December, 2010
Hello
to my family and friends,
I'll start with an update on my
life; those of you local who know me well are already aware of much of
this. Shortly after I sent out my letter
last year, I had another date. (I had
had lots of dates over the preceding two years.
As far as I can tell from my calendars, I dated 30 women over that
period, and some of them I went out with twice or three times. But it wasn't exactly a hectic dating
life: Over about 30 months I went out
perhaps 40 times.) A woman contacted me
through match.com, the Internet dating service I used during 2007-09. She knew who I was because she also worked at
the University, but I did not know her. We
met in Dinkytown in early December and had a glass of wine. It seemed to go fine, from my point of view,
and I later asked her if she'd like to go to the University President's annual
holiday gathering at Eastcliff (the University President's residence) for the
people who work in offices that report to his (mine does). She agreed.
We went out a third time, and a
fourth, and have been going out ever since.
She later confessed that her first date with me was the first date she'd
had since getting divorced earlier that summer and she was so nervous she could
hardly get a complete sentence out of her mouth. (She went out on another date with another
guy a few nights after our first date, she also told me later, and couldn't get
across the parking lot fast enough to get away when it was over. I assured her it was doubtless because she
was so impressed with me J)
So, as a number of you who are local
friends know, Kathy and I have been together ever since. It is wonderful to be paired, to have a
significant other, as anyone in a long-term marriage or relationship knows,
someone to whom one is deeply attached.
So this is a happy letter, unlike the ones of the last couple of
years. The ironic aspect of this
development is that I'm now attached to a woman who works in the same BUILDING
I do at the University and has for a number of years. So after dating women from all over the
metropolitan area, I end up with someone down 4 floors.
Kathy
has now met most all my friends, and still likes me. She's even agreed to take on the task of
learning how to play bridge (fortunately, she's a card player from way back, so
playing a game with a deck of cards is not an alien experience, although bridge
is a challenge for anyone to learn). In
return—although obviously it was not a bargain struck, just happenstance—I
agreed to "learn" opera. I've
always been interested in opera but never got around to pursuing it. Kathy grew up with it, so the music from
operas is second nature for her. Now we
go to many of the Met Opera simulcasts and, based on the two I went to last
year, I'm glad we do. We have learned we
share many interests in common so things seem to be working out just
hunky-dory. Kathy also makes
jewelry. I do not. I just write.
Interestingly,
there is a (remote) possibility that we are very distant cousins. Her last name (Jensen) is the same as my
Danish great-grandmother's name, and our forbearers came from the same region
of Denmark. One imagines, however, that
even in the 19th century there were a lot of Jensens in Denmark. We also both share German ancestors whose
name was Pagel. Unfortunately, neither
of us has sufficient information about our ancestors to be able to find out if
there is any kinship between us, however far removed it might be on the family
tree.
Fortunately,
the kids also like Kathy and she likes them, which is a relief. (I had told the kids, very shortly after the
divorce, that I would be dating and that I did not intend to remain single for
the rest of my life, but that one of my criteria for continuing any relationship
was that she had to like the two of them as well as me. I like to think they were reassured by that,
so they had no difficulties accepting my dating. I don't like to think about what I would have
done had I fallen madly in love with a woman who didn’t like my kids—but I
probably would have quit seeing her.)
So
my social life, which had been rather barren in the last couple of years, was
suddenly quite full.
* * *
Perhaps a month after I met Kathy, I
decided I was confident enough about the two of us being together that I asked
her if she'd consider a trip to Sweden with me.
A faculty friend of mine and his wife, Russell and Ellen Luepker, own a
summer cottage on the southeast coast of Sweden and he had told me a couple of
years ago that I was welcome to use it any time they were not there. I hadn't taken him up on the offer previously
because I'm not fond of traveling by myself.
Kathy said "yes" (which took some courage on her part, I have
to say), so we planned the trip—and took it in mid-June. This was really a commitment for her, because
I had frequent-flier miles to use for my ticket; she had to pay for hers.
I am (in)famous (with my kids) for
planning the details of trips abroad in great detail—and trying to fill up
every waking hour with activities (mostly because if I go that darn far, I want
to see everything there is to see!).
Shortly before Kathy and I left, we had my cousin Mae over for dinner,
and at the dinner table Krystin asked if I had planned my usual hour-by-hour
itinerary. Unusually for me, in this
case I let Kathy do almost all the planning—and she did a great job. (She's traveled abroad herself a number of
times, so this was not a novel experience for her.) It turns out that Kathy had a friend who
lives just outside Copenhagen, a woman who is from Minnesota, worked at the
University (where Kathy met her), and who had since met and married a Dane and
moved to Denmark. Moreover, because
Kathy is Danish, our trip was slated for seven days in Sweden and six in
Denmark.
