November 4, 2008, Chicago

Spring here is really little more than a rumor. In some ways, though, it's all the more impressive watching taut bundles of life cling to their branches through the frost, ice storms, and of course wind for which we are famous. (In Peru, revealing that I am from Chicago is always met with a grave, knowing nod, "Mucho viento.")

Spring here is muddy and often grey. And cold, although most of us are prone to sartorial denial about this. We move, heads down, necks pulled into the inadequate collars of our useless spring jackets, declaring the weather "Brisk!" to one another through chattering teeth.

I'm not a fan of spring, or of summer for that matter, but I can't help but get a little rush of excitement the first time we have that distinctive chalkboard smell after a rain. I can't help admiring that bonnie blue spring sky. And when those stubborn little buds eventually uncoil and leaves stretch out to one another, when there's a solid canopy of green interrupted only by a road map of veins, it's beautiful.

But honestly, even I—I who have so much green in my wardrobe that I try not to leave the house without performing what I call the "cabbage check"—get tired of all that uniformity. I love fall for its short days. I love it for its dry, crackling smells. I love its overcast afternoons and howling wind. But what I really love is how the relentless green gives way to an incredibly diverse palette as each species, each tree makes a separate peace wth its own cyclical death.

November 4, 2008, was a beautiful day in Chicago. And I took pictures. Partly to keep from going insane, of course, but partly because I really wasn't convinced that Wednesday wouldn't bring another disappointment, and I felt an urgent need to preserve that beauty and have something that would remind me of that feeling of hope, of possibility, of progress.

November 4, 2008, was a beautiful day in Chicago, but it was also a day that brought disappointments—terrible and important disappointments in California, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida. I think those losses are attributable in part to ambitions for what we can be that withered as we watched ourselves become something terrible. But there is beauty, there is possibility, there can be progress. And I have pretty pictures of trees to prove it.

























More here, including Hound Pr0n for those not into fall foliage pr0n.

Vote!

We don't get fancy stickers here.


I suspect a certain editrix of paying off the election judge to tell me that I have excellent penmanship.

The soundtrack to my voting:
"Rock and Roll," Velvet Underground
"Once in a Lifetime," Talking Heads
"Heavy Metal Drummer," Wilco
"Long Snake Moan," Flatlanders

(No, I don't have any explanation for that last one either.)

Hippydrome: The World's Largest Music Lesson @ OTSFM

So it's been just shy of 50 years since the Old Town School of Folk Music (the actual anniversary is in December) held its first classes. In 1957, Frank Hamilton was the only game in town teaching-wise. Without benefit of even the trusty Old Town School Songbook, he would zip around getting absolute beginners started on the basics and teaching more advanced players new techniques. I've had that very anxiety dream many, many times, but I assume that Mr. Hamilton was not naked the whole time. More surprisingly, yesterday was anxiety free.

So about two months ago notices began to appear about the World's Largest Music Lesson. As many guitar-bearing folk as possible were to gather in Welles Park in an attempt to seize the Guinness World Record for largest music lesson from a bunch of chocolate-making, harmonica-playing pacifist monkeys.

I hadn't been to a Second Half (a great OTSFM tradition wherein everyone gathers in the auditorium after classes and plays together for half an hour, culminating in a "Twin Spin"—two songs chosen by a different teacher each week copied on to a double-sided sheet of paper [greatly embiggening one's collection of music!]) in a long while, because I've been taking mostly ensemble classes, which run off schedule with the core classes and thus with Second Half. However, since I've been volunteering at the resource center on Tuesday nights, and M has his class on Tuesdays, we meet up there. (So for anyone wondering about the strange woman who shows up at Second Half to, apparently, knit: Mystery solved.)

Anyway, they were pushing the music lesson hard at second half, but each time they did, there was some confusion: At first there was a rain date of August 8, then it was the 7th, rain or shine. There was a rumor that those with Tuesday night classes had been prorated for the night of the lesson, then that was quashed. All the while, I kept thinking about the logistics of trying to register and check in 2000 people in the space of an hour, and I worried.

