14 May 2010

Today is Owen’s birthday. He is five years old today.

Last year, one of my co-workers asked why I felt the need to take the 14th off of work and do something special with Owen on that day, especially since we had a birthday party scheduled for that coming weekend. Owen wasn’t nearly as attuned to times and dates back then, so I didn’t really have a good answer. My co-worker said, “It seems like you’re just doing something special on that day for your sake.” Which, you know, is true.

I think the day I became a father was the most significant day of my life, and I would be interested to hear a compelling argument why the same is not true for any father. So much changed on that day…more than even the obvious.  So I choose to celebrate this day, not just so that my kid has a fun time on his birthday, but because it’s an important date for the whole family.

When I was growing up, there was no celebrating birthdays. Witnesses have no logical reasons for this. Most of the rationales they throw out for abstaining from birthdays immediately fall apart when applied to other life-events. For example, many will tell you it’s wrong to set a date aside to honor an individual…yet they see no contradiction in holding wedding receptions, wedding anniversary parties, retirement parties, graduation parties and, heck, even baby showers (which are, essentially, birthday parties). More astute Witnesses will try to cite scriptures, but this too is fallacious, as any non-Witness bible-believer can vouch for. The bottom line is, Witnesses don’t celebrate birthdays for one reason: because the Watchtower Society, which dominates their lives, tells them not too. See, unlike murder or idol worship, Witnesses don’t actually find birthdays offensive. If the Watchtower Society was to announce tomorrow that birthdays are okay now, nearly all Witnesses would jump at the opportunity to begin celebrating them.

As it is, many Witness families struggle with this policy. My brother- and sister-in-law, for example, give their daughter presents on their wedding anniversary. I recall at least three occasions where my parents arranged for “surprise days” for me, in lieu of birthdays. Just two years ago, in fact, my mom, Uncle, and Aunt invited us to an arcade where they had cake and gifts for Owen and my second cousin. “This is so nice to do for the kids,” my mom said, “’cause, you know, we don’t celebrate birthdays.” In fact, even my grandfather, who loves the Watchtower Society so much he calls it “mama” used to call me every day on my birthday to share a scripture with me. Pathetic as it may sound, I looked forward to his calls, even arranging my schedule to try to catch his calls… It was the only birthday tradition I had.

Indeed, I can’t even recall anything about most of my birthdays. On my golden birthday, when I turned 11, I went to school all day. I didn’t show up with cookies or treats to pass around, and no one sang me a song. No one even knew it was my birthday. It rained all day, and I walked home getting wet. I asked my mom if I could go play with the Witness girl who lived down the street, but she said no. We went to the meeting that night.

I am reluctant to share what I said in the previous paragraph, as I fear it solicits responses like: “Oh, boo hoo, poor little Jimmy didn’t get presents on his birthday.” But I’m not shooting for sympathy. Once I reached adulthood, and pretty much concluded the Watchtower’s birthday policy was bullshit, I still didn’t do anything for my birthday. It didn’t matter, I figured.

But once I became a father, I realized that what mattered was not my birthday – but my child’s. On the day he turned one year old, I couldn’t help but celebrating the day: it had been one year since he, Jennifer, and I became a family. It was the anniversary of a day more important than my wedding, and certainly more important than my baptism. In reflecting on my childhood, I am absolutely appalled that my parents were able to pass by my birthday as if it were any other day; as their older child, it was my birth that first granted them parenthood status. In our materialistic culture, it’s true: presents are over-rated and usually unnecessary. A candle-topped cake is merely a tradition hoisted on us by our culture. So I do not mourn the absence of sweets and treats on my birthday; I mourn the absence of celebration: an air of joy, a day – or even just a few hours – taken out from our busy cycle of work-school-meetings to just enjoy each others’ companionship. To play, to laugh, to talk, to think, to run, to eat, to do whatever a family finds special to do.

