Academia as an Extreme Sport

Death isn’t always sad:

I had an interesting conversation with That Guy the other day about Westboro Baptist; they came up for some reason, and I mentioned the rather excellent idea of full on drag queens, trannies, out and proud gay and lesbian couples, etc, protesting his funeral when Phelps dies. That Guy objected on the principle that it’s just distasteful to protest funerals, it’s not a moral or virtuous action, and playing dirty just because someone else does isn’t a good reason. He thought it would simply be better to throw a party on your own elsewhere- and I admit that he raises good points.

But there is something in intolerance and hatred spewed forth by people like Falwell, Robertson, Phelps, and etc, that makes it hard to be neutral and say a funeral is a funeral, and all should be given respect, all mourners the right to mourn in the way they want. Because sometimes, death isn’t a sad thing - not because it brings relief, but because it removes a really really bad person from society.

Would protesting at Phelps’s funeral make a point? Yes, I think so. Would it get through to his family? I would hope so - but am not optimistic that it would. Could it be done in a way that wasn’t spiteful, mean, and full of hate? Perhaps - but again I’m wary.

The satire Mahr provides is one way at poking the people who deserve to be poked for who they are, but if it would be wrong to protest at a funeral, shouldn’t it be equally wrong to speak ill of the dead? What about, as Mahr points out, when the dead made their living speaking ill of others?

I don’t know. On the one hand, I attempt to live a peaceful and moral/virtuous life. So That Guy raising the possibility of a protest stepping outside those self and religious imposed guidelines certainly brings me up short to think. On the other hand, it feels like a very human response to people who have caused so much pain and suffering. On the gripping hand, however, I wonder if the best thing is indeed to simply offer well-wishes and show how much better a person it’s possible to be.

Then again, it’s not like they raised the bar all that high…

Over on the BBC website, reporter Chris Jeavans is blogging about her August challenge: to live a month without buying or accepting anything wrapped in or made with plastic. Why? Because even though we’re all repeatedly implored to reduce, reuse and recycle, plastics are still one of the most common things to make it into our trash, our landfills, and our oceans. So she wanted to track exactly how life would change if she gave up plastics - first, of course, tracking how much plastics she and her family used over the course of one month.

The numbers were surprising…click to continue reading

Surgeons in Denver are happily announcing a major break-through in infant cardiac transplants: using hearts from infants that have died of cardiac-related deaths. According to the Wall Street Journal,

Until now, it was thought that hearts from those donors were too badly damaged to be transplanted successfully. Only hearts from donors who were brain-dead — and whose hearts were still functioning after they were declared dead — have been considered suitable for transplant.

To make the donors’ hearts more viable, doctors at Children’s Hospital in Denver altered the standards for declaring the patients dead… The Denver researchers narrowed to as little as 75 seconds the time between when the donor was pronounced dead and when the heart was harvested. Current guidelines call for waiting up to five minutes as a way of making certain that the heart does not start beating again on its own. But removing the heart earlier increases the odds of a successful transplant since it limits the damage caused by a lack of oxygen to the organ.

Most professional medical types I know, be they bioethicists, doctors, nurses, etc, agree that there are significant and severe problems with how transplants are handled in this country, and that we need to do something to increase the number of available organs…(continue reading)

Whistles the wind
Blowin’ my way
Sweepin’ me back, back here to stay
Can winners be losers?
Runnin’ on the same track
While some head for glory, others we crash

Well it breaks my heart to see you this way
The beauty in life where’s it gone
And somebody told me you were doin’ okay
But somehow I guess they were wrong

My isolation
Now there’s a sobering thought
A minute alone, a lifetime too long
See the face in this mirror
So pale it could crack
Desperately wantin’ the color it lacks

Well it breaks my heart to see you this way
The beauty in life where’s it gone
And somebody told me you were doin’ okay
But somehow I guess they were wrong

So you drank with the lost souls
For too many years
Tied to their ankles now crippled with fear
Never been righteous though seldom were wrong
Life’s only life with you in this song

Now there’s an ocean between
Where I am and where I want to be
So you prayers in doubt
Doubt not for me

Well it breaks my heart to see you this way
The beauty in life where’s it gone
And somebody told me you were doin’ okay
But somehow I guess they were wrong

Well it breaks my heart to see you this way
The beauty in life where’s it gone
And somebody told me you were doin’ okay
But somehow I guess they were wrong
-Flogging Molly

Sigh. Sometimes, not being able to fix things for other people really sucks. And I am not very good, when it matters, of thinking of the right words to say under pressure (even if that pressure is my own).

