Expressing Gratitude - inspired by Chris Kalman

I recently received an e-mail from the writer, climber, rock-star man - Chris Kalman. He presented a gratitude list and recommended doing it for yourself. I have let this blog collect quite a lot of dust over the last several years. So much has happened in my life since Tom Paine's Ghost had its hay day; marriage, job, cross-country moves, procreation. Perhaps a gratitude list is a good way to reboot things here at TPG. Here goes.

1.) Family - This one is amplified by the most recent addition of our first child - Atlas Malkolm.  He'll be three months old at the end of June.  The love I feel for my son grows every day with the addition of each little giggle or groan to his vocabulary.  So far being a father is better than I dreamed it would be. I miss him when he's sleeping.  Watching my wife bring him into the world was the most intense experience of my life as I am sure it is for many birth-partners out there.  I am grateful that I had two parents who loved me as I grew and wanted all the best things to happen to me.  I am grateful that I knew three of my grandparents and I am grateful for this new family of ours here in western Virginia.

Atlas Thinking (Photo credit Evelyn Amos)

2.) Freedom to find new things.  Finding novel information; songs, drawings, paintings, and especially perspectives, is something I really value. I sometimes feel that in the age of streaming services, which would have us all think we are free to decide among endless choices, I get stuck in the algorithmic ruts and actually have less and less autonomy when it comes to deciding what goes into my eyes and ears. Every day I try to scratch beyond what is offered to me by the electronic content curators to seek new obscure content. Content the creator wanted me to experience, not the movie studios, record labels, or the newspaper publishers. I am grateful that I have the drive to seek novelty and the freedom to search for it.

3.) My memory. As I age and lose people close to me I cherish memories more and more.  Though this can take an unhealthy turn when I get too attached to items that have sentimental value I think using old cassette tapes, photos, sound and image files to help remember people is OK.  Many times just telling the stories of their lives, preparing and eating foods they loved is enough to bring their smiling faces right back in front of me.

4.) Bicycles - Riding my bike to and from work still feels like a subversive act in the climate justice realm. I feel like I'm hacking a system designed to force me to drive. No matter the weather, floating down a hill on a bike always makes me feel invigorated.  I'm grateful I know how to ride and can afford to own and maintain my bikes.

5.) Career - Whenever I think of the value of having a career I think of this line from The Desiderata poem by Max Ehrmann

"Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time." 

Having a major component of life that needs to be taken seriously keeps me focused, provides for our family and helps maintain a rhythm to life. I am extremely fortunate to hold a job I love.  I'm 36 and this is the first time I have felt satisfied with my professional standing as a college-level educator.  

6.) Good Food - A few days ago I made an extremely simple brunch for myself and my wife. I microwaved Amy's black bean burrito and on top put fried eggs, and sliced ripe avocado with salt and pepper.  It was a totally spontaneous meal made up as we were all out of bread.  It was one of those meals where I grunted 'mmmh' repeatedly.  One of my two eggs was actually a duck egg from Glade Road Growing farm down the street from our house. My wife got two chicken eggs mainly because it was a double yolker! I think the eggs were so good because they were local and had likely been eating fresh summer greens when they made those orange gooey yolks.   Those moments of simple yet complete gastronomic euphoria are the best! Thank you, farmers, thank you sun, thank you chickens and ducks!

7.) Humor - This one is intertwined with my memory as I can't think of anything funny without thinking of my father - the pun master - always stringing words together to make a joke no matter how small. " You know why lawyers love bananas? Because they have a lot of appeal!" I'm not as funny as some of my siblings but laughing at an endless line of references to inside jokes sitting around a table is one of the greatest scenes I've had the privilege of experiencing.  I want more of that in my life.  (If you want to laugh right now - watch this)

8.) Community - I've struggled with this one living the nomadic life of a young adult in America in the age of gig-work and employee churn.  I value the idea and the small roots we've begun to set down here in Blacksburg, Virginia. I felt like I had a genuine community in Fort Collins, CO where I lived for many years. But after I moved away to Atlanta for two years, then back to Fort Collins I felt the weight of Heraclitus' words whooshing past - "You can never step in the same river twice."  I realized college towns are places where community ebbs and flows. This makes me sad. At my age, I don't think I'll ever have that idealized version of hometown community I've always romanticized about.  Thinking of my grandfather - Charles "Puffy" Guertin - as a pillar of his community, volunteer fire department leader, known and respected as an archetypical local of Lakewood, NY. On the flip-side, through all my moves I have made connections with people that persist to this day and I stay connected to many online.  I was just helping a friend from the UK plan a visit in the fall.  Cheers and gratitude to old friends scattered around the globe!

