The Bauer Confidential

You’d have to be living under a rock, or ignoring the news altogether (which might not be a bad thing) to have missed all the hubbub about Kevin Smith being too fat to fly Southwest Airlines.  It’s been splashed across every news outlet all week, rehashed, expounded upon, and generally beaten to death as a news story.  I’m not going to argue the merits of the case, who’s right and who’s wrong, I’ve been thinking of something more profound than that when pondering this incident.  I made a big mistake, I read a few of the comments made on these articles.  The vitriol people are spewing towards their overweight brethren is staggering.  I heard somewhere that hatred against fat people seems to be the last acceptable form of prejudice; it’s alive and well in internet comment forums.  I want to ask all these people who are so disgusted by the obese if they’ve ever struggled with their weight.  Have you ever taken thirty seconds to imagine what that would be like?  You wouldn’t ridicule people for mental illness, but in many cases, being overweight has emotional, mental, and/or even physical roots.

One commenter on CNN said fat people have “no concept of moderation” which if you’re overweight you know is absolutely ridiculous.  I think all these “normal” sized people have a very distorted view of the eating habits of the overweight.  We’re not all sitting around buffets shoveling fried chicken into our pie holes.  We are people, with feelings, and complex issues that can’t be neatly categorized and treated with some magic pill.  Try just a little empathy, see if you can muster just a little understanding.  We all struggle with different things in life, for some of us, our major fight may be with food.  Step back and remember that guy crowding you in your itty-bitty plane seat is still a person.  Imagine the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, and consider that an overweight person battles similar evils everyday.  Ponder why you find a fat person so disgusting, so upsetting, and try, just for a second to think about how you would like to be treated if your situations were reversed.  What if a loved one was treated with the disdain you harbor towards the overweight, how would you feel for them?

I’ll start with a warning, this is not a light-hearted post.  There’s something I need to work through, think about, process, something that’s plaguing and distracting me, so I’m going to write about it, in the hope that putting it out there will help free some dark things from my mind.

As we grow older, we become increasingly more acquainted with death and dying; that’s an accepted part of life, the reality of nature.  In the past three years, in our family, we have witnessed the passing of three family leaders, some of the eldest generation of our relations, and we have mourned them and missed them, knowing life will go on, hating that it seems to do so effortlessly.  How ever expected, how ever aged, how ever loved, it seems that the loss of our oldest loved ones cuts deeply, but we are able to go on because we know that’s the way of the world, that they lived good lives, touched the lives of others, they left a mark through their many years that cannot be easily erased.

But when we loose the young, all sense and logic seem to fail us.  The world seems to turn upside down.  In high school, I lost two class-mates.  One to cystic fibrosis, the other to a car accident.  I’d known both, had classes with both, liked both.  I was sad then, but somehow that teenage mind of mine quickly filed them away, quarantined their memories just out of reach, perhaps to protect me from grief, but more likely to maintain the illusion of indestructibility most teenagers seem to seek.  A couple years after I graduated from college, I got a call, a mutual friend was taking lessons to become a pilot.  She was practicing “touch and goes” when a wing clipped the run-way, she and her instructor were killed instantly.  It felt as if the breath had been knocked out of me.  This was a girl in my photo albums, not a close friend, but someone I really enjoyed.  She was one of those rare people who seemed to posses an internal light that never faltered, whose smiled was infectious, whose humor was healing.  And like that she was gone, her light extinguished.  She died doing what she loved, they said, to some it was a solace.

This week, I received another such call.  A colleague and friend from graduate school had keeled over at work, out of the blue, and that was it.  28 years old and life was over like that, plans gone, promise unfulfilled.  This was a guy, who when he talked to you, you knew he was listening, he gave you his attention, made you feel like you were worth listening to.  It seems like a simple thing, but it’s a skill few possess.  And he was bright, and quick, and kind, a go-getter.  I’d always thought, someday I’d turn on the news and there he’d be, a Senator, hell, maybe President.  He seemed like a born politician, without the smarmy stuff, a leader, the sort of person you wanted to follow.  And we went to high school in the same town.  And his wife and I share the same first name.  And this is where I really get stuck, on her, his wife, under 30, recently moved half-way across the country, walking into their home, alone, lying down on their bed, alone.  I can’t stop turning it over and over in my mind.  Her grief, her loss, constantly running through my head.  And knowing, however bad I’m imagining it to be, it’s worse, because for her, it’s real.  He’s gone, and she’s changed, forever without him, always missing him.