Which doesn’t mean those in the know should worry - things are still fine. Just, baggage handling issues.

It’s not that I forgot, it’s just that missing you has died down to a steady ache, rather than one sharply punctuated every year. Or maybe it’s that I’ve been talking about you a lot lately, to new people, retelling the stories and the lessons learned - how important it is to never let things go unsaid. And what an amazing impact that’s had on my life, especially lately.

In life, you taught me a lot - fierce stubbornness, how to play. But in your death, you gave me the strength of conviction, of following what’s right even when it’s hard. The final emphasis to live without regret.

I know you would like him, and I know you’d be pleased to know the fruits of your efforts were felt on Friday - an appropriate day, of all days.

This cracked me up. Someone else might not have quite appreciated the humour in the same way… But I swear to god, I don’t know the author of this comic!

It’s sometimes hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that someone might see me as worth it. That I alone and in myself might be worth an effort, a risk. That I am more than a body holding a space for someone else, someone better. That the swirls of emotions and desires are things that I cause, rather than things I am a convenient outlet for. This…lack of belief in myself can cause problems, can pair with my doom and gloom to assume the worst while still holding out faint hope, just with the assurance it will be crushed.

I don’t know what to do in the face of it not being crushed, other than spread my arms wide and spin, ever so slowly; to sink to my knees in wonder; to awe that how I feel is a feeling returned.

I doom and gloom well. I’m aware of that; my goth disposition, I suppose. But I also try to do things that scare me, like taking deep breaths and placing faith and trust in external sources, things, people. Which is around where I’m at right now - a lot of faith and trust in someone else’s hands, with fevered whisperings of prayers, wishes, whatever, that it will be okay. That the right choice can be scary, but that fear is often just overcoming the conditioned self-preservation that other people ground into us in the first place.

Fear is illogical, fear is the mindkiller… fear is the thing we should use against the person who’s caused it, not people after, who were never involved. Don’t punish the innocent for other’s mistakes.

Good theory, anyhow.

I hate waiting. I hate pins and needles. There is good anticipation; this is not it.

Resigned to things having seemed so momentarily right, likely working out so wrong. Two months of being under constant stress, how can I justify that? How can I alleviate that?

It’s funny, in the sad irony way, to find out part of your own baggage is the fear that what you say and do will chase others away, so you don’t say or do, until you do…and chase others away.

….after a very long day, where you end up breaking and showing just how fragile you are, too, to be laying in bed, encouraged to talk about a serious and painful bit of your personal history… and have the person you’re talking to fall asleep on you.

Yes, he had the decency to both tell me and to apologize, and I know he’s exhausted - and for good reason (mind out of gutter, people, it’s been an emotionally draining week). And I’m still crushed and find myself bricking up a wall faster than you can say “vulnerable”.

Since I keep going to look for the link to show others,…

Interact, though a perfectly good common-useage word, is also physics jargon for two particles with certain characters and trajectories that converge until they feel each other’s fields of force, then either collide or veer off; in either case, their characters and trajectories have been changed.
-Ann Finkbeiner, The Jasons: The Secret History of Science’s Postwar Elite

Perfectly good common-useage word, perfectly good physics jargon; both accurately describe how we affect one another. Reminds me of another quote I quite love that conveys the same sentiment, this one by Carl Jung:

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

It’s been a…difficult week, transitioning from Santa Cruz to home, from a chaotic and loud, full life to silence and single-ness. I’ve filled my time and space as best as possible, and in some ways I am more pleased with the results than I could have hoped to expect. But in other ways I’ve kicked into a bit of a moody spiral; I have been transformed, and the question is whether or not that remains a positive thing. In any case, my character has changed.

