Hallowe'en

I don't do a lot, as an adult, for Hallowe'en. (I can't dress up today, anyway - I have a field lab this afternoon and anything remotely costumey would be uncomfortable or unsafe. I AM wearing a t-shirt with a bat on it, though).

I don't know why. I guess I always took Hallowe'en to be a kids holiday. (Don't get me wrong, here - I'm not saying you're stupid if you celebrate it or go all-out as an adult, it's just not something I do). I think part of it is I'm so busy this time of the semester - it's Midterms and it's also the time when I'm trying to wrap up research - that it just gets away from me.

I do do one thing: hand out candy to any kids who come trick or treating. I enjoy that.

Two really cute/memorable costumes from years past:

1. a very tiny little girl - probably 2 or 3 - in a homemade (really detailed - probably made by Grandma) Tweety Bird costume. So cute.

2. Two little boys, very likely twins, dressed in identical army-fatigue suits. (They were probably 6 or 7). When I gave them their candy, they stood at attention (military style!) and said, in unison, "Thank you, ma'am!" That was so cute it almost killed me.

This year, my coleader and I decided to cancel Youth Group for the week - so the younger kids could go out trick or treating and so the older kids could go to a "teen event" (a chaperoned dance) tonight. (And I have to admit I'm glad to have the chance to hand out candy. I ran out the day after we decided that and bought a big big bag of little Twix bars, and a couple bags of snack-packs of mini oreos, and a big big bag of Kit Kats. I like to give out the "good" candy - I hope these qualify as "good" in the eyes of the kids trick or treating)

One thing that bugs me? All of these places - malls and things and even, I think, the local hospital - are advertising "Come with your kids and trick or treat at our place. It is a 'safe and fun' alternative!"

Um, yeah. I'm kind of insulted by that "safe." It almost seems to imply that people's neighbors are carefully inserting pins into the Snickers bars or injecting peanut butter cups with LSD or something. I suppose in some towns, people really DON'T know their neighbors well enough, but it bugs me. It bugs me that malls and places are playing on the loss-of-trust of other people, and that they're probably figuring, "If we get the moms and dads in with the kids trick-or-treating, we will probably be able to sell them something."

As for "fun" - well, when I was a kid and saw E.T. and saw the kids trick-or-treating in the daylight, and my mom explained to me that in some communities they were worried enough about safety to do that, I thought "what a rip." I suspect there are still enough kids - or at least I hope there are still enough kids, in this bubble-wrapped society we have - who feel like "What a rip" when they go trick or treating at the mall.

Going trick or treating at night to people's houses was FUN. It was fun because it felt a teeny tiny bit naughty - you were ASKING for candy, and you were permitted to do that! And it was at night - my parents would let my brother and me go out to look at the stars, or catch fireflies, or stuff, but the rule is we had to stay in the yard (or, if we were playing flashlight tag with the kids across the street, stay in their yard). We weren't allowed to roam the neighborhood. And with trick or treating, we DID roam - we probably walked well over a mile, all the way up to the part of the neighborhood we normally never went, because it was "too far," and, except for Lisa E., neither of us had friends who lived out that way.

And you were in costume. To be out, at night, in costume, and asking for candy was pretty intoxicating to a normally rule-following child like me. It felt like I was being BAD. But it was a type of BAD I was allowed to get away with.

So, I don't know - but to me, trick or treating at a mall (or in the downtown of a town, like they do here) would feel like a very poor substitute.

And, of course, living where I live, there are people who don't like Hallowe'en. Who say it's a day for the devil. Who talk about the paganism rampant on this day.

And you know? I just shrug. Sure, there are pagan associations to the day - it's Samhain, in the old Celtic calendar - but there are also Christian associations - it's All Hallow's Eve, the day before All Saint's Day.

And the way I look at it? It's a day to laugh at what scares you. And isn't laughing at what might ordinarily scare you (like, death) something you might want to do, as a Christian?

I've also heard a few rumblings from other quarters - that it's a "wasteful" day, because of all the candy bought (all those wrappers, going to the landfill!) and the costumes - far better, they say, to make a costume out of old clothes and give out unwrapped treats (but then, that contradicts the "safe" mantra above).

I've also heard people talk about the caloric impact of this day - all that candy, all that sugar. Let the kids have a piece or two and then take the rest away from them. (But I will say I also heard a nutritionist speaking last week who said: "It's only one day out of the year. Let the kids have the candy. Kids have to have fun, sometimes." Which seems a more sane response, to me.)

I don't know. I wonder sometimes if in the future we will just have amorphous "holiday days" rather than actual, dedicated holidays, because it seems no matter what, someone gets offended by the observances.

When I was a kid in school, we got to bring out costumes to school on Hallowe'en. In the afternoon, after lunch, we changed into them, and had a parade around the school grounds. Lots of mothers would show up to take pictures (my mom has pictures of both me and my brother - I was usually some kind of animal, my brother was, depending on the year, a cowboy or a robot or a sports star or a rock star). Then we had a party - we got Hi-C punch (Hi-C punch seemed to be a fixture of school parties) and orange-frosted chocolate cupcakes and we got to be in the classrooms in our costumes. And then we went home, and after dinner, went out trick-or-treating.

It sounds like kind of a small thing, now, but it was something that loomed large in the school year - a party (we got to have 3 parties: Hallowe'en, a Christmas-but-we're-not-calling-it-that party before the Christmas break, and a Valentine's day party). It WAS a big deal - no classes in the afternoon, Hi-C punch, cupcakes, a chance to talk with your friends instead of learning about fractions or the Civil War.

I hope kids today get the chance to do that kind of stuff. I think having things to look forward to - even small things - is important. And I also think being able to enjoy and appreciate little things like being able to wear a costume in class and have a cup of Hi-C punch is also important.

funny PSAs

A lot of PSAs, I don't care too much for. But there are a series running now that I think make their point effectively. A seedy looking guy walks up to someone in a coffee shop, shows him a rumpled piece of paper, and begins the spiel that he's got ALLLLLLL this money, he just needs a bit of assistance getting it out of his country, and the person who helps him will get a share.

Or, a punk-looking teenager is shown telling people they've won the lottery.

Of course, in both cases, the person is brushed off by their potential victim...because who's foolish enough to fall for such a thing?

But obviously people are, when it comes over the internet. ("If it's on the Internet, it must be true"?)