As callous as this may sound, lots of children don’t make it to their first birthday. Likewise, lots of fathers and mothers aren’t there when their child reaches such a landmark. Since Owen’s birth, the Earth has traveled nearly 3 billion miles – five times hurdling around Sol and coming back around to this same place where it was on that first day he came into the world. The three of us have been there, with each other the whole time and on each anniversary of that first day. Raising a human life to age five is nearly as big of an accomplishment as simply living to age five – and if that’s not something to celebrate, I don’t know what is.

12 May 2010

Today was my last day of class for the semester. I’m still not done with the work, however, as my final paper needs to be turned in on Monday by 5:00, but at least I’m through with a three hour class every Wednesday night.

Our professor asked us to reflect on the course by writing down a few things, and I decided to list the main texts we examined this semester, ranking them by how well I liked them:

Almost an Evening, by Ethan Coen

A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry

The Best American Short Stories 2009, edited by Alice Sebold

Limbo, directed by John Sayles

The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold

Thomas and Beulah, by Rita Dove

When the professor asked us to share our thoughts, I commented that I though I didn’t think everything we read in class was top-notch, my appreciation for each text was enhanced after discussing them in class and writing about them – “unpacking the texts.”

If you’re looking for recommendations on what to look into, I say: read Almost an Evening. I liked it so much, I’m gonna keep the book instead of selling it back to the store. The next three…sure, if you’d like, you can check ’em out. Concerning the matter of the collection of short stories, the best of the buch was “Rubiaux Rising.” I am hereby endorsing readership of this short story – the shortest in the book – but save yourself the cost of that whole book (in which you’d be forced to buy 19 other stories that aren’t as good); try finding a copy online. The last two items on the list, don’t bother.

I turned in 4 papers based on the above texts. I’ll post my grades later, once I have them.

13 May 2010

Today I attended the Minnesota Chromatography Forum’s spring symposium; somewhat of a tradition for my co-workers and me. I’ve attended in 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008 and today. It basically consists of several short presentations, and I go from room to room trying to catch the most job-relevant ones.

It probably goes without saying, but the most interesting presentation I listened to was the one that had the least applicability to my work.

Professor John Goodpaster delivered the keynote address titled “What Do Explosives Smell Like? Characterizing the Volatile Compounds Available to Explosive-Detecting Canines Using Gas and Liquid Chromatography.”

Despite this horrendous title, I liked what I heard. Here are some tidbits…

As far as we humans can tell, there’s no variability in the sniffing ability of various dog breeds. The breeds that are most often chosen for sniffing work are chosen by virtue of their size, intelligence and temperament. The three most commonly used breeds are springer spaniels, Labrador retrievers, and German shepherds.

There are over 30 applications for dogs’ sniffers in the humans’ world. These include searching for illegal drugs, bombs, cancer cells (!), and even fruits and vegetation that are illegally smuggled into a country. This latter application often employs beagles, who run around the customs area of airports searching for contraband.

Here’s a big advantage of using dogs for such work over instrumentation (or, as the Professor called it, Lab vs. lab): Dogs are not invasive. People don’t like having their bags searched. They don’t readily give up swabs of the inside of their mouth, and they do not like cavity searches. Get a friendly beagle running around, however, and people practically throw themselves over the canine, fawning over them with sentiments like “oh what a cute puppy.” Also, a dog’s nose is always working; no need to profile or seek a court order – just as we immediately begin scanning a new area with our eyes, a dog does the same with his/her nose.

Dogs trained to search out explosives are taught passive detection. Active detection, often used in seeking out cocaine, is when the dog barks, wags their tails, and even starts scratching at the container housing the drugs. I hope I don’t have to explain why this is a bad idea for a dog who finds explosives. One problem however, is that the dog is excited, both because it’s achieved its goal, and also becuase it knows a reward will be forthcoming, so teaching the canine to sit still with all this excitement brewing takes some training and discipline.

Another problem with dogs: like human noses, their noses shut down when overloaded; their noses detect differences. Think of it this way: you walk into a kitchen and you say: “wow, it smells great in here.” But stay in the kitchen for a few minutes, however, and you no longer notice the smell.