My one regret about the trip was
that we didn't inform Kathy's mother and uncle earlier that we were going. Her uncle, it turns out, is acquainted with
the queen of Denmark, and had he had enough notice, he could perhaps have
arranged tea with the queen. Alas, it
didn't happen.
After the usual hassle of airplane
travel these days, we arrived in Copenhagen.
It was a case, as the children's book title goes, of planes, trains, and
automobiles: We flew to Copenhagen (closer
to the cottage than Stockholm), took a train to Malmö in Sweden, and rented a car to drive to the cottage. The biggest pain was getting out of Malmo,
which is Sweden's second-largest city:
We got terrible directions from the Avis rep before we left and spent
half an hour trying to find our way out.
And we only found the highway we were looking for by accident. This was a trip different from the ones I
have usually taken because it was spent in the hinterlands rather than big
cities.
As drove through southern Sweden,
and came to the cottage, it became clear to us why Swedish emigrants settled in
Minnesota. It was the same
landscape: Gently rolling farmlands,
occasional clumps of trees, occasional small towns. Even the bugs and birds and squirrels were
almost all the same. (But not many
mosquitoes.) I could have been driving
across western Minnesota. And the
cottage is nestled in a lightly-forested area of pines and some deciduous
trees, similar to the part of middle Minnesota where the prairies meet the pine
forests of the north. Of course, then
the Scandinavian immigrants got hit with a Minnesota winter, far worse than
anything those who come from southern Sweden or Denmark ever saw in their
homeland (Kathy's friend in Copenhagen said the temperature there rarely gets
much below the mid-20s (F). The
temperatures here can get 40-50 degrees colder than that. It must have been a shock, and I have
sometimes wondered why my Danish and Swedish forbearers didn't head south about
500 miles once they'd been through a Minnesota winter. Especially in the 1880s, when there was no
indoor plumbing or central heating. And
probably a sod shanty to live in the first year or so. They were hardier folks than we are now, I
guess.)
Kathy and me at the cottage in Sweden
Although there were other
homes/cottages in the area where we were staying that we could see through the
trees, there were few people in them at the time. The "summer" season doesn't start
until July 1 in Sweden. So it was
extremely quiet, very unlike living in a large city—all we could hear was the
wind whistling through the trees and the birds singing. Well, except for the first couple of nights,
we kept hearing this distant "boom" about dinner time, like the sound
of distant fireworks. We later learned,
from Swedish friends of the Luepkers, Lennart and Ann-Sofi, that just down the
coast from where we were staying—the cottage is just a couple of blocks off the
Baltic Ocean—is the Swedish Navy's practice bombardment area. It wasn't disturbing, and it never lasted
long, but it sure mystified us until we learned what was making the noise.
The
one thing that struck us was the light.
We knew, intellectually, that when one goes north, the days are longer
in summer. The location of the cottage
is several hundred miles north of Minneapolis.
We were nonetheless startled when, having a nightcap before bed on the
porch and talking, I would ask Kathy what time it was. It was broad daylight, but it was 11:00 at
night! I also learned that the birds
start singing at 3:45 a.m., when the sun comes up.
The area of Sweden we were in was
Skåne, the southernmost province of Sweden.
The best I can do on conveying the pronunciation in English in written
form is "skoona," but you have to curl your lips for the
"oo" part of it. I kept
hearing the word, and finally asked a waitress in a restaurant how to say it. She said it, I said it, she said it, I said
it, and I still didn't have it right.
Still don't. There are words in
Swedish, particularly place names, that I finally gave up on and used some
watered-down English version.
One aspect of the trip to which
neither of us was sure how we'd react was being completely disconnected from
the Internet. We made a conscious
decision not to bring our laptops (and we didn't have international service on
our cell phones, so we didn't bring those, either). It turned out that being disconnected is
quite relaxing. We didn't track the
news, or Facebook, or emails, or our work (the last of which, for me, is a
constant temptation). We felt no urge to
go look at a computer and we didn't miss it.
We just talked and traveled and enjoyed our own company—something I am
not sure youngsters today know how to do.
Just to stay in touch with our kids (Kathy has a son the same age as
Elliott), we occasionally went into small-town libraries and used the free
Internet service. That worked fine and
the world held itself together without our constantly being connected. (I am not contending that I wish to be
disconnected permanently from the web, only that it was very pleasant to take a
vacation from it.)
About 3 hours north of where we were
staying is the "Kingdom of Glass," an area where most of the major
Swedish glass manufacturers have their plants—and stores. We visited quite a number of them, and the
result was that our carry-on luggage weighed about 80 pounds when we got them
all packed to go home. We visited a
couple with familiar names—Orrefors and Kosta-Boda—and some with names I did
not know—Skruf, Bergdala, Sea, Afors. I
didn't really "need" any of this glassware, but I know I'll never get
back to that area and it is fun to have stuff from the places they're
made. The kids can split it all up when
I'm gone. (Or, as Elliott declares with
a smile, "EBay." And even
though they gave me a hard time about buying more glassware, they were still
curious to see it all.)
