Drift and Diffusion

A Re-constructed Diary, Part 1

2008-10-24T19:51:00.016-04:00

A few people have asked me what's it's been like to be near the front-lines of the financial (and now economic) crisis. Actually I find the media coverage so expansive that there's nothing I know that's not reported out there somewhere.

That said, I've recently realized that a personal history might be interesting to look back on some day. It is now conceivable that we're watching a world being dissolved a week at a time, for better and/or worse. So, since I wasn't disciplined enough to keep a diary, here's an attempt to reconstruct one of the past couple of months.

September 1-8. We are in a cabin outside Machias, Maine, enjoying a much-needed late summer vacation. I am reading topology(!!) and Will Durant's ancient Greek history, written in 1938-39 (and found on the New York streets for free!). Durant makes the point that it takes a few hundred years to complete a cycle of ascendant culture, cosmopolitan cities, trade-driven prosperity -> stability, some sort of democracy -> concentration of wealth and power, subversion of government -> revolt or dictatorship -> land and wealth re-distribution -> trade-driven prosperity. This goes back to Minoan times, and probably further. It is both unnerving and comforting: why were we raised to think we're any different?

An anecdote. It seems the (subprime?) mortgage brokers and securitization conduits have devastated this part of Maine. All kinds of people must've re-financed unwisely, because 20-30% of the property is for sale, and it's not just the vacation homes. Very sad.

September 9-14. I'm back in the office on Tuesday. Thanks to Jérôme Kerviel's shenanigans we now have to take off five consecutive business days, and we have a database to prove it. ( I am neither a trader nor controller, though conceivably I have access to systems.)

Lehman shares are sinking fast. There have been times in my career when our higher-ups have publicly said that they expected some consolidation in our industry. But it's clear they never meant this, and we are nervous too. On Thursday my boss tells me with a shrug some colleague is buying Lehman at $7. He knows this since he has to approve all trades we make, even for our personal accounts. I tell him that some Lehman employees have brought cameras into the office to take goodbye photos of their colleagues -- this is via a friend of Sofia's who works there. He's silenced by this thought, and yet he's been at the Firm for 20 years, and is perceptive enough to have told me in May that "it'll be a recession for the country and a depression on Wall Street."

On Sunday evening I'm in JFK, flying a red-eye to Budapest where we have an analytics team. I call my parents, as waiting for flights is some of the least chaotic time I have for catching up with family. We discuss what's being reported about what's going on inside the New York Fed regarding Lehman. I actually think that Lehman is technically solvent, but that they are suffering from a panic; my father thinks they are insolvent. It probably all comes down to the price one puts on illiquid assets, which may as well be a whim.

I then board the plane, which is one of the few ways left on this planet to have a Blackberry in your pocket and still be in a news blackout.

Thinking about Lehman

2008-09-13T15:16:00.005-04:00

(From wordle)

I dunno, this one is kind of sad, and not just because I know a few people there, or people who for whatever reason had a chunk of their net worth in their stock.

Lehman was not an Enron, Long Term Capital, or even a Bear Stearns.

Ellie's Yellow Belt

2008-08-24T17:35:00.003-04:00

Of course, we are very proud parents....

(For windows users, a better video host is here.)

Cookies in August

2008-08-21T23:08:00.002-04:00

Seems Ellie was flipping through back issues of her Ladybug magazine and *really* wanted to decorate gingerbread men. At least it wasn't 98 degrees out with the oven on.

Rainy Day Marble Run

2008-07-05T19:55:00.002-04:00

AKA "I can't remember the word 'block'."

Pre-school Year-End Photos

2008-07-04T03:40:00.002-04:00

Probably a lot more photos of other people's kids than most of you would ever want to see, but what the heck.

If you have windows, you might try this link. Otherwise:

Borough Sense

2008-06-19T22:03:00.003-04:00

This actually happened last October. I suppose Ellie had been asking how she came into being, and Sofia told her that we'd been looking and looking and looking for her for a long time.

So she relates this to her Baba (grandmother):

Ellie: Before I was born Mama and Papa were looking for me everywhere -- in the park, the bushes, around the trees....
Baba: What about me, wasn't I looking for you too?
Ellie: Oh, no, Baba. You were in Brooklyn.

Comes With The Job

2008-06-15T22:02:00.003-04:00

And it's a perk.

Last Stop for Poetry In Motion

2008-06-07T10:25:00.005-04:00

Just learned it's the end of the line for Poetry In Motion. Kinda sad. Hope I don't forget what the city I moved to was like....

Dance Recital

2008-06-04T22:16:00.002-04:00

First Tomato Soup

2008-05-31T16:00:00.010-04:00

Had my usual Saturday walk with Ellie and Lucy this morning. To Riverside Park and the River Run playground. Once we were home, Ellie talked about making tomato soup. Now, Sofia's made many fine soups, but none of them tomato. (I'm hoping for matzo ball soup one of these days.) I asked Ellie if Baba taught her how to make it, and pointed out that I've never made it. (I've only had the one Warhol presumably liked.) "No. I know myself." she said. Thinking this was going to be more pretend cooking I settled into some web browsing.

Then some tomatoes attached to Ellie walked by -- to the bathroom, where she can reach the sink. I paid a bit more attention when a pot of water came walking back from the bathroom, most of it (not all) staying in the pot. "OK," I thought, "this is not entirely pretend." and cleaned up the floor.

