Vivus Interruptus

Veteran parents told me, before Gwendolyn was born, that having a child soaked up all the free time one used to have. They told me, in fact, that they found they could not complete a full sentence without being interrupted by some matter pertaining to their child. I used to roll my eyes at this--internally, of course--but now I know what they mea

Archaeology

My father was a surgeon. He did his residency at the College of Medicine in Cincinnati, Ohio, around the time that I was coming into the world. He studied under one W. A. Altemeier, about whom all the brief wisps of information I get say that he was a brilliant, demanding, medically famous, and personally ferocious man. (He doesn't show up in Wikipedia, so I haven't heard of him.)

As I brushed through the first layer on my great dig through Dad's stuff, I found this photo in a frame:

Here Dr. William Steward Halsted performs the first surgery in an amphitheatre (perhaps at Johns Hopkins?) in 1904. Halsted was the great American guru of surgical medicine at the beginning of the 20th century. The fact that my Dad had this photo framed, with a cheat-sheet marking the names of all those present in the picture taped to the back, testifies not only to his love of history but also to his passion for ground-breaking surgery.

In the same envelope, taped to the back of the frame, is a letter from the late great W. A. Altemeier. The letter thanks my Dad for photos he took of a case involving hemolytic streptococcal gangrene, and declares that Altemeier intends to use them in his next surgical textbook. The survival of this letter--a commonplace thank-you typed on university letterhead--suggests to me that perhaps my Dad wanted to be a part of that kind of ground-breaking medicine.

With the Halsted photo is an article snipped from the 1986 American College of Surgeons Bulletin. It describes Dr. Halsted's surgical accomplishments (including perfection of the radical mastectomy and the innovation of latex gloves), but also illuminates some of his personal struggles (like addiction to cocaine then morphine, and his gradual withdrawal from non-professional relationships). I think my Dad saved this article because it contained a copy of the 1904 photograph. Yet perhaps inadvertently he saved a snapshot of the ambiguous legacy of passion-driven geniuses: they sacrifice health and love in one lifetime for an art and a name that will last many lifetimes.

I am struck now, in a new minor chord, by the stories from my dad's life that suggest he may have made some of the same sacrifice. He was divorced twice, suffered a nervous breakdown early in his career, left ambiguous relationships with his children, and died too young. But he taught several generations of physicians, was adored by his co-workers, and has a memorial in a wing of Muhlenberg hospital. I do not know whether my father was a genius like Altemeier or Halsted. But I suspect he was no stranger to the great tension between professional passion and the everyday relationships of love and family.

~emrys

At Last, the Headboard!

After all that verbage (see May entry entitled Redemption), I didn't show you what the headboard looks like on our bed. Here it is, with unadorned comforter:

And here it is with pillows, ready for use:

I took these pictures four weeks ago, and I don't think the bed has been made since. Hm.

~emrys

A New Song

Maybe it's the Welsh in me; or maybe it's the Spirit. Either way, every interaction with my daughter is an opportunity to sing a new song whose words, melody, and sometimes harmony arise right on the spot. And what good is life if it doesn't produce new songs every day?

Here's a selection from the ones I recall (or of which I sing a variation on a regular basis):

The Good Morning Song, often sung to an arrangement of The Animaniacs theme melody;

The Cutie Patootie Song;

The Bathtime Song, often to the tune of Dean Martin's You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You;

The Chocolate Cake Song, a shameless theft of Bill Cosby's stand-up hymn;

Ooh! Aah! a jazz ensemble of sounds inspired by bodily functions;

Gwendolyn Hope, a fugue inspired by the theme song of Winnie the Pooh cartoons;

and one of my personal favorites,

Oh, Gwendolyn Cry, sung by Emrys Marley and the Wailer, usually when we've gone way past naptime or bedtime.

Here's to the songs that arise from day-to-day living!

~emrys

What's the Deal with Dairy?

Dairy products are not necessary for life; witness Asian cultures which have little or no dairy content in their diet. Furthermore, dairy is expensive in terms of cost or labor to produce. This combination makes dairy a luxury. Yet dairy farmers cannot set the prices on their goods; instead, after they have delivered the fresh milk, they are given a payment based upon how much the creameries received for their products. We thus violate the laws of free market economies to get milk more cheaply, and in the process make it more difficult for dairy farmers to survive without reducing wages and sacrificing opportunities for advancement and well-being. We endanger dairy farmers' welfare in order to get a cheap luxury.

Doesn't that constitute oppression?

~emrys

Sara's Writing

So I've taken on a new challenge to excercise my brain and have begun to write for Helium.com on random things I know a little bit about: gardening, laundry, budgets and cooking. I'll keep the list on the right up to date with recent articles I've written or you can click here for my profile which includes a list of my articles. If it interests you, please click on over and check it out!

We Are Well

Life is full. Garden is growing. Gwen is growing. We are well.