We had an adventure with Swedish law
enforcement. Before we left, we met with
the Luepkers (who live about 8 houses from me) to get the key to the cottage,
driving directions, and general hints and information. Russell warned us, in a rather ominous tone,
that "if you drink and drive in Sweden, you WILL do jail time." We learned once there that the legal alcohol
limit in Sweden for driving is .02, compared to .08 in Minnesota, or about one
low-alcohol beer. When we were coming
back from visiting the glass places, we stopped in Karlskrona on the south
coast to eat dinner. We each had one
beer and then a rather substantial Italian dinner. About an hour and half down the road, on what
passes for a freeway in Sweden, we were pulled over. But it wasn't just us; it was a random stop
and EVERYONE was being pulled over and required to take a breathalyzer
test. Kathy was driving, but we were
both petrified. The policewoman had
Kathy breath into the gadget; it didn't work the first time but we both
thought, when she asked Kathy to do it again, that she wanted to check to be
sure before she nailed us. But
apparently Kathy simply hadn't breathed deeply enough; after she did it again,
the policewoman showed Kathy the screen (Kathy had no idea what was on it, she
was so nervous) and smiled and waved us back on the road. I knew, intellectually, that there was no way
her blood alcohol level could be above .02 after only one beer and 90 minutes
later, but that didn't prevent us both from being terrified at Kathy facing jail
time. (I told her later that I would
have come and visited her in jail J)
Because of all the driving we'd done
that day, I finally had to fill up the gas tank on the car. I spent more on filling the gas tank than I
had on glass. There is a flat 25% tax on
all goods and services (although it's built into the price of everything,
rather than added on at the cash register).
We could see where some of the money is going: There was no such thing as a pothole on any
road we drove on, including the quaternary roads we drove on in some small
towns that were no wider than my dining room table. (If there are primary and secondary highways,
and tertiary roads, surely there must be quaternary roads, and some of the ones
we were on fell in that category.) All
the roads were kept up perfectly.
As we drove (a great deal) around
the Swedish countryside, we were impressed by how neat and clean it was. The farms were neat, the houses were neat,
the small towns were neat. Almost every
scene was from a postcard. No rusted
cars or appliances sitting on lawns or driveways, no junk anywhere, and no
litter to be seen. Either they have
incredibly efficient crews to pick up litter or the Swedes are an
extraordinarily neat and tidy people (at least out in the country). I suspect it's the latter.
In Simrishamn eating my aggakaka
Another
thing that impressed us was the presentation of food in restaurants. No matter where we ate—fancier restaurant or
small-town café we'd wander into—each meal was a work of art in addition to
being extremely good. Scandinavian food
is famous for being white and boring, but we didn't find that to be true. Kathy took pictures of many of our meals
because they were so exquisite in appearance.
The only time we had a problem with eating while doing our traveling
around was in Växjö. Most restaurants in most smallish towns don't
open until noon, we discovered, and by mid-morning that day we were
ravenous. So we broke down and ate at
McDonalds, which was open. And
crowded. Same lousy fast food as here,
but it didn't matter because we were starving.
Not only did the restaurants mostly
not open until noon, the stores and museums are only open from 10:00 –
5:00. (And many not on Monday, so that
knocked out almost an entire day.) Our
tourist activities were thus limited to those hours. I suspect the shops and other establishments
in the big cities do not have such limited hours, but we were in small-town
Sweden before the tourist season begins in an area that's not that heavily touristed
anyway, so we had to make do.
When we were living in Scotland in
2006, we took a trip with Elliott to Oslo and Stockholm. In one of those cities (I don't recall
which), Elliott commented that he felt like he'd come home—he felt very
comfortable there. I agreed with
him. I don't know that that sentiment
had anything to do with the fact that I'm half Danish & Swedish, and he's a
large part Norwegian as well as Swedish and Danish, but I felt the same way
when we were in Sweden and Denmark on this trip, too. So did Kathy.
I suppose it was helped by the fact that virtually everyone spoke at
least some English, and most spoke it quite well. It probably also had to do with the fact that
the country looked just like home and people looked just like us. As someone who grew up surrounded by
Norwegian culture, none of this seemed very alien. (Yes, neither of my parents had a drop of
Norwegian blood in them, but they belonged to the Sons of Norway, which
apparently didn't mind Swedes and Danes too much, and had lots of friends who
are/were Norwegian. Some of my own
friends are Norwegian and retain a small bit of the culture. So even though it was Sweden, not Norway, it
didn't seem to matter.)