Death makes me sad for three reasons: the first is that I will always miss the person who is gone, the second is that the world takes such little notice, and the last is that it reminds me of all I have to loose.   There are also the feelings of injustice, followed closely by the feelings of gratitude for all that we have, and an introspection that makes me uneasy.  The question nags at me: what am I doing with my life, am I spending my days in ways that make me happy, or will I regret?  I’ve been doing a lot of revising of plans, hopes, dreams, all in the abstract though.  These passings, these losses, keep bringing me back to a feeling that it’s time to act, to do something to ensure that I do more than bide my time, that I seek out what adds to my happiness and rid myself of things that bring me down.

I’m not sure any of this makes much sense to anyone but me.  I am mad at myself too, for turning the death of a friend into something that’s about me.  I want to remember, be grateful, to celebrate a life, short but brilliant, but I’m just not there yet, still lost and angry but powerless, and so I can’t keep from imagining…

We dressed Jocelyn up as a tulip fairy for Halloween, but she really didn’t like the outfit much.  She kept trying to pull it off; eventually she came to tolerate it.  Please enjoy the photos.

Through a twist of serendipity, a couple of weeks ago I started reading the blog Dry as Toast (through a link on a blog I found because the owner fo said blog had commented on this blog, it’s like the blog-o-sphere’s version of 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon).  Anywho, the author of Dry as Toast wanted to know if anyone would like to do an on-line book club and read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer.  It just so happened that I was reading that very book at that very time.  I thought why the heck not, I like to post reviews of books anyway.  This one is going to be a little different, in two parts, because of the on-line format.

Reading this book can be a little discombobulating.  Not your typical novel, The Guernsey Literary etc., is told through the exchange of letters, chiefly between the main character Juliette, an author, and her friends and publisher.  World War II has just ended and though London is still deep in rubble and destruction, normalcy is slowly creeping in to Juliette’s world.  By an unusual twist of fate, a book belonging to Juliette has made its way into the hands of man residing on the island of Guernsey in the Channel Islands.  This stranger is so enamored with the book, finding Juliette’s name-plate in it, he writes to her to know more about the author.   A series of events are set in motion that drive Juliette to learn more about the lives of the residents of Guernsey through the letters they send her concerning their experiences in the war, as Guernsey was occupied by the Germans for several years.  Juliette’s life is full with touring for her book, insidious reporters trying to smear her good name, and a dashing American trying to sweep her off her feet.  And yet nothing in her life seems as interesting as the stories told by the people of Guernsey.  Their trials and adventures capture Juliette’s imagination and she decides to base a series of articles on their lives during the war.

The first half of the book introduces the many characters and sets the scene for a world we’re quite accustomed to reading about and seeing portrayed in movies.  World War II is so often the subject of cinema and novels, so frequently fictionalized that I had to remind myself that the events so central to this book are real, not just made up for a great story.  The things that happened are so incredible and horrible, it would be easy to believe they were the work of an over-active imaginations.  The author does a good job of getting you to imagine what London was like after being decimated by German bombing, the feelings people experienced, the mixed euphoria and sadness at the war’s end are palpable on the page.  The book is interesting enough and the characters engaging enough to pull you in and compel you to follow their lives.  I was anxious to keep reading this book….more to come next week.

Some of you may remember that back in mid-July I planted a garden.  I thought I’d give a little update on the garden’s progress.

This is what we started with:

Now we’ve got some of these:

And these (cherry tomatoes):

It’s hard to get a good shot because of the lay-out of the garden, but the tomatoes are about three feet high now, we have peas, carrots, and lettuce from seeds.  Potatoes are growing, there are herbs and kale taking it slow but definitely getting there.

I also started from seed three planters full of herbs that are growing on our back porch, parsley, oregano, and two kinds of basil (on of which is supposed to be purple, but I think I was misled as it’s more like green with a few purple spots).

We’ve got a couple heirloom apple trees in our “yard”, only one has any apples this year, it’s a pippen, and makes really tasty, crunch apples.