So I peeked into the kitchen. (Thankfully we live in an open-plan apartment, so this required leaning back about One Inch.)

Turns out that peek was some sort of sixth parenting sense: there was Ellie standing on her chair, serrated knife in hand, halfway through a tomato on a precariously placed cutting board on the narrow part of the counter in front of the sink. Knife is On. The. Way. To. The. Fingers.

[Oh. Jesus.]

I guess she knew she shouldn't have had the knife because I didn't have to say much or say it loudly. Nonetheless, lots of sobbing tears -- body-heaving sobs. Sheer physical trauma from the disappointment. This girl *really* wanted her tomato soup.

So we talk, and I explain that I don't really know how to make it. But we can always look it up in the Joy of Cooking. (Amazing book, that.) And of course it was about the fifth soup recipe.

And so we cut the tomatoes. (Ellie watched this time.) And sautéed some onions in olive oil, just like Joy says to. Ellie got to put in the onions. Then the tomatoes about seven minutes later. (Any risk of her standing near the stove on a chair seemed worth it.) We munched on some bread while it simmered. Finally we did the puree thing, added a touch of cream, simmered a bit more, and served.

So maybe I don't get a listening award. Or a home safety award.

And I certainly didn't get the salt right. (Not enough.)

But it was a very fine soup.

That's My Generation

2008-05-29T22:50:00.003-04:00

We were sitting in Big Nick's Pizza Joint last night where the TV is always showing Charlie Chaplin or the Three Stooges and the music is always some doo-woppy mix from the early 60's. (As is the grime, er, I mean, character.) So I was trying to think of how this music might sound from Ellie's perspective. She certainly didn't seem very interested. (But then again, she had Pizza on her mind.)

Let's see....the early 60's are roughly 45 years before she was born.

45 years before I was born was the mid 1920's.....

And it hit me: the Beach Boys are to Ellie as Puccini is to me. That's right, Puccini's last opera, Turandot, was written in 1926. (OK, if you don't like the classical music cross-over, how about Basin Street Blues?)

Of course by now you could replace the Beach Boys with the Beatles.

Wonder what the 'boomers think of that!

Springtime

2008-05-06T22:23:00.004-04:00

Happy Easter

2008-03-21T17:56:00.005-04:00

We're here in London for one last weekend. Unfortunately, today might've been the best weather we're going to get. Not very "springy": snow is expected on Sunday. And even today we got some hail between the sunny spells (as they say).

Went up to Kenwood House in Hampstead Heath and did an easter egg hunt consisting of a map and clues to nine eggs around the house and grounds. We found eight of them. At some point 3-year-olds (and their parents) get tired of tromping through an 18-century house where the main thing to talk about was 'Don't touch' / 'Why?'. Maybe it would've been better for older kids.

Anyways, Hampstead seemed very tweed-and-cashmere English, which is why we stayed here for the long weekend -- to get a further sampling.

Re-tracing Steps

2008-03-02T16:22:00.011-05:00

It was our first non-jet-lagged weekend in London, so we decided to head down to the coast and see Brighton and walk the Seven Sisters, repeating a walk I did in 2002, when Sofia was in NYC and Ellie wasn't even on the planet. That day still glows in my memory.

We got away a bit later than we'd somewhat optimistically hoped, and arrived in Brighton a bit after noon. Spent a little while on the beach looking at the waves and all the rocks (and remembering reading Graham Greene's Brighton Rock back in high school). Ellie in particular had a good time collecting rocks, climbing rocks, throwing rocks.....you get the idea.After a lunch of chicken fingers and chips, we headed uphill to the bus station to catch bus 12 for the trail head. This turned into an interminable journey -- apparently some local train line was out of service this weekend, so the 10 or so miles to Seaford took over an hour. I think we stopped at each possible bus stop.

Finally we got there a bit after 3pm. Between the clock and the steady 30-mph winds, it was clear we were not going to trek all seven of the Sisters, have tea in Birling Gap, see the lighthouse at Beachy Head, or descend into Eastbourne past the hotels of bygone English holidays, or have a dinner of fish and chips before catching the last train back to London.

Yes, the first time around Kurt and I managed to do all this, and see the Royal Pavillion in Brighton. Sigh. As if I needed the reminder, six-year-older knees and the addition of a child to one's life really do make a difference. I was chided gently by a grandmother on the return bus who reminded me how fast children grow, after I had mentioned how much further down the trail I'd gotten the first time around.

Great days really can't be re-traced: you really do have to savor them at the time. And yesterday, I have no doubt we did too.

Yada What?

2008-02-18T13:02:00.006-05:00

A couple of weeks ago while Sofia was at work and I was trying not to burn dinner, Ellie and I were watching Seinfeld on TV. I had figured that this was not a very interesting show for three year-olds, but that doesn't mean they stop trying:

Ellie: What is George saying?
Me: [How does she know his name?] I dunno, let's listen....
A bit later...
Ellie: What's Kramer doing?
Me: [???!] Well, let's watch and see....

She knows Jerry too, but seemingly not Elaine.

Wonder if she'll learn it as "Eeelaaaaaaayne"?