About the sixth day of the trip I
realized I was relieved about one major worry.
When we were in Scotland, and Krystin and her friend Mike were about to
leave for 5 weeks on the continent traveling around and staying in youth
hostels, I warned them that being together 24/7 might make them get on each
other's nerves and come to detest one another.
Even the most happily- and longest-married couples I know do not spend
every hour of every day together, which maybe why they are long and happily
married. (Mike and Krystin, of course,
were skeptical, but it did happen. By
mid-way through their travels they could hardly abide one another's
presence. The end of the story,
fortunately, is that they got over it when we all got back home and they remain
good friends.) I certainly remembered my
own counsel to Krystin when Kathy and I planned this trip. But we got along famously, and the few
moments of irritation that occurred (like thinking to myself while driving the
wrong way on some highway, "why can't you read that damn map?")
passed within seconds. Kathy said her
reaction was the same. (And in the interest
of fairness, I must concede—as Kathy pointed out when she read what I had
written—that a couple of times she was driving and I was reading maps and I
also got us going the wrong way on some road.
But that's different.)
In front of Fredericksborg Slot
We
left Sweden and went to Copenhagen, so trains and automobiles but no
planes. All the time we were in Sweden
it was never warm; perhaps it hit 70° once or twice; sometimes it rained and
often it was windy. When we arrived in
Copenhagen, I'm guessing it was in the low 50s or maybe even high 40s, windy,
and overcast with occasional drizzle.
This was the middle of June.
We visited a number of castles in
Denmark, most of which were rather pale imitations of castles compared to ones
one sees them in Britain or on the continent.
But one huge one outside Copenhagen, Fredericksborg Slot, was enormous
and impressive, built largely by Christian IV between 1602 and 1620. It is enormous, and now is a great national
museum. We had 90 minutes there; I could
have used a day.
Everyone we knew in the U.S. who'd
been to the Copenhagen area told us we had to go to Louisiana. It's a small modern-art museum north of
Copenhagen set in beautiful grounds next to the water. I'm not a big modern art fan, but this was an
exquisite little museum and I even enjoyed much of the art.
At the Mons Klint (white cliffs)
I would wager that most people do
not know that the south coast of the island on which Copenhagen sits has large
white chalk cliffs, similar to the more-famous white cliffs of Dover on the
south coast of England. Kathy found them
in her explorations on the web, so we drove down there to stay overnight and
see them. We walked from the parking lot
down to the ocean and the cliffs. It was
a long, twisting wooden staircase, and when we walked up we counted the
steps: 497. It was a little unnerving being at the base
of these enormous cliffs, seeing the rock everywhere, and reading the signs
that rocks fall down off and on all the time.
I could just see myself dodging some boulder falling down the
cliff. Or worse. But nothing happened, so we went back to our
B&B and sat outside for a cocktail looking at a farm field and the back
side of the cliffs, listening only to the birds.
One castle we visited, Egeskov Slot,
is privately-owned. A large manor home
rather than a castle, on the grounds were buildings that housed rather odd
collections: Motorcycles dating back to
the early 20th Century, cars of the same vintage (which were
interesting), and emergency-rescue vehicles also from the early 20th
Century. Who collects this stuff?
Kathy outside a remote bed and breakfast in Denmark
We
drove across much of Denmark, visited a number of museums and parks, did a
little shopping, and drove back to Copenhagen to spend one day in a big city
before we came home. A boat tour of
Copenhagen revealed a number of beautiful buildings (e.g., opera house) that
one does not readily see by walking. The
day walking around Copenhagen was the only day we were actually rather
warm. A good part of the last night of
the trip was re-packing so we could get all our glassware and other purchases
safely arranged for transit. I really
don't have a lot to say about Denmark.
It is a very pleasant country, very similar to Sweden in the
countryside. It is, in my view, an
innocuous country.
I did conclude that my friend Ann's
cousin was right. We met him for dinner
in Oslo when we visited in 2006. He
explained that the Norwegians believe they speak the most "pure"
version of the three Scandinavian languages and they think of the Danes as
speaking Norwegian with a mouth full of potatoes. After this trip I concluded he was right;
Danish is a mushy language with a lot of odd letters. With my high-school and college (and very
rusty) German, I figured I could identify one in a hundred Swedish words. Danish was hopeless; my chances of figuring
out what the English equivalent was was about one in a million. I did not realize how far removed from German
the two languages are.
As anyone who travels by air
realizes, airport "security" is a farce. Sometimes we were checked through with barely
a glance at our carry-on luggage; in Copenhagen they picked through every item
in the suitcases, disarranging all the glassware we had so neatly packed. Passport control was equally silly; there was
huge line to get through in Copenhagen, and when I got up to the booth, the guy
glanced at my passport for about 1/5 of a second and waved me through.