But you’ be surprised how fast these dogs can detect explosives. In one experiment, 100g of explosive compounds were placed in a small can (about the size of a soup can), which was then placed inside a larger can. Five other cans were spaced around, some containing nothing, and others containing odors designed to confuse the dog. This handler releases her dog, who then proceeds to run past each canister. The dog didn’t linger at each canister by any means; it went at full sprint. After passing the third canister, he had to double-back – as he was going so fast – took a quick sniff to be sure, then sat down next to the canister, his way of saying “it’s in here.”

This was illustrated with humans: we could run past a line of people and immediately spot (by sight) the one person we know. But smelling works even better, because odors “smear” across the air, so a canine is already picking up on an odor before it even focuses on the one with the substance.

Of course, this can also pose a problem: some dogs have been brought into warehouses or onto ships and just immediately sat down – the contraband is everywhere, so the dog figures “hey, why look for it? It’s all around.” Some criminals take advantage of this by placing, say, a small bag of cocaine in a larger container filled with coffee beans. Even then, though, a little bit more sniffing and most dogs can still spot the desired drug.

Amazing. I just can’t understand how a species with that phenomenal of an olfactory system can possibly stand ramming their snouts into their fellow dogs’ butts. Maybe I’ll find out next year.

10 May 2010

Today I was invited to read my short story “Big Trees” at Hamline’s Fulcrum Showcase. The Fulcrum is a book of student works that the university publishes yearly. They had an indie-folk band playing before the event began, there was artwork on display, and five people got up and read their work.

The entire book, as far as I can tell, features only two short stories, the rest is all visual art and poetry. I was invited to read my work first and then, after I sat down, the next four people each got up in turn and read their poems. My story, thought not that long, was longer than any of the poems. I swear I was up at the microphone for 10 minutes, and the other four poems probably took a combined total of 7 or 8 minutes to read. So, I unintentionally dominated the presentations.

I participated in a similar event 19 years ago. I submitted my short story “Slaughter in the Family Room” to my high school’s yearly literary book. When I received an invitation in the mail, inviting me to attend a banquet for the release of the book, I didn’t think I’d go, but my mom wanted to go. So she and I dressed up nice, and – I swear – that was the only extracurricular event I ever attended in high school (I didn’t even go to my graduation ceremony).

On both occasions, I was disappointed to see that there were errors in my work. Earlier this year, after I’d received word that my work had been accepted for publication, I wrote back a few weeks later asking if there was anything I needed to fix in my story. The editor wrote back and said she didn’t recall seeing any errors. Then I wrote back saying there were at least three. She never wrote back and, today, while reading my story, I stumbled over the errors. The first two were no big deal – one concerned punctuation and the other spelling. But the third error concerned a missing word, and that tripped me up. Afterwards, the editor came over and apologized for not fixing that error. She also said: “And I need to apologize for something else, too.” She showed me the back of the book where it lists all the authors…except me. “I have no idea how your name got cut off,” she said, pointing out that there was even a space for my name. I told her I know how my name got cut off: because it’s alphabetically last (as usual). She understood what I meant, as she has the same last name as me. Oh well.

On the way home, Jennifer and I wondered why editors don’t do any editing anymore.

11 May 2010

So, I was going to write about my trip to the dentist today, but I’ll save that for my next check-up 6 months from now. Instead, I’ll write about three things that happened this evening.

I took Owen to the Mall of America today in an effort to give Jennifer some quiet time to finish her homework. Yes, I realize bringing my kid to the mall is lousy parenting, but the weather was awful for visiting a park, and zoos and museums are too expensive.

1. They have mini-golf at the Mall once again! Yay! It was way better (and less expensive) than the mini-golf place at the Burnsville Center, which has an obnoxious ball dispenser, and really lame holes with nothing interesting besides black lights.

Anyway, this family of six bought a round of golfing shortly after Owen and I. Despite their large group, they soon caught up to us. At first, I wondered how they managed to do that, but then I realized: they weren’t really playing golf. The dad and mom were just taking their kids around, disrespecting the order of the holes, to play where ever they felt like it. I set my ball on the tee for the 4th hole, and right as I was about to putt, this 3 year old (?) girl comes walking across my path. No big deal, I know little kids do those things, but the father just followed along with her, and they walked over to a spot about 12 inches from the hole, and began putting from there. I meanwhile, just stood there and stared.