Our land-lord recently planted a magenta bougainvillea, which has such a vibrant color it makes me happy just to look at it.

Soon we shall harvest our first food, we’ll be having a salad from our garden in the next couple of days!

More Jocelyn Goodness. This was taken about 2-4 weeks ago. She is really scooting along now. We have to keep an eye on her at all times because she has the keen eyesight to spot the smallest things from across the room (dirt particles, tufts of cat hair, etc..) and wonders what it must taste like.

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Or nearly wordless. In the afternoon I like to take Jocelyn for walks, she takes a nice nap in the carrier as I walk around. Last week I decided to take the camera along. Since I’ve got a small human strapped to my chest, I can’t always get the best shots. I’m a macro kinda gal especially when it comes to flowers, but it’s not so easy with a baby making squatting nearly impossible. I tell you this just to justify why these images aren’t necessarily great in terms of composition, and I don’t have time to do any photoshop tweaking, with a baby and in-laws coming into town this will have to do. As you look at these, try to imagine the smell of fragrant blooms and freshly mowed grass.

More about Wordless Wednesday here.

I’m not very good at keeping this webpage updated.  This stems from many things, but mostly it is allocating time to write.  I like writing, I really do.  I struggle with it.  I was listening to a podcast, and the writer that was being interviewed put writers into two camps he called Mozart and Beethoven.  Mozart was a genius who thought in music.  He thought about it and constantly edited everything in his head.  By the time he got writing it down, it was basically a masterpiece.  Beethoven on the other hand, had to write everything down first, and his masterpieces came from constantly rewriting, editing, etc.   My writing style is more like the latter, with constant rewriting, revising, editing, etc.  The difference, my finished product takes more time per word written than the average writer, and it is never masterful.  This style may seem a bit tedious, but I find it enjoyable because unlike my occupation as a researcher, I see my final product (or the intermediate steps toward the final product) immediately.  I have to get over the first major hurdle (kind of like the activation energy for all of you chemistry geeks out there), which is I have to start writing.  Once I have a topic and I start, I can go on for hours and not notice.

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Now I got that out, let’s move on to a different topic: Nov 12.  It was Lincoln’s birthday, but it was also the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s Birthday, and the 150th anniversary of his publication “On the Origin of Species.”  As a scientist, and even more so as a molecular biologist, you would think that I’ve read this opus.  I have not, I am ashamed to admit.  I tried once when I was younger because I was told by a science professor how good of a writer Darwin was.  I didn’t make it too far before I put the book down and didn’t pick it up again.  Now that I am older and slightly wiser, and because I now have a much greater understanding of the evolutionary principle, I was going to go back and read it, but I discovered the “On the Origin of Species” audio book read by the famous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.  Dawkins has a kind of monotone british accent that if I didn’t listen to it while actively doing something, might put me under.  Don’t listen to this while driving unless suicide by falling asleep at the wheel is your goal.

I just finished listening to the book a few days ago, and I am completely amazed by just how good of a scientist Darwin was.  He tackles issues like the difference between species, variations of the same species, etc. Remember, this book was published in 1859, thus no knowledge of the genetics of inheritance, and the definition of what a species was or variations in the same species, etc.. were hotly debated.  He had a great grasp of the nuances of what current naturalist thought.  Of course, he devotes a lot of time discussing the evidence he collected that his theory is based on, but he also devotes a good amount of time discussing the questions his theory proposes, and arguments against his theory (in which molecular biology has addressed a vast majority).  His intelligence and thought process are all right there, and I’m left very impressed.

Darwin made a very insightful hypothesis, and even he understood that his theory wasn’t complete, there where few exceptions, and his theory would become more complete and modify over time as various parts are tested and information about inheritance is discovered.  I find it ironic that his theory of evolution has experience dessent with modification, but the basic backbone is still there today.

I should actually read it, because while I’m running around the lab or in the gym I get distracted and I’m sure I missed some interesting parts, so after I finish my current book maybe I’ll try tackling “On the Origin of Species” again.

On a final note, for anyone whose feels the urge to start posting comments in an effort to debate his theory…STOP.  This post is not meant to begin a debate about evolution. I just wanted to point out that no matter what you think, Darwin was a damn fine scientist.

