‘Maters

I planted some tomatoes today. This act--jolting me out of my month-long pout about how short the Boston growing season is--was inspired by a talk I went to yesterday, given by Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I haven’t read either of these books yet in their entirety, but from reading bits and parts and from listening to his talk, I’m psyched to read on. He captured two things perfectly: One is the luxuriously nurturing feeling you get from planting seeds on a sunny spring day. The other is the simultaneous glee and monotony of purchasing an organic-farm vegetable subscription. On the one hand, you are inspired by weekly surprises of arugula, beets, turnips, and okra--rare vegetables one seldom thinks to experiment with--and thus, one gets to look through and try out some fun new recipes. On the other hand, there can be a few weeks when the box is mostly okra, and you get real sick of okra, even in the form of such Cajun delights as gumbo and jumbalaya. Anyway, Pollan talked about this fun way of getting great veggies, though kind of glossing over the negative side in order to prop up his PR campaign for supporting the local farmer. He also reminded us how good a garden-grown tomato tastes. Mmm! I can’t wait for a crop. Sadly, neither my shady little porch nor the lead-poisoned, dog-bespoiled backyard that I share with my neighbors will likely yield any real tomatoes, but it’s fun to have something to water again.

Irish greenhouse

You Ain’t From Around Here

This week I discovered two ingredients that are sadly missing from New England cuisine: queso and ground sausage. Now the queso part isn’t too surprising. I mean, we’re pretty far from the border, so why would Tex Mex be any good up here. But, you ask a local whether they want to order chips and queso and they don’t know what you are talking about. Very sad. I will have to enlighten some of these folks in the near future. (By the way, they think that enchiladas use flour tortillas…yick, very soggy.)

The ground sausage thing blew my mind, though. I just can’t imagine a large grocery store not carrying this staple. I mean obviously I don’t cook with it very often these days, but how are these people supposed to make sausage lasagna? Or, breakfast sausage patties? Or creamed corn and sausage? (Okay, that last one is just gross, but it was a regular meal in the Frohlich household when I was growing up.) The butcher man at the super market said that they don’t carry sausage out of its casing except during the holidays. This explains why I was able to buy it no problem for my Thanksgiving turkey stuffing.

Come to think of it, I might want to shake things up around here and make Southern Surprise, a recipe I just made up: queso with ground sausage. Sounds delish, no? I’d have to import the ingredients, but Jimmy Dean would approve.

[Image from: http://www.jimmydean.com/products.asp?p=1]

Ill Communication

When I read about people living in squalor, having too many cats, or staying in abusive relationships, I think “Man, how could they let it get so bad?” But, then a part of me thinks maybe they started out like me, doing okay but letting some things slide occasionally, and they just let one new detail slip every day until an acceptable situation slowly evolved into an unacceptable situation. You know, sometimes I leave garbage out on the countertop for a day. What if I did that every day? Then it would be squalor, right? Well, I’m one of those people--not in a poor hygiene or abusive sense. But, I’ve nearly crossed the line over to the criminally negligent arena of having crappy phone service. And, it’s mostly self-inflicted. We have two cordless phones, two cell phones, two fax machines, one cable modem, two wireless modems, and a corded phone--all told about $1,000 worth of equipment. In addition, we pay over $200 a month on telecommunications bills and services. Yet, because of a bad combination of crappy cell phone service, old batteries, poor location of land-line connections, general laziness, and some recent financial setbacks, Scott and I have let ourselves get into a situation where we can enjoy no more than one hour-long phone call per day, and any other phone calls that we make that day have to be limited to 15-20 min bursts before we are cut off. The solution: about $200+ in new phone equipment, new batteries, or new cell phone service. Normally, I wouldn’t mind spending that amount to improve my life and get a service that gives me so much comfort, safety, and pleasure. I’m just sick and tired of giving people so much money and not getting what I want! Aaaargh!

[Image from: http://www.amazon.com/]

Scooped and Deceived!

I could just spit! As my final radio documentary, I had wanted to do a piece on this local facility that trains monkeys to help paraplegics, a monkey college. Six weeks ago, I called them and explained what I wanted to do and that I would try to sell it to WBUR, the local public radio station. The rep at the monkey college said that they couldn’t let me interview someone there because they were all booked up on media events, blah, blah, blah. He said maybe I could call in a year and he might have time for me then. So, what do I see on the WBUR website this past week?! A freakin’ radio story on the monkey college! They aired it last week, with an intro that implies that they conceived of the idea just two weeks ago. Follow this linkfor a listen.

This is proof that it’s all about your connections. I’m sure when they called, he didn’t give them the call-me-in-a-year bs. Grrrr!! I feel like a chump. (Or, should I say a chimp?) I want to throw some feces at them, like a monkey who failed out of monkey college.

P.S. Scott says that I wouldn’t have lasted a minute in that place anyway. It’s true. I’m scared of monkeys. But, I swear I would have pulled myself together for such a great story!

[Image from: http://www.here-now.org/shows/2006/04/20060427_17.asp]

Scooped

Damn it! I’ve been scooped by a glossy! The editor and chief from Technology Review, the MIT uber-geek magazine, came to our class to speak today. Apparently, they are about to do a huge, front-page feature on the Sony rootkit, the exact same topic that I have been writing about all semester. I could kick myself for waiting on that one. I was hoping to get my piece published somewhere this summer, but now I can’t because it will look like a copycat piece instead of a cutting edge article. Plus, because I haven’t yet pitched it to anyone, I don’t even get to look like a badass for thinking of something that a major magazine then later did. Oh well. I suppose this happens constantly in the real world.

I’m afraid of the real world.

[Image from: http://www.mediamaxtechnology.com/HTML/index.asp]

When the Puck Sank

Well, I finally finished my radio documentary about underwater hockey. I’m trying to sell it to the local radio station, but I’m not too sure that they will go for it. Apparently, they already ran one like it a few years ago. I’m like, if it’s old news, why hasn’t anybody heard of it? Anyway, follow this link to have a listen.

[Image from: http://members.tripod.com/jls_website/uwh/index.html]

Marathon Madness

I watched the Boston Marathon today. This was one of the most amazing sporting events I’ve ever attended, except perhaps a world cup game. I got all choked up watching the physical rawness of the runners dragging themselves along on mile 23. It amazed me how exhausted and focused they all looked. And, they no longer seemed to care that they looked terrible. I guess it takes energy to suck in your tummy and straighten your gym shorts, energy that you really don’t have to spare when you are running 26 miles.

Bostonians are just crazy for this race. The spectators were out of control. All the screaming and cheering deafened me to the point where I considered putting paper in my ears. This one lady had a sign that said “Go Japan!” and then something in Japanese, and she would go ape shit every time an Asian runner went by. If one of the runners stopped to stretch or catch their breath, everyone would yell and cheer until they started up again.

Plus, it’s not enough to just run a marathon up here. You also have to do it with a twist. One guy has been running it while pushing his wheelchair-bound son for 25 years. These other two guys do the whole thing while “joggling.” See if you can guess what that means from the picture below. I saw them both today. Apparently they are vying from some kind of world record.

[Image from: http://www.wcsh6.com/home/article.asp?id=34092]

Hugs Not Bugs

I went to a benefit tonight as part of a radio assignment. The event consisted of several speakers including three young people, two of whom have HIV and a third whose mother has HIV, and they all gave speeches about how HIV has affected their lives and how hard it is to be public about the disease. It was pretty powerful. I interviewed the speakers afterward. One girl, who is 17 and an eloquent speaker, gave me a terrific interview. She was so poised and friendly. It was funny, because I am such a crummy interviewer when I have a microphone in front of me. I just feel really rude and like I’m invading people’s space. But, of course, this girl has a lot of practice talking to strangers and making them feel comfortable, and she’s probably been in front of dozens of mics. So, of course, I was completely nervous and awkward, and by contrast this teen was totally cool.