The Village Vanguard

2008-02-17T22:59:00.005-05:00

Sofia and I got out to celebrate our anniversary Friday night and ended up where we usually do for a birthday, or when someone is in town, at the Vanguard. Thankfully, this was after a so-so Italian dinner in the meat-packing district, where pretty much all the other diners were born AFTER the Michael Jackson songs being played were released. (And, yes, too loudly.)

Anyways, the Ed Simon trio was playing in front of the red velvet curtain. Among us and the Japanese tourists (ok, and a few others), there were just piano, drums and this guy, John Patitucci:

Wow. For some reason a great bass player can really steal a show. They played several of Patitucci's compositions -- he's at least as much a composer as bass player.

Simon's playing is something like Bill Evans -- lots of colors and pretty. But after about ten minutes of Evans playing I always end up thinking "this guy can't swing to save his life!". Anyways, Patitucci can, and it was a solid show.

Made me come home and think about the other bass players we've heard over the years, and found that Ron Carter will be playing in April at the Blue Note. Can't wait.

Back Seat Accompanist

2008-02-17T22:47:00.003-05:00

Just a few minutes ago, while playing (practicing?) Shubert's G-flat Impromptu:

Sometimes I think Kuzia had a past life in a nineteenth century concert hall or opera house. She always a willing audience for classical music.

It's One of Those Years.....

2008-02-13T22:30:00.005-05:00

Cute. Really. Makes the dot-com burst feel nostalgic, knowing how it ends.

But the bloodletting is trickling down. There were actually layoffs within trading and technology, much closer than the article suggests.

That said, all is well personally. It's times like these that I'm glad I ended up in plain old interest rates. Stuff that was supposedly "done" 10-20 years ago and many consider "boring".

Must be my laid-back Midwestern style. (Funny, I'd mostly forgotten about that till the reunion last summer.)

So it seems like another 'season' is underway, and it certainly looks like it'll be plenty exciting -- re-orgs, new priorities, the works. Will have to enjoy it while it lasts. Seems the sports analogy is apt: very few go out winning their last game, on their own accord. Thinking back on the people who are out of the industry, mostly it's a tap on the shoulder and the manager asking for the ball. Or spending too much time on the bench and getting the hint.

It ain't a walk through the tulips. But I guess that's a fun part too. Especially seeing how I suck at sports.

Speed Limit

2008-01-31T23:22:00.000-05:00

Ah, good to be back home even if it was a 29-hour day.

So....think this month had something like 27,000 miles in it. Let's see

27,000 / 31 / 24 = 36.3 mph

for an average speed for the month.

Makes me even more tired. Was hopefully a unique month, fun but not exactly something I want to repeat.

It's like one big Chinatown!

2008-01-30T10:52:00.000-05:00

Whew. Near the end of this journey. Hong Kong is pretty comfortable for me -- I don't speak Cantonese, but things are familiar enough. I managed to dive into a local bake shop and buy a breakfast bun without a fermented duck egg in it. Glad I retained that ability from all those years ago.

On Sunday a colleague met me at the airport and we went up to the peak of Lantau Island where there is a Chinese temple and apparently a huge Buddha.

It went something like this. Tram on the way up (and down). You can see what a lovely day it was.

And then somewhere up in the fog there are statues:

At least there was no fog inside the temple. Although we almost didn't see it in front of our face.

Oh yeah, got my fortune. Something about being patient. Poetically put, there was a phrase about fish and dragons: while fish don't normally become dragons, apparently in my future--if I don't do anything crazy--something great will come my way. Hard to say if this contradicts that Calcutta swami who read my palms ten years ago.

Anyways, work is on Hong Kong island, which is like any Chinatown on steroids. It's pretty cool. I love these dense vertical cities everything you could want is within two blocks.

Back on a plane tomorrow evening.....

Day out in Tokyo

2008-01-26T19:25:00.000-05:00

Had a good Saturday exploring the city a bit. Seems Tokyo must be a bit like LA -- very spread out. Unlike LA I guess, the transport system is good and I was able to get around ok.

Had quite a bit of Taiwan deja vu -- Asian countries are similar the way European ones are. I don't speak the language here, but recognize enough characters to not be too surprised when I eat. Smelled some good food in the shopping area around a temple. Took a couple of tries to get what I wanted -- first purchase was some fried salty things (the food is SALTY here). They were good, but not what I was looking for. So I queued up again and got some fresh sweet red bean paste cakes. Yum.

Of course the hot sake was good too:

Pictures from the day are in the usual place.

Off to Hong Kong in about 20 minutes -- this was an airport lounge post.

A Clear Morning

2008-01-24T18:02:00.001-05:00

Just as I was headed out for a walk, I noticed something in the view out my hotel room window:

Crashed in Tokyo

2008-01-22T12:18:00.000-05:00

Am having good deja vu here in Asia, in particular small restaurants and bars that feel like home even if you've never been there before. First trip back since 1990(!!).

Apparently it's okay to just take a snooze here at the Bashi Bar here in Yebisu:

The Home Leg

2008-01-19T20:41:00.000-05:00

Off to Tokyo tomorrow morning -- SUNDAY morning. (Arriving Monday afternoon, should be at the hotel around 6pm -- yes, MONDAY night.)

Meant to add some photos from NYC this week, but I was down with the flu. (And now everyone in the house has had a turn. Not the most fun week.)

