Gabe went over to play basketball with RyanCole Friday evening.  That does my soul good too - not only that my boy is willing to go out of his way to help raise his sick friend’s spirits, but also the encouraging fact that RyanCole is even capable of throwing a basketball after all he’s been through.  The Weldon-Carrolls - did you know RC’s mom’s last name is Weldon? - did get some positive news this week.  Apparently, when a patient is diagnosed with leukemia they immediately put him on the intensive 28-day regimen of ghastly treatments - I’ve already told you all about these.  At that end of that month they draw some marrow and, after subjecting it and the patient to all kinds of tests, come up with a measurement they call, with brutal frankness, the “survival risk”.  It’s all very hard to digest, but they come right out and tell you what your little boy’s chances of pulling through are.  RyanCole’s family is nearly beside themselves with joy at the news that he was placed in the “medium” survival risk group, and not in the “high” risk group as they had feared.  I guess you take whatever scraps are given you.

Yesterday Gabe participated in the annual Pop, Rock, and Jazz piano competition up at UT, playing Tuxedo Jazz and Variations on America.  (No I don’t understand how the latter counts as pop, rock, or jazz either.)  He pulled down a “Superior Plus” ranking, entitling him, like his elder sister last Spring, to play in the city-wide Honors recital.  So if you’re in town on the 18^th, come by and hear Gabe jazz it up.  He really has a good ear for that stuff.

Those of you who know my friend Chris or cousin Scott, or just want to see what a rocking French village wedding looks like, check out these beautiful pictures.  They were taken by Chris’s friend Kelly, a guy who studied photography at the art school in New York that Chris attended.  I’m not sure I’ve quite come back down to earth from that trip.  There’s a very popular but somewhat insipid self-help book on the shelves these days called The Secret that claims that if you earnestly visualize or “announce to the universe” specifically what you want - wealth, happiness, a new car, relief from disease, etc.  - that you will certainly get it.  I’m not sure I believe that that’s true, beyond the fact that earnestness and the ability to conceptualize and communicate naturally help you attain your goals, but if there is anything to it, let me announce right now to the universe and everyone else that I would like someday to take Tina over to Europe and live there for a while.  Along these lines, Pascal said that he believed in God because if there turns out not to be one, there is no harm done, whereas if he had chosen not to believe and there is…  uh oh!   However, consider that mere belief in the existence of God is not sufficient for salvation, because even Satan himself believes in God.

The kids and I have been enjoying the humor of Jack Handey, the writer of pithy little sayings, memories, and other absurd pearls of “wisdom” who used to write the “Deep Thoughts” segment for Saturday Night Live.  He has the uncanny ability to pack some very funny ideas into a tiny package.  For example, one we read today went

        When I die I want to go peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather… and not yelling and screaming like his passengers.

Good writing is usually terse and concise, and I guess good humorous writing is no different.  Handey will put together a string of short gems like

       When I looked up at the scoreboard, there were fifteen seconds left.  It seemed like plenty of time, but it wasn’t.  Before I could get to the rest room, I had wet my pants.

 … and then, just to throw you off balance, toss out a long, rambling, absurdity, like the tale of the stolen watermelons in the Bonus section below.

 Those of you with peanut allergies take heed: the bags of peanuts Continental Airlines serves sport a warning that they have been “prepared in a facility that processes peanut products”!  Watch out!

 Have a nice week.

 Mikal

 Bonus read: A few Fuzzy Memories from Jack Handey.