At the end of the interview, I went to shake her hand, and she said “Naw, how about a hug.” It was really sweet, because I just don’t get very many hugs these days, especially since I left Austin (except from Scott of course), and I needed a bit of TLC from this precociously maternal teenage girl.

Only when I got on the subway did I realize that of course the hugging thing was part of the message. It wasn’t just because I looked like I needed a hug. They wanted everyone to be comfortable with the disease and understand that hugging is safe, etc. The funny part is that I had spent the entire afternoon obsessively washing my hands because this one guy with a cold shook my hand earlier and I didn’t want his cold. It didn’t even occur to me to fear getting HIV, but I was freaking out about the cold germs. Of course, that’s the way it should be because you can get a cold from a handshake and not HIV.

The point of this rambling soliloquy: This is proof that AIDS awareness activists have actually gotten somewhere in the last 20 years. I wouldn’t have felt this way when I was a kid, back when every one was freaking out about HIV, and somewhere along the way a transition occurred that I didn’t even notice.

Here’s the link to my story.

[Image from: http://www.aids.hacettepe.edu.tr/]

Autocannibalization Needs Salt

I had a dream last night in which it was the future and politicians had made a law that de-stigmatized cannibalism, as long as no one was suffering, however that works. Anyway, everyone immediately thought eating human meat was okay and not creepy or wrong, just because it was no longer against the law. But, I still had this feeling it was wrong. To add to the weirdness, someone also had just invented a kind of human cloning that allowed you to cultivate a full-grown clone of yourself in just a few weeks. So, maybe you can see where this is going… Someone made a clone of me, my clone died, and then for some reason I was coerced into making a stew out of my clone self and then eating it.

I tasted bland.

Self Psychoanalyst: Geez, could I be any more transparent?

[Image from: http://www.suegregg.com/recipes/soups/splitpeasoup/splitpeasoup640x480.htm]

Garden Dreams

I miss the smell of good soil, finding plump earthworms in your garden bed, planning the layout of the veggies and spice plants, scoring and soaking seeds, checking on the lil’ sprouts, the satisfaction of composting, buying six-packs of baby plants, purchasing and orchestrating hi-tech irrigation systems, shopping for funky pots, pulling apart delicate root balls, and dreaming of tomato season. I also miss redbud trees and agave plants.

From a recent trip to Austin, where spring is now:

Colour Me Cowardly

As part of an application for a summer internship, I completed a writing test today for New Scientist, a prominent British science magazine that has a bureau here in Boston. The editor gave me the assignment last Friday, and I had exactly one week to find a news story, interview scientists, and write a 600 word article about it. No problem, I’ve been doing this every week or two for a couple of my classes. I thought that the biggest challenge would be making sure that I used the British spellings of words (e.g. analyse, colour, nanometer, etc.). But, apparently, when it comes to timed writing, I crack under pressure. I could barely keep it together.

For some reason, though I usually have a plethora of story ideas, I couldn’t get excited about a single one this week. I ended up reluctantly choosing a story about comets because I’ve been doing so many astronomy pieces of late that I thought I would at least feel comfortable with the topic and had a good relationship with enough sources that I wouldn’t get bogged down by a lack of information. Also, though I usually procrastinate on assignments, for this one, I started right away. Yet, even with these two things going for me, I almost bombed.

Two things happened. First, I didn’t make the connection until Thursday, that they made this announcement about comets at a comet conference in Houston, and thus, all the reliable comet scientists were unreachable because they were all, well, in Houston. (DUH!)

The other thing that happened was that I totally psyched myself out. I couldn’t stand the idea that whether or not I would get this great job all hinged on how I did with just 600 words. I couldn’t concentrate, got a terrible case of writer’s block, and basically left myself no time to edit my submission because I finished it at 5:45 pm—15 minutes before the deadline.

The sad part is that the very people who can relate to this painful drama are my competitors. All of my classmates are going through the same thing, though only one of them also had this particular writing test. I never know if they want to commiserate about how hard this is or whether they are secretly resenting me for any of my meager successes. It may be all in my head, but usually we share such warm camaraderie and lately I haven't felt it. I guess it’s odd that, until now, I’ve managed to avoid the whole cutthroat academic atmosphere that is usually inherent to graduate programs. I suppose it was unavoidable.

The good thing is that even though I didn’t do the best writing I could have, I at least finished the damn thing (barely in time), it had some sort of a point (though meager), and it fleshed out a semi-newsy topic (however unimportant). My victory: I didn’t completely embarrass myself. If for some crazy reason I do get the job, it will in spite of this writing test and not because of it.

Wild-2, My Favourite Comet of Late : )

[Image from: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/16jan_stardust.htm]

I ain’t got the blues.

Sorry for the long absence; t’was a ferocious week of term papers and then spring break, which I took as a break from all writing, including blogging.

Today I bombed a guitar test. I got a B-, which sounds like a good grade, but really it’s not. The funny thing is that I really was better prepared than I sounded. It’s just the performance that I suck at, and with a guitar test that’s all that really matters. Basically, I couldn’t keep up with the professor’s strumming, so even though I could play every note of Norwegian Wood, I just couldn’t play it at the same pace as him. Then, to top it all off, he asked me to bust out with an extemporaneous blues riff. Good lord. Not only do I not have rhythm, but I have no soul. Thanks for pointing that out so officially Professor Warren.

Poor Professor Warren. Today, he had to listen to at least 30 students play the same tired Beatles song…and badly at that.

[Image from: http://www.balboafeet.com/articles/gypsyswing.php]

More ‘Fichin’

If you ever feel like traveling back in time, go to the library and scan through a microfiche reel containing issues of 1960s Time magazines (serendipitous pun!). I did a bit of that this afternoon for the professor I am working for. Not only does the magazine itself generate anachronistic ambience, but the machine is straight from a nearly expired era. All its parts are giant and clunky, and the deteriorating grey plastic looks like it was skinned from my family’s first Apple IIe. It doesn’t even have a digital display. Instead, if anything goes awry, a red light with a funny icon lights up. After a few of these error messages blinked at me, signaling yet another delay in my attempt to make barely legible copies of a seriously out-of-date mag, I realized the icon is a symbolic representation of a sheet of paper moving through a series of rollers in the printing mechanism. That is, there is a paper jam and you have to disembowel the dinosaur and prod it back into functionality. I wonder how long it will take librarians to get an electronic version of all those old archives. Until then, it’s kind of fun to do it the old fashioned way.

[Image from: http://www.gl.iit.edu/govdocs/micro/micro.html]

Micro-Fache

I had an exciting face off with a B-school jerk today. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating my side of the conflict. I was too shocked to say anything back really, but he did sass me pretty good. Here’s how it went:

I was doing a little microfiche research as part of my teaching assistantship. I hadn’t used one of those hunks of junk since, maybe, junior high. It was pretty fun trying to figure out how to get the little spool loaded and the image aligned and in focus. I was a little self-conscious about how much noise I was making, because the machine’s motor and the spinning spool were quite loud, but whatever, I didn’t choose to locate this dinosaur in the middle of a public study area.