It would behoove me to remember several things…first and foremost, that my SUV doesn’t have a snorkel. Secondly, there are actually areas between my home and school that flood badly enough that a snorkel would be handy, and I should perhaps remember this during future OMG-thunderstorms-of-doom. I suppose the third would be something along the lines of some terror being okay as long as you know you’ll get yelled at, but the end reward is still worth it.

7:00am, Washington DC, Dulles International…
My final night in Santa Cruz, I joined various members of the CTY staff to see The Dark Knight. I don’t know many comic book fans in Albany (in fact, I’m not sure I know any), so seeing the movie with a bunch of very bright comic book fans was a special treat. My Taurus Twin Missy sat right behind me, while the clone of the ex-husband next to me, and between the three of us, we kept up an animated glee and snark during the previews (the group of physics majors in front of us turning to snark the ex-h clone’s reaction to the name Quantum of Solace was particularly amusing, given Jacob’s got his MA and will likely get his PhD in the field), especially for the utterly phenomenal OMG-can-I-see-it-NOW Watchmen preview. Then the movie started, and I was in heaven. Fabu movie.

Came home, packed, managed to get a comfortable 5 hours of sleep, and finish my odds and ends in the morning - impressive for me, I actually was well prepared to leave. I had checked in the night before, bought my upgrade (as $45 is really worth the extra leg room on a cross country flight for someone my height), reconfirmed my flight and its delay due to the massive thick pea soup permeating the entire Bay Area, from San Fran down to Santa Cruz, and enjoyed my final breakfast and casual goodbyes.

Driving back through 17 and the mountains was a continual trip through memory lane; the smells, views, roads, even the roasted dusty taste of fire smoked air. Resonating home. Where I grew up, played, worked. Moffet Field, Blue Angels, NEC, Great America. That way to the house. To places irrevocably changed by time, places I can never return to save memory. It was a little sad, a little sobering; I reached the airport contemplative.

Checking my bags, contemplation burned away to irritation - my flight was canceled and they were offering me the next available flight out… on Monday. They hadn’t even bothered to call anyone on the ticket - when my cell, Dad’s, and even Tracy’s were options. This, more than anything else, is what pisses me off about the entire thing. When I got an agent, that was rescinded (eventually) to Sunday afternoon departures. In theory I could have caught the noon shuttle back to the CTY site, but we would have had to figure out where to stick me for the night, how to feed me, and someone would have had to bring me back - not something I wanted to infringe on an already overworked and short numbered staff. I could have tried relatives, but again, a last minute imposition seemed wrong.

Finally, my bitchy and domineering personality got me a departure out of SFO at 10:30pm. Red eye to O’Hare, then a normal flight to Albany. Fine, fine… they shuttle me to SFO, I go to the ticketing line, and after nearly two hours of waiting get to an agent, who can’t get me out earlier, but offers to place me in a hotel overnight, let me wander around SFO, have a leisurely departure in the morning, and arrive home in the early evening. I take the offer, she books the flight, upgrades me the entire way, and goes to print out my hotel voucher… to discover the original flight was canceled due to crew being over flight flying allowance. Which they don’t cover for hotels.

Sigh. Fine. Back on the 10:30 - but wait! In that time, someone else grabbed those tickets! Suddenly I’m facing spending the night in SFO! Wonderful. Except! Eventually she offers me a flight that will have me home around 10pm Saturday night. What? FABULOUS! Sold, I’ll take it, I’ll sit in baggage for all I care, I just want to go home. I want to crawl into my own bed, cuddle my cats, see people I care about. Just let me go home.

She books me, doesn’t remember the upgrade that I had paid for on the long haul, or the complementary upgrades she provided for inconvenience. I don’t care - I’ll fix it at the gate, or deal.

Going through security, I check my tickets one more time for departure information, and discover the agent either lied to get me out of her face, or forgot how to tell time. She was going to be getting me home at 10AM Sunday, not Saturday night.