9.) Wilderness - Walking in the woods was a morning ritual I shared with my Dad and sisters growing up. Watching the sun shine through the leafless maple trees on cold December mornings on the little trail behind our house will always stick with me as my first real appreciation of nature. This backyard tradition would balloon into an obsession with getting into the wild when I was in college and in my 20s.  Hiking Mount Washington in New Hampshire with my best friend, sister Betsy and her then-boyfriend Stew when I was 16 really kickstarted my outdoor enthusiasm and it continued to grow with an out-west road trip at 19 with Betsy and younger sister, Katie. Highlights came in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah (Colorado would come later for me when I got into graduate school at Colorado State). Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota was my first National Park and holds a special place in my mind for the lasting inspiration it left with me.  It has been a privilege to spend as much time as I have roving the American West, hiking on the Rockies from Montana to New Mexico. I can stand in awe of a glacial lake or a desert butte for hours and to this day I often look at the pictures from my travels. A memory of sharing the views at the Island in the Sky viewpoint in Canyonlands National Park with my friend Craig come to mind. As he stared at the sunset tears from a sense of overwhelmed happiness streamed down his face and I was reminded of how lucky we are to be able to witness such beauty here on this wonderful planet of ours. 

10.) Creativity  - By their prolific practice of painting, knitting, sewing, and building, my mother and her mother imbued in me the confidence to create.  Though I have had long quiet periods in my life with little artistic creation I have always kept a flame of creativity lit somewhere inside me.  Lately, I 've been inspired to paint again, build another little free library, take more photos with intention, and absorb more art for the sake of being moved to create art.  In the newly released documentary about Bob Dylan's 1975-76 "Rolling Thunder Revue" present-day Bob Dylan says to the camera 

"Life isn't about finding yourself or finding anything. Life is about creating yourself, and creating things."

I am grateful for all these things and so much more. I have an extremely full life and want to share it.  Thank you for reading.  If you feel like writing a gratitude list let me know.  I want to read yours too!

Remembering Dad

Ronald G. Hite 

February 29th, 1932 - May 17th, 2013

Dad was born February 29^th 1932 in Rochester, New York.  This date tells us a lot about the person he was.  As a leap year baby his birth made the local papers, a showman from the start! But being born in the middle of the great depression would not be easy on him.  His father “Ross” left Dad and his brother’s Bob and Jim and his mother Agnes when Dad was very young.  Dad spent much of his youth in chaos. His mother Agnes struggled to hold down a job. He spent time in foster homes and even ran away with his older brothers for an entire summer when he was around eight years old. 

Dad proudly retold the story of living off the land that summer, camping on the banks of the Genesee River, smoking cigarettes and foraging for food. The boys would get so hungry that they resorted to stealing vegetables right out of the back of farm trucks. They’d stand on a bridge near Avon, NY with a grappling hook dangling on a rope and when the veggie truck drove under the bridge they’d fish for sustenance.  One time while pulling up string beans Dad got the grappling hook caught on the back of the truck and pulled the tailgate right off and all the sting beans came pouring out.  You could say he had an early start spilling the beans.

I tell you this story to give you an idea of where Dad came from. Ultimately he found a home living with his grandmother – Lizzy Duffy and his grandfather Frank Moran in Avon where he worked as an adolescent at the Avon Inn. He spoke so fondly of his grandmother Lizzy attributing his love of home cooking and fresh vegetables to her.

When I think of the archetypical Dad I think of hunting, fishing, and power tools you know, the macho stuff. But Dad did not enjoy any of these things. Dad valued good conversation and learning new things. I spent many years of my life being upset with him for not filling the traditional father roles I thought he should have been playing with me. But now, when I think of Dad’s life, what he went through to put himself through college and law school all without a father I can’t help feel more and more proud of him.  Despite all the obstacles he faced Dad was able to develop a unique personality and sustain an unbridled optimism.