I shouldn't have. It all came off beautifully. The worst thing to say about the whole thing is that it was so horribly hot yesterday, which can hardly be blamed on the dearth of planning skills of a bunch of hippy artists. I got up to Lincoln Square quite early because we were the bad people who drove there, despite admonishments not to do so. It simply wasn't practical for M and I to haul ourselves and 2 guitars from Beverly to Lincoln Square on public transit at rush hour.

So after soaking up some lunch and air conditioning, I grabbed my trusty trunk blanket (see? it's totally a good thing that I haven't gotten around to donating all the crap in my trunk!), both guitars (did you know that resonator guitars are really freaking heavy?), and my laptop bag and settled myself in some shade near the gazebo. I was just on the very edge of the Sulzer Library's free WiFi, so I was able to check in and get some editing work to do, which I then promptly blew off so that I could cast on this sweater in some luscious rowan tapestry.

Being relatively immobile in the shade made the heat bearable. Add in the iPod, and I spent a pretty good few hours oblivious to most of the rest of the world. Around 4 PM, activity started up around me as staff and volunteers got the sound equipment, tables, and so on, set up. I hadn't volunteered for the lesson, because I wasn't sure what our plans would be, and I felt moderately guilty just sitting there while others worked. Not guilty enough to try to move through the swampy air, mind you, but guilty.

Around 5:30, everything seemed, more or less, to be set up. One of the faculty approached me tentatively and asked if he could interview me. Uh oh. He started with, "I think you're the first student I've seen here."

"Uh, maybe . . . " said I, shifty eyed.

"Oh, have you seen others?"

"No," I admitted, "and I've been here since about 3:30 . . . "

"Because you wanted to be the first?"

No, so that I could evilly monopolize the ultra-scarce resource of parking spaces, MWA HA HA HA HA HA! I decided this answer was too dissonant with my hippy dippy skirt and my knitting with all-natural fibers, etc. (I'd already stashed my massive, pimped out MBP.)

"Well, I had some errands to run . . ."

He looked perplexed but seemed to accept this. He asked about my relationship with the school and with music, which led to the articulation of something I've been thinking about for a while.

I've been taking classes at OTSFM for nearly 6 years. I started with voice classes just before road tripping with my pal M and the First Daughter to the nuptials of pals A and B (heh, no seriously, those are their initials!), just before spouse M moved to Chicago, just before I started work at Castle Demented, and just when I was pulling myself (and being pulled) out of a pretty low point. My very first guitar class was September 6, 2001. It goes without saying that my world and The World have changed immeasurably in that time (of course, as usual, I've just said it).

I think I've mentioned before that I have no art brain whatsoever. That matters not even a little bit at Old Town.

I sing. And the world doesn't come to a screeching halt because I'm not very good at it. I'm better at it than I was and I can sing with others (and even, occasionally, by myself in front of others) without dying a little bit each time.

I play. And when I screw up, I pause, catch my breath, and jump back in. (And when I practice, I get better, but sssssshhh! Don't tell my lazy!brain, which likes to think in terms of "There is no try, there is only rock!")

I listen. And I hear new things every single time a song I've been listening to for decades comes on. When I hear something and tingle, I know better how they're doing it. And I can learn how to do it if I want to. I pick out harmonies. I add my own.

And, being me, I write. I have words for the things that move me that I didn't have before, and I can fix thrilling moments in my memory and on the page.

No, I didn't go all drippy on the poor guy and go into all that. I gave him the Reader's Digest Condensed version, which is no less true or important:
I learn. Teaching, as I do, mostly introductory classes, it's easy to get frustrated with students' struggles with what, to me, is incredibly basic information.

I have no musical ability whatsoever. Every class I take is a struggle (granted, an incredibly low-pressure, low-stakes struggle). It takes work (and practice, but again, we're not telling lazy!brain). I forget things. I fight against my tendency to translate everything by way of piano. I mess up. But I go back every week, and it's not just because I also have fun (and I have an unconscionable amount of fun there): I hope it makes me a better teacher—and I think it does.

In addition to just the struggle to be a student, though, I think Old Town makes me a better teacher, because I get to watch so many good teachers in action. And they were in fine form last night. The park filled up so gradually it was really hard to guess how many people were there. Once M showed up, I finally went over and checked in, which took a matter of 2 minutes (and I don't think anyone had any more trouble than that).