I've probably gotten 500 of those Nigerian-scam e-mails - some claim to be the widow of a highly-placed military official. Some claim to be some kind of deposed prince. Once, one claimed to be from the illegitimate son of Saddam Hussein. Most recently, I got one from someone claiming to be a former British MP who had money in a big settlement.

Of course they're all bogus. (And these scams existed before the widespread nature of the internet - both my father and my graduate advisor received LETTERS - actual, physical letters on that blue air-mail paper - from someone in Nigeria claiming to have a lot of money for them. (My dad turned his in to the Post Office suggesting they investigate it as mail fraud. My graduate advisor was almost considering responding until those of us in his lab convinced him that it was a scam).

But I guess some people must believe them - or else they'd figure out a new tactic.

One of the things I have to admit I find a little interesting is the evolution of "phishing" or other scam techniques...of course there are the phony bank-notice ones (I get ones from banks I didn't even know existed). I've also received a few claiming to be from the IRS, and either claiming I owed more money and was IN BIG TROUBLE unless I sent them my bank account number post-haste (shyeah) or that I was owed a big refund. (Incidentally - both of these I checked, just to be 100% sure. Seeing as the full-header showed them supposedly originating in France, I figured it wasn't even worth my sending them to the real IRS - they probably get swamped with that stuff).

I will say that although it's kind of fascinating from an academic perspective (there was actually an article published in American Scientist on "how many different ways can spammers spell 'viamagra'" and tracing how it changed and mutated over the months - still, it's an annoyance to have to actually deal with. I have to hit my in-box and my "quarantine" box almost daily just to clear out all the crap I get sent. And that's both my personal e-mail and my work e-mail.

(Some of the really horrifyingly depraved spam - at least in what they are offering - actually come to my work address. And no, I don't surf any dodgy sites...I think .edu addresses are just prone to getting bad spam, because they can't differentiate faculty from students. And a few years ago we had a security breach from a disgruntled former employee and it's entirely possible he sold or gave all our addresses to spamming outlets.)

But at any rate - the PSAs make me chuckle, and I hope they do educate a few people who might otherwise be naive and fall for the scams. Because if no one got scammed, then the scammers might go away. Or at least I hope.

comment and counter-comment

Heard on the news: "Relief agencies are amazed at the outpouring of donations and help in response to the wildfires."

My immediate response: "Well, duh! That's how Americans ARE."

Seriously - there are a lot of societal problems here, there are some problems with the country BUT when bad crap happens, people step up and help and do all kinds of unselfish loving acts.

And I thank God that my countrypeople are, by and large, like that.

Oh, and...

It seems that even Pinky is now a spammer.

I just received one labeled "Tnorf-ne"

Sounds like Pinky, at any rate.

the absolute limit

Okay, I think this is about the worst - in terms of the mental picture if you take it to mean what they intend it to mean - or the funniest - if you take it in an "innocent" literal reading - spam message ever:

"She will love a massive meat in through her back door."

Somehow, I'm envisioning clandestine deliveries of the giant-size Hickory Farms smoked hams to the kitchen door of a household where most of the folks have gone vegetarian.

I don't think that's what the spammers had in mind, though.

Petty

Given all that's going on in the world, this is going to be kind of a petty vent.

But, you've been warned.

First off: I cannot stand it when students call to let me know they need to miss an exam (and request a make up) when they KNOW I am in class. It is as if they are afraid of dealing with me in person and won't call me because they are afraid I will say no.

It's even worse when they leave no contact number, just "I'll try calling you again." I am not planning on sitting my office waiting for your call. It is Friday. I have fieldwork to do. Even if I didn't - it is Friday.

I also cannot stand the students who come to class when there is a quiz or short test - when we are doing something after the test - who come, take the test, and leave. I have made it a point of, as I hand out the test, telling the students what we will be doing after the test so that they have no excuse to say, "But I didn't KNOW we were having class after the test!"

And of course it goes without saying that I cannot stand it when people show up ONLY for the exams, and then wonder why they're failing.

You know, it occurs to me that perhaps some of the problems we have in this nation may be related to a breakdown in the belief or understanding of cause-and-effect. That people don't learn from their mistakes. I've had students repeat my class, where they failed the first time because they partied-hardy and didn't spend time studying. And then they take the class again, and do the SAME DAMN THING.

Look: if it didn't work the first time, why do you think it will work the second time? If I mix up a bunch of ingredients and stick them in a pan and cook it up and it tastes like crap when it's done, I'm not going to do that recipe again - or at least not do it the same way.

Oh, and another thing: DNA fingerprinting has NOTHING AT ALL to do with actual fingerprints.

I just needed to get that off my chest. It drives me up the wall every year - I teach about the process, I show them examples, I explain why it's used, and then on the exam I ask "What is it and where is it used" and at least 20% of the people say "DNA fingerprinting is getting DNA out of the fingerprints left at a crime scene" Durr! Even though I make a BIG POINT that it requires "bodily fluid" - blood, semen, saliva, or something like hair follicles or skin.

I guess these folks don't watch any of the various CSI clones?

And don't even get me started on stem cells. They ask us to 'teach to the controversy.' I'm sorry, but how does one do that when the majority of students don't even know what a stem cell is?

I don't know. I was fairly insulated as a college student but even I watched the news on tv or listened to it on the radio, and read a newspaper, at least on Sundays. (And actually? A good big-city Sunday paper is a lovely way to spend a long quiet Sunday afternoon.)

So I don't know. I don't know where to start with some of the students. I don't want to cover trivial stuff - like one of my colleagues said, "The textbook - as its example on enzymes - says that they're used to make stonewashed jeans. How does that matter?" But I don't know any more. Some of the students, it seems their level of background understanding IS trivial.

What really gets me? We're gearing up for a "major overhaul" of the course - because the students don't do well on assessment tests. This involves a lot of work and a lot of changes. And I have a sinking feeling we'll be doing this again in another 3 years. Sometimes it is not US, sometimes it is THEM. I try to make the topics interesting - I look up all the 'applications,' I try to get discussions going on the different issues. I try to find interesting stories that illustrate the points.

But - you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. There is only so much I can do. Don't get me wrong - some of the students ARE doing well and they seem pretty interested based on the questions they ask and the points they bring up. And I get decent evaluations. But it's that 10% or so of people who sit there dead-eyed that drive me up the wall.