So here are some photos taken last week. They're "city" enough.

Being away again is not going to be easy for anybody. I did at least spend a few minutes with Ellie and Google Earth "flying" to the different cities, and showing her the office buildings where I'll be. And we have Skype to look forward to too.

Off to pack. See you from the land of the rising sun.

Sznow on the Danube (Leg 2) (*)

2008-01-09T18:05:00.000-05:00

And so, on to Budapest for 2 days, where it's a bit colder.....

Here's the street in front of our office here. Not sure I qualify to work on Fashion Street.

(*) 'sz' is just plain old 's' in English, whereas 's' is our 'sh'. So with the westernization here you get signs having szex and szandwhich (not necessarily on the same sign). Takesz szome getting uszed to. Unfortunately these are the only sorts of recognizable words in Hungarian.

Leg 1

2008-01-08T20:12:00.000-05:00

Seems this will be a month of much business travel. Here's Canary Wharf in London, looking at the Millennium Dome.

Though I've not managed to leave the Canary Wharf area on this trip, there were a few times on the short walk between the hotel and the office when I wished I'd had my camera. There's something about the angle of light at this lattitude -- fairly bright and golden light at midday with long shadows.

Then again, when I pointed out that the sun helped the jet lag on Monday, they did suggest taking a picture of it....

The Joy of Jetlag

2008-01-06T22:32:00.000-05:00

The holidays are over, and that means there are no easy excuses to avoid business travel. So here I am in London at 3:30am wide awake after optimistically falling asleep a bit after midnight. Over the years I've learned to function with it, much like learning to function after spending 2-4am trying to coax a newborn back to sleep. But it seems that it cannot be skipped -- it really is physiological. Even if I sleep through the second night (cause I'm usually exhausted) I'll wake up on the third night. And this is just the routine for a five-hour time change. My few trips to Asia (all years ago when I presumably had more spunk) were very unpleasant for the first week.

It's not thrilling, obviously. So I when I read the "making lemonade out of lemons" NY Times blog post on jet lag, I scoffed and groused that the author clearly doesn't have a corporate job --- it can't be romanticized, and if you're only gone for a few days or a week, you can't simply patiently adapt.

Nonetheless, as good essays do, it resonated eventually. So I was reminiscing about the fine jet lag experiences I've had. Let's see....

Watching Dr. Ruth, eine prominente deutsch-amerikanische Sexualtherapeutin, in Budapest on German TV. At least now I know she's still alive. Her German isn't so different than her English in case you were wondering.
Being waaaay outclassed at the Savoy Hotel. This was in the days before there were any hotels near the office here in London, so one had to get up even earlier to get into the office. Jet lag isn't to solely to blame obviously, but being cranky in a swanky place where Sean Connery and Elizabeth Taylor filmed movies actually seemed to make matters worse.
Catching up on old movies that I've never really seen. Last year I watched Porky's and The Sting at the same time, flipping back and forth. It's fair to say that The Sting needed more careful attention, but I think I followed. Or maybe I was loopy.
Watching The Red Violin without subtitles. If you remember, there were scenes in Chinese, French and German as well as English. The Chinese and French were fun at least. The only German I know is my last name. And now Sexualtherapeutin.
Watching dialog-free candid camera in Budapest and getting a strong feeling of deja vu. There were signs in Cyrillic, so I had an obvious clue to work with. I came home convinced it was shot in Odessa, having recognized the art market in backgrounds. My family was doubtful, so I spent some time googling to find one I saw, and the proof -- this is clearly the top of the Potemkin steps. If you've followed the links, you'll find the humor has the subtlety that sixth grades boys devour. I remember mostly watching for background scenes after seeing the first few bloopers; even jet lag doesn't mush my mind that much.
After sleuthing out Odessa, on the trip home they showed Romancing the Stone (of all things!). If you remember the opening and closing scenes were filmed in NY. At the end, when sailboat is being driven down the avenue I must've still been in background mode. The intersection is 80th street and West End Avenue. It's no surprise I recognize all four corner buildings, as I walk by there every time the dog and I go to the park. Sure felt like some strange kink in spacetime.

Yawn. Going on 5am now. Time to get some sleep before looking for that double espresso in a just a few more hours. Or I could see what's on TV.....

2007 Top Ten Photos

2007-12-23T15:26:00.001-05:00

Ten is an arbitrary number of course, but it seems like a nice way to look back over the year without flooding the blog. (I started by picking "favorites" and had over 40!) There were no particular criteria -- some landscape, some personal and some just those lucky captured moments. They are in chronological order.

This is Ellie's first Valentine's Day card:

The Chain Bridge and Hapsburg Castle in Budapest, in May. My first trip. (This was actually shot with one of those point and shoot cameras that fit into a pocket.)

Independence Square in Kiev, just about ten days after Budapest. Funny how the crappiness of jetlag is canceled out by just being somewhere new -- the photos from the first few days turned out well despite how I remember feeling.
Procession at the Kiev Caves Monastery:

Anton, at the local swimming hole. What a wonderful Norman Rockwell like picnic we had that day in a village with a public well and the cows were walked home in the evening. The whole town was out swimming.

At my mother-in-law's first college. We stumbled upon an end-of-the year concert. This was the Ukrainian music group.