• When you’re ten years old, and a car drives by and splashes a puddle of water all over you, it’s hard to decide if you should go to school like that or try to go home and change and probably be late. So while he was trying to decide, I drove by and splashed him again.
• When I was seven, I told my friend Timmy Barker I would give him a million dollars if he would eat an earthworm. He ate the worm, but I never gave him the million dollars. As of last week, all I had given him was $9,840.
• I didn’t want to cut down that tree. But I had no choice. It was growing right where I’m going to build my house, if I can ever get enough money together to build it and if I also have enough money to buy the land. That’s another thing: I need to find out who owns the land.
• As I felt the soft cool mud squish between my toes, I thought, Man, these are not very good shoes!
• I think the most beautiful sunset I ever saw was on page 4 and 5 of The Book of Sunsets.
• The day I met Marta was the happiest day of my life, because that was the day I screwed a friend of mine out of a bunch of money.
• As I stood there looking at the beautiful waterfall, I wondered how many other people had stood there, and how many had candy corn “teeth” sticking out between their lips like I did.
• When I was a kid, the people next door had this little yappy poodle that I used to make fun of all the time. I thought it was real stupid-looking and annoying. But let me tell you, I didn’t make fun of it after the time it saved my life. How did it save my life? It’s a long story. Too long to tell here. But I can tell you it was full of excitement and danger, and afterwards I never made fun of that poodle again.
  Well, I suppose I can at least try to tell the story. I’m still not sure I believe it myself, so many strange and fantastic things happened. Briefly what happened, though, is this: I was walking across a vacant lot near my house when I heard a noise. I turned. You know what? This story is just too hard to try to tell here. Just believe it when I say that the poodle came out of nowhere to attack a cobra.
  Where did the cobra come from? Okay, I guess I can at least tell that part. No, I’m going to change my mind again. It’s just too hard to explain-although if I did explain it, you would be glued to the edge of your seat.
  Maybe someday I’ll tell the story of the poodle and the cobra. No, I won’t. It’s a good one though.
• Mom always told me I could be whatever I wanted to be when I grew up, “within reason.” When I asked her what she meant by “within reason,” she said, “You ask a lot of questions for a garbage man.”
• The first cigarette I ever had I smoked behind Grandpa’s barn. It made me dizzy, and I coughed a lot. “Don’t worry, that always happens with the first one,” said Grandpa. “Try another one.” And you know, he was right.
• Every year at Christmastime a whole set of emotions sweeps over me-emotions which probably go back to my childhood. The first emotion is wondering if I’m going to get any presents. Then it changes to “Hooray, I got some presents!” Then it changes to “Is that all the presents I got?”
• Every summer we’d get out baskets and buckets and go out into the hills and woods, looking for wild strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries. We never found any, though.
• I’ll never forget the time I got caught stealing watermelons from old Mr. Barnslow’s watermelon patch. I was with my friend Bobby. We were giggling so hard I thought I’d wet my pants!
  At first we tried to steal two watermelons each, but they were too heavy and we dropped them, and that made us laugh even harder.
  Finally, we each picked out a good one, and we were just about to sneak back through the fence when we heard a low, deep voice behind us. “Just where do you two think you’re going with those watermelons?” I gulped and turned around. It was old Mr. Barnslow, pointing his shotgun at us.
  Bobby dropped his watermelon, then pulled out the .38 revolver he kept in his waist, turned, and fired. But the turning must have thrown off his aim, because the shot only hit Mr. Barnslow in the thigh. Mr. Barnslow immediately fired both barrels at Bobby. One blast of buckshot missed entirely, but the other tore into Bobby’s shoulder. He tried to fire back, but his shoulder was so torn up he couldn’t raise his arm. Just as he was trying to switch to his left hand, Mr. Barnslow ran up and cracked him across the face with the butt of his shotgun. Bobby fell to the ground in a heap. Mr. Barnslow raised the butt of his gun to finish him off, but just then Bobby pulled out his hunting knife and plunged it into the farmer’s big white belly.
  After that, I don’t think I stole watermelons for at least a year.
• If I could go back and change one thing in my life, I think it would be that time I found that one-dollar bill on the sidewalk. I would change it to a million-dollar bill.
• What started out to be a nice pleasant drive in the country turned into the “Afternoon from Hell.”
  First of all, when Marta and I were leaving, the cats looked at us like, “Where are you going?”
  Then, when we were driving, we had to stop and get gas. So right there that’s time taken away from looking at the scenery.
  Then, when we get home, guess what the cats are doing? Sleeping! Man, what next?
• I remember when we were kids, one of our favorite games was to play “pirate.” We’d dress up like pirates. Then we’d go find an adult walking down the street and we’d go up to him and pull out our butcher knives, which we called our “swords,” and say, “We’re pirates! Give us your money!” A lot of adults would pretend to be scared and give us their money. Others would suddenly run away, yelling for help. We played pirate until we were twenty or so.
• Mom used to warn me that I could lose an eye playing with BB guns. But she never warned me that I could also lose my BB gun, which I did.
• I’ll never forget the time my friend Stew went skydiving. Boy, what a mistake that was! First of all, his parachute didn’t open. Second, we didn’t have the right address, so before we got there we got lost and went driving all around for almost an hour. And third, when we finally did get there, Stew tried to back out and we had to talk him into going.
• We asked Dad if we could have a trampoline, but he said no, that they were too dangerous and too expensive. But then we went and talked to the trampoline salesman at the store, and he said they weren’t too expensive or dangerous. I think I’m still sorta mad at Dad for lying to us like that.
• Sunday was always Pancake Day in our family, because that was the day we’d all drive up to Pancake Mountain, and then maybe on the way home stop and get some pizza.
  We’d always sing the same song, too, on the way home. It went like this:
  There’s nothing flatter
  Than a pizza
  Nothing you can make.
  The only thing that might
  Be flatter
  Is a fish they call the hake!
• When Dad found out the house was full of termites, he got real mad. But I was glad, because now I wouldn’t have to go all the way to the woods to get termites for my termite farm.
• I remember the first time I ever saw a shooting star I said, “What the hell is that?” But nowadays when I see one I just say, “What is that?” I leave off the “hell” part. Maybe when I’m old I’ll just say, “Whazzit?”
• The first time I ever tried to milk a cow at Grandpa’s farm, I didn’t even know which end of the cow to milk! Then I guess I got even dumber, because the next time I couldn’t even find the barn. Then the last time, I just went out in the woods and lived, with no clothes.
• When we were kids, I used to make fun of my friend Kevin whenever he had to go to his piano lesson. But look where he is now and look where I am. Actually, I don’t know where he is now. But look where I am, that’s my point.
• Maybe it’s my imagination, but food seemed to taste better when I was a kid. Also, food would sing and dance and play musical instruments, but that could also have been my imagination.
• When I was a kid, I used to think you could jump off the roof of our house using an umbrella as a parachute. I thought my little brother could, anyway.
• When I told my Dad I wanted a kite he said, “Okay, but instead of buying a kite, let’s make one.” So we did. Then, about a month later, we also made me a bicycle, but it blew away.
• I remember I was hammering on a fence in the backyard when Dad approached. He was carrying a letter or something in his hand, and he looked worried.
  I continued to hammer as he came toward me. “Son,” he said, “why are you hammering on that fence? It already has plenty of nails in it.”
  “Oh, I’m not using nails,” I replied. “I’m just hammering.” With that, I returned to my hammering.
  Dad asked me to stop hammering, as he had some news. I did stop hammering, but first I got a couple more hammers in, and this seemed to make Dad mad. “I said, stop hammering!” he yelled.
  I think he felt bad for yelling at me, especially since it looked like he had bad news. “Look,” he said, “you can hammer later, but first-”
  Well, I didn’t even wait to hear the rest. As soon as I heard “You can hammer,” that’s what I started doing. Hammering away, happy as an old hammer dog.
  Dad tried to physically stop me from hammering by inserting a small log of some sort between my hammer and the fence. But I just kept on hammering, ’cause that’s the way I am when I get that hammer going. Then, he just grabbed my arm and made me stop.
  “I’m afraid I have some news for you,” he said.
  I swear, what I did next was not hammering. I was just letting the hammer swing lazily at arm’s length, and maybe it tapped the fence once or twice, but that’s all. That apparently didn’t make any difference whatsoever to Dad, because he just grabbed my hammer out of my hand and flung it across the field.
  And when I saw my hammer flying helplessly through the air like that I just couldn’t take it. I burst out crying, I admit it. And I ran to the house, as fast as my legs could take me.
  “Son, come back!” yelled Dad. “What about your hammer?!”
  But I could not have cared less about hammering at that point. I ran into the house and flung myself onto my bed, pounding the bed with my fists. I pounded and pounded, until finally, behind me, I heard a voice. “As long as you’re pounding, why not use this?” I turned, and it was Dad, holding a brand-new solid-gold hammer.
  I quickly wiped the tears from my eyes and ran to Dad’s outstretched arms. But suddenly, he jumped out of the way, and I went sailing through the second-story window behind him.
  Whenever I hear about a kid getting in trouble with the drugs, I like to tell him this story.