Glad

I'm glad I'm busy and don't have time to watch the self-styled pundits discussing the fires on the news or on chat-shows. Tracey is talking about it a little bit and it's making me angry, attitudes of people like Katie Couric and George Carlin.

Look - yes, you have opinions. But it's not the time, not the place to spew them. And incidentally - it's bad form to ask a firefighter why he isn't doing "more." I KNOW a few firefighters. You won't find a more doing-all-they-can-when-there-is-a-need profession (unless, perhaps, you look at the Marines). They are not magic. They are NOT Dumbledore, people, they can't wave a magic wand (heh...given Rowling's recent comment, that has two meanings) and make the fires go away.

Once again I am amazed at the inability of some people to understand a very simple fact of life, which is:

Stuff happens.

Sometimes that stuff is bad and there's sometimes nothing to be done about it. It is no one's fault. It is how the world works. What we are called to do (at least, this is what I believe) is to get in there and work, do what we can, to try to ameliorate the effects of that bad stuff. And that DOES NOT include flappin' your gums about people "overbuilding" and crap. We can have that discussion later. Not while people are sleeping in tents and worrying about their dogs.

I have to say it kind of kills me that I'm not closer, that there's not something more concrete I can do other than praying and sending a check to Salvation Army.

That said...my two California cousins are OK, and I am thankful for that. (Actually, my cousin D. - he lives in Bakersfield, and I had forgotten that he had moved there recently, so he's out of any fire area. But still). And it seems like my IIFs are all OK, and I'm grateful for that.

And it sounds like they think the winds may die back tomorrow, and give the firefighters a chance to kick fire butt. I hope that they will.

uhhhh....

Some of you know I teach a Youth Group every Wednesday night at my church. They are mostly 12-18 year olds, mostly boys.

Well, I began working my way through the Sermon on the Mount with them a month or so ago - I had read someone who said, "Protestants don't pay enough attention to the Sermon on the Mount!" and so I thought that was a good enough reason to use it as my teaching focus for this quarter.

I've been going through Jesus' discussion of each of the commandments each week. This week, I'm up to Matt. 5: 27-31.

Um, yeah. The adultery ones.

I looked at them, and I thought...should I just "blip" over these, go on to the next one (on not saying stuff you don't mean). I mean - the local public schools DO offer abstinence-based sex ed.

And then I thought, no. Yes, it's kind of uncomfortable for me to talk about sex, especially in front of a group of teenaged boys, and I admit I'll probably be euphemism-pa-looza tomorrow night (I've already used in my write up words like "don't run around," and "faithful" and stuff like that).

I'm kind of downplaying Jesus' words on divorce because many - if not most - of the kids are from what used to be called "broken homes." In one case the divorce came because of abuse going on in the household. And I don't want to make them feel worse than they already do (I know they do) about the whole family situation.

But - I'm taking the "no adultery" part of the lesson as a (basically) three-pronged approach:

first - when you marry, you are faithful to your spouse. That means both emotionally faithful as well as the more traditional 'sleeping with' faithful. I've seen couples get into problems because one member of the couple had a "work husband" or "work wife" where they developed a strong emotional attachment to this person at work, and they'd confide in them, and kind of neglect their real spouse emotionally. And although that's perhaps not as shattering as a true affair, it still really sucks to be the spouse of someone who has such a GREAT friend at work that they share EVERYTHING with and they're less willing to share with you.

second- when you're dating, if you think the person you're dating might be "the one," don't run around on them - and (perhaps paradoxically) don't rush into things. (for "things" read sex. I said I was going to be euphemism-pa-looza.). Part of dating is sort of learning what makes the person tick, so you can determine if you can spend an entire lifetime with them, or if they have traits that turn out to be "dealbreakers." I've seen far, far, far too many hasty marriages that wound up either unhappy or divorced because the people involved were drawn in by lust and didn't think about personality or attitudes.

And then, finally - treating people of the opposite sex with respect. Basically - don't objectify people. See them as children of God. And it's hard to do that when you're spending all your time talking about the "tight buns" or "ginormous rack" of the person.

So, hopefully it will work okay. Hopefully the kids will neither fall into derisive laughter at my spinster euphemisms, nor will they be so embarrassed about the idea ("Sex! Mentioned in CHURCH!") that they totally clam up.

*****

Oh, and welcome to Soapbox Diva! And maybe I wasn't clear - I'm not saying that all "childish things" need to be put away when one is an adult - in fact, I have a pretty healthy teddy bear collection myself, and 80% of the dvds I own are cartoon-oriented (several of the Miyazake movies, and the box set of Animaniacs). I think adulthood is more knowing what is appropriate, when.

Another C.S. Lewis quotation: "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

I think perhaps the desire to look sophisticated - and that desire being so strong that someone can't plop down on the sofa and enjoy, say, "Pinky and the Brain" or a good old Bugs Bunny cartoon - is actually part of the permanent-adolescence problem.

I think nightfly has a good point - the undergrown adults are aping adult behavior because they think it makes them grown-up, when what they are totally missing are the attitudes of respect, responsibility, and appropriateness that are what really make a grown-up.

I remember once commenting to a friend, "Why is it that things that are labeled "adult comedies" are so often extremely juvenile in their attitudes?"

Don't get me wrong - sex and such can be funny in some situations - but so often a lot of the "special unrated editions" of dvds seem so aimed at pushing the envelope of bad taste that I don't see anything "adult" about the comedy.

so many prayers...

My prayers (for safety and also for freedom-from-fear) are going out to the people in Southern California who are affected by the fires. I don't just have IIFs (Invisible Internet Friends) out there, I have flesh-and-blood friends and also flesh-and-blood relatives (a cousin - as far as I know he's okay; I haven't heard anything. We don't talk on a regular basis so I'm not worried that I've not heard anything).

I do not live in a fire-prone region (our main natural-disaster threat is tornadoes, which is different from a fire storm in a lot of ways), so I don't know what it's like but it looks very frightening.

And as Emily said on her blog - stay safe, and when they tell you to leave, you pay attention to that, okay? Don't make this another New Orleans.

At any rate - stay safe. Hopefully some of the giant tanker planes the Feds are sending today will help make a dent in the fires.