Before the lesson started, they announced that the number of checked in participants had topped 1250. A second announcement put us at 1350. The final tally was 1377—more than twice the previous record. Woot!

The two songs on tap were "Jambalaya," because, thank you Hank Williams, a song containing only D and A7 gives everyone a chance to be a rock star, and "This Land is Your Land." Steve Levitt was, more or less, the MC for the evening. He was my third guitar teacher and the one who pulled me back from the edge of giving up at Guitar 1-Rep.

In classic Old Town style, he started with the beginners and gave everyone a lightning-fast, easy-to-understand tour of their own hands and their guitars. In a matter of 15 minutes, the substantial portion of the crowd that had never before picked up a guitar knew how to make the chord shapes for D and A7, to transition easily between the two, to count out the measures, and when to strum.

For level-2 players, Andrea Bunch and Cathy Norden introduced the tried and true "Johnny Cash" bass/strum-alternate bass/strum pattern (credit should probably go to the Carter family, but I understand the need to command the authority of the Man in Black before such a crowd), and fancied that up with some Sus2s.

Dan Fulkerson helped level-3 players out with some mini-barre chords on the 5th, 10th, and 12th frets that made for more than passable solos (because you've gotta have your "Jambalaya" solos ready to rock for your encore, you know). Tossing things back to Steve, the level-3 folks were also briefly instructed in jazzing up the regular old verses and chorus with a reggae strum pattern. After each level's lesson, we played a verse and chorus putting the m@d 5k1llz to use, and then we played the whole darn thing. And we rocked, dammit.

The road to "Jambalaya" was a great distillation of the Core Guitar program. "This Land is Your Land," was more representative of how things go in the Second Half. One of the teachers picks a song to lead, and everybody jumps in at their own level. If you can only strum on the 1, then by god, you strum on the 1 and those who are further along pick up the slack. If you want to do crazy barre chords and totally mash on the trembolo and work those squeadlies, then power to the people.

The Different Strummer was raffling off a guitar to one of the first 1000 registrants. After the drawing, the crowd started—slowly and reluctantly—to thin as the faculty lead us all in "Give Peace a Chance" (because ya just gotta under the circumstances). We'd all been invited back to the auditorium for a big Second Half.

M repaired to the soccer club for a mini-class (next week is their graduation, so they at least needed to plan that out), and I headed for BEER. I hadn't realized just how hot it was until I stepped into the air conditioning. Still, I was so full of peace, love, and hippy happiness that I did not, in fact, bust a cap in Charles Kim's ass when he cut in front of me in line at the cafe. (Kidding. Mostly. I was turned away when he got into the line, so I suppose my beer need was not immediately obvious.)

The auditorium only holds about 600 people, so fortunately not all 1400 came back for the embiggened Second Half. Still, it was quite full. Mary Peterson shook us down and forced us to admit that most of us knew more than the 2 chords we'd just learned, and we went into midnight special. Every teacher who'd made it led some song or another, and even the new executive director (whom I've now seen an infinite percentage [division by zero, dontchaknow] more than I ever saw the old ed) led one.

Good times. Rock on.

Primate-cy: Electric Boogaloo at the MIlwaukee Zoo

It was more than 2 years ago that M and I last ventured to the Milwaukee County Zoo and lost our headgear to wiley moose.

That trip was auspicious for me, because it marked the first time that I actually got to see bonobos, after multiple attempts to do so. In retrospect, it's a bittersweet trip, because it was also the first—and very sadly, the last—time I'd get to see Mitch Hedberg perform. Although I almost never reread anything I've ever written, I peeked into that entry and I'm sad that I wrote so little about his performance. His appearance that night was both a surprise and a real treat. Given how much of Mitch permeates conversations at Telecommuniculturey, he's someone that M and I really do miss on almost a daily basis.

Anyway, it's a long time since it was all happenin' at the Milwaukee County Zoo. Given that my baby brother has just matched at the Medical College of Wisconsin and will be looking for a house, most likely in the zoo's 'hood, it seems unlikely that it'll be that long before our next visit, and that's a good thing.