So there's the trip. We had a wonderful time. Won't ever go back to any of those places, I
suspect, because my list of places to visit on the planet is too long and time
and budget are too short.
* * *
Elliott all his life has been pretty
healthy, only the occasional cold. We
left for Sweden on Thursday. The
following Saturday he had a headache that felt like an earache and he was
having trouble swallowing because his tonsils were enlarged. By Sunday morning he felt so bad his mother
took him to the ER, with a diagnosis of mono.
When he went back in for a check on Tuesday, they gave him a penicillin
derivative for strep throat. A week
later he broke out in a terrible rash all over his body, an allergic reaction
to the antibiotic. By the time we got
home that Saturday at 2:00 a.m. (late because of plane delays), on Sunday the
rash had started to go away. After being
there for him all his life, the one time he gets sick I'm across the
Atlantic. I felt bad, but he said later
he didn't think anything of it. I guess
for the two weeks we were gone he pretty much slept but for an hour up and
around now and then. But he recovered.
* * *
Before
we left, I suggested to Elliott and Krystin that we go out to eat for a
"farewell" dinner. I suggested
taking them to Forepaugh's, a late-19th-Century mansion renovated to
be a restaurant. The menu had recently
been updated and it came highly recommended.
In response to taking them there, Krystin send me back an email: "Elliott and I are simple folk.
Why do you like to go to places where we have no idea what half the things on
the menu are, and they use such strange combinations of foods in dishes??
Here I was thinking we'd just go to Pepitos or something!"
Since
I was buying, I persuaded them to go to Forepaugh's. They conceded afterward that the menu was
fine and they both got food they liked.
I suppose I shouldn't complain that they don't want me to take them out
to "fancier" restaurants—saves on the wallet—but they ought to have
the experiences once in a while. Jeez.
* * *
Interesting to me, last summer I
stumbled across an article from ScienceDaily titled "Internet
Access at Home Increases the Likelihood That Adults Will Be in Relationships,
Study Finds." It found that "adults who have Internet access at home are much more likely
to be in romantic relationships than adults without Internet access. . . . Although prior research on the social impacts
of Internet use has been rather ambiguous about the social cost of time spent
online, our research suggests that Internet access has an important role to
play in helping Americans find mates."
The authors also found that "the Internet is the one social arena that
is unambiguously gaining importance over time as a place where couples
meet." They also said the Internet
is on the way to replacing friends in finding partners. I'm living testimony to the accuracy of that
research!
* * *
I
learned two new technologies this year, something I'm not that good at. I do it when I have to. The first was the Ipod. My doctor, my therapist (both for a couple of
years), and now Kathy had been bugging me to join a fitness club. I've known for years I should do something obnoxious
like exercise, but I always shared the view of the President of the University
of Chicago 1929-45, Robert Hutchins:
"Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down on the sofa in my
office and it passes quickly." I
know I am at an age, however, when I should at least get some cardiovascular
workout, and walking across campus every day doesn't do it.
So
I finally broke down and joined the local outfit, as did Kathy and
Elliott. Well, if you're going to do all
those things, it's best to be distracted, Elliott assured me, so gave me his
cast-off Ipod. He also had to show me
how to get music from my CDs to my Ipod, which I did. So now I get on the elliptical and the treadmill
and push on the weight machines with Mozart and Haydn and Bach in my ears. Sigh.
Krystin in Korea
My second technology acquisition
was Skype. Early this summer Krystin
decided she was going to seek a position teaching English in South Korea. A friend of hers from the University had
gotten a job doing it, and after a bit she decided it was a good idea. The economy is lousy and she couldn't find a
job, so this would be an interesting experience. She went through all the rigmarole to be
considered, including taking the bus to Chicago to go to the South Korean
consulate to get her visa approved.
(They interview everyone, but Krystin said it took about 10 minutes,
during which they asked her about her interests and her background and then
told her she'd make a good teacher and wished her luck.)
She
was originally scheduled to go on July 30 or 31. Then, after the Korean consulate had given
her its stamp of approval, the director of the school asked her to come on July
21. This was on July 15. Suddenly things were a rush. I asked Krystin how she felt; she sent me a
text message saying "I'm sad and flustered and panicky and nervous and
excited all at the same time. I'm not
ready to go yet!"
So
on July 20 Elliott and I—he was a good sport to go along—took Krystin to the
airport at 4:00 in the morning. We got
her checked in and left her standing in the security line. I was a basket case the rest of the day. There were so many things that could go wrong
(especially on a flight that went through Denver and San Francisco en route to
Seoul)—her luggage would get lost, the guy wouldn't be there to pick her up,
she'd get lost in Seoul, whatever. I
knew perfectly well that Krystin is a competent adult who traveled all over the
continent with her buddy Mike, arranged hostels, got to places they needed to
get—but European culture is not so dissimilar from ours. Anyway, once a dad, always a dad, I guess,
and I was worrying the entire day until I was in touch with her.