Anyway, I had everything lined up to make a copy, and when I popped in a quarter (highway robbery: one quarter = one copy!), nothing happened. I put another quarter in the machine and again, nothing happened. I pressed several buttons and then hit the change return button. Suddenly, it was like Las Vegas and I hit the jackpot at the slots! The machine started spitting out quarter after quarter--probably $10 worth came out in the end. Ka-chunk, ka-ching, ka-chunk, ka-ching!! It was pretty funny, so I was cracking up. Now, keep in mind, this was in a library, so there were dozens of students nearby, all studying in silence. Thus, the sound effects from my lack of lo-tech know-how were magnified by my embarrassment and their annoyance. I ran to get the librarian who came to my rescue. He banged around the inside of the machine, readjusted all my handiwork, and stole back all the quarters (damn--that was laundry money!). All the while, he was talking in a regular voice, not the stereotypical librarian whisper. I took his cue and responded at the same decibel--plus, maybe a little louder so he could hear me over his clattering repairs.

Well, of course, you can guess how this ended. Some little snotty kid stood up, glared, and sneered that couldn’t we tell that he and his comrades were all trying to read and *this* had been going on for at least 5 minutes. I wanted to snap back, “Look, it’s only for a short while and once I get this figured out, I will be out of your wormy little way. And, can’t you see that this man is the Librarian?! He is like the sheriff, and what he says goes in this town.” Fortunately, a wise little voice of reason in my head reminded me that I was about a decade too old to be trying to out-sass the undergrads, and I didn’t say anything back. But, I fumed about it all afternoon. Hah, take that!

[Image from: http://www.mixnet.biz/services/microfilm.asp]

[Image from: http://www.jokejam.com/cartoons.htm]

Fumble Fest

Boy, have I got a lot to learn about radio. Nina and I had our first live radio newscast today. If you listened in, you might have thought that we hadn’t prepared at all, but in fact, we spent a total of maybe five woman-hours preparing for it. And, the show lasted a whole whopping 16 minutes! AND, nine of those minutes were pre-produced radio packages from two of our classmates. Okay, enough math.

I had no idea there were so many things to keep track of when deejaying. Every new form of sound that you use--voice on mic, mini-disc track, CD track, mp3 file--requires that you push the correct, poorly labeled button and often push up the little scroll-y bar thing. What the hell are those called? Anyway, for each transition, I’d panic, trying to figure out which thing to fade up and which thing to fade down. Plus, people kept walking in and giving us suggestions for things we should add to spice up the show--during the show! For example, the silly trumpet news theme music was added at the last minute. Because BU doesn’t have an abandoned radio studio for students to practice on, we couldn’t really practice unless we practiced on air, or at least that is what they told us. And to top it all off, we had to write intros and modify stories on the fly while the mini-disc tracks were playing. It was quite exciting. I think I had enough adrenaline pumped into my veins to lift a car. I didn’t come down for another hour at least.

I didn’t even get into the writing part of it. I hadn’t realized that most of the writing on deadline that I do involves knowing the stuff before hand and then writing it all quickly. The time I spend beforehand is what I call “percolation time.” You don’t get any of that in the newsroom. Plus, radio writing needs to be a lot more interesting to hold the listener’s attention. Or, perhaps all of my writing needs to be more interesting. Hmm…I’m thinking I am learning more than I thought I would from this whole experience. We’ll see how it goes next week.

To listen to the archive, follow the link to the WTBU website. Go to “Schedule” and look for the 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm “Rock Block.” You have to scroll to about an hour and a half into the show to hear Nina and me.

[Image from: http://www.uncleozzie.com/trips/reviews.html]

Dog’s Adrift

Dogs + Giant snow drifts = Great fun!

The dogs are very excited about last night’s snowfall. They are so cute, tearing around like four-year-olds on sugar. I haven’t seen this much pooch glee since Athena caught her first squirrel. Okay, I actually didn’t get to see that, but I hear she was pretty darn euphoric. (Poor squirrel!) I took them to the park and it felt like being a contestant in the Iditarod. They could not wait to be unleashed and were practically dragging me up the hill. Their favorite snow-time activity: playing fetch with snowballs, eating them, and then puking up the melt water. Even kids aren’t this easy to entertain.

Lil’ Tex’s First Blizzard

I think this is my first blizzard. It isn’t so bad, because I guess we’re only getting about a foot or so, but I’m choosing to stay inside all day. It did not occur to me until my brother mentioned it offhand last night that one should prepare for a blizzard. Apparently everyone else knew this, so when I went to the store last night, it was packed with people buying supplies, well, groceries anyhow. It’s not like a hurricane where you have to board up your windows and get canned food and water, but you can just count on everything being difficult to do the next day, or so I hear.

Wow, it is white out there!

[Image from: http://www.unl.edu/scarlet/v13n5/v13n5nibs.html]

Anchor-wo-man

You are looking at the new news anchorperson for WTBU Radio on Thursdays from 3:30-4:00 PM! That’s right, I’m going to be writing and reading news stories for the college radio station along with co-anchor, Nina, a woman from my Public Radio class. So, what will we talk about for half an hour? Good question. I’m thinking there will be segment with a Science Friday-esq spin to it, in which I interview local scientists live. Also, I would like to do a movie review every week. Plus, there will be BU and Boston news, the usual AP drivel on national news, and hopefully some of my classmates will allow me to broadcast their excellent feature stories. I’ll let you all know as soon as it airs, but I might get to do my first broadcast next week. You can listen in by following this link to the WTBU website.

Ow! My eye! …oh

A first for this southerner: I got a snowflake in my eye. I saw this giant white chunk coming at me. I felt it touch my sclera and I started to panic…must protect…valuable organ…primary shield (glasses lens) has failed! Then it melted immediately, of course. Quite refreshing actually, like a squirt of chilled Visine.

I’m guessing this is one of those things that most people who grew up around real winters experienced often as a child. Maybe, like running around with their tongues out, they also ran around trying to catch snowflakes in their eyeballs for fun. I know nothing about this. It occurs to me there are probably a thousand aspects of snow, ice, and other sub-freezing eventualities that I am ignorant of. Did they suck on icicles like ice-pops? Did they crunch the snow drifts like a crème brulee? Did they eat snow-cream? Did they watch as dogs made yellow-rimmed cenotes in snow piles? Did they examine the patterns in frost on window panes? Did they really get their tongues stuck on metal poles? Did they see cave formations in waterfalls? I’ve only read about these things, and as an adult, I don’t make time for finding out myself.

Those precious years when I was a young child and had all the curiosity, time, and patience for exploring the world at a face-to-the-ground level were spent in warmer climes. I know everything there is about ant-lion pits, the paper cuts you get from trying to weave baskets out of giant grasses (the kind with puffy cream plumes), the feel of agave flesh under your finger nails (and how to pinch off the spines and poke them into the leaves like a pomander), and keeping an eye out for water moccasins while hunting for tadpoles. But, I am a novice when it comes to snow.

[Image from: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/book/snowflake.htm]

Movie-Manic

In case you haven’t noticed, I am now in the movie-watching phase of year, in which I start to get a little obsessed with viewing all of the Oscar nominees. This is a nasty vice, I’ll admit. It is expensive and it is not clear that it improves my life in any way. Plus, I miss school and work deadlines and alienate my husband in trying to cram a year’s worth of schlock-y movie watching into four weeks. I’m sad this year, because I don’t really have a chance to throw my annual Academy Award’s party, but nonetheless, I’m still frantically trying to see all the nominees before the big date. I really should see a doctor about this obsession--a head doctor that is. I suspect it has something to do with another secret stress-relieving habit that I have: making to-do lists and crossing off items on said lists. My movie list is really just a to-do list, and going to the movie is crossing off one more list item. It feels like what I imagine that shooting heroine feels like to an addict. It also feels like what I know for a fact that peeling stickers off and sticking them onto things feels like to someone (eg. me) who has a tactile peeling fetish.

Shew, I feel like I just went to confession.