I bit back my tears but accepted the flight; I still left earlier than the 10:30 flight, and would get to Albany around the same time.

I proceeded to head to the correct gate, and confirm the flight with the agent there. A few tears have fallen, frustration winning, and she hands me kleenex and asks what’s wrong, expecting the typical travel story of departure, leaving a loved one, etc. I tell her briefly, and her eyes well in sympathy. Taking my tickets, she upgrades me again, all the way through. I am grateful, and find a corner to retire in to read for the next 6-odd hours.

Some 4-hours later, I get up to walk around, shop, get food. On the way back to my gate, I check my departure to LA, and discover, to my horror, that the flight has a delayed departure. A departure so delayed I won’t make my connecting flight.

Once again, I am stranded.

This time, I break down completely, huge wracking sobs. I simply sit in the middle of the nearest departure area and cry my eyes red and swollen. The only gate agent in the entire area comes flying over to find out what’s wrong, and I manage to choke out the entirety of my day, that I’ve been traveling for nearly 12 hours, that I’m stranded, that I can’t afford a hotel in SFO, that I want to go home. I want to go home.

She takes pity on me, and gently guides me to her podium, where she begins sifting through massive amounts of departure information. She eventually gets me on a flight to Seattle. There’s still the possibility of the flight out of Seattle, to Washington DC, being canceled, but at least in Seattle I could call on friends. Maybe delay my return a few more days, and recuperate up there - both from the travel ordeal and the month of teaching. If I did make it to Dulles, I would have an array of flights to Albany - and again, friends to call on if I was stranded. In fact, the only real concern was that, depending on when I arrived in Albany, there might not be anyone available to retrieve me from the airport. A hurdle to deal with if it ever even occurred.

I made it to Seattle, and discovered there another set of upgrades to Dulles and then to Albany - upgrades I became grateful for at 3am, trying to nap, muscles constricting with pain and frustration and exhaustion. I’m currently sitting in front of a combo News Connection/Starbucks, half a terminal away from my plane to Albany, departing in approximately one hour. Before most of you are even awake and reading this, I will be home, hopefully tucked into bed and quite passed out. (Although much more likely that I will be fending off persistent and irritated cats.)

I realize that delays and cancellations, especially with the economy being what it is, with high oil prices and fewer people flying, are a part of air travel. And I also realize that I’ve spent much of the last 18 months traveling frequently, and without any significant delay or other problems (save a single mishap with getting the cats back to Albany last April). It was my time, and the travel gods were not smiling; hopefully this means another two-odd years of travel juju.

But I’m still tired, exhausted, and wanting nothing more than to collect the hug that I know is waiting for me, and to go home.

written on United Flight 262, SeaTac to Dulles, red eye

The stars are bright and the moon is full, illuminating the wisps of clouds below. Further down, under the cloud layer, are the cities of Middle America, the flyovers, stretched out in bright hazy orange clusters as far as the eye can see. Stretched to and beyond the horizon. They look like neural ganglions, the glowing tendrails of the highways connecting them in a perfect mimicry of our own neural makeup.

The sun set for me almost two hours ago, but we are racing east, racing home, and soon enough the sun will rise to meet us, cutting night off with a mere five hours, if lucky.

The sun will be up and burning by the time I am home, a new day. But I will be home.

It is 10:30pm, and I am dreadfully tired and not tired at all. Thoughts refuse to form in any sort of coherence, words flying around like leaves scattered in a breeze, but my fingers pluck them out and down with ease. Split in two, I at once want to sleep, to sleep for weeks, and to madly push through all that needs to be done in a single fell swoop. I want to go out, expereince the people around me and life, and curl under my blanket until dawn breaks over the tips of the trees surrounding my bed and room.

The split life is everything right now - the immediate of where I am, the reality of coming home and back to the place I grew up, where everyone has embraced my casual attitude. Santa Cruz time, Santa Cruz casual - don’t bring your East Coast attitude here. But at the same time, my East Coast life hasn’t stopped, hasn’t really even paused, and what was at one point just a gentle reminder of the life I have now became the lifeline holding me together and on through an increasingly difficult experience. I look forward, now, to going home, and that has shifted in my head to mean things like my bed, my cats, the people physically in my life in Albany. But I know once I am there, as happy as I will be in that moment, it will be the echo of arriving at San Jose International Airport, and in a few days I will begin to ache, again, for the Left Coast life.

