essay stub – Journal

Ice Crystals on Minihaha Creek

Saturday, 18 February 2023

The winter here has been weird – a couple of sub-zero weeks, a couple of warmish (32ish) weeks, repeat. I run several days a week, mostly along Minihaha Creek, which winds through south Minneapolis. With the variations in temperature there is a lot of thawing and refreezing, and that, combined with changing water levels in the creek, results in marvelous ice crystals. Mostly they are two dimension intergrowths of needle-like crystals, almost fabric-like in their structure.

A Dream, a Flashback to College, and Daily Life

Monday, 13 February 2023

Hello. It is Monday, February 13, 2023.

This morning I awoke with a memory of a dream.

That’s unusual for me. I am told that my dream-amnesia means that I’m repressed or something like that – that it is healthy to remember dreams! And, in fact, I can if I try. Or I used to be able to.

Stub: Doors, identity and intelligence

Thursday 2 February 2023

I approach the doors to 501 Groveland and ring the bell and wait. It is a public entrance, but it is secured, and I wait for the buzz that will signify that the door has automatically unlocked. Does someone inspect me from a distance, weighing my dress and visage to see if I am suitable for entry? Or does the person on duty hit a button as reflexively as Pavlov’s dog salivates in response to it bell. I suspect I would only be subject to scrutiny if it were late at night, where I am nothing more than an unknown body emerging from a grey mist of fog.

Algorithmic Untruths

Tuesday, 6 December 2022

“Tom, you’re on a roll with your career!” Thus reads the subject line of the latest email of the day.

This is fantastic news! Not “fantastic” in its most common sense, but rather in its alternative sense of “fanciful; remote from reality.” After all, I am well into my fourth year of retirement, and it is at least two years since my last paper was published, my last patents granted, and my last appearance at a professional conference. While it would be fun to believe that the cumulative mass of my accomplishments has somehow reached a critical point, tipped, and is now barreling along on its own like an ever-growing cartoon snowball, it is not so.

Haecity: The Architecture of ‘Thisness’

This note is under construction…

Haecity has to do with the distinct and specific identity of a particular time-place. I encountered the term in Stan Robinson’s Mars triology, and was intrigued by the way it was used to fuse a sort of mystical view of the world as a deeply interconnected whole with the quest for rigorous and systematic understanding that drives scientific inquiry.

On Being Tough

Monday, 28 November 2022

I awoke early, called not only by the glacier, which had been on my mind all night, but by a grand flood-storm. The wind was blowing a gale from the north and the rain was flying with the clouds in a wide passionate horizontal flood, as if it were all passing over the country instead of falling on it. The main perennial streams were booming high above their banks, and hundreds of new ones, roaring like the sea, almost covered the lofty gray walls of the inlet with white cascades and falls. I had intended making a cup of coffee and getting something like a breakfast before starting, but when I heard the storm and looked out I made haste to join it; for many of Nature’s finest lessons are to be found in her storms….
—John Muir, Stickeen,1909

I am not tough. Nor I do not aspire to be. That’s not to say I’m weak. Rather, I’d characterize myself as cautious, intelligently so. I am open to challenge, but I wish to be prepared, and would like to see myself as resilient.

Street Art

Tuesday 22 March 2022

I sporadically read a weekly newsletter called Reasons to be Cheerful. RtbC was founded by, and still features writing by, David Byrne, singer, songwriter, etc. As its title suggests, it is a purveyor of hopeful news, something that I’ve welcomed over the last few years.

This week there was a link to a story on another blog that really stuck a chord. It is about the work of a street artist who ‘repairs’ pavement by embedding mosaics in damaged areas. (The full article can be found here: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2022/02/ememem -pavement-mosaics/)

Take a look:

The web of muscle, ligament and bone

Thursday, 10 March 2022

This morning I went to my an evaluation by a physical therapist. For several months I’ve had a small spot of pain – about the size of the tip of my little finger – dwelling in my right elbow. It makes itself known only occasionally, but when it does it does so with considerable force: a sharp, hot, shot of pain. Normally it happens when my arm is extended and my fingers grip something with a bit of force. Though, if I’ve irritated it, the spot can flare up during seeming innocuous activities.