At Sofia's old school in Odessa. This girl was enjoying a moment on the last day of classes.

There were a ton of characters at the Privoz Market in Odessa. I like how the cake lady looks like her work.

Downtown Manhattan, after a walk on the Brooklyn Bridge:

Hungarian Science Academy, October:

Old First Impressions

2007-12-21T21:44:00.001-05:00

I had the camera at work today for the Holiday Party and took a shot of our trading floor. My seat is way off in the background behind the pillar near the top center; this is one of the trading rows on a tranquil day (other than hundreds of kids fueled up on cotton candy).

I wish I'd gotten a good photo back before we had flat screens. The best first impression of the floor I ever heard (second hand) was that of a colleague's mother over a decade ago: "My God. It's a digital sweatshop!".

`Tis the Season

2007-12-02T22:23:00.000-05:00

Nice snowy day here in the city, and we trimmed the tree.

Ellie seems to be getting more involved in Christmas this year:

Radioactive Ironies

2007-11-18T20:59:00.000-05:00

This weekend Ellie has been off to her Baba's in Brighton Beach, leaving us the chance to wake from from a nap at 7:10pm and catch our friends' new play Atomic Farmgirl just down on 78th St and Broadway at 7:30. (You might think that living in NYC we do this sort of thing all the time, but life doesn't quite work out that way.)

The play is adapted from the book by Teri Hein. From the play I learned that the majority of the weapons-grade plutonium for the US arsenal was processed in Hanford, Washington. The site was operational from 1943-1987.

It was and is a disaster. It wasn't until the Freedom of Information Act of 1986 (the year of the Chernobyl Meltdown) that area residents learned that over 600,000 curies of radiation had been leaked during the site's lifetime. Sometimes deliberately -- get this -- to study how radioactive clouds and particles would propagate, "in the real world".

By contrast, Three Mile Island leaked between 15 and 24 curies and hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated. (By contrast further, Chernobyl leaked 18 million curies.)

Quite obviously the play had a lot of cancer victims. The WWII vet who had been stationed outside Hiroshima was not one of them.

Like all well-told stories, there was more than one. The local history was put into context: in the 1940s it had been less than 100 years since the "treaties" (slaughter) of the local indigenous tribes, making the meta-theme "don't be in denial when you're in a war for your survival".

Oh, and you can't trust the government. (Note however, the Freedom of Information Act was passed during the Reagan administration, probably about when the Iran-Contra deals were going on.)

In a lighter moment of the evening, the characters were reminiscing about their "Emergency Preparedness" float at the 196x Flag Day parade. The supply list ran saltines...check, board games...check, ..., bible.... Sofia laughed: the Soviet bomb shelters were the same, except for the Bible.

Godless commies. Good thing we won, eh?

Hope her D students don't read the paper

2007-11-04T15:10:00.000-05:00

As you might imagine, articles on the local public schools are starting to grab my attention.

I couldn't get more than a couple paragraphs into this one before breaking into a fit of "did she really just say that?" laughter.

So when Ellen Foote, the school’s veteran principal, received a copy of the school’s new report card from the city’s Education Department, she was taken aback at the letter grade: D.

“It is just so demoralizing to have a number or grade assigned that is just sort of trivializing things,” Ms. Foote said. “It doesn’t reflect, I think, the valuable work and the very complicated work that we do here.”

I can't even enumerate the lines of questioning one could take from here....

Happy Birthday, Sofia

2007-11-03T23:53:00.000-04:00

Native New Yorker

2007-10-22T22:21:00.000-04:00

Buying flowers and a card for her Baba's birthday last week.

Was a welcome sight for the on-the-road Papa. It was basically at this point that I started to 'get' the point of cell phone cameras.

Better than a Birth Announcement

2007-10-09T09:36:00.000-04:00

Ellie's sense of humor has made the NY Times. (OK, maybe she was being perfectly serious....)

We are, of course, fantastically proud.

Last Lectures

2007-09-30T19:12:00.000-04:00

I've seen a couple of blog posts about the Last Lecture of Dr. Randy Pausch at Carnegie Mellon.

For me, at least, it was more notable for what wasn't said. In the video, Dr. Pausch seems to be upbeat and even chipper. Even on my best days, I'm not nearly as confident or positive.

Maybe one's perspective changes when confronted with a terminal illness, or maybe he was feeding off the energy of the audience (one of the things I enjoy about teaching), but I think it's too much of a longshot to count on a personality change when confronted with such a challenge. Indeed, if I recall correctly from Tuesdays with Morrie, even Morrie Schwarz allowed himself a few minutes of sadness and self-pity every day.

Which reminded me that while we can all admire and be inspired from people like Dr. Pausch and Morrie, in the end, particularly in our most vulnerable moments, we have to live and deal with who we are. And our choices should probably realistically reflect our tendencies and limitations.

Which, as you might expect, got me thinking....

Which.....eventually....reminded me that I've been to a Last Lecture, although we didn't know it till after the fact.

In the fall of 1989 as a college junior, I took Analytical Mechanics from Dr. Lewis Salter. Dr. Salter, of course, was a man of a different generation, born in 1926 and spent most of his life in liberal arts colleges in the Midwest. He was President of Wabash College from 1978-1989, but if he was famous it was certainly in a pre-internet and more centralized media environment. (There seems to have been no New York Times obituary -- the only search result is in -- what else -- an article about Wabash remaining all male.)