[Image from: http://www.wackypackages.org/stickers/cloth/peeling.html]

Match-disa-Point and Hustle & Whoa!

Two movies that I felt certain I knew were about one thing but turned out to be the complete opposite: Match Point and Hustle & Flow, both Oscar nominees by the way. (Dear reader, while this is not a spoiler per se, if you want to experience the thrill of not knowing at all what a movie is about before you see it, please don’t read the rest of this entry and just head straight to the theater or video store immediately.) To add to the surprise is the fact that they are thematically inverses of one another. I didn’t read much about either of these movies before viewing them and only had the previews to go on, which is very likely why I was so astonished. The opening of Match Point promised that it would be Woody Allen’s attempt at the sweet treacle of a Wimbledon II, but it turned out to be “the feel-bad movie of the year” according to moi. (Sorry, quoting oneself in an article is a journalism no-no, but this is my blog, so who cares.) I came home from seeing Match Point and realized that I desperately needed to see some movie about bunnies or some other cutie-pie antidote, because I was afraid of slitting my wrists it was so depressing. (For some reason Scott and I started watching Bram Stokers Dracula, I can’t tell you why, but I put an end to that and snuggled up with the New Yorker instead.) It turns out I should have watched Hustle & Flow, but I wasn’t clued into that at the time. Hustle & Flow seemed like it would be one of those hour-and-a-half train wrecks in which you grind a millimeter off your tooth enamel waiting for the shit to hit the fan because, you think, how could a movie about a destitute pimp/rapper and his herd of dirty little whores turn out well? But, no, in fact it was downright heartwarming, and I mean compared to, say, It's a Wonderful Life! I cried from the sweet sappiness of it all. Go rent it immediately!

[Image from: http://regencymovies.com/movieRunDetail.php?theaterId=10&movieRunId=1147&movieId=265]

My Pet Cloud

I had another moment of geek euphoria in discussing my latest science article with my feature writing professor. I am writing a piece on a magical material called aerogel, which is kind of like hard foam, and it is the lightest solid on Earth (officially named so by the Guinness Book of World Records). Okay, you might not be impressed yet, but please sit down for this next little factoid: It is transparent! That’s right, it is like a super-lightweight glass. In addition to being porous and having some wack acoustic and kinetic properties, it also happens to be an excellent insulating material, so it has all sorts of possibilities for use as insulating glass in greenhouses, solar swimming pool heaters, and satellites. This January, NASA just retrieved a space capsule called Stardust that collected comet dust in aerogel so perfectly it made a bunch of astronomers weep with joy during a press conference. Clearly, it is one of the hottest things in materials science these days.

Really, this stuff will blow your mind. Please refer immediately to the pictures posted below to get an idea of how weird it looks. Chunks of aerogel look completely alien, like some sort of ghost foam. People are so captivated by its mystique that they have given it names like frozen fog, solid smoke, and (my favorite) pet clouds. There is a funny description on the website of some researchers who I might interview in which they say that your first encounter with aerogel goes something like this: You cup it carefully in your hand and comment on how lightweight and translucent it is. You gingerly press it to see if it is flexible. Upon noting with surprise that it is strong, you press it harder. At this point, the aerogel shatters into a thousand pieces, and a look of panic comes over your face. You’ve killed it! Just so I can experience the feel of it myself, I am tempted to spend the 25 bucks it costs to get a lab in Wisconsin to send me a piece the size of a stack of about 6 quarters.

Take a gander at these pics snagged from U. Wisconsin, NASA, and the Lawrence Berkeley Lab:

[Image from: http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~aerogel/aboutaerogel.html]

[Image from: http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/photo/aerogel.html]

[Image from: http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/aerogel-insulation.html]

First Radio Piece

A very exciting day for me--I just completed my first radio piece. It is a bit amateur because my interview tapes were not clean and I am not very good with sound level editing. However, I am pleased with it. I’m not sure if this is the usual pace of audio file production or if I am just suffering from beginner’s pokiness, but it took me probably 11 hours of taping, logging, writing, and sound editing to produce a whopping 2 minutes of sound!

Click on this mp3 link to hear the radio piece.

Rest in Peace, Sweet Otto-Spot

Dearest Otto,

We’ll miss you sweet pup. I haven’t gotten to spend much time with you in the last half of your life, but I have some very fond memories of the first half. You were the cutest little teddy bear of a puppy. It must have been the chow in you, but I remember thinking that it was impossible for you to be any cuter. And when you were older, you were the best guard dog a scaredy-cat girl could ever have. I never felt afraid of the murder-rapists with you in the house. You were a very special dog and will always claim a sacred place in the dog-loving parts of my heart (which grow bigger every day).

love,
your old roomie

P.S. to my readers:

I’ve had many a run-in with my own dogs in which I’ve thought, “Why couldn’t you be more like Otto, who doesn’t chew up my things and doesn’t chase cats and is very tidy about his poo habits!?” I know, it’s bad to say that to a little innocent animal, but hopefully dogs don’t understand English and therefore are not traumatized by this kind of out-loud thinking. As dog owners, we get to choose which habits we work on and which we let slide, so really, I know that it’s my fault my dogs are cat-terrorists. Cosmo, my fat orange cat, got along better with Otto than any other dog I have known--in particular my own.

I do remember that once, when I was living with Otto, we had a strange homeless girl living on our couch, I can’t remember why, and Otto got into her stash of chocolate bars, cigarettes, and marijuana. (Apparently, though residentially challenged, her life wasn’t so bad.) Despite the rumor that chocolate kills canines, Otto just seemed a little out of it that evening, thank goodness, and the whole incident turned out to be humorous. In fact, I remember that this feat of gastric strength always seemed to impress college guys who heard the story, I don’t know why. I wish I could think of a more-flattering and less-bizarre vignette from Otto’s little doggie life, but alas, only the extraordinary comes to mind at the moment. I hope that Otto forgives my weakness in the memory department.

This is not Otto, but it reminds of him as a puppy:

[Image from: http://community.webshots.com/photo/81561892/1090212776033696810zfVgrb]

Good Vibrations

Another unusual day of good weather led to my sitting with the dogs on a street bench in Cambridge, while Scott shopped for art supplies. I felt a subtle rumbling under my seat, which at first I thought was an earthquake. Do we get seismic activity up here?! But then I realized that it must be the subway. How funny it is to live in a large city and experience such sensations, which are so quotidian to everyone else but novel to me. The same thing is still true of snow. Every once in a while I will be walking down the street, laboring through mountainous snowdrifts and accidentally skating on slick patches of black ice, and I’ll think, “I live here--in a city where snow is boring and people don’t think that the subway is an exotic urban adventure!” How long before it is no longer unfamiliar?

[Image from: http://www.hibblenradio.com/transportation.html]

The Digital Trojan Horse--Revealed!

My latest assignment for my Science Magazine class will be on the infamous Sony rootkit, an evil piece of digital rights management software that Sony has snuck into many CDs to keep consumers from making and sharing mp3s of the music they just legally bought. It’s basically a newfangled pirate catcher. An unfortunate side effect of this music industry giant infecting your computer is that this tricky piece of code cannot be removed from your machine without permanently damaging the security of your computer. I’m excited because I found out accidentally through my daily trawling on boingboing.net that some respectable academic types, two computer scientists from Princeton, are writing an intellectual paper on the whole debacle. I will hopefully be able to interview them and write a pretty compelling piece on the whole controversy. It’s nice to get some technical expertise to backup one’s conspiratorial paranoiac fantasies. Plus, because there seems to be very little high-profile reporting on this topic, as far as I can tell, I might be getting to do some real-world investigating--very exciting!