I’m back from an exhilarating, yet all too short four days in London.  It’s astounding what cultural events go on in that city.  This week it was the London Philharmonic doing the Shostakovich Symphony #8, Kevin Spacey starring in Inherit the Wind, the Royal Opera with Rigoletto, and the Philharmonia doing our old favorite, the Mahler Second.  And those were all things I didn’t go to because I was at something better!  I heard the London Symphony on Tuesday, the Chicago Symphony on Wednesday and Thursday, and the English National Opera on Friday.  What a town to go broke in.  (Someone once told me that the only city with more than one world-class orchestra is London with five - the three mentioned above plus the Royal Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony).

Tom, Dale Clevenger (principal Horn in Chicago) was something of a disappointment.  He played soullessly and frankly a little out of tune.  And how is it that he gets an assistant for Brahms’ First, when you can’t hire one for Mahler?

While we were waiting to go through customs in Dallas, a few of us were amused to see a police beagle intently sniffing at an elderly lady’s bag.  The attached officer finally asked a curious question: “Ma’am do you have an apple in that bag?”  The bewildered and embarrassed lady replied, “No, but I do have quite a bit of chocolate.  Perhaps that’s what he smells.”  “No ma’am,” replied the officer, “an apple, perhaps down near the bottom somewhere?”  Sure enough, after some digging around the lady found a forgotten apple.  You’ve got to declare fruits that come into this country, and that little beagle was just keeping us safe from fruit invasion.  In 2007 when I told the customs officials that I had visited a British farm, they confiscated my tennis shoes for about 10 minutes.  When I got them back they were gleaming as if new.  Because of avian flu fears, they had been given a first class cleaning, courtesy of Homeland Security.

Gabe is working on a cool assignment for his science class.  I’d be interested to hear if you all have ideas on this, but he has two weeks to build a timekeeping device.  The device can’t use any electronics, and the most he can spend on materials is $10.  (Recycled bottles, etc. count as $0) It must accurately measure times of at least 30 seconds to within +/-2 seconds and fit into a 12″x12″x24″ space.  The other curious restriction is that while pendulums are legal, they entail a 20% penalty on your final score.

As a part of my application for a new life insurance policy, a friendly fellow named Oscar came to the house to give me a physical.  In the course of the exam we got talking about RyanCole, Gabe’s young friend who is battling leukemia.  Oscar says that encountering just one case like that can change your life.  He told how he once went to a buddy’s house complaining about his lupus.  “I’ve been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease,” countered the friend.  This friend declined very quickly and died in less than a year.  Oscar says he no longer complains about his lupus or anything else.

As part of the physical I had to get an EKG.  Oscar attached several electrodes to my chest and asked me to lie on the couch while he monitored a graph of my heart signals.  This part of the exam enthralled our two new kittens.  Rosie jumped up onto the back of the couch and carefully studied the wires hanging from my chest, preparing for a vicious pounce.  Sammie was mesmerized by the rolled paper flowing from the machine in Oscar’s hand.  How was I supposed to lie perfectly still for four minutes with all this feline activity going on above and around me?  I even had to avoid catching Oscar’s eye: he was about to burst out laughing as he tried to defend the paper ribbon from Sammie.  When the test finally came to a merciful conclusion we both laughed freely.  Oscar carefully unstuck the electrodes from my chest hair - ow, ow! - and it suddenly occurred to me what a compromising position I was in.  I wondered what Tina would think if she came home from her shopping trip to find me lying half naked on our most comfortable couch with a strange man bending over “tending” to me.  As it happened, I had just put my shirt back on when Tina did come home.  She came around the corner and greeted us with absolutely the most radiant smile.  “Pretty smile!” exclaimed Oscar.  What a curious first thing to say to someone, I thought - especially since I was thinking exactly the same thing.  Keep on smiling that beautiful smile, baby, and keep on smiling all of you out there too!

Have a nice week.

Answer: (C)

Mikal

I flew to Paris Friday morning.  Because I had to play at Chris’s wedding Saturday I was a little apprehensive about how the jet lag might affect me, so I tried an experiment on the plane.  After the meal, I popped a blanket over my head and fell asleep.  When I awoke, my plan was to leave the blanket on my head and try to, if not go back to sleep, at least remain quiet and still in the dark.  This plan seemed to work pretty well.  I kept the blanket around my eyes rather zealously and found myself for the rest of the flight drifting back and forth between sleep and that delicious “between” time.  It was rather surreal (if a little stuffy) to be able to stretch that “nether” time to several hours.