Later, while Owen and I were at hole 10 and they were at hole 9, they just walked on past us to hole 11. Then they past up a few other groups, evidently in search of a free hole. At one point, I think on hole 15, I looked up and saw the couple ahead of us were just standing around. “Are you guys taking a break?” I asked them. The guy said, “No, we’re waiting for them,” and he pointed to a couple ahead of him and his wife. And who was that couple waiting for? Yep, the family of six.

Incidentally, the only hole-in-one (or “homerun” as Owen called it) of the game was Owen’s. I wasn’t even watching, but the couple in front of us was, and I guess his ball just traveled right down the green and into the hole. I missed my one opportunity for a hole-in-one when my ball actually went over the hole because a little boy’s foot was in the hole.

2. While waiting in line to buy ice cream, I noticed I was being stared at. It took a second to register, but finally recognized the staree as John, a Witness from my former congregation. Once I realized who it was, I waved to him, and he just kind of reverse-nodded at me (you know, the kind where someone lifts their head up instead of down). “How you doing?” I asked him. We were about 10 feet away, but I couldn’t get any closer, as I did not want to leave my spot in line, and I think he was waiting for his wife to pay for her ice cream. He nodded again. I think he said “good.” Then he turned around and started walking away.

Poor guy. I feel bad for Witnesses like that, who are torn between their conscience and their religion. John will have to get over that if he ever wants to be an elder.

3. Minutes later, while I was paying for our ice cream, the cashier looked down at Owen (who had a mouthful of food) and said: “Hey, little squirt, you should thank your dad for that ice cream.” He didn’t really understand what she was saying; I don’t think he’s ever heard the word ‘squirt’ applied in that way, and I don’t think he even knew that she was talking to him because, after all, adults almost never talk to kids that they don’t know. I smiled at Owen and said, “do you like your ice cream, buddy,” but he was too shy to answer. Then the cashier said: “I’ll give your Daddy a dollar off if you say thank you.” So then, desiring the discount, I looked at Owen again and said: “Say thank you.” He said it real quiet, real sheepish.

I know why she gave me the dollar off. Because those folks at Cold Stone have a tip jar sitting out (which seems really stupid to me – why should I give a 15%+ tip for that?) and they really prostitute themselves out in an effort to get that cash. I was going to throw the extra buck in the jar, but then I thought: “No way, this lady pissed me off.” No tip for her.

Here’s the deal: it’s not the Cold Stone cashier’s job to teach my son manners. If I wanted to guilt him in to morality, I would raise him religious. My son is not the kind of person who thanks me instantly upon receiving something like that. He’s usually overwhelmed out in public, anyways. He’s more they type who, while lying in bed that evening, will say: “Thank you for bringing me to the mall today, Daddy.” In fact, he’ll even thank me at times that I don’t feel it was warranted. Like the other day, I was pushing him on the swing at the playground, and he said: “Thanks for pushing me.” And, at any rate, I don’t really think I need to be thanked for everything anyways. Forcing those words out of someone renders them sterile. There are other, more meaningful way to connote gratitude.

08 May 2010

We dropped Owen off at his grandparents’ home this afternoon. His grandparents have suddenly surged ahead in the coolness department thanks to their acquisition of a Wii. This causes Owen to want to visit with them even more. He must figure, “heck, I got lots of grandparents…but only one Wii.”

I just gotta mention how much it is possible to accomplish without a four and eleven-twelfths year old under foot. Jennifer and I made significant progress on our final papers for the semester. The dishes are clean, the carpets are vacuumed, the laundry is clean, the bird feeder is full, the plants are watered, the shelves are dusted, and the litter box is de-littered. Jennifer and I even went out to lunch and, as the sappy romantics we are, we chose Applebee’s.