The holdings of the Milwaukee County Zoo are, somewhat unfortunately, superior to its facilities. And I'm not just talking about the slim pickings in the way of junk food. (Although, as it happens, only the Santa Barbara Zoo, with its repulsively healthy, avocado-featuring offerings, ranks lower.) Their signage is pretty tragic, both in terms of content and literacy (someone had added a much-needed sharpie apostrophe to "It's" on one sign, but I lacked a sharpie to remove one elsewhere; and let us never speak of the mote/moat problem). A lot of the "interactive" signs (you know, where a question is asked and you lift a flap, slide a lever, or push a button to get the answer) are in bad repair. And nothing appears to have been updated in the 2.5 years since we've been there.

In perusing their website, I see that the problems also penetrate that. For example, the Great Apes and many of the Primates are in the same house, so their organization on their list is not simply location based. Leaving aside the fact that Great Apes are a subset of Primates, making the location-based list confusing even if it were accurate, you then have the Orangutan (hint: it's a Great Ape) lumped in with the Primates. And the term "Pygmy Chimpanzee" has no place on any materials that hope to be educational.
These kinds of problems irk me but don't really have much of an effect on what I get out of a visit. For the most part.

After grabbing a bite for breakfast, we made a false start down the wrong path to the house with Great Apes and other Primates and had to backtrack to it. It was quite cold, so all the primates were indoors. There were two gorillas chilling in the indoor habitat, quite possibly the same two brothers we saw the lsat time, but I'm not sure. They weren't doing much, so we moved on to the bonobos.

The first thing that caught my eye was a nearly hairless male bonobo who sat stock still, keeping himself apart from the rest of the group. He was incredibly muscular, a feature emphasized by not being especially hirsute. He just looked out over the rest of the group so calmly the whole time that we took to calling him "The Cooler."

The second thing I noticed was that there were three bonobos as high as they could possibly get in the habitat. Two of these were adults (one male and one female, as it would turn out), and the third was a youngster. The little one was on the move, clearly wanting to get down on the floor where the rest of the action was. The adult male was hot on his/her heels and in fact sped past to cradle him/her on the rest of the way down. The female caught up with the two and elbowed the male out of the way to take charge of the little one. It gradually became clear that she'd lagged behind because she had extremely limited control of her lower limbs, and seemingly none over her feet.

We're going with the assumption that the female was Linda, the oldest of their bonobos and one who suffers from diabetes, and that she is the mother of the little guy/gal was quite possibly the little baby we saw back in '03. Unfortunately, none of the information delineating the individuals had been updated since our last visit, so this is just a guess. The identity of the male remains unknown, although I suspect he might have been the one actively pursuing the mother of the baby in '03. That guess is based on the fact that he was obsessed with both the mother and the little one, and the mother didn't seem especially pleased with or interested in his bonobo-y attentions to either herself or her offspring (and yeah, the adult male went there with the little guy, 'cause that's how bonbos roll). And just to complicate things, any and all of these bets may be completely off based on the fact that the female was sporting a truly giant estrus swelling (and seemed to have actual intercourse with at least two males), which seems out of step with the age of the little one.

So you can see that information—any information at all—on identity, relationships, health status, etc., would have been a real asset. But our confusion was probably nothing to that of the student who was parked on the floor by the habitat, clearly making notes for a school project. She was a bit surly to someone who asked her a question, snapping that she didn't work for the zoo, but we'll right (in fairness to the Milwaukee zoo, I leave my think-o intact, here. WRITE, damnit!) that off to quite understandable frustration.

From the bonobos, we powered past some cuddling mandrills and fairly sedate spider monkeys. The Goeldi's monkeys were completely uninterested in showing us their tiny baby. The two orangutans were kind of canoodling, but with their backs to us. The black-and-white colobus monkeys were looking glum, as they have every right to, and the Diana monkeys were quite huffy at my having mistaken them, based only on a very brief glimpse, for the B&W colobus monkeys.

But the siamang were all up for being entertaining. The group comprised a family: adult female, adult male, and a little one just over a year old. When we first got there, the mother was sitting on the floor, looking despondent, as the little one performed a vaudeville routine. He was trying to walk on the floor, but kept slipping all over the place. This seemed to irritate him, driving him to climb some of the vines hanging over his dear old mum so that he could kick at her head and shoulders in the universal, cross-species dance of toddler frustration. He was so bad at walking bipedally on the floor that I entertained two possible explanations: (1) He was somehow developmentally delayed and not yet strong enough, leg wise, to "walk"; (2) some particularly cruel keeper had actually crisco-ed the floor.