Keeping that blanket over my head reminded me of a time back at college when Chris and I were “kidnapped” by some friends.  The kidnappers made us wear blindfolds so that we couldn’t tell where we were being taken.  It was a curious and uplifting experience to be blind for a couple of hours.  Blindness is a tough thing though. Grandpa Hart lost most of his sight to macular degeneration as he got older.  I gave him a copy of Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth one year and he told me, sadly, that he probably wouldn’t read it because his sight was getting too poor.  When he did read it after all, I was immensely proud.  It may have been the last substantial book he read.  An English clergyman named John Hull wrote a beautiful book called Touching the Rock: An Experience of Blindness, detailing, among other things, what it is like to slowly lose one’s ability to see one’s children.  He eventually came to terms with his disability and managed to draw some strength and insight from it.  If given the choice, would you lose your hearing or your sight?  I used to think that, as a passionate musician, I would retain hearing at any expense.  John Hull notwithstanding, I now feel quite sure that vision is more precious.

I spent Friday getting reacquainted with my charming first-cousin-once-removed Sophie, whom I hadn’t seen in probably 10 years.  She has a number of mannerisms that remind me of our own Rachel’s and is fun to be with.

Scott and I left for the wedding at noon Saturday, driving north to the flowery village of Villennes-sur-Seine.  The next 30 hours or so were filled with brunches, lunches, dinners, receptions, toasts, dancing, speeches, and of course le mariage itself.  The wedding took place in the old town hall, with the smiling mairie (mayor) himself, bedecked with the tricoleur sash performing the ceremony in front of a stern looking bust of Liberté.  I played the old southern hymn tune What Wondrous Love is This, which might have seemed out of place is such a secular place, but was in fact enormously effective.  The witnesses affirmed that they had seen what they had seen, and after a quick Handel Hornpipe, off we went to another round of cheese, wine, bread and other culinary feats.

There is too much about this wedding weekend to describe here.  We all felt like we had been transported to a surreal place that had some resemblance to the real world but was clearly in a parallel universe.

I’ll close with one tiny vignette.  After the wedding everyone drove to nearby Poissy to a small restaurant/bar built into a boat moored on the Seine.  The couple had arranged for a family friend, an eccentric and very French old gentleman named Jean-Philippe, to lead a bit of singing at this little reception.  For accompaniment, Jean-Philippe turned the crank on his orgue de Barbarie, a mechanical calliope-like instrument driven by a ribbon of player-piano style punch cards.  Song sheets were passed out so that everyone could take a stab at joining in.  Imagine then a very happy group of people, French and American, young and old, actors, photographers, musicians, sculptors, writers, and long time friends, crowded together singing French songs as best they can, with the soulful old man turning his crank and joining in joyfully.  The two little kids, who have heretofore been running helter-skelter, teasing each other and disrupting the proceedings the way only 4-year-olds can, settle into a chair and sing along.  At one point, Jean-Philippe announces that the next song he’s chosen is Que Sera, Sera… What Will Be, Will Be.  I’ve never been much of a fan of that song; it seems just a little insipid and its lyrics trite.  But on this occasion, as everyone joined together to sing the familiar refrain I was overwhelmed by how intensely apropos it suddenly seemed.  It was as if with our singing we might melt away the discords of the world, and help the new couple prepare themselves, come what may, for a bright and beautiful future.

Have a nice week.

Mikal

Chris and Christele

Theo

A little girl

Jean Philippe and his Orgue

Que sera sera

Gabe started his 13^th baseball season today and hasn’t yet sunk all the way to the bottom of the sea of homework they pass out at his new school.  He’s happy that he can already hit the high Bb on the baritone and play Three Blind Mice from memory - at least up to that tricky bit where they and the farmer’s wife run off.

Rachel continues to persevere at volleyball and confides with genuine satisfaction that she “is no longer the worst player”.  She received her first after-school detention Friday for chewing gum in English.  I told her these things sometimes happen when you break the rules and your teacher has had a trying day.  In my time I might have received a paddling for an offense of that magnitude.

      hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh <- that’s Sammiepppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp typing.  Sammie is one of our two new grey tabby kittens.  She’s the one who climbs on the keyboards and chases the mouse cursors around.  Rosie, the other one, mostly just purrs, poops, eats, and meows for more.  Teddy Bear, the family dog whose three years’ seniority seems to have gained him nothing, is alternately distressed and enthralled with the new arrivals and continually harasses them in that nebulous half-play, half “I’m going to EAT YOU!” way that some dogs have.  When I catch him at it, I always start humming that old Pink Floyd lyric, “Hey… Teddy…. Leave them cats alone!”

Tina has been active in the community of people who are working to support RyanCole’s family as they navigate the treacherous seas of leukemia.  It’s beautiful to see her turning this terrible situation into an active, if not actually positive thing.  I internalize things like this, at best turning them into a bit of writing or something, but those moms who are banding together to raise money, deliver dinners, or schedule visits are really making a tangible difference.  Under a canopy on our street today some kids were hosting a bake sale cum lemonade stand to raise money for the family.  It was heartrending to see a line of cars a couple of blocks long pulled over to support the effort.  When it comes right down to it, people are dazzling, wondrous things.