Some time in 1988 or early 1989 he too was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and must've thought about his Last Lecture. His decision was to resign the Presidency and return to teaching. We were a class of 8 physics majors, and if I recall correctly, his only teaching course. It was a bit of a thrill to have a college president calibre person as an instructor. After all, two years before he had "rang in" our freshman class with the 1830's Caleb Mills bell.

Dr. Salter was, as you might expect, "old school": chalk and blackboard for him, paper and pencil for students, and 'thinking' for us all. If he lectured from notes, they were minimal -- his was the 19th and early 20th century style of lecturing. But it's the style I admire the most when done right. Like Tibetan Mandalas, physical truths were shared only to be erased from the blackboard to be carried forth by the students.

Sometime in October of that year, Dr. Salter became too ill to teach and died within a week of missing his first class. Our replacement instructor was a retired professor of the same vintage. We had a moment of silence, then on with the lecture.

I had heard that we was still working on research problems "to the end", and only now (yes, thanks to the internet) learned that he published a paper posthumously on solutions to Schrödinger's equation. This equation, incidentally, was proposed by Erwin Schrödinger in 1926, the year Dr. Salter was born. It mentions right in the abstract that "The approach is aimed at student exploration...."

Dr. Salter was only 63 when he died (he seems much older in my memory), and he did not have any young children at that point in his life. So I imagine that to some extent he had greater choice in how his last year would be spent. And even though he chose to return to an ordinary classroom of Waugh Hall overlooking the autumn tinged Wabash mall, his Last Lecture deserves mention on the 'blogosphere' as much as anyone's.

Co-op Blog

2007-09-10T23:07:00.000-04:00

Decided to try a joint blog for the co-op. Updates on herding and taming just four of NYC's three year-olds will be posted here.

Managment Material?

2007-09-10T22:32:00.000-04:00

OK, so tomorrow is Day 1 of a three-part management skills workshop at work. Today I took an online "test" to figure out what type of person I am.

Turns out it's Creative. Great!

When it comes to my "i dimension" (i=influence) the report says that the words that best describe me are

pessimistic
aloof
withdrawn
self-conscious
reticent

Geez. Does it count if I'm able to laugh at this?

Seen on city streets...

2007-09-10T22:29:00.000-04:00

Looks like Ellie's future license plate is already taken:

Welcome To School

2007-09-09T16:27:00.000-04:00

Well, after seven months of planning over Sunday brunches, we'll be starting our pre-school co-op tomorrow, with three other families in the (greater) neighborhood.

It will probably be ad-lib for several weeks, as getting four three-year-olds to more-or-less do something (desirable) together at the same time is probably a bit ambitious for now.

But we do have a School Song, Welcome to School, written by Karen and arranged by me. We're going to work out the bridge a bit more (this came to me as a voicemail from Sofia's cell phone). But here was the premiere just this morning:

Guitar Man 2004

2007-09-05T19:53:00.000-04:00

I actually found the video capture file on our hard drive from the time we took Ellie there when she was four days old. Somehow I managed to turn on the camera for this song -- some sort of divine luck, because I certainly didn't record everything and cherry pick this:

Though I started going in the summer of 2001 -- my personal annus horribilis -- this may be why such days in the park are hormonally imprinted into all of us...

The song is I Can't Wait and is one of David's originals.

Art Scene

2007-09-03T13:13:00.000-04:00

Awhile ago I was flipping through an art book at home, and quite accidently stumbled upon this:

I about jumped out of my chair. You see, that was painted in 1974, and today, the scene looks like this:
I walk by here every day that I leave our apartment as this is 79th Street and Broadway; when I come home from work, I exit the subway right there.

It's not that different, of course. But I never expected to see part of my day-to-day life in art books.

The former is a painting by Richard Estes, who apparently lives somewhere in the neighborhood, because there are nearly a dozen such paintings, based on photos that he took up and down Broadway for the past 35 years.

Here is one looking uptown at 79th and Broadway: and here it is today (from not quite the same angle):

When I've seen these 20th century photo-quality paintings in museums, I've always sort-of wondered "What's the point?".

But at least today, I smiled a bit more than usual walking up and down Broadway, thinking that it's both changed and not changed over my lifetime.

And I wonder, if people like this had stumbled across themselves in a museum in the 1560s, would they think there's a point?

Saturday In the Park

2007-09-01T22:01:00.003-04:00

We've had a beautiful Labor Day Weekend here in the City. We spent all of Saturday afternoon on "the hill" overlooking Central Park Lake listening to That Guitar Man, otherwise known as David Ippolito.

It's hard to know what part was best:

The music
The mixture of tourists and locals, saris and jeans
The guy who looked like Rupert Murdoch, telling strangers he used to work on Wall Street, but was there alone and fell asleep curled up like a baby
The fact that he emptied his guitar case of donations and bought everyone hot dogs
You never know who's in the audience, like Sid Bernstein
Or who might sing, like Christine Lavin
Or singing along to someone's wedding dance -- this couple was from Bristol, England

Or just watching your child, who you first brought here at age four days, dance in the sun-dappled shade to Jack and Diane, seeing that even growing up in the Big Apple she'll know something sweet about the Heartland [at 2:30].