And more personal prayers, prayers of another sort:

Joel has a beautiful post up about prayers for Lauren (the tiny child with neuroblastoma; the one upon whose behalf a great many FOs have been issued against cancer on the FFOT. And you know...when I think about it, in a kind of twisted way those FOs themselves are a form of prayer...a recognition that something is Not Right and a hope that somehow things can change). He compares the situation to the OT lectionary reading from this past Sunday, how Aaron and Hur held up Moses' hands against the Amelekites (I have to admit this is a passage I am less familiar with than many). And Joel observes that praying for others is like that - that you are helping them to hold up their hands, that you are providing some amount of strength and assistance to them in a difficult time.

It's a nice metaphor and one I will remember. I earlier talked about how I sometimes envisioned prayer as sort of an invisible spiritual net that the pray-ers try to set up under the person being prayed for. And I like that image too, because it reminds me to pray for the FAMILIES of the afflicted person as well. As someone who has had seriously ill relatives, I'm well aware that the family members are almost as much in need of that "net" to hold them up as the ill person is.

One of the things that strikes me - and humbles me again and again - about people of faith is how WILLING - no, how EAGER they are to offer up prayers for assistance or healing for people they have never even met. I think it's perhaps because so many of them see us as being all connected...it's kind of like the bit in one of the early Star Wars movies where (I think it was) Ben Kenobi made the comment that he "felt a great disturbance in the Force" when the evil Empire snuffed out a bunch of innocent lives.

(And I have to say I liked the Old-School Star Wars way of dealing with the Force - leaving it somewhat mysterious, so that you could almost accept that it was their way of describing the Holy Spirit - rather than the New-School "midchlorian" explanation, which seemed clunky and mechanistic and not-full-of-wonder to me. When I was a kid, I loved the idea of the Force.)

At any rate - that kind of plugged-in, everyone-is-my-brother-deep-down feeling - it's a good thing.

One of the memorable scenes from My Antonia - which is one of my favorite novels - is when the Mr. Shimerdas (the father of the recent-immigrant, Bohemian family) starts to pray over something (I don't remember what) in front of Jim Burden and his grandfather. Now, the Shimerdas are foreign (and, presumably, Catholic - and Jim and his grandparents are old frontier Protestant), and there's a moment where you think there might be some rejection there (remembering how badly some Protestants in my country have treated Catholics over the years - and that's one thing I think we as Protestants should be ashamed of), but it doesn't happen - Mr. Shimerdas' prayer is accepted by those being prayed for. And later, Jim's grandfather makes the comment that, "The prayers of all good people are good."

And you know? I believe that.

death of childhood, death of adulthood?

This is something I've been wondering about.

For years, I've been hearing people (especially mothers of young girls, it seems) talking about the "death of childhood" - where kids are pushed to be "sophisticated" or "grown up" (really - acting old beyond their years). The sort of trampy clothes sold for pre-teens, the fact that lots of girls seem to give up playing with dolls and such at increasingly early ages, the pressure to start dating so young. (I know of ten year olds who "date." While I realize that's not like, say, 18 year olds "dating," still, it sets up certain expectations that are probably kind of heavy for such a young kid.)

Of course this has come to a head with the talk about birth control pills being offered to girls potentially as young as 11. (Which just blows my mind...digression time...

When I was 11, I was still sewing doll clothes and still playing with my Kermit the Frog doll. I knew the facts of life but was in NO rush to put them to the test. In fact, if you'd asked me at 11 about having sex, I probably would have grudgingly said, "Well, when I'm like 28 and married and if I want to have a baby, I suppose I will HAVE to." I still thought the whole idea was incredibly gross.

Now, granted - for me puberty didn't kick in until 13 or 14, but even then, even at 15 and 16 and 17, I still figured I was not ready. Especially not ready if it meant I might have a kid as a result.

But anyway. I realize it was 25 years ago now, but still...even then...I think I was in a lot of ways a sheltered and kind of backwards kid. I was still interested in teddy bears and dolls when my friends were experimenting with makeup and hairstyles. I refer to having had my first "boyfriend" at 10, but really - he was the first boy I didn't think was icky and that I wanted to talk to. It was incredibly innocent - we sat across from each other in homeroom and we used to talk and laugh. We never even held hands or anything like that.

And you know? Thank God I had those experiences. Thank God I had those innocent times to sort of try things out on, instead of being plunged hardcore into the world of "real" boyfriends and dating and worrying about my appearance and stuff.

And I'm glad I played with toys for as long as I did. I have good memories to look back on - years spent sprawled on the floor building stuff out of Lego bricks. [and, okay, maybe when I was perhaps a bit past the age when it was considered acceptable, I still did play with them - but I had the argument that "but I'm just spending time with my little brother." I was, but I was also playing with the bricks...]. Years spent building forts out of blankets and dining room chairs. Years making my own paper dolls. (I made a lot of paper dolls. When I got older, I'd check books on historical or ethnic costume out of the library and do it under the guise of research or "preparing for a possible career as a fashion designer" but the truth was, I just liked drawing paper dolls and making clothes for them).

At any rate - I had a fairly protracted and carefree childhood. And now I'm an adult, and although I don't always LOVE shouldering all the responsibilities and requirements of being an adult, I do - because I'm an adult and I feel it is expected of me.

And I wonder sometimes if the strength of my childhood has something to do with that - that I was a child for long enough that I was able to build up into being an adult.

(Follow me here).

Another thing that I hear people bemoaning these days is how so many young adults seem to be stuck in a protracted adolescence - they can't buckle down and WORK, they think the world owes them a living, they don't commit to things, they don't take on the 'trappings' of adulthood. (Though that last one, I don't know about - I wear a watch with Eeyore on it and I'm still a responsible adult. And I have Snoopy pillowcases on my bed pillows at this very moment. And there's nothing wrong with that. But....when you have a job interview, you know? You wear "business casual" or better. I've seen people go into interviews in wife-beater shirts and old torn jeans and wonder why they didn't get the job. Perhaps it's not so much always having the 'trappings' of adulthood as much as it is knowing what is appropriate, when.)

And I wonder if the two things - the death of childhood, and the failure of many 20- (and even in some cases, 30-) somethings to fully graduate to responsible adulthood are linked.

One of the things I guess I absorbed during my protracted childhood were ideas of appropriateness. How to behave. How not to behave. What was important, and what was silly. (Didn't C.S. Lewis, in one of his Narnia books, talk about how Susan had fallen away from the belief in Narnia, and instead taken on a "silly" belief in things like lipsticks and skirts? Or something to that effect?).

In drawing my paper dolls, and looking at the books of dresses for inspiration, I think I learned a little bit about why short skirts were sometimes not OK. And why sometimes it was better to be more covered than less. I think I also kind of absorbed the difference between how children and adults dressed.