While mother and child were enacting this tender scene, the adult male was at the back of the habitat, looking through the grate into the interior, out-of-public space. At some point, the mother and kiddo moved back to sit near him. He seemed annoyed by the kid and, at some point, seemed to be trying to make some connection (not necessarily a bonobo connection) with the adult female, who whipped around and smacked him, once, twice, upside the head. Although her reasoning was not obvious at the time, when the whole group later moved closer to the glass, his hand appeared to be entirely covered with shit, which might explain some things.

We finally peeled ourselves away from the primates and headed off to see some reptiles and fish. I appreciate herpetological creatures in general, and M is, of course, an a fish person (and pisces), but there was not much that was particularly exciting in here. M reaffirmed his position that poisonous snakes are cheater cheater pumpkin eaters, and we reminisced about the crazy rattlesnake at the St. Louis Zoo. I was then roundly mocked for wanting to know (a) whether said crazy rattler was abnormal neurologically or otherwise and (b) just how much craziness is out there in the snake population waiting to be selected for.

We next hit the small mammal house where river otters did their cute river otter thing, which is just a smidge less cute than the sea otter thing. Most of the monkeys, including the pygmy marmoset, were completely uninterested in being seen by us. The icky, horrible bats, in contrast, were all too happy to make their presence known (and I'm still having nightmares about the one that was loping across the ceiling while upside down). The wild kitty had just been given a treat ball and was being hilariously house-cat like. The bush baby remained cute, although he did not engage in any particularly spectacular locomotive feats this time around.

Our outdoor tour was rather brisk due both to the cold and the fact that we learned our lesson about sudden Wisconsin wind last time. The short list to the outdoors:

• The peacock that was really really bummed about the closed snack bar and perpetually screamed about it.
  
• Australia was a bust because it was under construction and being painted, which might explain the sacked out roos.
  
• Giraffes look totally ridiculous indoors, but being that close, you can see them swallow, which is pretty freakin' cool. Also, their skulls are quite alien looking.
  
• The wussy polar bears went back inside almost as soon as we showed up.
  
• The black bears we saw look surprisingly like the hound, despite the fact that the hound is quite equine.
  
• The "Farm" is generally pretty lame, but we did see:
  
  
  
  • A very twitchy bird of prey being trained and demanding food about every 5 seconds (reason for presence on farm unclear).
    
  • A cow that trotted in for its lunch when called.
    
  
  
• The timber wolves that they have are just completely beautiful. They also very pointedly walked to the glass as we walked away, watching us for as long as they could see us with a look that clearly said "We don't want your kind 'round here, two legs."
  

After some lunch, we swung around the opposite side of the apes/primates to check out Macaque Island where the so-called "snow monkeys" were looking pretty miserable in the cold. Well, most were looking pretty miserable. There was one who was sitting with his legs splayed wide, his erect penis making a jaunty arch and resting on the rock between them like the proverbial third leg.

It was closing in on closing time by then, so we made one more swing through the primate house. This was quite fortunate, because we learned that the adult male orangutan "Tommy" (if that is his real name), suddenly seemed to be in possession of a bucket. We also got to witness all the bonobos going completely mental: They'd run into a deep, out of sight portion at the back of the habitat. For several minutes it would seem as if they had gone inside for the night, but moments later, they'd emerge, as if from a clown car, screaming. Over and over again they did this. Comical, yet mysterious, that's our bonobos.

Happy Birthday, Annie: Darwin, His Daughter, and Evolution

Had she lived, Anne Elizabeth Darwin would have been 166 today.Ok, had she lived past childhood and then found her some sweet steam punk technology she would have been 166 today.


A couple years ago, my friend J was kind enough to buy me a copy of Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution (sold in the UK under the title Annie's Box, and pointedly not sold under this title in the US for obvious reasons) as a thank you for guest lecturing in his class. For whatever reason, I had not picked it up before, but now I'm devouring it in chunks.