I took some video on our little Canon point & shoot. The quality isn't so good, partly from the technology of converting it to mpeg, and partly because it's always better to just be there.

Nonetheless, I hope some of the magic makes it through:

They're Gr-r-reat!

2007-08-25T17:30:00.000-04:00

I was watching the Little League World Series today while eating lunch with Ellie, and saw this during the commercials:

Now I don't know about you, but the first thought to my mind was, "Man, even Tony's been popping the 'roids?!".

You decide. Here's a box of Tony's from 1987:

And they say "there's no cereal box immortality" for Mr. Bonds.

Once a band geek...

2007-07-08T13:20:00.000-04:00

By the end of high school, I'd had enough of the whole marching band scene. But at one point I was interested enough to follow the Drum and Bugle Corps -- these are near-professional über-bands that do nothing but practice a 15 minute show 15 hours a day for 2-3 months every summer. Besides, at the time Bloomington had its own new ("corporate-sponsored") corps, Star of Indiana, and hosted a summer competition. Drum corps tapes were passed from walkman to walkman (remember those? -- they were new then) on band trips.

At some point, it all seemed a bit cult-ish. Or maybe it was just part of going off to college (one that didn't have a marching band, I might add). So, for twenty years I really hadn't thought much about drum lines, 8-to-5 steps, or how polyester is not breezy in August, but porous in November.

But now it's high school reunion time, which means you get some sort of Biological Condition that makes you remember these things. Problem now is that we have Google and You Tube, so in a matter of minutes I was watching old shows from the 80's and forwarding links to friends. Shortly after that, I was searching for the nearest show to NYC.

And so, last night we ended up in Allentown, Penn. at the DCI Eastern Classic, watching and listening to people who weren't even born the last time I'd seen a show. For those of you who haven't experienced 100+ drummers and buglers blasting away into your face, here's an excerpt of the Phantom Regiment's show:

After twenty years of abstinence, it was intoxicating. Even if we were sitting on the minus-ten yard line. That's right, we had a dead-on view of the goalposts; every high-school band student from 200 miles around must've bought tickets early.

For any fellow band geek out there, here's a brief review:

The Madison Scouts still seem to be all-male. And they were the only corps to take advantage of their chorale warm-up by warming up the crowd. Tricky, but good.
Santa Clara Vanguard, for me, remains high-performance but somehow not completely satisfying.
Carolina Crown (which I don't think existed "back then") was sweet and wonderful musically. They were the only ones that had the crowd leaping to their feet on the last note -- no cerebral delay due to high-brow music.
Phantom Regiment still rocks. Wow.
The Cadets (aka "Garfield"). Hmm. Being twenty years older, I now recognize the genotype: they are the FIJIs or Goldman Sachs of drum corps. Arrogant, but undeniably a fine machine. But this year it's their show that's annoying -- they've got some narration being amplified all throughout their show. It's full of clichés, self-satisfaction ("Excellent!" it shouts at one point) and has way too many over-aspirated Ps that Pop and Pound till all you want to say is "Puck off!". The anti-Cadets faction (which is probably most other corps) is putting out "Shut up and Play" tee shirts. That's pretty succinct and right on.

Sadly, the Cadets appear to have won, with Phantom Regiment finishing second. Just as well that we didn't stay for the scores, but then that was never the point for me anyway.

Pianoversary

2007-07-05T22:54:00.000-04:00

Somewhere in the last couple of weeks I passed my fourth anniversary of re-starting piano lessons. It's been fantastic (well, maybe not for the neighbors), and I now approach the piano in a way I couldn't have imagined even existing. (That's not to say I play better than I can imagine.)

By now I've heard the same aphorisms many times. (My teacher is very patient.) And they're not only worth hearing again from time to time, but worth writing down lest I forget. If they seem like Zen Koans to you, then you've got a good idea of what this trip has been like.

Thou shalt Not Reach.

I don't go the notes. The notes come to me.

The faster I play, the slower I move.

Speed is only a state of mind.

The preparation is in the opposite direction of the intent: to go right, first go left.

The shortest distance between two points is a curve.

Any muscle that's not helping is hurting.

If you spend 15 minutes in the gym, you've spent 15 minutes practicing the piano.

One doesn't play the piano with the fingers. They may touch the keys, but the playing comes from all of you.

People confuse mechanics and technique. Mechanics is how to play the written notes; technique is the ability to achieve your intent.

Music is comprised of Breath, Tone and Pulse. If any of those are missing, it's dead.

There is Structural Analysis, Harmonic Analysis and then there is Emotional Analysis.

The great pianists aren't making it look easy; it IS easy. (For them, of course.)

"Genius" is mostly wrongly applied to music. Playing the piano is learning a craft, and that can be taught.

It's as if our bodies are built perfectly for playing: every joint, muscle and tendon is used in beautiful playing.

Understanding is not the same thing as accomplishing.

OK, so the last one is mine. At best, I think I now have an understanding. The accomplishing may take the better part of a decade, but I'm looking forward to it.

Kiev Photo Highlights

2007-06-29T22:52:00.000-04:00

I've made a photo show of the Kiev portion of our trip. It can be downloaded from here for the next 7 days. Be sure to save it with a .exe extension. (And, sorry, this is a Windows executable.)

There's music, so have the speakers on.

