all. John, with a cute little hat to protect his head from the sun, had fun splashing around on the first step in six inches of water, just his size. Then he tired out after an hour and was ready for his afternoon nap. But not Laurel! She just loves the pool; she'll stay out there for hours on end and still has to be bribed to get out. At first she was afraid of the deep part, but then got to paddling around in it on an inner tube. There were lots of other kids for her to mix it up with, too. And, nothing like a hot, sunny afternoon at the pool to get her good and tired out for the day!