The author, Randal Keynes is Darwin's great-great grandson, and despite the title change for us maturity-challenged Merkins (heh heh, I said "Merkin!"), Annie's writing case (i.e., the box) is really the centerpiece of his story. The text is largely drawn from early 19th century writings, primarily those of the denizens of Down House, but radiating outward to create a rich social, economic, political, and philosophical context against which the extraordinary story of a very ordinary family is set.

As an avid consumer of Victorian literature, I've had more than my share of chuckles at the Heroine with the Mysterious Illness. (I mean, seriously what, exactly, is wrong with Laura in The Woman in White, other than the fact that she's not the highly superior Marion?) It's less funny when said heroine is the 9-year-old daughter, not just of the man that you personally regard as a hero, but of a doting, affectionate, playful father. Annie was simply "not well" for months. Except that sometimes, within the course of those months, she seemed well enough, as children do, when her cousins were visiting, when her brother was home from school, when there were adventures to be had.

Charles, of course, had his own chronic and mysterious illness, which eventually led him to take Dr. Gully's famous "water cure" at Malvern. Although Charles had experienced great relief from the treatments, probably because they involved the cessation of all the "legitimate" remedies—most chock full of heavy metal goodness—that he'd been taking, his turnoffs included mesmerism and clairvoyance, which Gully used routinely for diagnosis and treatment. They'd even sought out "bathing" treatments, the practical details of which were mind-bogglingly complex in the era of Vicorian sensibilities. However, when Annie's general absence of health devolved into a "bark," possibly indicating tuberculosis, Charles and Emma turned to hydropathy.

At first these were administered at Down where Charles used a qualitative scale to note Annie's general health and responses to the treatment. After a complicating bout of 'flu, Charles decided to take her to Malvern and Dr. Gully. Charles made the initial trip with, Annie, her sister Etty, the children's nurse, and the governess, then headed back Down-ward once the womenfolk were settled.

I'm not yet finished with the book, but I reached the chapter that culminates in Annie's death two nights ago (DUDE 5p01!3rz!). I wept copiously. Yes, I am ridiculous and, apparently, whether it's nonfiction or fiction I've read a zillion times before, I still hope that those crazy kids will somehow work it out. In stringing together some of the other events in the book, Keynes has little to go on: He infers a letter, a visit, a conversation from an abbreviated note in a personal diary, or he sifts through mundane materials that coincide with major goings-on and explores the incidental, everyday side of monumental events. But that brutal fact of it is, he has a lot to work with.

During what turned out to be Annie's final weeks, Emma was nearing the end of her confinement, as was the genteel phrase, with her seventh child. Given the social atmosphere, the medicalization of pregnancy, and have I mentioned it was her seventh child?, Charles traveled to Malvern alone when Annie's health took a turn for the worse. By the time he arrived, most of the Annie they had known had been gobbled up, physically and mentally, by fever and delirium. But Charles and Emma wrote to one another by every post. Each put off sealing letters until the last possible moment, eager to give and take the latest possible news. These are filled with hope for, despair of, and resignation to their daughter's fate as well as with affection, longing, and concern for one another. They are, 156 years on, a jagged distillation of a brutally intimate 24-hour news cycle. Keynes ends the chapter simply with a photo of Emma's diary page for April 23, which simply reads: 12 o'clock.

In the end, being able to do nothing for Annie, Charles and Emma did for one another and for their surviving children. Emma's sister-in-law, Fanny Wedgwood, had traveled to Malvern both to look after Charles on Emma's behalf and to reassure her sister-in-law, mother to mother, about Annie's condition. After Annie's death, Fanny urged Charles to leave the funeral arrangements to her and join Emma immediately. (I'm well on the "detached" end of the spectrum when it comes to rituals of death, but it still kills me to think of Charles choosing between attending his daughter's funeral and being with his wife and surviving children.)

This book is so much more than Annie's story or even the story of her relationship with Charles and Charles's relationship with her death. It's a book about what kind of men and women they were, these Darwins, as thinkers, writers, scientists, Christians, spouses, and parents. It's about the natural basis for moral behavior and ethical choices at a time when cruelty and injustice were propped up by supernatural rationalizations. It's about a world that is ripe for change, that must change, that is changing. (I don't want to digress or belabor here, but this is something that is very much on my mind at the moment, and I blabbed about it in the comments to this Pharyngula thread.)