Our friend Tom McNally recently returned from a 60-mile hike down a northern run of the Appalachian Trail.  He’s one of a fair number of friends and contacts who recently lost a job and took advantage of the “down time” to do the hike with his son.  Even though I’m not much of a walker, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of hiking long trails like Scotland’s West Highland Way ever since I read Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods - a touching and hysterical account of his attempt to walk the entire 2170-mile “A. T.”.  Tom told us that they ran into a bit of trouble one evening when the shelter they were making for turned out to be closed because of bear sightings in the area.  (Question for the reader: doesn’t that seem like a good time not to close the shelter?)  Those of you who have read A Walk in the Woods will remember Bryson’s two main points in dealing with bear encounters.  First, he says, bears are not usually aggressive unless startled, so many people think it’s a good idea to wear some noisy jingle bells to help ward them off.  Second, it’s important to be able to tell the difference between the species you’ll likely encounter.  Black Bears are harmless, timid vegetarians and their poop usually contains grass, roots, and seeds.  Grizzly Bears are the ones you want to watch out for.  A cornered or hungry Grizzly is a very dangerous animal.  Grizzly poop is black and loose, smells rank, and usually contains fragments of small bells.

A very busy travel season culminates with a short visit to Paris and London this week.  It seems like just yesterday I got back from an exhausting business trip to Houston.  On the drive back to town, I stopped in Brenham for a sandwich and couldn’t resist a BlueBell cone for dessert.  I hadn’t been able to find my favorite flavor, Snickerdoodle, for an alarmingly long time, but it wasn’t much of a concession to settle for that rich Pralines-n-Cream.  Ever since we churned up that Stan’s famous vanilla last month I have been experiencing deep cravings for the sweets and fats that you can only get in a certain class of dairy treats.  Once our French visitors left town that entire second batch of leftover Stan’s -now nice and firm and creamy after the extra day in the freezer - was mine for the taking.  The kids didn’t know where I had hidden it in the back freezer, so I paid two or three visits a day, spoon in hand, indulging myself freely.  I found that, much like Milo’s “subtraction stew” in The Phantom Tollbooth, the more I ate, the more I wanted.  Now that it’s all gone I find that it takes all my willpower to keep from drinking straight from the Half-and-Half bottle or squirting the whipped topping straight into my mouth.  I can’t remember a craving this serious since 1971 - the year Baskin-Robbins introduced Nutcracker Sweet.  Thanks a lot, Uncle Stan!

Dad must have liked Nutcracker Sweet too, because that summer he authorized the purchase of a gigantic (3 gallon?) tub of the stuff, which Damon and I sneaked, spoon by spoon, for about a month until it was almost - but not quite - gone.  By then we had developed an algorithm for sneaking treats that we were pretty proud of, designed to minimize the chance that Mom would detect the theft.  It went something like this.  If the tub of ice cream or box of cookies was already opened, it was pretty safe to pilfer at a slow rate, but under no circumstances should you actually finish it, because the empty (or missing) container would surely be noticed.  On the other hand, a sealed box of Thin Mints or roll of cookie dough called for a completely different technique.  Mom would be sure to notice the breach in an unopened package, so the only possible strategy in this situation was to eat the entire contents elsewhere, carefully disposing of packaging in the outside trash can.  If Mom did notice the missing item, she would surely conclude she had misplaced it; no kid would be so audacious as to steal an entire box of Thin Mints!  That’s nine-year-old reasoning for you.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have gone much slower on that Nutcracker Sweet.  After nearly 40 years of fruitless hunting around the country, I discovered just this year that Nutcracker Sweet is in the Baskin-Robbins “Deep Freeze“.  It was made just for the summer of 1971 and hasn’t been seen since.  Who knew that flavors could be retired?!  Happily, the friendly gal behind the counter at the little shop in Brenham told me that BlueBell Snickerdoodle is not in this category.  It’s a (Fall) seasonal flavor and we should see it again come October.  I’ll tell y’all all about it then.

Have a nice week.

Mikal

There’s a decrepit old pear tree on Grandma’s south fence.  Some of you know it well.  For decades, Damon and I enjoyed visiting the farm in September partly so that we could gobble up sacks full of those crunchy, juicy, succulent fruits.  Biting one jolts you with a crisp, tart crunch that store-bought pears come nowhere near.  Marvelous.  Grandma claims that the tree was full-grown when they moved into that house in 1940, and given that pears typically live only 80-100 years, it now definitely qualifies as ancient.  The entire core has rotted away, leaving little but the bark to support it, so I guess it wasn’t too surprising that about 8 years ago it experienced a major trauma.  It might have been helped along by a lightning strike, but more likely the old tree just couldn’t support its weight anymore.  When the storm blew through it just ripped apart, leaving only a shell of its former self.  And after that day the old gal just didn’t seem to have it in her to produce fruit anymore.  For years I continued my dutiful pilgrimages to the heartland, but the glory days had seemingly come to a close.  There were actually a total of eight precious pears last year but none for many years prior.  You can imagine my delight then, when I encountered this:

Pears on Grandma's Tree

As we seek everywhere for signs of renewal and vibrancy amongst death and sickness, the appearance of hundreds of pears on the old tree is about as great a metaphor as I could hope to find.

Have a nice week.

Mikal

Bonus pictures:

The Umpqua River at sunrise

Sunlit ripples on Crater Lake

The unearthly blue

Four sleepers - Rosie, Sammie, Teddy, and Tina

The kids started back to school.  Rachel, who hasn’t really participated in any athletic activity since dropping gymnastics at seven, surprised us by signing up for volleyball.  Her decision may have had less to do with the game itself than a poster of the glamorous, not to say exceptionally cute, Westlake High girls’ volleyball team we saw last spring.  We were attending Gabe’s robotics tournament, and there it was, taped to the gym wall - as good an advertisement for a sport as you could hope.  In the way Rachel studied those attractive, if perhaps overly homogenous faces and the uniformly long elegant hair, I thought I detected more than a passing interest in that poster.  Perhaps she detected the same in me.  In any case, I am proud of the way she continues to persevere amongst so many girls with much more experience.  Hopefully Janet will consent to give us some volleyball lessons someday.