[Image from: http://www.albany.edu/cetl/about/studios.html]

Ambience

As part of my Advanced Public Radio class…Wait, I have to stop and tell you about this awesome class! It is like a dream come true that such a class exists and I get to take it. My weekly homework assignment is to listen to at least 7 hours of public radio each week, including Talk of the Nation, All Things Considered, Science Friday, This American Life, Marketplace, and BBC World. I also add Prairie Home Companion and Car Talk, just because they are quality shows. Then, we talk about these shows and how to produce them. I have to write and produce five mini stories over the semester. This is exactly what I want to do! It is quite difficult getting to know the equipment and software alone. But, it is also a whole new world of thinking about things from a sound perspective and retraining your ear (and mouth) for radio interviewing. So, getting back to what this blog entry is about…For class, I had to make a recording of ambient noise in some setting and then produce a 2 minute radio piece that immerses the listener in that scene.

I chose as my scene an exhibit at the Museum of Science that includes this crazy Rube-Goldberg-device-like audio-kinetic sculpture. The title of the sculpture is Archimedean Excogitation and it was done by an artist named George Rhodes. I think I’ve seen his work at an airport somewhere, but I’m not sure. Basically, it is a bunch of billiard balls racing around on metal tracks and bonking into things that make noise or cause gears and doodads to move. It was quite captivating. Children seemed to be especially fascinated with it. Parents would sit down next to the sculpture to take a break from a long day of museum exploration and let their children run around and look at the sculpture. But, then when mom and dad thought the break should be over, they’d find that their kids did not want to leave! They were completely transfixed by the sculpture and did not want to go see any of the other exhibits. We’re talking exhibits that include dinosaur bones, live hatchings of baby chicks, monkeys swinging on vines, and robots doing all sorts of things--all of these exhibits were as dull as dirt compared to this 20-year-old sculpture. How funny is that? As soon as I get the radio piece made, I’ll see if I can’t post an mp3 of it on this site.

Here are some pics I snagged from the artist’s site and a fan’s site:

[Image from: http://www.georgerhoads.com/Monumental.html]

[Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/troybthompson/tags/ma/page4/]

Prophet Feynman

I had a spiritual moment while watching a documentary about Richard Feynman, a physicist and mathematician who won the Nobel prize for something called quantum electrodynamics. Quantum electrodynamics is some sort of fancy math that allows you to describe the behavior of anything with an electric charge or electromagnetic force (atomic particles, light waves, etc.). Anyway, it appears that Feynman was a bit of a dirty old man, if my interpretation of the documentary is correct. He spent a lot of time in topless bars, covering cardboard coasters, paper napkins, placemats, and other scraps of paper with schizophrenic-like pencil scrawls: mathematics equations, physics diagrams, and “fine art” sketches of the nude women who worked there and the male patrons who were entertained by them. In spite of his iffy personal habits, it is clear that he was truly a genius.

The above-mentioned spiritual moment occurred when one of his students and close friends described his take on the afterlife. He said that Feynman didn’t believe in an afterlife, except in the idea that you live on in people’s memories of you. Thus, if you do good or important things, you leave a piece of yourself with your survivors, and you shape their lives in good or important ways. The same is true with bad things, except, of course, these bad acts leave an evil legacy. I’ve always held this very belief, and there was something very relieving about having a genius confirm one’s personal theories about spirituality and life philosophy. Also, it was very moving and beautiful to hear this straight from the mouth of a weeping physics nerd.

Richard P. Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988)
[Image from: http://www.improbable.com/projects/hair/hair-club002.html]

Cold Snap

Alas, the real winter is back. I woke up this morning to the chill of a northeastern January in my poorly insulated apartment. This last week in Boston, we had a bit of an Indian summer. Upon returning from the gorgeous Austin weather, I was expecting the harsh Boston winter I had left but, in fact, was treated to a bit of a warm spell here. I mean, I could actually go outside in just a sweater or maybe even one of my autumn jackets--oh joy! To think that only six months ago, I would have found even that kind of 60-degree weather miserably cold. Little did I know what I was in for. I hate winter! The only thing that will take some of the edge off is that I finally bought some winter clothes: several cute sweaters and some snuggly snow boots. These delights will probably get me through next week and then it will be back to my new vice: moping and shivering.

[Image from: www.hillsrain.com/Weather_Station/Events/2005/01-feb/]

New Life Dream

The weird part about moving is when you go back and visit your old town. The new town seems like some sort of dream, less real. You can’t remember the names of people you spent every day with, and you keep thinking that you will soon wake up to staring at your old light fixtures. Every time I go back to Austin, I want to go to my old house. I keep thinking that I should be able to go through my old garden and pick my tomatoes. It’s not my house anymore, but it feels more like home than my new apartment. Posted below is the last basket of veggies and herbs that I picked from my old garden. [Sigh.] The growing season and Boston doesn’t start for some time.

Potty Training

Speaking of nieces, mine is getting potty trained. So cute! She gets a single Skittle as a reward for every time she goes pee and washes her hands. Apparently, this is a doctor-prescribed incentive plan, and boy does it work. Each time she earns a Skittle, she cherishes it for over ten minutes, clutching it, running around with it, presenting it to everyone periodically, and shouting with glee, “My candy!” It is quite darling to see happiness in its purest form. In fact, it’s infectious. I kind of wanted a Skittle myself after watching her go to the bathroom, receive her rewards, and perform her victory lap four times in the course of two hours.

Her mother, my sister, says that a side effect of the potty training process is that she is also learning fraud. After the Skittle has been eaten and its inebriating effects have worn off, she states, “I need to go potty,” and then for clarity, “I want candy.” Then, she insists that she go to the bathroom alone. Her wily parents are not fooled and say that she must have a witness to her feat, which frustrates the budding con artist. Yet, she usually manages to squeeze out some proof. She’s pretty talented, my niece!

[Image from: www.shopping3000.com/toys2/?product=2667979]

How Exactly Do You Know My Dad?

My little sister, who is six years old, asked me today, “Are you my daddy’s sister?” My dad and I assured her no, but she didn’t stick around for the explanation. No doubt, after a flurry of family functions this holiday, in which aunts, grandparents, and half-siblings were visiting my dad, she can now recognize when an adult has a familiar and familial relationship with my dad. She’s just trying to figure out which kind. Later, she also asked if I was a teenager, and then still later, she asked my dad if brothers and sisters could marry. These are all excellent questions! I mean, even I have trouble sorting out my relationship with her because, in many important ways, we are not very sisterly. Yes, we share the same father, which means genetically we are half siblings. Also, as adults with the same father having raised us, albeit during very different eras in his life, we will likely have some things in common in our backgrounds. But, other than that, she really is more like a niece to me.

[Image from: www.shempcompany.com/ll_scrapbook.html]

Sperm Shopping

Two friends of mine, a gay couple, have decided to get pregnant. I am so excited! I love it when my friends have babies. For one thing, I am too chicken to have one myself right now, so getting a bit of vicarious motherhood from my friends’ and sister’s experience is truly precious. Of course, with family members, it makes sense to get a bit parental with a newborn that is not your own. But, even with a friend’s baby I feel keenly a sense of community ownership of the child, which hopefully is some sort of universal evolutionary programming, because otherwise it is just grounds for a restraining order. These ladies have opted for using a sperm donor--a fascinating process! They get to pick the biological father of their child by looking at height, weight, family health records, personal essays, staff impressions, SAT scores, job resume, and even a toddler picture. Looking through the 3-ring binder of their final picks of potential bio-pops, it’s hard not to get caught up in the shopping frenzy. And, they chose well. All these gents seem smart, healthy, cute, and friendly--all characteristics you’d hope for in a genetic parent. However, every so often, while pouring over the donor profiles with an obsession similar to that of a swooning teenager reading her high-school yearbook, you get a niggling sense of how, no matter which donor is chosen, you will love the resulting baby and “Aren’t all these things superficial, anyway?” But then, you think, “Well, this is the only choosing the moms get to do at this stage, so the most responsible thing is to make the best decisions they can.” Once the baby is here, there will be significantly less emphasis on the sperm donor issue, but at this stage it is hard not to be engrossed by it.