Keynes has a light touch when it comes to personal relationships, letting surviving text speak for itself when possible and minimizing speculation. On the larger scale of interaction, he gives succinct, thorough introductions to the freethinkers, the dissenters, the writers, the scientists, and the clergy, both in the thick and at the fringes of the Darwins' lives. In broader perspective still, when the topic demands it, Keynes gives the reader a firm grounding in thought contemporary with the story.

When I cover the history of evolution in my classes, I always begin with my frank admiration for Darwin and his accomplishments. That said, I acknowledge that it was, in some sense, "time" for evolutionary theory in the mid-19th century and that Darwin, as insightful and methodical and brilliant as he was, could not have written The Origin of the Species without roughly 400 years worth of work by others. It's important not only to acknowledge the contributions that came before and to stress how much science is influenced by the social and cultural context in which it is practiced, but to underscore that Darwin is not the prophet of evolution. He's not the Messiah. He's not even the Great Man without whom we wouldn't have evolutionary theory. You can't make a (frankly very weird movie) about someone uncovering proof that Darwin never existed and expect much more than to rouse the fan!boy!girl!person in a metric assload of scientists to raise a collective "Dude! He was the man." (And you'd better believe that those bitches are going to be buying my steam punk novel, Darwin in America by the palletful.)


So every word I say in my typically digressive, caveat-laden lead up to evolutionary theory is perfectly true. But I always feel a right shit after I give that lecture. I always want to buy Charles a beer afterward and assure him that, you know, I really love and admire him, man. Keynes' book is that beer. It's a wonderful look at a great thinker and scientist living in volatile, dynamic times, who happens also to have been a very good man. And the movie based on it is officially on notice: Don't you go fucking it up.

Happy birthday, Annie.

The Road to Nerdom, pt I: The Big O

Last week, metaphorical posted (and beautifully so) about mathematics professor Erich Friedman's site devoted to numerical arcana. As a recreational math nerd, I find the site delightful on its own merits, and as metaphorical argues, it is a powerful proof-of-concept for the kind of communication we're engaging in. But in a tribute to the lateral thinking the page embodies, metaphorical's entry has inspired me to memoir. In other words: Blame him for this.

In Jane Eyre, Jane gives this rather underwhelming description of her pupil, Adele:

She had no great talents, no marked traits of character, no peculiar development of feeling or taste which raised her one inch above the ordinary level of childhood; but neither had she any deficiency or vice which sunk her below it.

With few exceptions, that's how I felt about most of my teachers before high school. If I had to choose a favorite, I suppose I'd pick Ms. O, who was my homeroom teacher in both 5th and 7th grades. In 5th grade, she was responsible for teaching us language arts (English, more or less), religion, art, spelling, and science, plus she was the social studies (sort of geography, history, and protoanthropology combined) teacher for us as well as for the other two classrooms of 5th graders. In 7th grade, she was relieved of duty for English (for which we "changed classes"), but inherited responsibility for reading and maintained all other duties.

When I think about Ms. O and why I characterize her as a favorite, it's hard to put my finger on why she holds that place. There are certain superficial things that, no doubt, influence some of my perceptions: She was pretty and younger by several decades than most of the teachers I had, and therefore less hidebound. But I also believe that she was simply a more actively kind human being than I'd experienced before. In first and third grades, I'd had brushes with nightmare teachers, labeling, and so on. In third grade, in particular, we spent all day with the same homeroom teacher for all subjects. My teacher hated me. (If that sounds melodramatic, please believe it is the softest, most even-handed language that I can use that I think retains any truth). Ms. O liked me, not especially or in any way that singled me out, but liked being around kids, including me, and she liked teaching them.

As a teacher, Ms. O was something of a mixed bag. As kind as she was as a rule, I recall instances in which she was angry with us as a class (mostly for behavior-related reasons, in this case, primarily talking when we weren't supposed to) and wouldn't speak to us for days. It also didn't take me too long to realize that she was not very well informed and probably not particularly well-qualified for teaching any particular subject in depth. To this day, I have to mentally correct my pronunciation from "Appottomax" to "Appomattox," because she taught it to us incorrectly. Not that pronunciation is the be all and end all of knowledge, but unfamiliarity with that pronunciation speaks to one's qualifications to teach what was, in large part, American history that year. (Of course Ms. O's sins are not even worth mentioning in the context of those perpetrated upon me in the course of history education.)