One of Gabe’s new teachers became an immediate superstar - in Gabe’s eyes anyway - when he let slip that he had won the South Texas regional MarioKart championships a few years back and came in 30^th of 100 at Nationals.

Gabe’s friend RyanCole also had his first day Monday.  On Tuesday, he wasn’t feeling well so his mom took him to the doctor for a check.  Much worse on Wednesday, he was admitted to the hospital where a preliminary diagnosis of leukemia stunned his poor family.  By Friday, the diagnosis was confirmed, and he underwent a painful procedure to extract bone marrow.  This had to be done without anesthetic, because an alarming mass discovered near his heart made the introduction of anesthetic too dangerous.  Tina and some other neighborhood moms began planning carefully orchestrated visits to the hospital for Saturday - kids only (to reduce stress); not too long, not too frequent - because once the chemotherapy sessions began Sunday, his compromised immune system would not admit having visitors.  But a dramatic decline in his blood chemistry intensified everything.  Friday night he was wheeled into intensive care and immediately given an accelerated dose.  The doctors told his parents something I hope none of us ever has to hear… “The next 6 or 7 hours are critical.”  We got news he had apparently made it through those crucial hours, butwas reported to ask, and pardon me while I wipe my eyes, “Mom, if I don’t get my numbers up by Sunday, I’m going to die, aren’t I?”  What mother should ever have to hear such a thing from her little boy?  The moment Tina told me that I wished I could immediately transform into one of those angels in Wings of Desire - in the movie they are invisible beings that lurk among us, comforting the distressed and overwhelmed with unfelt caresses and unheard whispers.  But all I could manage was to hang up my cell phone and continue my lonely nighttime drive down the Umpqua highway.  I shouted “no…!” as loudly as possible, then waited to see if I could hear any echoes bouncing off Pluto and the outer planets.  But there was nothing: just the sound of that SUV engine barreling down the road.

Have a nice week.

Mikal

Earlier this evening I visited the cat food aisle at Wal-Mart, and as I put my hand on the stack of Iams I was suddenly jolted by the recollection of my last trip here some months ago.  At the time I was desperately (and fruitlessly) shopping for something that little Gracie would find edible, and you who read early editions of Notes will remember that we were all feeling rather heartsick and forlorn.  But time ticks on, and tomorrow morning while we are enjoying Tina’s muffins, the two tiny grey tabby fur balls, Sammie (born 6/09) and Rose (5/09), now curled up in Rachel’s bed, will be voraciously gobbling Chicken Giblets with Gravy.  Pictures soon.

Chris Immel, his fiancé Christèle, and Scott and Matt Weldon all came over for a pleasant dinner Wednesday night.  I have been trying to get Scott and Chris together for some time.  They are, after all, two of my favorite people and both live in the same town (Paris).  But it takes a trip to Austin, some 7800 kilometers away, for them to finally meet.  Amusingly, Scott has similarly been trying to get Matt and me together.  We are both first cousins of his who live in Austin, but it took a 7800 km trip by Scott to bring us together.

In honor of uncle Stan, and because Scott hasn’t seen it done in 35 years, I thought to make the famous homemade ice cream for dessert.  Apparently unaware of the technological advances of the last one-third century, Scott anticipated having to help turn a crank for a couple of hours.  It’s no wonder he hasn’t been making ice cream in Paris.  We were very careful to follow Stan’s recipe to the letter, even making a long-distance call to Nebraska for verification:  “That’s really two tablespoons of vanilla?!”  And just to be obsessive, we took an out-of-the-way trip to buy the specially prescribed $15 Watkins, only to discover we already had a nearly full bottle in the pantry.  Whether the special vanilla or the Eagle Brand condensed milk made a difference I can’t say, but the response was very favorable.  My apology for the intense vanilla flavor was drowned out by a chorus of “No, no, it’s delicious!” from the happy diners.  Especially enthusiastic approval came from Christèle’s charming five-year-old son Théo, who, it turns out aime très bien la glace!!  Théo provided a great deal of the evening’s entertainment, liberally sticking his fingers in the ice cream and chocolate sauce and chasing Teddy around the house.  He and Gabe bonded well, especially for kids who don’t share a common language.  Théo calls Gabe “my big, tall friend”.

It is an unhappy fact that if a “bag of ice” is on my shopping list, I will ultimately forget to purchase said some 80-90% of the time, even if I still remember as late as while I am handing my groceries to the cashier.

In other ice cream news, we bought a half-gallon tub of BlueBell Southern Blackberry Cobbler (ice cream) for an end-of-summer treat, inspired by a little note we got yesterday from Susie Hageman.  Susie reports that she and Travis are back from a pleasant trip to Colorado, where they camped, hiked, fished, and enjoyed yummy bagels and ice cream from the BlueBell store.  She also mentioned that she will be having some not-so-minor surgery later this month, but that the recovery time will give her a much needed chance to catch up on reading War and Peace.  I think it’s a wonderful testament to Susie’s cheerful optimism that she sees even surgery as an opportunity, but I’m a little ashamed to admit that my first response to her thoughtful and carefully written note was a Homer Simpson-esque, “Mmmmmmmm…. BlueBell Ice Cream”.  What’s that a testament to?  BlueBell-it really is the best ice cream in the country, and the third best-selling brand, despite being available in only one third of the states.