God Save What, Exactly? And How?

2007-06-26T19:00:00.000-04:00

This photo was a keeper. Apparently the UK is launching some new "hunter/killer" submarine. All fine and good, as far as defense spending goes.

But check out the goofy smile on the clergyman, happily shepherding the nuclear reactor and tomahawk missiles to sea. He's either so giddy from being next to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, or from being in the papers that he somehow missed the fact that the tenets of Christianity have nothing to do with anything "hunter/killer".

Pure irony, isn't it? Another fine example of what institutionalized religion can achieve.

I started keeping an eye out for these situations a few years ago after reading an introduction to post-modernism. While I think I learned that there must be dozens of vague and not-necessarily-compatible meanings, one thing that stuck is that in a "post-modern" world, "traditional" symbols show up in all kinds of nonsensical -- that is, to say "ironic" -- places.

One of the authors collected clippings and photos of this sort of irony. My favorite example was from a trip to Japan: in Tokyo he found a pendant with Santa Claus nailed to the cross.

Now I wonder if the Japanese pendant-maker wasn't so far off-base.

Tarakan

2007-06-24T15:13:00.000-04:00

Although two-thirds of my household speaks Russian, I haven't picked up much. What I do know tends to be things you say to young children ("Careful!", "That's garbage, come over here!"). And then there are the odds and ends that are usually not very useful in adult conversation.

One such word is tarakan, meaning "cockroach". I learned this from a cartoon version of one of Chukovsky's tales. The gist of the story is that all the animals in the forest -- lions, bears, elephants, etc., are running away from the all-feared Tarakan. At some point a kangaroo comes into the picture and asks what the big deal is, and is told "Shhh! He'll EAT you!" It eventually comes to an end when a sparrow flys down and makes about three chews and a gulp out of the cockroach.

I'm told it's an allegory of Stalin. While I'm not so sure (he really did "eat" people, and I can't think of who could've been the sparrow), it does seem to be a good moral tale for more ordinary politicians, or just plain bullies. Ellie knows this story well, which I find all well and good.

On our recent trip to Ukraine, we visted Crimea. One of the side trips was to the cave city of Chufut Kale. Various peoples (early Christians, Goths, Monglos, Karaite Jews) have lived there over the last 1,500-plus years. Today it's at the end of a short hike and you can wander around looking at ruins and admiring the view.

When we approach the gates are closed. A bit of dispair sets in, and then we hear the chains and padlock rattle. Some guy is standing there with a money belt, and otherwise nothing official-looking. He asks us for 12 Hryvnia (about $2.40) each for admission. While this is not much, the guidebook warned us of imposters, and we decided to stick to our principles.

Sofia, being the only one speaking any Useful Russian between us, quizzes him a bit, pointing out there are no signs, and no ticket office. I tell her to ask for an ID. He has none. They spar a bit more, all the while my patience are thinning. Finally I roll my eyes saying, "This is bulls**t" and walk in. (It feels good to be the grunting, inarticulate Bad Cop.) Sofia follows and we're yelled at some more, with threats of being locked in for the night. As we go around the bend, he loudly makes some cell phone call and Sofia hears a "[Blah Blah] -- Go after them."

OK, so the hearts were pounding a bit (I really didn't want to visit a Ukrainian police station), but we eventually saw other people walking around. We stopped one (a foreigner like us) -- he had paid the guy. We were both proud and nervous. Eventually we settled down and took in the late afternoon cliff-views, sounds of the swallows, some tomb of some Khan's descendant, and peered into the Karaite synagogue. It is well worth it if you find yourself in Crimea.

And so it was time to go back. We get back to the gate, and of course He Is Still There, letting in a large group this time. They say "Of course we bought tickets!" and shoot us dirty looks. (We then realized they were on a guided trip, which doesn't prove anything.) So with the chance of making a scene off the menu of tactics, we walk up to the gate, which he is busily locking. There are teenagers outside, and it turns out that they want in, and weren't expecting to pay either. Sofia tells him that if he's going to lie for money, he at least shouldn't be so lazy and make a sign. It escalates a bit, and certainly the group outside hears it. Eventually, as we expected, he decided to cut his losses and opened the gate. The teenage girls are crying. We tell them that he's got no radio or ID, and should pay him no attention and walk in. When we left them it was a standoff -- don't know what they ended up doing. We walked back down to the car (which we had unnecessarily paid somebody for a parking spot -- hence our determination not to be fooled twice), telling everyone going the other way to give the guy a hard time. Much too late, I remembered the story of the Tarakan. Would've been nice to use it as an epithet.

When we get back to Yalta to Sofia's mom and Ellie, we recount the tale. I try to boil it down for Ellie. Showing her the picture of the gate I say "We saw a tarakan behind this gate." Big Eyes. "He tried to take our money." Bigger Eyes. "We said No!" (Not mentioning the parking guys.) While walking to dinner Ellie is repeating "No, No, Tarakan You Can't Take My Money! No, no!"

When we sit down to order, thinking the day of cockroaches is over, Ellie turns to the waitress, narrows her eyes and says slowly "Do not bring us any tarakans." The waitress didn't flinch and said "No, no, don't worry. We don't serve any cockroaches."

Well, maybe the moral of the tale needs some focusing -- but lessons and laughs all the way 'round.