But what Ms. O lacked in specialist knowledge, she at least partially made up for in teaching style. I remember her as an adventurous teacher who was willing to take us off the beaten path to learning. For example, I remember in 5th grade social studies, an argument broke out between me and my long-term crush/eternal nemesis MH regarding whether soil or climate was more critical to plant growth. We both had taken an "as any idiot can tell you" approach to this absolutely-vital-to-any-10-year-old question and were soon staring daggers at one another.

MH and I were nemeses created, not nemeses by nature. We were the two smartest kids in our grade and arguably the two smartest in the school at that time. (Um, can we just pretend that I've qualified this statement in some appropriately modest way that doesn't make me sound like a supervillain waiting to happen?) Although we consistently performed almost exactly the same on all tests, standardized and nonstandardized, it was Well Known that MH was very good at math and science (because [paging Hippo Dignity to the gender-neutral-colored courtesy phone] that's what boys are good at) and I was very good at English and reading (because that's what girls are good at). (I will take a stab at real generosity and modesty here and point out that, although he also sucked at art, he sucked less than I did, and I won't even point out that there are blind hedgehogs in bags clinging to the intestines of the ape creatures of the Indus who are better at anything artistic than I am.) In fact, this was so well known that I was excluded from a very exclusive accelerated math program in 8th grade until one of the boys was kicked out as punishment for bad behavior. Anyway, being so blinded my oppression that I directed my anger at my fellow oppressed, I pegged MH as my nemesis and he returned the favor.

Ms. O, not being brain dead or obtuse by choice, knew that both MH and I were bored to tears nearly 100% of the time in school. So when she was faced with the two of us, on the very verge of pistols at dawn over the issue of soil v. climate, she ran with it and suggested that we have a debate on the topic. MH and I were captains of team climate and team soil, respectively. We were each allowed to choose three teammates, and we had a week to gather data for our case. Without being overly rigid on the rules, she introduced us to them and taught us about argument, rhetoric, dirty linguistic tricks, and how to think ahead and think on the fly. It was such a big hit that there was demand for other debates with other captains and teams throughout the year.

In 7th grade, she again noticed that there was a small, but growing posse of unabashedly smart and nerdy folk (in HS, an older neighbor once asked me, "How did you manage to make smart . . . well, not cool . . . but at least not grounds for assault?"). I'm not sure she was as much concerned about our intellectual growth as she was worried how much trouble we might be if left entirely to ourselves. So she took a bunch of incipient slackers who had been coasting on their ability to paraphrase, rather than rip off more directly, encyclopedia articles for 7 years and assigned them a group term paper on Hitler's rise to power.

One could argue that she then hung us out to dry a bit. She gave us a week to come back with sources, shot said source list all to hell with words like "bias," "crank," "agenda," and "fiction!!!" (circled many times in red), only then telling us about things like the Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, journal articles, and peer review. She allowed that random facts, such as the predisposition of Nazi scientists to experiment of midgets and twins, or the tendency of Hitler's closest allies to be Catholic (in the interests of protecting the identity of the innocent, I will only say that the school was named for one of the Blessed Virgin's crossover stellar/maritime incarnations), were interesting in a "gee whiz!" sort of way, but did not actually constitute an argument, and only then did she introduce us to the concept of a thesis statement. She pushed us and challenged us to think and to express our ideas in persuasive ways. I think it was the first time that any of us had someone hold us to a standard that we couldn't meet simply by having a pulse.

It's odd, this entry started out being about my two favorite HS teachers, who happen to have been married to one another. I still want to write about them, amazing individuals worthy of much more unqualified praise and gratitude that they are, but I kind of like this one being about Ms. O alone. I think I've gotten in the habit of thinking of her as the first person I encountered in my education who was simply neurotic, rather than actively psychotic, but she apparently deserves better. Here's to you, Ms. O, wherever you may be.