Did you know Applebee’s is actually named for T.J. Applebee’s? I didn’t know that. There was some stained-glass artwork in the particular location, though, that tipped me off to this fascinating bit of trivia. (Question: is there any bit of trivia that’s not fascinating? Answer: yes.) A friend visiting from Germany once asked me what the word “applebees” meant. I told him I did not know, but that the apostrophe indicated it was someone’s last name. Now I know even more.

This reminds me of my 4th favorite job: Lenscrafters. Did you know the place is actually called “Precision Lenscrafters”? I didn’t know that until after I’d gotten hired and worked there for a week. I asked one of my co-workers: “Why are all the stores called ‘PLC’ and then a number?” And he said: “‘Cause ‘PLC’ stands for Precision Lenscrafters, and the number is the number of the store, so this is the 581st Lenscrafters to open.” Then I said: “Cool.” And he said: “No, it’s not really.”

Also, did you know this: Ikea is actually an acronym, so I guess it should always be written as IKEA. The letters stand for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd, which I think is a Swedish curse.

09 May 2010

This morning, around 10:00, there were two guys out in the parking lot playing with a remote-controlled toy car. The both had the backs of their pick-up trucks open, and they kept fiddling with the little car, then setting it back down and driving it around. Let me say for the record: I hate those things. They’re louder than real cars, which is bad enough, but the sound they make is akin to a dentist’s drill. Squealing, whining, incessant screeching.

At one point, one of the guys (the one with the baseball cap on, not the one with the bald eagle t-shirt), picked up the car, and took a piece off of it. He then shook up a can of spray paint and, leaning on a lamppost, sprayed the piece a beautiful black. In doing so, he vandalized the lamppost, too, but he might not have seen that beyond his third-trimester belly.

They left, but returned about 4 hours later, and played with their car again. My wife walked out on the deck and said: “Do you know how annoying that is?” The bald-eagle shirted fat hick looked up and said: “Sorry.” Which, no, he wasn’t, as was evident from the fact that they continued to play with their car for another ten minutes.

Whenever I see or hear those obnoxious toy cars, I instantly snap back to my first encounter with them. At the risk of hearing “You’ve told me that story, like, ten times,” from my wife again, I will hereby relate it once more:

When I was 14, my family moved to a new home. That summer, we discovered our neighbors (with whom we shared a driveway) had one sole interest in life: racing their toy cars around the pavement. They did it ALL the time, one weekends and weekdays. Even in the rain. Every morning, around 9:00, they’d open their garage door, and these two fat drunks would sit in lawn chairs, drinking swill and racing cars. They’d quit around dusk time, as if they knew that continuing any further would bring the cops down on them

My bedroom, alone of my family’s, did not face the driveway, but theirs did, and my parents and sister came to despise our new neighbors. Even with the windows closed, they could hear the cars. We had just moved out of a mobile home park…so you could imagine our surprise that our most hillbilly neighbors to date were these guys. There were even a few times we had to come to a complete stop while driving into our driveway so that they could move their toys our of our way. My mom would say: “You should just run them over.” But my Dad never did.

Instead, he was bemoaning the situation to my Uncle Danny one day. Uncle Danny, incidentally, has always had the coolest electronic gadgets of anyone in my family. He had a VCR before the 80s began!  Anyway, he took my Dad into his workshop, and gave him some kind of special “interrupter” that could cycle through different frequencies until it happened on the correct channel.

That weekend, while eating breakfast, I heard the toy cars being fired up. My Dad flew down the stairs, grabbed the gadget, and went out into the garage. I went in to join him, but he told me no. Peaking through a little hole in the garage, my Dad tuned the knobs on the interrupter until -suddenly – silence. Both cars stopped dead. The neighbors lumbered off the lawn chairs and sauntered to the cars, picked them up, and scratched their red necks. They carried their electronic carcasses into their garage, did some stuff with a screwdriver, swapped out some batteries, and prayed to Lynyrd Skynyrd. But they couldn’t resurrect their babies.

A few days later, they were back at it, but within minutes, my dad arrested their fun.