Dad had such a passion for being alive. A child-like sense of curiosity and positive attitude filled him with fervor for sharing new information. If Dad read a stimulating article he would have copies made at his office here on Cherry Street in Jamestown and pass them out to people. People he loved and people he just randomly encountered. A Democrat to his core Dad believed whole-heartedly in the earnestness of the common person. I always admired and will for the rest of my life strive to accomplish his skill at communicating with total strangers. He struck up conversations at bus stops in the airport or at the bakery with anyone who would smile back at him.  Though we have photos there is nothing that will replace Dad’s smile.  A genuine smile with rosy cheeks you always knew he was about to say something clever.  

Dad was larger than life. He stirred the pot and rocked the boat all while making you think.  More than just a pun-master he was a great weaver of stories.   On Tuesday nights when I was a boy Dad would come home from choir practice here at Saint Pete’s (as he so affectionately called this place back then) and walk up the stairs to my room where I would pretend to be asleep. He’d walk in and sit on my bed and begin to tell me about the day’s excitement. Eventually I would beg him for a story. Maybe an old standard like his rendition of Robin Hood or the old Irish folk-tale - Billy Beg and the Bull. But often I’d request a completely new story improvised on the spot. I would even give him a breakdown of what I wanted “one part scary, two parts science, one part camouflage and two parts adventure… please.” Dad would sway for a few minutes sitting on the bed with his eyes closed; his bottom lip pulled up high then he’d begin to unfold the most marvelous tales you could imagine.  There were kingly feasts served on red silk table clothes pulled right out of a bull’s ear, a mad scientist who saved the world with his magic camouflage camel, and a little boy who ran away into the woods only to return home heroic but sleepy.  I romanticized these stories the most; running away into the wild, living on what nature supplied, making a bed out of heaps of dry pine needles. It was not until much later that I realized the personal origins of these stories for Dad.

As I get older I become more and more grateful for the gifts he gave me while he lived.  First and foremost he gave me an education.  But more important than the means to attain an education he also instilled in me a deep-seeded appreciation for education in general and a drive to continue learning as long as I live.  Many nights when I would visit home in my twenties I would walk up those same stairs to his room sit down on his bed with him. I’d scratch his back and we would start talking about politics, or world history, or Cornplanter, Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull.  If we got to a point in the conversation where neither of us knew much about the topic at hand I’d go get the appropriate Encyclopedia volume and we’d read together about the Etruscans or the Danube River, or the Andromeda Galaxy. 

I was lucky to have thirty years with Dad and to have such a close relationship with him. When I look at my voicemail history I see that the vast majority of the messages were from Dad. He loved to chat and stay in touch. This will be the biggest change for me, loosing not just a supportive and loving father but also a great friend.

The Immortal Genome of Henrietta Lacks

Heard his skull crumple

Me on my favorite part of the dam-ride; east side of Horsetooth Reservoir - Fort Collins, CO

Today I woke up in a terrible mood and I had no idea why. The regular tasks like making breakfast, taking out the trash or finding my keys just aggravated me. There was no reason to be in a bad mood.  It just seemed to be circumstance; off serotonin levels, bad night sleep, I don't know. When I got on my bike to start the commute to work that bad mood fell away. I feel like a kid and a superhero all at the same time when I'm on a bicycle. There is pure joy in it for me. As my metabolism gets crankin' so do my thoughts. More visions of the illuminated phylogenetic tree burst into my head and plans were made to send out e-mails, assemble a team to make it happen. 

While thinking about my affection for the act of riding a bike I recalled reading an amazing passage in Earnest Hemingway's Moveable Feast last year. In it he describes attending the velodrome races in Paris. I recall getting that tingling sensation you get when you hear a moving piece of classical music of see a painting close enough to notice the brush-strokes.

Here it is. I hope it strikes the same chord with you that it did with me. 