I think also the hundreds of little comedies-of-manners I put my stuffed toy animals (or the little plastic zoo animals - I had dozens of those and they were almost like a miniature acting troop, the way I played with them) were my mimicking what I saw the grown-ups doing and saying, my trying to make sense out of things. Trying to learn why some behavior was accepted and other behavior was seen as foolish. (And I was lucky in that I had good models - "acceptable" behavior was not the kind of narrow-minded, "but they're not OUR kind of people" attitude some of my friends' parents had; and foolish behavior was, well, behavior that could bring pain or shame to you.)

I do think childhood is important - as a learning process, as a process of watching the adults and trying to learn how to be one. (And I suppose, sadly, some kids don't have much to work with in the way of models, and that may be part of the problem.)

But I wonder - if kids don't have that kind of "lag time" - where they can sit and think about what they hear the grown ups say, and how they watch the grown-ups act, and try to synthesize it into some kind of reasonable whole, if maybe they have problems being grown up themselves.

What I'm trying to say is, a kid who takes on some of the behaviors of adulthood too early may fail to develop other (possibly more important) behaviors.

Or maybe more baldly: if a kid gets cheated out of childhood, maybe they have a harder time successfully growing up into an adult? The little girls running around in tight sparkly t-shirts with double-entendre messages on them, or (God forbid) sweatpants with "Juicy" on the backside, who ape the suggestive moves of dancers on MTV - they maybe have less of a chance of understanding fully what it means to be female, and maybe become stuck in a caricature? Or the boys who base their behavior on the coarse, rude, but somehow "cool" guy on television - they don't learn what it really is to be a man?

I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud here. But sometimes I wonder if there's a link between kids growing up too fast, and their not growing up completely. And I worry about the future of a nation of 45-year-old adolescents.

switch

In the past few days, it's like a switch has been thrown, and it's finally autumn.

We've gone from days where it gets up into the 90s, with high humidity, and little cool-down at night to days where it's cooler, dryer, and it gets sort of chilly at night.

(I have to say for me, the hardest thing to take, living where I live? Nights that don't cool down. When I lived in Ohio, we used to get some hot days - even hot, humid days - in the summer. But at night it would often drop into the fifties (or at least lower sixties) and it would cool off and the mornings would feel nice. Here, in the summer, mornings often feel like getting slapped by a warm, wet towel. And not a clean towel, either.)

The drier air gets rid of a lot of the stink. One of the things I dislike about humidity is that it seems to hold a lot of smells close to the ground- the diesel exhaust from my neighbors' duallie (and please, don't leave the thing idling in your drive; not only is it loud but it smells), the smells of cooking grease from the Dairy Queen a couple blocks away, the smashed skunk out on the main road. I have a very sensitive nose and there are humid days where I feel like I'm constantly being assaulted with new stinks.

It also gets cooler at night, which is wonderful. I am sleeping much more soundly. I always realize in the fall that I spent a lot of the summer kind of bungling along in a sleep-deprived state. Even with air conditioning, it's really not possible to suck enough humidity out of the summer air, or cool it down enough, to make sleeping easy. In the summer, I wake up every couple hours or so. In the fall and winter, I sleep pretty solidly through the night.

Also, it's QUIETER when it's cooler out at night. Just this past week I realized something - I wasn't hearing the boom cars in the neighborhood any more. Either the owners of the cars have decided that they have to keep their windows rolled up - and even for a boom car owner, I suppose there's a volume that's "too loud" - or they've decided that cruising isn't fun when it's chilly. And I welcome that because every night there had been someone driving through the neighborhood around 11:30 pm - just after I had first dropped off to sleep.

And my neighbors with their new bark-and-whine puppy seem to be keeping it indoors now.

And cooking is more fun when it's chilly out. When it's hot, you don't want to eat much other than salads, and the thought of heating up the kitchen by turning on the stove is unappealing. But when it's cold out, soup sounds good, chili sounds good, doing things in the slow-cooker sounds good. (I bought some country-style ribs the other day; I'm going to put them in the slow cooker shortly so they will be done for dinner tonight). It's pleasant to cook, it's pleasant to nourish yourself. Food becomes more than simply fuel.

Reading also takes on an added dimension of pleasure - curling up on the couch with a huge book and a mug of tea and a quilt, or piling up all the pillows in bed and putting on flannel jammies to read.

It's always a huge relief to me when the heat breaks. I begin to feel alive again.

all together now...

AWWWWWWWWWWW!

weird....

I saw this on someone's blog, but the link seemed to be broken, so I couldn't do it. Then Big Arm Woman had it up on hers - and the link worked:

Your past life diagnosis: I don't know how you feel about it, but you were female in your last earthly incarnation.You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Mexico around the year 1575. Your profession was that of a writer, dramatist or organiser of rituals.

Your brief psychological profile in your past life:
You had the mind of a scientist, always seeking new explanations. Your environment often misunderstood you, but respected your knowledge.

The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:
Magic is everywhere around you, even in the most usual, most ordinary situations. Your lesson is to understand this magic and to help other people to see it, too. You are a magician! Do you remember now?

Oooooo-kaaaaaaay. So was I Latina or was I of the "oppressor" class? What is this "organizer of rituals" you speak of - that sounds seriously voodoo. Was I using chicken blood to divine the future? Or was I like some kind of proto-magical-realism writer? Like a female Jorge Luis Borges?

I also am amused by how I had the mind of a scientist, and yet learned that magic was all around me.

Oh, and apparently I'm a magician. Didn't Mr. Norrell claim that women COULDN'T be?

(OF COURSE I do not believe this. It's silly. Even if I believed in such things as past lives, there's no way the computer could divine mine based on the information given. But if you want to play, go here)

This cat is ME!

....practically every day when I drive to work.

One of my favorite while-driving comments is the sarcastic, "Oh, thanks for the turn signal!" directed at a person who doesn't use it. (One of the turns I have to make to get into campus, if someone doesn't have their turn signal on and they do turn, it means I'm delayed that much more because I expected them to come through straight. I suppose it would be worse if someone had their turn signal on and then DIDN'T turn, but few enough people use their turn signals that I've never seen that happen)

O Bliss! O Joy!

My favorite magazine in the whole wide world used to be "Victoria."