Throne Improvement

You might think that the nature and quality of a toilet answers only to the purely pragmatic function of getting waste out of the building as swiftly and smell-lessly as possible. But in this, you'd be wrong. The appearance and condition of toilet parts can be as important as whether or not it flushes. A recent case in point was our upstairs toilet (the one between the changing table and the glass block wall). Here is its original condition:

Besides looking like it came from the--well, whatever decade it was that wood-grained toilet seats came into fashion--our seat had the added liabilites of seeming a little grungy on the undercarriage and beginning to deteriorate at its brass hinges. At least, they used to be brass. However, as if sickened by their position in society, the copper flanges had long ago turned green:

Now instead of metal mounting screws, plastic bolts hold the seat to the porcelain bowl. Though safe from corrosion, I don't know whether the plastic will hold up as well to the normal stresses of human weight, ups and downs. We'll see.

At worst, I'll have to replace the toilet seat every couple of years. That would be an expensive proposition, I'm sure, if we wanted to keep the natural wood grain look. However, with the help of Wallie-World and plastics, throne improvement comes at just $10 a pop.

Have a seat!

~emrys

The Power of Decision

Microsoft just hired Qi Lu, super-brainiac-mastermind-guru-of-internet-searching, in order to boost its chances of getting an elbow into the market that Google dominates. Qi Lu is at the core of a new effort by MS entitled "Bing." You can check it out here.

Clicking on the "Why Bing" button, I found an introductory letter about this "Coming Soon" engine.

Another search engine? Nay! Don't call it a "search engine"--here's why, in an excerpt from that letter:

"So far in 2009, there are four and a half websites created EVERY SECOND as the web continues to expand. While more searchable information is cool, nearly half of all searches don’t result in the answer that people are seeking.

At the same time, the way the world searches is changing. You want more than just information. You want knowledge that leads to action.

The truth is you've evolved. It's time search caught up.

So we had an idea. Start over. And we did.

We took a new approach to go beyond search to build what we call a decision engine. With a powerful set of intuitive tools on top of a world class search service, Bing will help you make smarter, faster decisions. We included features that deliver the best results, presented in a more organized way to simplify key tasks and help you make important decisions faster."

Did you feel that? Did you feel the earthquake?

Probably not--the tremors have been going on for about a decade.

Bing acknowledges what we already knew: "nearly half of all searches don't result in the answer that people are seeking." In other words, Google is a firehose of internet information, and we're trying to drink from it. Or the internet is a forest, and we're scavenging for food. We want "knowledge that leads to action." I want a drink, or edible roots and berries--not the poisonous ones. Bing has unearthed--again, for the first time--the great liability of the search engine: increased access to information (or choice) does not necessarily lead to better decisions.

So we need a "decision engine." We want "smarter, faster decisions." Genius. Pure genius. Bing has hit the nail on the head.

Bing will sift your search results into logical categories (like, in the case of searching for a restaurant to patronize tonight, the categories of parking, prices, rating, and others) and display results in rankings on each page of results. Want to know where will have the best prices in San Francisco? Bing will tell you just where to go. It will search, categorize, sort, and rank, so that your search becomes a decision. Just like that.

That move from search to decision-making is one that will make us all breathe a sigh of relief. After all, I cannot count the number of times I have searched on Google, only to find I have to modify and repeat my search in order to get what I really wanted to make a decision (about, say, where to buy treehouse lumber).

The thing about hitting the nail on the head, though, is that you have to ask, Who put the nail there?

We can be clear that a Google search will show us the most popular sites that contain our keywords. But how precisely will Bing determine its categories? Will I trust that Bing's "logical" categories fit the way I think about the search at hand? If I'm looking for a restaurant that's been in that neighborhood the longest, that's family-owned, and has the friendliest staff, how will I know Bing will address those categories? Or will it always be about parking, price, and critics' ratings?

The power of a "decision engine" is that it takes the chaos of the internet search and narrows it to make choice easier. This narrowing is necessary--without it, we would never be able to choose anything. But how we narrow our choices may be as important as how quickly we choose. And who chooses the categories by which we make choices has the real power in the process of choice. By using Google, I know that my choices will be narrowed only by number of hits on a site. I get to narrow it further by searching again. More work--but more freedom. With Bing, my choices will be narrowed for me--less work for me, but taking one step closer to having the choice made for me. Isn't the fastest and easiest decision the one that is made by someone else?

Bing. Finally, I won't have to work as hard or think as much as Google makes me do. Yes, I've evolved--or maybe Bing will help me evolve. But into what? You decide--and let Bing help you.

May our decisions be not just faster and easier, but better. Who's going to promise that?

~emrys

JennyMark Tagged Me

My friend Jenny tagged me in her blog (I think this is the second time she's done this to me) so here it is:  the fourth picture from the fourth folder.

 

Zoysia grass plugs that Emrys planted in April.  (not that they look a whole lot different now!)

Tag- you're it (that's right, if you click and it's your blog - you're it!): 

Sophie D

Patty F

Luke H