By next spring, they’d moved out.

06 May 2010

For the third month in a row, I accompanied Jennifer to her appointment with her midwife. I first went in March with the idea that I would get to hear the baby’s heartbeat. But, no dice. Neither the midwife nor her apprentice could find the beat. So I went again in April and, still, no detection of a heartbeat. And today, for the third time, I left without getting to hear kid #2’s pulse. I’m beginning to think that maybe this new baby does not have a heartbeat, which would mean that it’s probably a robot. Which, you know, is great. I mean, I wouldn’t be disappointed. It’s just that we already have a robot.

Then there’s the ongoing discussions of what to name the cyborg. We narrow the choices drastically before we even think of names we do like:

-No names of people in our family (Stan, Dan, Diane)

-No names that are too popular (Emma, Ethan, Madison)

-No bible names (Jacob, Mary, Melchizedek)

-No names that form unfortunate semordnilaps (Tara, Natasha, Dennis)

Actually, though I like to think these are established ‘rules,’ we continually waver on these and have considered names in at least three of the above four categories.

A couple of names that have been suggested to me are Luke and Beru, for a boy and a girl, respectively. Luke, of course, violated the anti-bible name policy, above, and Beru is, well, just weird. The upside is that they are both from Star Wars, as is Owen – in fact, they are all names from the same family within the Star Wars universe. But though it appears we glean our names from fictional texts, this isn’t a must. In the case of Owen, actually, it was only after I’d considered the name for a few days that I suddenly realized it was the name of a Star Wars character. Owen’s middle name is likewise from a movie (The Unsinkable Molly Brown), but it’s not as if we named Owen after the character Sheamus in that horrible motion picture. Rather, we were just watching it one evening, I heard the character’s name, and said: “Hey, that’d be good for our kid’s middle name.” Jennifer pointed out that she’d already mentioned that name a few months earlier, but I’d somehow forgotten. And now, once again, it appears that the front-runners for girl’s first and middle name are from movies, as is the front runner for boy’s middle name. Perhaps if we have a boy we will give him the first name Lando.

07 May 2010

Upon hearing a Bob Dylan song on the radio today, I once again returned to this conundrum:

Is there any Bob Dylan song in which he himself performs the best version (apart from songs wherein he has done the ONLY version)? I mean, think about it:

My Back Pages: better by the Ramones

Don’t think Twice, It’s Alright: better by the Four Seasons

Blowin’ in the Wind: better by Peter, Paul and Mary

The Times They are a-Changin’: better by Simon and Garfunkel

Mr. Tambourine Man: better by the Byrds

Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door: better by Eric Clapton

All Along the Watchtower: better by U2, but smokingly awesome by Jimi Hendrix.

There. Granted, I’m not well-versed in the tenets of Dylan’s catalog, but in every case where I know the song, and am aware of at least one cover, the cover triumphs.

Also today:

On MPR, in between their protracted, pandering, phony pleas for dollars (an odd thing to ask for after airing news reports on how lousy the economy is), they used the term “six state area.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term “six-state area.” I’ve often heard the term “five-state area,” a reference to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and the Dakotas and which, when I was a kid, presumed was some kind of comradship we had with our neighbors. But as I aged, I realized that such a term varied depending on the context. I mean, sure, those five states seem like a team when you’re living near the center of them, but does someone in, say, Rapid City, South Dakota really feel they’re part of some five-state conglomerate with the folks in Milwaukee?

Last summer, while in Iowa, I saw an add that mentioned the “tri-state” area; a term I immediately took to mean Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. But, looking more closely at the ad, I discovered the reference was to Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Wow, talk about a paradigm shift in the way I looked at the world. Now I’ve come to see the reference to any group of states must be clearly understood in the text, or by obvious geography. For example, I’m sure that anyone in Maine understands the “two-state area” to be Maine and New Hampshire. But, otherwise, define your parameters!

So, today, when I heard “six-state area” without an accompanying definition, I was left to wonder: which six states do they mean? Minnesota, for sure, but what else? My guess is North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. Makes perfect sense.