Mirror therapy treats CRPS.

I’m sitting at my desk, a little after 9pm on a Saturday night. The sun has set, the sky is a rich indigo, the trees inky black stains against it. Jupiter is rising, bright twinkling just peaking over the copse of redwoods in the distance. The air is sweet with the richness that comes from being near water and forest, a loamy earth-scent that is warm and familiar, relaxing. I’ll need a sweater, soon - a sweater in summertime, something I haven’t experienced in a long time.

I’m tired. Exhausted. Bone weary and barely moving. I was expecting this, but wasn’t expecting the additional strain on ankles and knees - the only thing that makes sense is having sprained an ankle and not noticing, something that is too easy to do. I spent most of the day napping, reading, stretched out on my bed like a cat in a sunbeam, warm and content.

It’s going to be weird going back to New York from this, from a place that so closely resonates as home. My settling into New York has yet to really happen, roots haven’t set, I could still blow away from there. Not so easily, not without pain and loss - I’ve grown attached to at least a small group of people, and there is one person in particular whose presence alone draws me, an incentive to return. But I realize how fleeting it is, still, and how much I would be served to fall in love with where I live as much as I love where I’ve come from.

I smell of salt and sand and sea, of musky smoke and fire and burning cloth and singed hair. My feet are blistered, my throat hoarse from laughing in all the smoke. And I am utterly exhausted, delighted, happy.

Jacob took a group of us to the beach this evening; we had decent Indian food for dinner, then parked downtown and walked to the Boardwalk. We hung out with the sea lions, broke into small groups to talk, watched people get sneezed on by sea lions (not me, for I move faster than a sea lion sneeze… but oh, poor OCD Emily…), then wandered past the amusement park to another beach to watch the fireworks.

These were not city-sanctioned fireworks. No, these were people spend hundreds, if not thousands, at fireworks stands, and set them off on the beach. And we, through what kind of luck who knows, ended up smack in the middle of the display. The fireworks were bursting overhead close enough to touch, sparks and flame raining down on us, we all carried home small paper parachutes that were part of the sparkling spiral fireworks. We had to watch and sometimes run, paying attention to where they were coming down, if they were too low, what the dangerous drunk people were doing.

It was terrifying. It was exhilarating. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever experienced; the awe, the laughter, the joy in living and being alive.

Eventually the danger outweighed the benefit, and we crept carefully out of a landmine of fireworks and sparklers and flares. Our original plan, to get alcohol, derailed when we walked by a Coldstone. Instead, we sat around small tables sharing ice cream, like we shared dinner, like we shared our laughter, and marveled at how, after only a week, it seemed like we had all known each other for years.

I made it through the evening. I selected some readings on the Hippocratic Oath; a student had asked if we could look them over, then I took a nap before dinner. My dean talked to me after dinner a bit - gave me quarters so I could do laundry (not implying I needed to, but an acknowledgment I was unable to get off campus to do it myself), and generally just checked in to see if I was okay. I assured him I had a lesson plan, I had napped, eaten, and things were fine - I was momentarily overwhelmed, but I’m good again. We’re gonna meet tomorrow afternoon, nonetheless. But it will be fine.

And I did make it through the evening. We did a close reading of the Hippocratic Oath, as well as the modern Tufts University version, and spent some time talking about the history of medicine. They were fascinated and appalled by “the cutting of stone”, surgeon barbers, the heavy use of mercury, etc. After the compare and contrasts of the reading, I taught them the four box paradigm of case analysis, and then had them analyze the case that was on their pre-class assessment. It was loud and they talked, a lot - but it was a good thing. I think running through case studies and analysis like this for every topic will be highly beneficial, especially if they become more and more complicated.

I’m not entirely sure what we’re going to do Weds, yet, but it’ll be fine. In the end, it always is.