I had to laugh at the news from Connecticut.  Our precocious and charming four-year-old niece Sylvie has mastered riding a bicycle.  When she discovered that older brother Byron was ceremoniously having his training wheels taken off, she demanded that hers be removed likewise, even though this meant Sandy shopping all over town for a Sylvie-sized bike that could be so modified.  They really don’t make two-wheelers for four-year-olds.  The humorous part is poor old Byron’s role in this.  Damon and Sandy had originally thought (wrongly) that the idea of riding a bike “big boy” style might be enough to seduce B away from the video game console to which he, like many of us boys, is addicted.  But the news of Sylvie’s unexpected prowess at the wheel finally did the trick.  Damon would take Sylvie out for a spin, and when they came back inside Byron would demand a status report.  “Is she doing better than me?”  Any hint of an affirmative answer would bring a sigh from Byron and he would put down his controller and trudge outside for a lesson.

Tina auctioned off over 70 handmade crosses at church last night.  I was pleased that the one I made, a little piece based on the Coventry nail cross, fetched $15 - almost as much as I spent building it.  One set of donated wood crosses had a particularly moving back story.  The fellow who made them only discovered his passion for woodworking after attending a seminar for the visually impaired.  A diabetic, he was eager to do something creative with his failing eyesight and settled upon making pretty little wooden crosses.  Even though he had never visited our church, when he heard of our auction he donated his entire collection, accompanied by a sad note that he would never make any more, as he could no longer see.

Have a nice week.

Mikal

It was hot again today, but there are faint signs that things are beginning to happen with the seasons.  Back in June it was still light at 8:30 around here.  Now it’s nearly dark at 8:30, demonstrating that we are once again beginning that big roller coaster ride into the blackness of winter and Christmas, a descent that will continue to gain speed through September.  This thought cheers me but reminds the kids that a certain unhappy something looms large - starting in fact a week from tomorrow.  Rachel politely asks us to avoid mentioning the subject where possible, or if we must discuss that-which-must-not-be-named, to call it “Voldemort”.  I expect about half of you find that funny and the other half don’t have the faintest idea what I am talking about.

It occurred to me that Tuesday was the tenth anniversary of the eclipse we saw in Germany on 8/11/99.  I can’t remember faces or names to save my life, but dates and numbers seem to stick.  Our Las Cruces phone number when I was six was 526-2590.  The other day a friend on a conference call remarked that he had bought so much at Amazon that he had memorized his credit card number.  “Oh yeah?” someone said jokingly, “let’s hear it.”  So the guy rattled it off as fast as he could to the laughter of the assembled, but because I have also memorized mine, I recognized his first eight digits.  Once the laughter died down, I calmly announced, “According to my sources, that’s a blue USAA Platinum Mastercard with a picture of an eagle on it.”  There was a stunned silence for a moment on the other end, and then the guy asked “How did you know that?”.  “It’s on the Internet,” I lied coyly.

Another Austin-y bumper sticker:

If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving may not be for you.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had an exciting writing opportunity.  It’s true.  I’ve been asked to write ten or twelve “recipes” for a new O’Reilly Press book called The Arduino Cookbook.  I’m pretty excited about it because O’Reilly is a big publisher, at least in the technical book domain, and the Cookbook series is one of their famous lines.  Another O’Reilly volume that came out recently, an interesting Physical Computing guide called Programming Interactivity, features some Arduino software that I wrote.  My name is even in the index!  It’s fun to “Look Inside!” the book at amazon.com.

So what’s Arduino?  Well, I have Chris Immel to thank for turning me on to this fascinating subject last year.  Arduino is basically a tiny and very inexpensive ($15-30) computer that looks like this:

Arduino Duemilanove

Do you see the rows of tiny numbered holes (”pins”) at the top and bottom?  Those are the Arduino’s (only) way of communicating with the outside world.  They’re designed to be connected with little wires to any of a myriad of compatible sensors, motors, lights, switches, displays, GPS modules, and what-have-you, so that the Arduino can sense its environment and react to it.  For example, you could buy a $1 thermometer device and a 5c LED and in about 10 minutes build a doodad that flashed a red alert whenever your greenhouse geraniums are getting too cold.  If that’s not satisfying, replace the LED with a 50c piezo speaker and now your alert is audible.  Wanna get more sophisticated?  With a $25 ethernet attachment, you can make it send you an email when the temperature falls.  Your imagination really is the limit.

 These Arduini are really popular with a certain species of artist because they are so cheap and because programming it is relatively easy.  After all, when it comes down to it all the program does, essentially, is turn on and off pins (for output devices) or detect whether they are on or off (input devices).  To flash an LED once a second, for example, you just write code something like this:

                Step 1. Turn on pin 13 (we’ll assume the LED is attached to pin 13)
                Step 2. Wait for half a second.
                Step 3. Turn off pin 13.
                Step 4. Wait another half a second
                Step 5. Repeat.

Robots are a natural application for Arduino.  You hook up an infrared distance sensor and a couple of servo motors attached to wheels, and you’ve got a little car that can roll around avoiding walls.  As I say, your imagination is really the only limit.  Here are some cool projects I’ve found:

1. A guy attached an Arduino with a GPS chip to a model airplane which he had hacked a bit. He gives the Arduino a latitude and longitude and the plane flies off. In a couple of hours, the guy gets in his car and drives/hikes to the designated spot where the airplane is waiting for him on the ground.

2. Another guy connected three servo motors to an arduino and glued wooden hammers to them. When he pushes a button the hammers strike glasses filled to various heights with water, playing a pretty tune. See here.

3. Another guy sells an $89 kit so you can make a mini-blimp that floats around the house, wafting autonomously in and out of each room.

4. One guy I know mounts cameras onto big helium balloons. The attached Arduino senses when the balloon gets to 35000 feet, triggers the shutter on the camera, and begins a descent. When it gets to the ground, it sends a radio message informing the owner where to come pick it up.