 I have started many stories about bicycle racing but have never written one that is as good as the races are both on the indoor and outdoor tracks and on the roads. But I will get the Velodrome d'Hiver with the smoky light of the afternoon and the high-banked wooden track and the whirring sound the tyres made on the wood as the riders passed, the effort and the tactics as the riders climbed and plunged, each one a part of his machine; I will get the magic of the demi-fond,  the noise of the motors with their rollers set out behind them that the entraineurs  rode, wearing their heavy crash helmets and leaning backwards in their ponderous leather suits, to shelter the riders who followed them from the air resistance, the riders in their lighter crash helmets bent low over their handlebars, their legs turning the huge gear sprockets and the small front wheels touching the roller behind the machine that gave them shelter to ride in, and the duels that were more exciting than anything, the put-puting of  the motorcycles and the riders elbow to elbow and wheel to wheel up and down and around at deadly speed until one man could not hold the pace and broke away and the solid wall of air that he had been sheltered against hit him.

     There were so many kinds of racing. The straight sprints raced in heats or in match races where the two riders would balance for long seconds on their machines for the advantage of making the other rider take the lead, and then the slow circling and the final plunge into the driving purity of speed. There were the programmes of the team races of two hours, with a series of pure sprints in their heats to fill the afternoon, the lonely absolute speed events of one man racing an hour against the clock, the terribly dangerous and beautiful races of one hundred kilometres on the big banked wooden five-hundred-metre bowl of the Stade Buffalo, the outdoor stadium at Montrouge where they raced behind big motorcycles, Linart, the great Belgian champion that they called 'the Sioux' for his profile, dropping his head to suck up cherry brandy from a rubber tube that connected with a hot-water bottle under his racing shirt when he needed it towards the end as he increased his savage speed, and the championships of France behind big motors of the six-hundred-and-sixty metre cement track of the Pare du Prince near Auteuil, the wickedest track of all where we saw that great rider Ganay fall and heard his skull crumple under the crash helmet as you crack a hard-boiled egg against a stone to peel it on a picnic. I must write the strange world of the six-day races and the marvels of the road-racing in the mountains. French is the only language it has ever been written in properly and the terms are all French and that is what makes it hard to write. Mike was right about it, there is no need to bet. But that comes at another time in Paris.

 

#SciO13 - Photo Journal

The conference ended late Saturday night. Though I folded myself into crispy hotel sheets my mind would not allow me fall asleep. Every five minutes throughout the night I got up, flipped open my computer and wrote down another idea. It was the first night since high-school I saw the sun rise without sleeping a wink. All thanks to the most epic conference I've ever attended.

Science Online is an annual meeting of people interested in science on the internet. As you can imagine this constitutes a lot of people. To distill the attendees the conference organizers (first photo below) allow a limited number of participants to sign up each year. Sign-up inevitably turns into a race on Twitter. This year I was one of the lucky 450. Like Charlie and his golden ticket I bounded off to Science Online 2013 in Raleigh, North Carolina to take part in a three-day extravaganza of beautiful ideas and new connections.  I met more interesting people in those few days than most people meet in a lifetime. One aspect of the conference I think worth noting was the incredible tolerance that flowed through the entire thing. I was amazed at how rapidly we all connected and immediately formed a large protective family. This was the first time I had been around a large group of people who were all twitter super-users. Indeed part of sign-up required disclosure of our twitter handles. These handles and our names were the only identifiers on our neck-credentials. The speed of connectivity in such an environment is breathtaking. If you have the opportunity to take part in an event like this I highly recommend it.

What follows are pictures and brief descriptions of just a few of those interactions. Over the next few weeks, as my mind mends itself from the internal combustion, I hope to bring you more descriptions and flesh out more ideas born at Science Online.
 

Karyn Traphagen                                                            Bora Zivkovic                                      Anton Zuiker

The organizers of Science Online welcome participants to Raleigh at the North Carolina Natural Science Museum - free to the public and a marvel to behold.

Carl Zimmer - Writes The Loom at National Geographic. Some T.Rex feathers were ruffled among scientists during the #explain session when Carl told the scientists in the room not to unload a textbook on anyone if asked to explain scientific concepts... unless they happen to be writing a textbook. I later unloaded his textbook on him. Carl's comment was taken poorly by scientists as it sounded like he was saying - "you do the science we'll do the journalism." He was later paraphrased by Karen James as saying "Wait, allow me to #journosplain."  I respect Carl and Karen both.  I hope we come to a time in the future when good scientific explanations come about organically from scientists in situ and are not the product of incentives in the publishing biz but then again I am just a naive scientist.