Every month when it came, I'd set aside time - an hour at least - to just sit down and look at it. It was gorgeous - landscape photographs that took your breath away, seasonal shots that were the very ESSENCE of fall - or spring - or winter, beautiful collections of antique buttons or lace or stacks of books.

It was like a very tiny vacation, a respite from some of the ugliness that exists in the modern world.

Then they stopped publishing it.

And I was very sad. And I kept looking for a magazine like it - Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion wasn't quite it, Southern Lady came close but wasn't it either.

And then, this summer, I got a postcard in my mailbox - Victoria is coming back! Do you want a trial copy?

(Does Tasha Tudor live in a house without electricity? Of course I wanted a copy!)

So I sent the card in. And for a few weeks, I looked eagerly at my mailbox. No magazine was forthcoming.

And I sort of forgot about it - I think at one point I thought, well, maybe they didn't get enough investors.

But I opened my mailbox this afternoon - in the middle of this rather unpleasant week - and there it was. The pre-Christmas issue.

I hugged it to my chest - yes, standing right out there by my mailbox - a tiny spontaneous expression of joy.

I removed the plastic protective wrap with a bit of trepidation - what if it wasn't the same? What if it had become another everyday-celebrity-obsessed*, plastic-surgery-fied-beauty touting, "low fat/low cal dishes for HER, "real food" for HIM and the kids" type women's magazine.


(*Yes, Victoria featured people who might be called "celebrities." But it wasn't your run of the mill type celebrity - they did features on Golden Age movie stars, and on authors like Tasha Tudor [well, Tasha Tudor is also worthy of celebritydom for her pure eccentricity], and women who had "gracious businesses" like tearooms and such. Not a pop singer or a stripper-turned-actress in the bunch)

I opened the magazine.

It had the same typeface. The same typeface! You might not realize how important that is.

It has the same departments - I almost cried a little when I saw it had a feature on "calling cards" (unusual business cards for small, often woman-owned, businesses).

It has the same wonderful photography - there's a lovely feature on old Christmas memorabilia, and lovely closeups of old buttons. And wonderful, soul-stirring (well, for this displaced Northerner they are) photographs of snow covered landscapes. (I miss snow. Don't miss driving in it but I do miss having it to look at. It doesn't feel like Christmas to me without snow).

It has the same kind of "don't let the cold hard world intrude" features on gracious living and general niceness.

(Victoria used to have as its motto "Because nice matters," which I always liked. I think they even offered it as a cross-stitch kit, and except for the fact that I don't cross-stitch [I always get off-count and wind up cursing], I'd have bought it).

I don't know. Someone with a colder eye for such things than I have could doubtless point out how it's changed, but to me, it's my dear old Victoria back again, and I'm very happy to see it.

(I will say there are some changes I'd welcome - one of the "welcome back" letters suggested that Victoria run a classic poem - like something by Keats or Frost - each issue, and I have to say I think that would be a fantastic addition).

(And I suppose some people would argue it's a sort of "domestic p0rn," that it portrays the same unrealistic, unaccessible-for-all-but-the-fantastically-wealthy-and-idle sort of world that Martha Stewart has created. And you know - they have a right to their opinion, but I don't agree with them. Just as many people read romance novels for an escape - or watch the Travel Channel - or window-shop, for me, Victoria is a tiny little vacation. Oh, it's not a world I could or would inhabit full-time, but it's certainly nice to visit and imagine about)

But what a nice thing, what a good thing to have back. My life is a tiny bit better with this magazine back in it.

Paging Harry Potter

..or maybe someone who writes Potter-themed sl*sh fiction.

Here's a spam message for you:

"MegaDik is your new magic wand!"

(I'm sorry, but I am just rendered speechless. I cannot even think up a cute rejoinder to go here.)

comfort food III

It was a difficult day all around.

Part of it was the worry about my aunt, part of it the concern over the nonfunctional drainpipe. ("Invisible drainpipe"? Sounds like a LOLcat). Part of it was just that everyone - at least among the students - was either in a foul or a subdued mood because it was pouring down rain today. (And also - high absenteeism.). And, not to go all TMI, but some problems with what one of my friends refers to as "ladystuff."

So I came home, not sure what to do for dinner. (That's a big issue, some nights. Some nights I don't mind taking an hour to cook something interesting and complex, but more and more, when I get home around 4 or 5 and plan to go to bed before 10 - there's just not enough time to do that, get caught up on grading, and have, you know, time for ME to be ME).

But tonight I lucked out. I remembered that I had made bean soup a couple weeks back and stashed a bunch in the freezer (because, as is typical of bean soup recipes, it made Mass Quantities).

This is actually an exceptionally good bean soup. It's roughly based on a recipe I have, but streamlined - you buy a bag of those "Hambeens" things (which is basically every kind of dry bean that is common, plus split peas and lentils). You soak a cup and a half or so of those in water overnight, rinse. Then you boil them up in water to which you add either a ham bone (if you can get one) or ham hocks (if a real ham bone is notforthcoming). You cut up an onion into it too, and dump in a can of chopped up tomatoes. At the very end of cooking, you dump in a cup or so of small pasta (I used some of the La Moderna alphabet noodles I talked about earlier). I also cut up a kielbasa in there because I didn't feel like pulling the fatty meat off the hocks.

I didn't season it well on the first go - the recipe I had called for just salt and pepper and that was too plain. When I reheated the first batch, I put in some cumin and a tiny bit of cayenne pepper and that made it a lot better.

Actually, it was really exceptionally good with the different seasonings. A "lot better" isn't a good enough descriptor.

It's actually not so much a SOUP as it is a stew - there's very little liquid. It's actually kind of like beans and rice, only with macaroni instead of rice (and, well, with kielbasa)

So for the reheat batch from the freezer, I used the same seasonings (I tend to freeze stuff unseasoned; it seems to keep better that way).

So as soon as that's done, I'm going to eat an early dinner (and I think I'm going to make a cup of hot Ovaltine and have some corn chips with the soup).

And then I'm going to go to bed and read. I started a new book on the Spartans (This! Is! Sparta!) the other night and it's pretty interesting; I'm not so much into military history but there's a fair amount in there about how the people lived - which does interest me a lot.

Ancient history is something that really intrigues me - especially Greece and Rome, because they're essentially the foundations of our culture, and yet, in many ways they were so different from us (in how they defined honor, and civic duty, and family vs. tribe).