When we first moved to the bay area, we briefly contemplated trying to buy a condo instead of renting an apartment. With sub-prime mortgages we could have pulled it off, at least initially, but we knew, even though our understanding of these financial matters was limited, that it didn’t seem right given our income and the cost of housing here. Even though we could have gotten a loan, it seemed the wrong thing to do, even though we really didn’t understand why. After watching the housing market tank this year we now know understand how people like us were getting loans they couldn’t afford and what that meant for the market and now the economy as a whole.
We moved to a vibrant neighborhood, full of upscale shops and nice restaurants. Over the last year the economic down-turn has been chipping away at the businesses here. A few newly constructed spaces are still standing empty after more than two years. A couple shops closed a while back, but new shops moved in to take their place. Citibank closed their mortgage office. Then Starbucks closed, which I have to admit didn’t break my heart, considering we have at least four independent coffee shops within four blocks of one another. Then a restaurant closed, and a fancy baby store. Though not in our neighborhood, we found out that they’re halting production at the chocolate factory that used to give tours so you could see how the chocolate was made, they’re consolidating production to a new plant in Illinois (perhaps a little ironic). Now it’s our pharmacy that has fallen prey to these times. It’s only a block from our house, very convenient, if a bit on the expensive side because of its focus on organic practices. There was no notice, it just closed; a victim of the shrinking credit market, unable to get the capital needed to continue operations. This has left me very sad. Despite being pricier, we often went there because it was just up the road, and when you’re sick you want your medicine fast. Also, the upscale brands they carried were usually less expensive there than elsewhere. They had a video section where rentals were just $1 a day, that’s how we watched The West Wing while I was spending so much time nursing Jocelyn. I’m harboring hope that they’ll find some way to pull it together, or a new investor or owner. I should have known something was going on, it seemed like they hadn’t restocked quite a few items but still it was a surprise. Now we’re joining the rest of the districts in our city with more and more defunct businesses standing empty since no one can afford to take the chance of opening anything new. I have to say in part that I blame the city. We happen to live in a town that is hostile towards business; with rents and the bureaucracy here it’s a wonder any shops survive.
I know that a lot of people are affected much more deeply by what is happening in the world than we are. People are loosing their homes, their jobs. But we are also loosing a lot as a culture, as small businesses close we loose more than just jobs in our community, but we also loose our sense of identity, our resources. Boarded up windows as you walk down the block make things a lot less inviting and actually lead to trouble. We know we should spend our money locally, but when you’re stretched thin, it’s hard to justify spending extra to keep it in the neighborhood as you barely scrape by. We’ve watched our bills go up dramatically as our retirement accounts have shrunk alarmingly. I’m afraid things will get worse before they get better, that’s what the economists keep saying.

I have a couple ideas for posts I want to write, but they’re going to be fairly long and involved, and there’s no time for that these days.  Additionally, I’ve had a bunch of random things pop into my head that I want to mention to people, but that couldn’t really be a whole entry onto themselves.  So here are a few of things that have been on my mind lately, in no particular order:

Why do they put pockets on baby clothes?  What do the clothes-makers expect the baby will put in the pocket, a baby wallet or baby cell phone?

Why do only women lactate?  If you look at it from an evolutionary perspective (or even a creationist point of view if that’s your thing), wouldn’t it be better if both parents could feed a baby?  It might interfere with the men going out hunting, but then the women would have more time for gathering or hunting.  It just seems like it would be a good way to hedge your bet should something happen to the mother.  And it would just be awesome if women didn’t have to do all the breastfeeding.

Do you like coffee?  Do you hate to clean your coffee pot?  Matthew and I like coffee a lot, but our coffee maker is a pain to clean.  Also, with the baby, we’re often unable to be drinking our coffee at the same time, so making a whole pot is a bit of a waste.  The other day I bought one of these single cup coffee makers by Melitta.  It makes really great coffee (better than our coffee pot I think) and it’s really fast.  We waste less coffee this way too.  This isn’t meant to be an endorsement or anything, I just really think this works well and wanted to share.

A random picture to go with the random thoughts.  Matthew is helping Jocelyn with her tummy-time exercises and watching her roll over.