As if preparing for a baby wasn’t pricy enough, purchasing “shots” of sperm is quite expensive, further justifying the idea of being overly picky. As a straight woman who hasn’t yet explored fertility issues, I can perhaps get away with being this naïve, but who knew that sperm were such a hot commodity?! I mean, an aliquot less than a quarter teaspoon costs hundreds of dollars. Considering many people have access to significantly more than that on a regular basis (I need not go into the naughty details), it shocks me that these sperm banks can charge so much. I hope that this seemingly exorbitant price is explained by the services that accompany the costly sperm samples, such as quality screening of donors, effective insurance, legal safety nets, and health counseling for the potential parents, because otherwise, it is a racket!

[Image from: www.crystalinks.com/spermdonor.html]

Lube Job / Day Care

I went to get an oil change for my car yesterday at Jiffy Lube. I was sitting in the waiting room which has giant windows on two sides to let you monitor the lube situation as you wait in air-conditioned comfort. (By the way, Texas is currently experiencing a glorious mid-winter heat wave with highs in the upper 70s--Oh joy!) Oddly, there was a toddler who was also waiting with me. He had no adult escort as far as I could tell, but there were no other cars in the bay, so I could assume only that he was the son of one of the employees. This assumption was confirmed by the dark oil stains on the bottom of his pudgy feet, which could only have obtained that hue from toddling through the lube station all day. He was a real cutie and alternated giving me shy, flirty smiles and coyly playing with a cell phone (his cell phone?). Soon, his father, who was in fact one of the mechanics, came and retrieved the little tyke and proceeded to play with him near my car.

I was making a few calls when suddenly I heard a baby crying. This wailing seemed a little too young for the toddler, who I hadn’t heard reenter the waiting room anyway. How mysterious. It took me about 30 seconds to discover the source of the distress--an infant in her little car carrier, precariously balanced on top of a printer, on top of a shelf, on top of the desk, behind the counter! I’d been there for 20 minutes, in a room that was no larger than 10 feet by 10 feet and did not previously detect her presence. Mr. LubeGuyDaddyDaycare did not notice that the babe was in distress, but I didn’t want to upset her further by going behind the counter and trying to calmer her. I mean, I was both a customer and a stranger, so my being behind the counter would be considered inappropriate. But, then so would gabbing on a cell phone and not attending to a wee baby’s cries. What does one do in that situation? As weird as it is to keep your kid on your work desk like a discarded three-ring binder, I decided the dad would be the best source of comfort, so I stuck my head out of the door and let out a loud “ahem.” Mr. LGDD came running to quiet her and took her out to the bay to finish my Subaru. What an odd juxtaposition: a clean, pink-cheeked 3-month-old in the oily hands of a mechanic who dangled her over my car’s engine while tightening the radiator cap. I couldn’t help but wonder what horrible circumstances led this poor man to opt to take care of two children while finishing up his work shift. And was it safe? It’s such a weird idea, babies at the lube station, that I can’t imagine that whatever board of health or better business bureau or child protective services would even have a rule against it. Plus, he seemed to have everything under control so I certainly couldn’t judge him. And, my Subaru now purrs like a kitten.

[Image from: http://bongo.www8.50megs.com/oil_change.htm]

Football Fever Has Infected My Mom

I got to Texas today, where I am visiting my family and some friends. I had heard that last night there was some big football game, and I think I knew that Texas was involved, but today, I have discovered that this was a VERY BIG DEAL to Texans, particularly Austinites. There is a great hullabaloo here. It’s funny, when I lived here, I would keep track of the UT games and made a point of attending one or two every season, but I guess it wasn’t a true interest of mine, because once I left Texas I forgot all about football. My mom picked me up from the airport wearing an orange spirit pin celebrating UT’s victory at the Rose Bowl. She informed me that it was a very close and exciting game with many Heisman winners and hopefuls displaying their athletic prowess. And, of course, we won.

My mother hinted a couple of times that she would like to go take pictures of the UT tower, which this week is lit up in burnt orange glory with a number 1 in honor of the team’s victory. I decided that a little nighttime walk on UT campus with my mom wouldn’t be such a bad way to spend the evening even if I didn’t fully understand the need to document this not uncommon architectural illumination event. I mean, it seems they are lighting up this tower at least once a month for something.

When we got to campus, I was shocked to find that there were hundreds of people with my mother’s same exact goal of taking pictures of the tower. There were three TV news vans to cover the occasion and hordes of families taking turns getting their picture taken, all wearing burnt orange t-shirts and looking pleased at their success. My mother (and everyone else) had to take a couple of shots of the tower from at least three different angles. The only things missing were cotton candy and t-shirt salesman, but I found out later when we went to the grocery store that HEB had the latter covered.

Shmolder Pads

My sister and I went shopping at our favorite 2nd-run and cheap clothing stores the other day. We noticed that the 80's look has finally hit H&M, Old Navy, and the like. I thought it was weird when the 70's came back in style, but at least youngsters like myself had never really worn those kinds of clothes during the actual 70's. (Well actually, I had worn the bell bottoms and double-striped knee socks when I was a kid, but they were hand-me-downs by the time I got them. By then, it was the 80's, and they were horribly out of style once my older sister and brother were through with them.) Anyway, we were trying to figure out why anyone would want to bring back the 80's. I mean, these stores are actually selling balloon dresses! Do you remember balloon dresses?! They were ridiculous--but now they are back on the racks. I have yet to see it, but we'll know they've really sunk when they start bringing out the superfluous shoulder pad. I will laugh the day that I again see knit shirts with shoulder pads sewn into them. Shoulder pads were just wrong. It's one thing to give a little form to your blazer with some spiffy pads, but it's another thing entirely to walk around looking as if a missing pair of socks have static clung to the inside of your favorite t-shirt. I *never* wore shoulder pads. I always cut them out of my shirts. In fact, until this evening, I had forgotten what it was like to occasionally ruin a shirt by accident because the shoulder pads you were trying desperately to remove were sewn in too well. What were these people thinking?! Can't we learn from the past? Many solid casuals were destroyed in the name of making women look like mini line backers. It was not worth it. Mr. and Mrs. Gap-Express-Banana-Republic, puh-lease, I beg you. Do not bring back the women's wear shoulder pad!