The
night before she left, Kathy suggested we try Skype, so we all downloaded it on
our computers and talked to one another from different rooms. Worked like a charm. As is usually the case for me, however,
simple though it is, I managed to not get it to work and Krystin had to get it
going for me. Krystin skyped me as soon
as she got to her hotel room to let me know everything was fine. I was enormously relieved. (For those of you unacquainted with Skype,
with it one can talk to someone and also have a live picture on the computer
monitor—it's the equivalent of a telephone with a TV camera, except that it's
through a computer rather than a telephone.)
Krystin caught an octopus
Skype
has been a godsend. Krystin and I talk
every day, or every other day, and she keeps me posted on what she's doing and
how the teaching is going. That I can
both see and hear her makes it almost like she's here. It's amazing to me that it's free. (The only drawback is that there is a lag
between the movement of the mouth and hearing the sound—I get the words and
then a couple of seconds later I see the facial expression. I suppose it is tough to get around the laws
of physics, but my friend Burt Shapiro wondered why all these whiz-bang
technology folks can't build in a delay so that the sound and visual arrive at
the same time.) But it's nice to be in
touch with her regularly, hear about her adventures (and see her photos on
Facebook and read her blog), and know she's doing fine and having a good
time. I suspect it helps stave off
homesickness for her, too—she said as much after a week, although that was a
little too soon to be homesick.
I
commented to Elliott, when we were driving back from the airport in the dark,
that I thought Krystin was very brave, because I doubt I would have gone off on
a venture like this by myself. Elliott
agreed and said he wouldn't, either. He
also observed, as had I to friends before she left, that she left Minneapolis a
"big girl" and that she's going to come back a young woman.
I
also seem to have acquired a new verb, to skype.
As
I finish composing this message in early December, I confess to being deeply
worried about Krystin being in South Korea. The recent flare-up between North
and South is a repetition of incidents that have taken place for the last 50+
years. What worries me is that the recent leaks of U.S. diplomatic documents
suggest that China, North Korea's backer, is prepared to see a unified Korea.
The North Korean leadership may see that as a death knell for them, and may be
inclined to do something dramatic to preserve itself—like attack South Korea
and try to take it over. The leader of North Korea is not someone one admires
for rational foreign policy, or for his government, and he could very well do
something egomaniacal, like invade the South. If that should happen, I would
fear for Krystin's life. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed that nothing
happens. I have toyed with the idea of telling her to come home, but thus far
have not done so. If North Korea invades, of course, then it will be too late.
(North Korea has the 4th largest standing army in the world, I believe, and I
read somewhere that even military experts concede that if North Korea launched
a surprise attack, its troops would be well into the South before any effective
response could be mounted. And Cheonan, where Krystin is teaching, is only
about an hour from the border with North Korea.)
* * *
There is one more technology I may
have to take up, the Kindle. Both
Krystin and Kathy have one and they love it.
I commented to Elliott the other night that with the Kindle and its
progeny and with improvements that will certainly come, mine may be the last
generation that has a room with shelves full of books. I suspect that college students will soon
download and read their texts from the web, never accumulating (and re-selling
some of) all those course books. Barnes
& Noble will likely be in trouble. I
don't know; I just can't fathom giving up books. But maybe they're going to go the way of the
vinyl record.
In
that same vein, after I wrote the preceding paragraph, there appeared an
article in The Chronicle of Higher
Education about the "Techonomy conference." At the gathering, Bill Gates predicted that
colleges and universities will, in five years, need "to be less
place-based." (Ho hum. That prediction has been made repeatedly over
the last 20 years, but the University of Minnesota can't build residence halls
fast enough to accommodate the demand, even now.) At the same event, "another tech
luminary predicted that printed books will soon be rare luxury items, and
e-books will be the norm. That
prediction came from Nicholas Negroponte, chairman emeritus of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab and leader of the One Laptop
Per Child effort to build low-cost laptops for education."
* * *
As Elliott and I are wont to do from
time to time, one night in early August
we sat and chatted for a couple of hours about everything under the
sun. One subject we spent some time on
was what his major in college might be.
All his life, since he was cognizant enough to think about such things,
he has intended to go into the video-game design industry. He is signed up as a design major. He's a good artist and he could develop a
story line for a game. But he has
learned, in taking art classes, that while he loves to draw (and spends time
doing it), he does NOT like drawing on demand.
Then it is no fun for him, he related.
So the appeal of game design has diminished considerably and he's
thinking about what other major he might pursue. The class he enjoyed most, by far, his first
semester of college was psychology, so he's taking another this fall.
What I found most interesting (and
startling), however, was his decision to find out whether there is an
"introduction to the law" course.