Generally, an episode is induced by some vigorous activity involving frequent gripping and grasping and holding. Gardening, especially digging with a trowel and pulling weeds by hand, is the usual and most evident culprit. More recently, an episode was triggered by reassembling a recalcitrant bookcase, which required a lot of squeezing and holding heavy things with one hand. After this most recent insult, rather than resolving after a couple of weeks, the pain lingered, wanning and then, without any clear incitement, waxing again. Eventually, after it failed to resolve during the quiescent period of my recuperation from surgery, I decided I should deal with it. I consulted with my doctor – who having done an x-ray that showed nothing structurally amiss – referred me to a physical therapist

I must say that I do like physical therapy. I like it because the examination and evaluation is so transparent. There are no x-rays that produce ghostly white shadows, no blood work that produces mysterious BUN/Creatinine ratios, no machines that hum or buzz and give forth a number. Instead it’s a very human, very one on one interaction: raise you arm like this – does that hurt? Where? How about this? Hold your arm out and I will press on it – try not to move it. Squeeze as tightly as you can; good, now hold your arm this way and squeeze again. After a while, it is clear that the therapist understands what will produce discomfort, and what will not, and then she can give an account and provide any number of confirming demonstrations: it is these two muscles, and they attach to the ligament here, which is right where the pain is.

And it is also nice because often the problem is part of a larger system. The thigh bone is connected to the knee bone, and the kneedmay be in unhappy because of the thigh. In my case, my elbow ligament is irritated because my arm has been overcompensating for weakness in my right shoulder. The shoulder had, indeed, been the subject of a previous series of visits, and I thought I’d gotten it back to about 95% of where it shoulder. I had diligently continued my shoulder exercises, until August, when my diagnosis of prostate cancer distracted me from my exercise regime, and that lapse – followed by continued inactivity during my recovery from surgery – coincides with the failure of the elbow pain to resolve. It all fits together. Very satisfying, and oddly comforting to have a narrative that makes sense of it all and connects it to things I already knew about. While I’m not keen on having the problem, I like it when things make sense.

And, since today marks the day when I can resume activities like lifting more than 10 pounds, and doing things that will exercise my abdomen and core, I can begin a concerted effort to address the problem. Ideally, not only will I come out of this having resolved the elbow issue, but I will be able to get a bit more guidance in getting my shoulders (which, truthfully, I’d thought were back to 95%), and my core (which has needed more work) back into shape.

So, I will update my exercise guide, adding the initial set of hand and wrist excercises (intended to placate the irritated tendon), to my Kegel exercises (for my prostate recovery), and my eccentric heel drops (to protect my achilles tendon for when I start running again). Interestingly, one of the exercises I will do for the elbow is a cousin of the eccentric heel drop: both involve an assisted lift of the joint spanned by the tendon, followed by a controlled drop of it which will strengthen muscles that will ultimately take stress off the tendon. So it all fits together nicely. Everything is connected, both physically and metaphorically.

Recovery: The Rule, the Lime Tree and the Hand Truck

Sunday 6 March 2022

Here we are, once again, in March. A dreary damply chilly month, but one that is redeemed by the knowledge that any snow will be followed in a few days by melting, rather than by weeks of frigidity. And, wet and unpleasant as it is, after a cold winter the dank interludes when the temperature creeps into the thirties and sometimes the forties seem harbingers of spring.

My recovery continues smoothly and quickly. I am four days away from the point when I transition from not being allowed to lift more than ten pounds to being able to do anything. It would be quite wonderful if the body really worked this way: if, in the midst of a state of tremulous of frailty, a surge would erupt and rush through my body—muscles swelling, sinews knitting, chest expanding—and like a superhero casting off his disguise I would burst forth from the cocoon of convalescence.