I thought more on that Nerd Test thing - and you know, I'm not so surprised I scored high on history and literature. I've always loved both those topics and spend a lot of time learning about them "for fun." At one point in my college career I actually seriously considering majoring in Literature (probably British Literature) but after talking to a couple people who were majoring in it, I concluded that it had become far more political - and, at the school I was attending, far sillier, because there were profs who spouted things like, "Every interpretation, no matter how absurd it sounds, is equally valid" - than what I'd be able to tolerate.

Science was far more cut and dried and was less political. (Oh, science can BECOME politicized - just look at the whole global warming climate change issue - there is real science that supports that the climate IS changing, but it's far from as dogmatically clear how much, how caused, and what effects it will have as what some would want to believe. Even some of my own colleagues.). Science also isn't prone to the same kind of po-mo silliness that sometimes literature and culture-related things can devolve into.

So I like science for that. Actually, I like statistics even better - that's even MORE cut and dried, in many ways, than, say, ecology is. (But, then again: there's the frequentist paradigm vs. the Bayesian paradigm, so there's statistics' own controversy. I tend to teach more from a frequentist point of view but do introduce things like bootstrapping and jackknifing - not so much on the Bayesian because my grasp on that is at best tenuous - but I do like my students to know that there are different tools you can use).

Seriously, if I had to do it over again? I might become an engineer. (The math-and-materials kind, not the train-driver kind). Because that seems even more comfortingly cut-and-dried (at least to an outsider) than the life sciences do now.

Complainey

Bulleted list.

* The weekend is never long enough. I can never either get enough work caught up or relax enough to feel right come Monday.

* (This is less complainey and more of a worry). My 87-year-old aunt is in the hospital. Apparently she had some hallucinations the other day. She's on a variety of meds, including meds that screw with your electrolytes, and she probably doesn't drink enough water. The various symptoms sound to me like dehydration but one of her doctors is making noises like "mild heart attack." She wants to go home, apparently the hospital wants to keep her. (I say: keep her as long as Medicare/Medicaid (she qualifies for either so I'm not sure which takes precedence) will allow). I don't know. Anytime someone over 80 has health problems it's a worry.

* There's another plumbing problem in my house. Had a plumber out already and the simple cheap fix he tried didn't do it...tomorrow (provided it's not bucketing down rain) he's going to try something from outside. He told me that he only ripped open walls as a "total last resort" but I'm kind of scared...this is an old old house and I am just terrified there's a collapsed pipe or something somewhere that's going to cost thousands of dollars to fix. (I guess I better mention the problem - the bathroom sink won't drain. Everything else drains fine. He's afraid of snaking the sink because he's afraid of cracking the old pipe with their power-snake. I don't know. Maybe I can live without a bathroom sink. Do all my washing in the tub, and brush my teeth in the kitchen? Or maybe I could get it plumbed into the toilet tank, and flush with used sink-water, and therefore be a bit environmentally friendly?)

*That said? I love that my town now has a Mr. Rooter franchise. They came out on a weekend (THEY ANSWERED THEIR PHONE ON A WEEKEND, PEOPLE. That is real progress for here) and didn't charge me any more than they would have for a weekday call. Also, they seem committed to making it right, unlike some workmen I've had in who work up to a point and shrug and go, "Sorry, babe, you're on your own now."

* I am deeply bothered when something doesn't function the way it is supposed to. I cannot DEAL with broken stuff on a deep and visceral level. Something in my psyche keeps crying out that it needs to be FIXED and the world WILL NOT BE RIGHT until it is fixed and it needs to be FIXED NOW. I realize that this is totally ridiculous and it's just a dang bathroom sink, but still. I want it fixed. I want to be able to brush my teeth at night while looking at myself in the mirror like a normal human, and not while staring into my neighbor's weird son's tv room (which is the view from my kitchen window)

* Part of my concern is kind of the same concern I feel when I go to the doctor - that the problem I see symptoms of isn't a simple problem and it is merely the tip of the iceberg and there are all sorts of painful, expensive, and life-disrupting things coming up that I will have to gird up my loins for. Like moving out of my house for a month while every pipe is replaced, or something.

* Also, the automatic window roll-downer things on my car quit. So I can't do drive-throughs any more (this is a problem with banking, not so much for food - I'm probably best off not being able to drive through the Dairy Queen). It's another thing that bugs me a tiny bit (plus, what do I do if a cop stops me? I know you're not supposed to get out of the car. Do I just holler through the window, "MY WINDOW WON'T OPEN WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO INSTEAD?") I know they're expensive to fix, and considering the $800 water heater (well, it was a $350 water heater and $450 of labor and code-updating) and the God-knows-how-much the sink unclogging/OMG EVERY PIPE IN THE HOUSE NEEDS REPLACING NOW that I'm facing this week, I just can't see getting them fixed any time soon.

besides, car matters less to me than house. Car can be out of sight, out of mind. House is top-of-mind because it's my HOUSE, you know? If my house is broken something is deeply wrong.

More on comfort foods

I talked a little about this earlier

I found a Mexican pasta ("La Moderna") brand that actually makes alphabet noodles. I bought a bag and brought them home and cooked them up.

Wow, noodles need a LOT of butter to taste the way they did when I was little. I felt kind of guilty about how much I put on.

You know? They're not as good as I remember. I think I like the wagon wheel pasta I had been using better - the alphabets are really small and they get kind of starchy just by themselves.

I also have to admit I like the Lipton's chicken noodle soup - the dried kind, that's basically chicken bouillon with noodles in it - it's totally artificial and the kind of thing that makes food snobs recoil in horror. But I'm not a food snob, and there's something comforting about boiling up a couple cups of water, dumping the packet in, and having hot soup in five minutes.

(I also have to admit I like the pre-packaged Swiss Miss pudding cups. I like pudding but never seem to have the energy to actually make it from scratch. Yes, I know how. Yes, it's not that hard. But it takes time, and often time is not what I have).

And I've already mentioned my fondness for Cup O Noodles. Yes, I know. It's loaded with salt. It's a dietary nightmare. But, to me, it means a particular sort of comfort - it's easy, it doesn't require thought, it's warm, it's noodles. I didn't eat these - or Ramen - for years, because of fear of the salt content. But several years ago, over Thanksgiving, I had to make an emergency trip overnight on the train - my father was having an emergency heart catheterization, with the possibility that he would have open heart surgery. So I got (by some miracle) train tickets up and back, and had to ride overnight in coach on a very badly delayed Amtrak (I was supposed to get on around 7 pm; I finally got on around 1 am. That wait in that tiny, crowded, overheated station was the most miserable and lonely six hours of my life.)
Anyway - I was on the train, I was exhausted, I was hungry, it was roughly lunchtime, the snack car was out of most things I'd consider eating. But they had Cup O Noodles. So, with a sigh, I said, yeah, I'll take a Cup O Noodles.