Karen James, who I mentioned above,  is a research scientist and educator. She and I had never met before but bonded while tweeting the Mars Curiosity landing in parallel last fall. I will never forget that night; my enthusiasm for science was set aflame once again. So, I was happy to make her acquaintance in person at Science Online 2013, I even got the chance to have dinner with her and Jonathan Eisen. Listening to them exchange stories about their first trip to the Galapagos Islands and their shared affection for Darwin made me want to buy a plane ticket.

Ed Yong is a renegade science journalist gone legit. He writes a brilliant blog I've followed for years called Not Exactly Rocket Science. NERS recently migrated from Discover Blogs to Nat. Geo.  I wonder how he feels about all the shuffling about that happens as the result of procuring "branded content" as it were. (I always begin writing with a British tone when I think of Edmond)

Kate Clancy is a force to be reckoned with. Thanks to Kate I am now more sensitive to the way I might phrase my explanations of science. #Mansplaining is a pitfall to avoid at all costs. Maintaining self-awareness of how one comes off as a writer and educator is extremely important.  Kate Blogs at Context and Variation. Put her and the rest of this lot up there in your bookmark toolbar!

Mark Henderson is the head of communication at the Wellcome Trust in the UK. He Blogs at the Geek Manifesto. What Can I say, Mark is a hero of mine, up there with Jonathan Eisen and Stephen Curry as crusaders for open access to all knowledge great and small. Bully to the bunch!

Michelle M. Francl was new face for me in world of online science-writing. I am certainly privileged to be connected to her and her brand of writing. She is professor of chemistry on the Clowes Fund for Science and Public Policy at Bryn Mawr College and Blogs at the Culture of Chemistry. Michelle had a phenomenal piece in Slate recently. The piece outlines the perils of irrational fear of "chemicals" it undoubtedly resulted from a session we both attended on #Chemophobia.  I was going to write a piece on this topic and I may still conjure up something of my own but I really do recommend her piece in the interim.

Seth Mnookin is a best-selling author and journalist and is currently co-director of MIT's Graduate Program in Science Writing. He is a contributor to Vanity Fair and blogs with PLoS. I like Seth. We first met in New York City at the 2010 World Science Festival at a panel discussion on Blogs and science-journalism. I sense he is becoming comfortable with his status inside the establishment of science-writing.  Wish time would stop washing revolution from our minds.

I know Jennifer Ouellette because of her presence on the Google+ social network though she is famous in her own right as an author and science blogger. She blogs at Cocktail Party Physics, part of the Scientific American blog network. It is funny how people you've never met before and are not paying any attention to you become like family on the internet. It was through Jennifer's Google+ channel that I first saw the Gangnam Style video.  Ha! She is pictured above inspiring us to use science fiction to explain real science. She encouraged us not to get hung-up on the short-comings of science fiction but to go with it and take liberties to get the audience into a mode of thinking where they can think about big scientific concepts like black-holes or alternate dimensions. I asked her if I could use the tree of Yggdrasil from Norse Mythology as an analogy for the phylogenetic tree of life without running the risk of getting in a creation vs. evolution debate. She gave me the go-ahead with Gusto.  I appreciate her style and hope to stay connected.

And Finally I come to Annalee Newitz. Annalee is editor-in-chief at the best blog in the universe - iO9.  I had only become aware of iO9 over the last year by using a personalized magazine app called Zite. Let me just say, my goodness is iO9 fucking awesome.  I had just read this article on the Evolutionary Biology of Star Trek a few weeks ago and had no idea Annalee wrote it and would be at this conference. How cool is it when you read someone's work before you know you will know them? Really really really cool I say. We got to talk while waiting of for the bus about our favorite TNG episodes. (Mine - Measure of a Man, Annalee's - Darmok, maybe... others were discussed). On top of all this I think the most thought-tastic moment of the whole conference came for me during the #SciFiSci session when Annlee described one utopian/dystopian vision of the future. A vision in which the earth is engulfed by an ever-expanding sphere of technology melded with human consciousness. A physical description of the singularity that sent my frontal lobes swirling into oblivion for several days thereafter. And thus you see why I have had such a hard time writing this first post to summarize my experience at Science Online 2013. It will take me awhile to get it all out there but I hope you stick with me while I try. Thanks for reading and happy Bookmarking!