The Mind in the Hand

7 July 2021

I have spent the last four years learning piano.

I started late, just after I turned 61. I was starting pretty much from scratch – I knew the treble cleff and quarter and half and whole notes, but that’s about it. They say that one learns things – especially things like language and music and dancing – better before puberty. That may be so.

:::Topography::: {fragment}

30 June 2021

Two years ago I took a course in Forest Ecology. I learned a lot about forests, and, unsurprisingly, have come to see them differently. But what I didn’t expect was that it would give me a new sense of appreciation for topography.

Prior to the course, I thought of topography as big stuff. Hills. Valleys. Mountains. Plains. Canyons. In my original vision of topography everything was large scale, at least relative to humans who would be small figures situated within it. I did have a sense of topography as fractal, at least a little bit. Valleys have gullies, hills have hillocks and humps, plains – well, OK, plains only have plains within them which is still fractal, but not very exciting.

The Napkin Thief

29 June 2021

Earlier this week I was cleaning out the cupboard in the mudroom. Among other things it contains a continually growing collection of cloth bags. Some are ancient, from professional conferences, often dating back 10 or 20 years, with acronyms I have forgotten. Others are souvenirs of a sort, gathered from various travels. A personal favorite is the Big Save bag, from an eponymous store in Hanalei, Hawaii. Others are kept for functional purposes, typically because they have elaborate structures with outside mesh pockets, and inner pockets, and zippered tops. Some, that appear of no import to me, mean something special to my spouse: ‘You discarded that?’

Unfocused Freewriting: On Errors, Patterns and Learning

29 June 2021

Start of second period of regular blogging (18 month gap)

My charge is to do some unfocused ‘freewriting.’ Don’t think of a topic. Just start. I don’t really care for the notion, but part of the role of being a student is to trust the teacher, or at least to give them a sporting chance.

Of course, I started out by ignoring the assignment. I did a number of focused freewritings. While I produced sizable chunks of text, that were reasonably coherent even though I wasn’t trying for that, I found them boring. Both in the production and reading. (On later re-reading, I did see bits of interest, but overall it was not a satisfying experience. And so I come to the assignment.

Letter to DC – Retirement & Identity

Tuesday 27 August 2019

From Then to Now

Email to DC

Yes, the self-description problem is a challenging one. I usually, as well, include that I worked at Apple, even though Apple was half the length and two decades farther in the past than IBM, for the sorts of reasons you describe. Apple still has cachet. Amazing it’s lasted 40+ years…

I have a friend who commented after a charitable event she was hosting — she does a side-gig as president of a small non-profit — that she ran into “one of those guys who used to be somebody,” referring to the way he was presenting himself. I thought, ‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ (not that I was much of a somebody) and ‘I don’t want to be that guy.’

So I am trying to let go of the professional component of my self identity. And of course it’s difficult to let go of an ~4-decade investment in a career that I feel turned out pretty well. Still, I have to accept that as time goes on it will seem less and less relevant to others. Other people of our age may be be mildly interested, but to most it will seem (at most) a historical curiosity.

I’m not quite sure what the alternative is to identifying myself with a profession. I can list a string of avocations, but that somehow doesn’t quite feel like it. And I will never be accomplished enough at either piano or geology, my two biggest foci, that I can call myself a pianist or a geologist. Saying I’m a bricoleur or flaneur seems more accurate, but almost no one knows those terms.

I’ve not yet had any negative interactions with younger students, but then I’ve had approximately zero interactions because so far I’ve only taken a lecture course. And I believe that to students, I am either invisible (a feeling which I’ve been increasingly noticing as I age), or perhaps a bit off-putting as I look like a parent (grandparent) or professor. We’ll see how it goes this fall, where one course has a sort of lab (it’s forestry, so I don’t think it will be what I think of a lab), and the other seems like it may have some group projects.