And you know, that was exactly what I needed then - something warm and uncomplicated, something I had eaten as a child. I've started eating them (very sparingly - not more than once or twice a month) again, and you know - there is something comforting about them.

(And my dad turned out to be okay, what showed up on the stress test was nothing major, certainly nothing requiring open heart surgery).

Another thing I like - and you can hardly ever find any more - is good cider. REAL cider. Not "apple juice." Real pressed apple stuff, with pulp and extracts from the peel and all that. (Of course, it's all pasteurized now - which is probably for the best - but I don't like the "clarified" stuff). I found a new brand - it's one of the "Simply Orange" line but it is "Simply Apple" that is close enough to being cider to satisfy me; it's not got that strange pallid cast that "apple juice" has.

(Actually, where I live now, it's hard to get good apples at all. Apples, apparently, don't grow here. Which makes me sad. A fun fall outing, when I was a kid, was to go to an apple orchard and buy a peck or so of good "keeping apples" for eating and applesauce through the winter, and maybe getting cider and donuts.)

It occurs to me now that a lot of the fun, nice, good things I remember from my childhood were fairly simple - and fairly inexpensive for my parents. I remember the apple-orchard trips, and also going to pick strawberries when they were in season. And if we were lucky enough to be visiting my grandmother at the right time, we'd go pick blueberries.

And we went hiking. And there was an inexpensive "revival theater" near my dad's campus that showed old Disney movies (and other "all ages" type movies).

My mom would bake with me - it was a big deal if she'd let me make "cutout cookies." (I still do make them, but only at Christmas - now that I have to do the rolling and the cleanup I realize what a big production it was).

And we kept a garden, and my brother and I were given little plots to plant what we wanted to try (pumpkins - which I always wanted to grow - never worked out that well; we usually went to a "pumpkin patch" to get ours).

It occurs to me that a lot of the good childhood memories revolve around food - cider and donuts, or baking cookies, or popcorn at the movies. I suppose there are some who'd roll their eyes over that, who said our parents raised us wrong, that we're "too attached" to food now, because of it.

I don't know. I get very tired of the "foodists" and the people who would convince their fellow Americans that chocolate cake is a weapon of mass destruction. I don't see food so much as the enemy; the enemy is the wrong attitude towards food.

When I was a kid, no food was "forbidden" - oh, we didn't get cookies BEFORE dinner, and we were expected to eat what was on our plates - but there was nothing that was made more attractive to us by being told it was off-limits. What was more, we were never forced to eat something we hated. (I had a friend who actually was grounded, because she threw up at the table after trying to force down Brussels sprouts. My parents asked us to TRY but if we just couldn't down the food, it was "no harm, no foul.")

I was a pretty picky eater - didn't like most vegetables (and found, in fact, that some of the really disliked ones from my childhood - like celery - I actually have a food intolerance to and should not eat). However, as an adult, I'm slowly adding things. I never liked sweet potatoes or winter squash as a kid - now they are two of my favorite things and I eagerly await for the "new crop" to come into season. And I'd never touch red cabbage when I was younger, but I like it now. Even the kind that comes in a jar, for when I don't have time to make my own. And salad. While I won't claim that salad is my Favorite! Food! Evah! I can and do eat it pretty regularly.

(Still can't do Brussels sprouts though. Not for want of trying. I do think I'm one of those "supertasters" - many of the things they are purported to hate, I hate. (And I can't stand meat that's too fatty, or salted olives unless I rinse them off first, or things that are too sweet).

I do like green tea though (but make it weaker than recommended) and spinach - well, raw it's okay; I can't do it cooked.

But I don't think my parents screwed me up too badly re: food. Yes, I'm kind of fat. But I don't THINK that's because I eat more than most people, based on my observations of colleagues and friends - perhaps I eat more calorically dense stuff, true (I like chocolate. So sue me.). But I do think there's a body-type issue, also - both my grandmothers were heavy like I am, and my dad is. (And, ironically - my mom is tiny and slim, and she's the only one in the family with elevated cholesterol).

I do think that a lot of the food-fear that's being promoted in the name of "protecting children from obesity" or "fighting the obesity war" is misplaced. I just fear we're going to raise a generation of anorectics, or conversely, a generation who binge on "forbidden" foods because they are "forbidden." Or that we'll have foods banned, or taxed out of people's reach, in the name of "protecting people from themselves."

I don't "forbid" myself chocolate; I can buy a bar of Green and Black's or something and eat one or two squares of it and go, "Okay, I'm good" and put the rest away for later. I guess some people literally cannot do that; I have friends who claim they cannot keep cookies in the house because they would eat them all in a couple days (or less). I am not sure what leads to that mindset; I would hope there'd be a way of getting over it.

Food is a great pleasure; it can be a great comfort. It seems wrong to me to scare people so much about what they put between their gums that they either no longer can take comfort from it or are racked by guilt for consuming it. Or to make them so conflicted about it that they cannot have a box of Oreos, or a bag of potato chips, or a pint of ice cream in the house without thinking obsessively about it until they've eaten it all.

(I'm always surprised at how many of my gen bio students don't really understand what a calorie is. When I explain it's a unit of energy content, they're all like, "baroo?" As if, they've heard for so long that calories are BAD, that they can't understand that a certain amount are needed to keep a person alive. And that the calories in, say, watermelon, are basically the same kind of energy as the calories in a cookie. Well, there are more per unit volume in the cookie, but it's the same energy.)

Food is food. It is not medicine, it is not virtue or vice. It is merely food. It cannot condemn us to Hell nor save us from dying. But every day, it seems there are more people trying to convince us that food is far more than what it is.

Ken did it...

And now, so have I





I'm a little surprised I didn't score higher on math/science, but perhaps that comes from openly admitting I would have "run away" when I saw that triple integral symbol. (And yes, I haven't had to do that since Calculus in college). And yes, I can lay my hands on a copy of the Iliad in less than 15 seconds. (It's the newer Fagles translation; I have to admit I've not read it yet but I fully intend to.)