[Image from: www.fiftiesweb.com/fashion/fashion-we.htm]

Great X-mas Deflations

Scott asked the other day whether I thought that Christmas is a depressing holiday because people just have too many expectations, and they can’t help but get disappointed by something. There seems to be some unfortunate truth to this theory. As a fan of Christmas, I regret to admit this to Scott, who is only annoyed by the behemoth holiday. I think that Christmas is a problem for me because the traditions and rituals that I expect rely on the coordination of too many people and rely on me having a solid week of vacation for making things. Even when I try to condense Christmas into a few manageable factors, I still have a lengthy list. The bare minimum Christmas for me is the following:

1. Buying about four gifts and receiving at least one--keeping it to just a few means you can actually enjoy the brainstorming process of finding the perfect thing for someone.
2. Exchanging stockings with at least one person--it’s fun because this includes buying weird/cheap items, which one never gets to do because it is wasteful (e. g. yucky sushi-shaped hard candy, fake eyelashes, novelty pens), and it involves buying a variety of candies and gorging on half of them. (What else am I supposed to do with them? The stockings are never large enough.)
3. Making refrigerator cookies--this is my absolute favorite part of the holiday, especially deciding which new flavor to make this year.
4. Making a Christmas ornament--when else are hastily glued-together glitter and construction paper crafts admired by anyone after you graduate from 3rd grade?
5. Having a Christmas tree--they smell great and I love watching a sappy movie while stringing up yards and yards of popcorn and cranberry garlands.
6. Cooking something that is overly complicated, like a turkey or a stew that needs multiple hours to simmer
7. Eating a large dinner and feeling physical discomfort
8. Hanging out with family members--especially ones you don’t see very often
9. Getting a little tipsy to take the edge off of being around said family members--essential! I wish I could convince my in-laws of how important this tradition is. Sadly, they are practically tea-totelers.
10. Overindulging on eggnog with brandy--why isn’t this delightful concoction available year round?
11. Seeing multiple movies at crowded movie theaters--okay, I’ll admit that I like doing this any time of year, but Christmas is when most people will agree to do it with me.
12. Singing a couple of Christmas carols--I’ll admit that I like some of them, and I also don’t think that there are enough musical traditions for non-musicians in modern America.

Which of these did I accomplish this year? 1, 2, 6, 7, and 8. Ergo, this year was not a complete failure, but I am feeling a slight aftertaste of dissatisfaction. I might have to let some of these rituals bleed over into my New Year’s festivities to fix the problem.

[Image from: www.polymerclayexpress.com/nov2001.html]

Spatially Challenged

I got totally lost today on the way to the hair salon. The only people who read this blog are people who know me well enough to know that this is NOT NEWS! I get lost all the time. This time was particularly pitiful, because I left the house a full hour ahead of time, printed out two (no fewer!) maps, and had consulted them multiple times the day before, the morning of, and about every 5 minutes during the trip. A lot hinged on this outing, because I needed a haircut badly, I have been looking particularly wooly for at least a month, I was feeling a bit down because of some negative feedback on my schoolwork, and my previous haircut with a new and incompetent stylist was a complete failure. (Those of you who do not allow your hair to rule your psychological and emotional stability may think that last sentence was irrational and unnecessarily wordy, but the rest of us know that it summed up all of my problems quite succinctly and with a tight and fluid line of logical reasoning.) I HAD to get that haircut in order for the month of December to turn out right. However, I was 30 minutes late to the appointment, had to cancel and reschedule, and was forced to waste a couple of hours until the next moment the stylist had available. The cascade of disappointment included getting a blister from walking two extra miles, failing to meet a deadline for work that day, wasting an additional 20 bucks on lunch in a shee-shee shopping district near the salon, discovering that there were items of clothing that I could never afford (such as $23 pairs of badass socks), and sobbing hysterically on a stump while passersby and people in parked cars looked away politely.

Was it worth it? Yes, I love my haircut.

Now that I no longer live in Austin, I am discovering how bizarre of a handicap this is--my incredibly bad sense of direction. I really can read a map. But, for some reason, when I look at a map with the intention of going from one point on the map to another, I lose the ability to make connections between the symbolic representation of space and real-time geometry. Also, to make matters worse, I can’t tell my right from my left, I have to use a mnemonic device to remember which direction is east or west, and I have a poor memory for business names. For example, I can remember that there is a fast food restaurant that sells burgers on a corner near my apartment, but I can’t remember whether it is McDonalds or Burger King. Also, my spatial memory is shoddy.

The only fun part of living in a new city for me, is making friends who don’t know that I am completely unreliable when it comes to getting from place to place. They start rattling off directions and saying, “Great, we’ll meet at this place at such and such time, right?” completely confident that I am a normal person who will have little trouble following their directions. Little do they know that I am a complete imbecile. I wonder how long I can keep up this charade.

[Image from: www.biblehelp.org/whatsay.htm]

Verbosity

It's official. I use too many words when I write. This semester, we had a 700 word limit on our weekly science newswriting papers, and I would always spend only 2 or 3 hours writing them and then at least 1 hour trying to shave them down from 786 to exactly 700 words. Last night, I turned in my final for my science magazine class and the word count was supposed to be 1200-1800 words. I wrote 1950. I couldn't trim it down, because I ran out of time. It's a damn fine paper on planetary science and the struggle between scientists and lay people over the importance to classifying solar system objects as planets, but hey, I'm a failure because I can't be succinct.

Next semester, my goal will be to be brief. Maybe I'll read some Hemmingway in preparation. Maybe I'll write what I should have written for this blog:

I write too much.

Go see King Kong.

Molly like.

[Image from: http://nutter.net/dana/humor/joke.asp?r=605&lang=en]

Bread Baggage

It snowed today, a few inches. Scott asked me if I had any boots. The moment that I replied "no," a long-forgotten childhood memory suddenly log jammed my brain. When I was little and we visited my grandma's in Indiana for Christmas, we never had snow boots. It didn't make sense for us to have them for just one trip up north each year. So, my mom used to have us double up on the socks and then wear bread bags over the socks and then our usual tennis shoes over the bags. I think there might have been some rubber bands around the ankles, too, but I'm not so sure about that detail. It was the 80s, so of course, to cover up the bizarre practice of wearing bread bags on our feet, we wore leg warmers. This noisy solution to the problem of lacking snow boots kept our toes warm and dry while we went sledding, though I can't imagine what the neighbors and my cousins thought. (Probably thought, gee, how many sandwiches did this family of five kids have to eat to get ten bread bags?)

Then, I remembered another thing about bread bags. (How many traumatizing memories about bread bags can I dig up from one childhood? The answer, my friend, is many!) My parents also used to save the bread bags because they were so handy for lunches and leftovers. But for some reason, my dad wasn't satisfied with reusing them just once. No, he had to breathe more life into each square foot of that plastic than was ever inhaled by the original organisms that decayed to form the petroleum byproduct that makes up the bag. He would reuse the bread bag and then, if they were still remotely clean, he'd put them back in a drawer, which we called The Bag Drawer. This drawer was stuffed full of years' worth of bread bags, so that you had to do a quick little stuff-slam-yank-your-hand-away maneuver to close the thing without bags exploding out like a jack in the box. He'd reuse these bags so many times, that the plastic or maybe the printing on the bags would start to disintegrate. They were all sticky, and I think that their stickiness was infectious, so a new bag would get sticky from residing in such close proximity with the ancient bags. I also think he might have put them in the washing machine, but perhaps this is only an exaggeration that my mind has accepted as real. I remember that I hated those sticky bags so much that I would hide new bags around the house for my own personal use. That way, I could pack my lunch in a brand new reused bread bag.

By the way, my family ate only Roman Meal brand wheat bread. This is exactly what the bags looked like:

[Image from: http://www.romanmeal.com/]

Volcanoes and Planets

This past week I have been interviewing dozens of volcanologists and astronomers for my two final papers in my science journalism classes. One paper is on an Antarctic volcano that is injecting burning hot lava underneath a frozen ice sheet. The other paper is on the red-hot debate over the classification of newly discovered celestial objects—that is, how astronomers are having to redefine the word “planet” to keep tiny oddball Pluto in with the Big Nine and exclude all these massive new guys that they keep finding.

With these two seemingly opposite topics juxtaposed artificially through a hectic school schedule, I hadn’t anticipated that I would discover two important ways that volcanology and astronomy are related. I mean, in addition to the fact that they are both Earth/planetary sciences.