His mother and his sister and I have for several years told him he
should not discount the possibility of going to law school because he loves to
argue. He has always stoutly resisted
the idea, but he grumped in our chat that so many people (OTHER than his mother
and father) have told him he should consider being a lawyer that he's at least
going to think about it. I think this is
a great idea. Krystin, upon learning of
this revelation in an email I sent to her in South Korea, wrote back that
"that boy just loves to argue, and even if he's wrong, he'll argue so that
he makes you think you're wrong, too."
So fair warning to those of you who are my lawyer friends: I may send Elliott to talk with you about the
legal profession in the next few years.
* * *
Some of you may have noted the
hilarious news report last spring that while money buys a little happiness, sex
buys more. David Blanchfield, CBE and
professor of economics at Dartmouth, reported that on average, the amount of
happiness bought by going from sex less than once a month to at least once a
month is roughly equivalent to about $40,000 of annual income. Diminishing
returns from sex do set in after that, but some is a lot better than none. He advises:
"A couple of hot dates will probably do more for your sense of
well-being than a higher bonus. Money
isn't everything. Go and raise your happiness. Do it for the good of the country."
* * *
Simon Heffer, Associate Editor of The Daily Telegraph in Britain, wrote a
column to readers on style notes. Among
other things, he wrote that "Some Americanisms keep slipping in, usually
when we are given agency copy to re-write and do an inadequate job on it. There
is no such verb as "impacted", and other American-style usages of
nouns as verbs should be avoided (authored, gifted etc). Maneuver is not spelt
that way in Britain. We do not have
lawmakers: we might just about have legislators, but better still we have
parliament. People do not live in their
hometown; they live in their home town, or even better the place where they
were born." The Brits also, of
course, put their commas outside quotation marks, which Americans do not. (I should note that Heffer has a reputation
as being very conservative on politics and social issues.)
The Random House Dictionary says
that "impact" as a verb is acceptable for formal use. The American Heritage Dictionary, which
contains usage notes, contains this comment about impact:
Usage Note: The
use of impact as a verb meaning "to have an
effect" often has a big impact on readers.
In our 2001 survey, 85 percent of the Usage Panel disapproved of the
construction to impact on, as in the sentence "These policies are impacting on our ability to achieve
success"; fully 80 percent disapproved of the use of impact as a transitive verb in the sentence "The court ruling will impact the education of minority
students." It is unclear why this usage provokes such a
strong response, but it cannot be because of novelty. Impact
has been used as a verb since 1601, when it meant "to fix or pack
in," and its modern, figurative use dates from 1935. It may be that its frequent appearance in the
jargon-riddled remarks of politicians, military officials, and financial
analysts continues to make people suspicious.
Nevertheless, the verbal use of impact has
become so common in the working language of corporations and institutions that
many speakers have begun to regard it as standard. It seems likely, then, that the verb will
eventually become as unobjectionable as contact is
now, since it will no longer betray any particular pretentiousness on the part
of those who use it.
I wonder if the Usage Panel would have the
same views nine years later, or if they would have been impacted by the
ever-increasing use of impact as a verb.
Since I tend to the curmudgeonly in my writing, except for the preceding
sentence, you will never see "impact" as a verb in anything from me!
* * *
Kathy
and Elliott and I went to see the movie "Inception," one of my rare
movie-going evenings. As those of you
who have seen it know, it's about manipulating dreams. We were chatting afterwards and thought about
that old question, if you die in a dream, do you die in real life? I looked up dream research; the answer, from
Professor G. William Domhoff at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who
does dream research, is "No; or rather, you're no more likely to die while
dreaming than any other time. The rumor
that 'if you die in your dreams, you'll really die' is completely
false." So there's my contribution
to your knowledge base this year.
And
while I'm on the topic of dreams: I
remember very few dreams, but in recent years some of the ones I do remember
have simply been annoying. Not
nightmares or bad dreams, or happy dreams, just dull and irritating, like
dreaming about adding up columns of numbers or unpacking boxes or moving
furniture. I can recall awakening and
thinking I sure was glad to be out of a dream that was irritating because it
was so tedious. I wonder if this is
peculiar to me or part of advancing age.
I choose not to believe that my dreams are symptomatic of my life.
* * *
I suppose it is inevitable that
these letters will on occasion mark the passing of a good friend. I did so last year with Bob Antila. That is painful enough. It is even more painful when my daughter is
confronted with the death by suicide of one her close friends. Because Krystin was in Korea when it
happened, she felt the sadness and grief while separated from her other friends
(although they were all in touch on Facebook).
I was affected by the suicide as well because I knew the young woman
reasonably well—she had spent time at our house when Krystin was in high school
and college and I had given her rides to the University when she and Krystin
were taking classes on the Minneapolis campus.