For one, astronomers and volcanologists both like to hang out on or near volcanoes. That’s right, most every one of these guys and gals are located in Hawaii. Volcanologists like to work within an easy distance of a volcano for obvious reasons. However, astronomers also dig volcanoes as sights for their observatories. Apparently, the telescopes get better images when located at higher altitudes, which have a thinner atmosphere and therefore have fewer pesky air molecules blocking and scattering the light from distant stars. Higher altitudes can be achieved on, you guessed it, pointy volcano summits.

The other commonality is less of a coincidence: Some astronomers study volcanoes on other planets. Why is this so cool? I can’t tell you for certain. Perhaps it has something to do with the sisterly feeling I get from knowing that another alien planet has similar blemishes on its surface. One guy I spoke with uses heat-detecting satellites to study both Earthly and Martian volcanoes. Awesome!

[Image from http://www.digitalmedia.cz/3dsoftware/show.asp?nid=128]

True Love

I saw the new Pride and Prejudice flick the other day with some ladies from my department. Actually, I'll go ahead and out myself. First we watched the 5 hour and ten minute BBC version and then made a mad dash to the movie theater (It was like a scene out of Burn Out 3!) to see the Keira Knightly version that just came out. The new movie was pretty good, though I was a bit Jane Austen'ed out by the end of the 8 hour affair.

One scene in particular moved me more than any other. In this scene, Elizabeth Bennett is in bed with her sister Jane. The warm lamplight illuminates the cozy tent they've made with the sheets. They are giggling and whispering about the dance they had just attended, in which Jane had met her new crush Mr. Bingley, a handsome man of good fortune and potential husband. (I know, I know, this description is perhaps putting a final nail in the coffin for any hipster persona I could have glued together from bits of coolness in my life. Hey, I'm a sucker for 18th and 19th century literature.) Anyway, my point is that this scene was so authentic I wanted to cry. It captured perfectly the pure delight and bathing warmth you feel when you love your sister and the two of you are completely in agreement over the importance and loveliness of some trivial event. I have two sisters and many times have we played out this very scene.

I think that you can achieve this kind of love with people who are not your siblings, but the physical comfort is hard to attain with a non-family-member. Even lovers and partners, who probably find themselves in bed together more often and more naturally than siblings, have an entire dimension of complicating emotions (good and bad) that would ruin or preclude this kind of intimate moment.

The Transformation Has Occurred

I had my first journalist moment yesterday. As I was heading back from an interview that I conducted at the convention center downtown, having gone two hours and $10 out of my way to speak with a chemist for 20 minutes (someone I easily could have spoken with just over the phone), the day before two major work assignments and an unrelated school paper were due, I realized that I have finally crossed over to thinking like a journalist. There is no explaining the value of a face-to-face interview versus any other type of communication.

Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Jane Cochran), late 1880s
[Image from http://www.newsday.com/other/special/ny-ihny1119story.htmlstory]

No Longer in Texas, But Still Texan

The house finally sold. We no longer have an address in Texas. YEEHAW! God, that is a huge weight off my shoulders. When the dogs are crazy and need exercise but it's too cold to leave the house, I miss Texas. When Bostonians are rude and talk funny in such a way that I misunderstand and make social blunders, I miss Texas. When it costs over $10 for a freakin' movie ticket, I miss Texas. When I bruise myself tripping over a dog and ramming into a piece of furniture because our overpriced apartment is way too small, I miss Texas. When I want to hang out with my old friends and family, I miss Texas. AT ALL OTHER TIMES I am really happy to be out of that crazy state!

This is Bud, a puppy that my friend Allison was puppy sitting last summer. We took him to the fair. Another thing I miss about Texas that is strangly missing in Boston: my secret puppy fix was regularly administered through random everyday encounters.

Bloody Journalists

A guy in my graduate program asked me today, "Are you one of those people who went into Science Journalism because you are an escapist and thought it would be all about how 'cool' science is?"

My first reaction was quite paranoid, either because he used the words "those people" or because I am probably an escapist and I have some guilty feelings about it. It's true: I have always hated reading the newspaper and having political discussions with people. It just makes me feel helpless to hear about awful things. I still read the newspaper, usually avoiding the sections that will just depress me, and I suppose I humor some of my friends and family by having the occasional political discussion, but it never gets me anywhere but down.

Today in the class that I TA, which is a freshman course for communications students, the lecturer showed photos by famous photojournalists in history. He flashed up, one after another, images from World War II and Vietnam and Iraq and Ethiopia--all the pictures you have seen before of dead, dying, tortured, or oppressed people. He showed us one particular picture from a Vietnam napalm attack. You know the one with the children running from the smoke, with the one girl crying in fear, naked from head to toe, and soldiers looking on in the background.

Then, he showed us a film taken at the same time as that picture. It was color and showed the same girl, though you get a more vivid and active view of how injured she was. You could tell for certain that her clothes had probably been burnt off--she wasn't just interrupted during a bath, as I had previously thought. In the same footage, within feet of this little naked girl, there was also an old woman carrying her dead grandbaby whose skin had been flayed off by the burning chemicals. I just started to cry when I saw that. (I'm so glad that I didn't happen to be sitting with my students during lecture today.)

This isn't the first time that my journalism professors have traumatized me this semester. Two of my other professors within the first two weeks of school mentioned murder investigations that they covered. One described vividly a police beating he wrote about. The other went into great detail of the rape of an elderly woman, mentioning weapons and acts that I just didn't want to know about. I felt kind of victimized by these professors, who are just so hardened to this type of story that they don't recognize it as crossing a line that sensitive people such as myself draw and try never to cross.

I think that today is the day that I realized a major difference between the fields of Science Writing and Science Journalism. In science writing you can guiltlessly limit yourself to writing about what scientists and educators think is important, how science is helping and sometimes hurting people, what people are curious about, and what is just gosh darn neat-o. I don't think that you can get away with that in science journalism.

I think that journalists of all ilks, but specifically print and photo journalists, feel this obligation to be deep and thoughtful and present only what is important. True, they write and illustrate feature stories and human interest stories, but they do so with disdain for their readers and for the market forces that demand them to. They call it fluff and hold it up as an example of how the medium of the newspaper is in decline.

I'm so sick of hearing about how young people don't read the newspaper and how they want only to hear about Brad and Jennifer. I question this need to constantly share and obsess over the horror of what is happening in the world. Please let me keep writing about astronomers and robotics engineers who are wasting our money on less-earthly pursuits. If anything, let it be a breather to balance out the bad that we all have to swallow in order to be "good citizens."

Studying the Occult...ation

My latest paper for class is on scientists who study eclipses and other astronomical events involving celestial bodies in alignment, specifically occultations and transitions. (Astronomy primer: During an occultation, something, such as a planet or moon, blocks the light from a distant star or planet.)

I'm pretty thrilled by the concepts of: 1) giant balls of fire, dirt, or ice whizzing around in space and occasionally lining up in straight lines, 2) anything blocking out the whole freakin' sun, 3) geometry equations that calculate the exact moment that these things will be visible at specific locations on Earth, and 4) people who spend all their time and money studying these events, which last only a few seconds or minutes. Here's an excerpt that was cut from my paper because I was getting a bit too caught up in the excitement and cornball drama:

"Every bit of preparation over the previous year led up to this brief moment, in which every second counted. If the equipment failed, they would get nothing. If the sky suddenly turned cloudy, they would get nothing. If the instrument operators made an error, they would get nothing. Thousands of dollars, months of research, hundreds of hours of equipment testing, days of organizing and traveling to a remote and isolated location, all of this would go down the toilet if just one little thing went wrong during those few precious seconds."

In summary: Astronomers are one crazy lot, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they might have their priorities straight.

[Image from http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/sunearthday/2004/vt_gallery.htm]