I am aware that youth suicide takes place all the time, but knowing of
it in the abstract and knowing someone who actually commits suicide are quite
different things (at least for me). I
felt bad for Krystin and for the young woman's family.
* * *
Elliott's doing well at MCTC. He thoroughly enjoys it and gets peeved when
he gets anything less than an A in a course or on an assignment. What a dramatic change from high school,
where he could have cared less. He did
say to me at one point after classes began this fall that he would have been a
much better student in high school if the classes had been as interesting as
his college classes are. That's the
first time I've ever heard him say that his high-school classes were
boring. That explains quite a bit.
We sat one night in September and
talked about the content of his current classes. I learned about the effect of
first-world-country consumption practices, particularly food, on third-world
countries, about what infants and newborns can perceive and not, how one learns
to write a research paper in the age of the Internet, and the novelty of
drawing on different kinds of surfaces with different media. His research paper will be on the sex
differences in the playing of video games, so he's got to find out what
research has been done and develop hypotheses to explain the significant
differences. Even though I am long out
of school (thank heavens), I find it extremely educational to have these
conversations with him, especially when he's taking courses that I never took. I'm learning a lot!
Several weeks later I learned more
that was quite interesting. According to
his developmental psychology instructor, there are four styles of parenting,
divided on scales of control and warmth/support. So parents can be: (1) high control, high warmth (considered the
best because it sets standards for behavior but in a warm and supportive
environment); (2) high control, low warmth (authoritarian cold parents); (3)
low control, high warmth (you raise little rebels); and (4) low control, low
warmth (indifferent or neglectful parents).
I asked Elliott where he put me; he said high warmth, moderate
control. I was glad to know that (maybe
he wouldn't have told me if it was one of the less attractive categories, but
he answered quickly and without hesitation).
I was a little surprised at the warmth, since I didn’t seem myself that
way as a parent, but he's more likely to be right than I am since he was on the
receiving end of my parenting.
He also told me about the
"sociopathic triad": If you
have a kid in the early teens (11-12-13) who wets the bed, abuses animals, and
is a pyromaniac, you could be on your way to raising a serial killer. Wikipedia:
"The triad links animal cruelty, obsession with fire setting, and
persistent bedwetting past the age of five to violent behaviors, particularly
homicidal behavior. Although other
studies have not found statistically significant links between the triad of
violence and violent offenders, many serial killers exhibited these behaviors
during childhood. Contract killer
Richard Kuklinski and serial killer Dennis Rader both engaged in acts of animal
cruelty." Certainly glad I didn't
see those characteristics in my children!
*
* *
Elliott and the birthday guitar
Krystin's birthday is at the end of
October. This year a gift for her was
easy: It costs a fortune to ship things
to South Korea, so a check was it.
Elliott's birthday is in early November; he was going to be a
problem. Then Kathy had the inspired
idea to get him an electric guitar. He
had mentioned an interest in one some time earlier, so we gambled and got one
for him. It turned out to be a hit; he's
been putzing around on it, teaching himself songs, ever since. And because he has as friends some guys who
constitute a band and who perform at various local venues (Elliott is the
roadie), he's gotten some help from his guitar-playing band friends as well.
* * *
Kathy touring the mall on a Segway
Kathy and I went to Washington, D.C. in November. I had a conference to attend; Kathy went as
a tourist (for all her traveling, she'd never made it to DC). While we were there we went to see a revival
of "Hair" at the Kennedy Center.
It was fun, but I don't have to see it again before I die. And seeing it reminded me that I was never
really part of the flower power/hippie culture of the 1960s.
At the Kennedy Center to see "Hair"
I have concluded that almost any art museum I go into
will be having some kind of special exhibit that I'll find interesting. It seems to happen (at least to me) about 75%
of the time I visit a museum. Visiting
the National Gallery on this visit was no exception. They were having a neat exhibit of Edvard
Munch's drawings, and an exhibit of the work of Arcimboldo (1526-1593)—the guy
who painted people's heads out of vegetables, flowers, plants, ocean life, and
so on. They're a little weird, in my
opinion, but they are intriguing.
* * *
Kathy and I had a long and busy
Thanksgiving weekend. I was glad to get
back to work on Monday so I could rest.
It was a "meet the families" weekend: I went with her to Thanksgiving dinner at her
brother's and met her mother; she went to a family wedding on Sunday and met
those members of my family she'd not already met. Both events went well, as far as I could
tell. In between those two events, Kathy
and Elliott and I went to cut our Christmas tree on Friday (something we've
done in this family since the kids were born), bring it home and get it
decorated, and prepared for Thanksgiving with my family on Saturday. All these events went as planned, and
everyone seems to have had the usual good time, but I was ready to be back to
work.
* * *
So ends a good year for me. I hope all of you have a healthy and happy
2011.