5. Here’s a video of a robot that rolls around a room looking for a surface to bang a pair of motor driven drumsticks against. When he finds something, like a trashcan or a vase or a toaster, he drums a while and listens to see what it sounds like. If he doesn’t like it, he moves on looking for something else.

6. This isn’t really Arduino, but I have to show it anyway. This is a guy who made a robot from the Lego robotics toolkit that solves Rubik’s cubes. Here’s another one, make by a kid.

So much cool stuff, so little time.

Have a nice week.

Mikal

Hart travels

All this summer travel is pinching the old pocketbook and making the adult half of the family look more and more forward to school starting.  Only one more trip to Oregon and another to Paris in the next six weeks, and I think we’ll be about done for the year.  Until Christmas.

After the beach, Tina and the kids flew to St. Louis and spent a few happy days first at one grandparent’s and then another.  Dad unfortunately shared with the kids several examples of the literary genre known as “knee slappers”, which Merriam Webster curiously claims has something to do with humor.  You be the judge.

Mary had a little lamb and the doctor fainted.

Hickory Dickory Dock, two mice ran up the clock.  The clock struck one and the other one got away with minor injuries.

Sigh.

After a visit to see how Peg’s new knee is doing, the three boarded the southbound Amtrak through Missouri and Arkansas and down into Texas.  To my great surprise, their train arrived at Mineola right on time - something I never remember happening.  When I last rode, the on-time percentage was something on the order of 0.5%.  This has increased in recent months to an astonishing 88%, because, according to Gabe, Amtrak sued the rail companies and won the right to priority access of the rails.

And so, after 10 days, the reunion with my family brought my bachelor life to a happy close.  I was eager for Gabe to fire up MarioKart and discover that in his absence I had knocked off all 32 of his record times.  He was dutifully astonished, but proceeded to regain his crown in only about 2 hours, despite the fact that it had taken me about 20 to wrest it away.

But Gabe was “kidnapped” this afternoon by the church youth group to which he, as a new sixth grader, is being conscripted into.  Rachel and a few other middle school thugs came knocking and dragged him away to an evening of mayhem and frivolity - giving me another hour or two to regain MarioKart glory.

Tina is also at church tonight, organizing a silent auction of handmade crosses that the artisans of our congregation are making.  It’s a pretty neat project.  The intent is that the artists (hopefully) derive some personal reward for creating something meaningful both for themselves and the eventual buyer.  You can’t help but be moved just looking at the display that Tina has set up.  And ultimately, these things make a sizeable amount of money for the youth.

When I think of crosses, my mind sometimes wanders to the nails “cross of nails” that was erected in the smoldering ruins of Coventry Cathedral in 1940.  Built in the 13^th and 14^th century, Coventry was the only cathedral in Britain to be completely destroyed by German bombs.  The iron frame that had been added for extra support in Victorian times actually helped bring the walls down under the rain of incendiary bombs.  As the rods twisted and turned in the heat of the flames, the weakened structure collapsed.

On the morning after the devastating raid,  a workman clearing the rubble tied two burned timbers together, fashioning a sort of cross which he placed where the altar had been.  Someone else fashioned another cross out of three of the many 13^th-century nails now lying amidst the debris.  With the nation listening on the wireless, the Provost of the Cathedral came to the microphone and said that, despite the horror and anger of the previous days, the thoughts of the affected people must begin to focus on forgiveness.  This astonishing idea became the new focus of the community.  The rubble and debris were cleared from the cathedral grounds, but the ruined walls have been left standing as a moving memorial.  The charred timber cross still stands on the old altar, with the words FATHER FORGIVE etched in gold letters into the wall behind.  The cross of nails, meanwhile, has become an international symbol of reconciliation. 

Burned Cross

The Cross of Nails

Churchill visiting the bombed Cathedral

After the war, it was decided to build a new, modern cathedral, not on the spot of the old one, but adjacent to it.  The new building it made of stone quarried from the same location that had produced the original cathedral’s stonework some 600 years earlier.  The roof of the new cathedral actually overhangs the ruins of the old.

The old and new Cathedrals

As you walk into the new cathedral, you are confronted with some profound text written in large letters clear across the entryway floor: “TO THE GREATER GLORY OF GOD THIS CATHEDRAL BURNT 14 NOVEMBER 1940 AND IS NOW REBUILT”.  That seems such a peculiarly English and beautiful sentiment.  The cathedral was destroyed in order to magnify God’s glory.

On your right is the amazing 70′ tall baptistry window by John Piper.

The Piper baptistry window

When the new cathedral was finally completed in 1962, Benjamin Britten wrote his famous War Requeim for the dedication.  The War Requeim is a weaving of ancient Latin liturgies with the contemporary pacifist poetry of Wilfrid Owen, who was killed in the First World War.  This huge piece calls for large chorus, a boys’ choir, extended orchestra, and three soloists.  In a maneuver that had clear overtones, the soloists chosen for the premier were the Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, the English tenor Peter Pears, and the German baritone Dietrich Fisher-Dieskau.  When the two men reached the searing reconciliation scene at the end of the work, Fischer-Dieskau broke down and could not continue.

Have a nice week.

Mikal

With Tina and the kids gone, things are different.  I am becoming even more nocturnal and disappointingly undisciplined.  A dead June bug in the living room will still be there in the morning.  I’m just saying.

The American-Stateman reports that Austin experienced above-average temperatures 30 of the 31 days in July.  The only exception was July 1^st, which was 1 degree below normal.  26 of those were over 100 and six were new records.  It’s no wonder I’m nocturnal.  It’s funny how some people, like Rachel, are night people from the day they are born, while others (Gabe) are clearly morning people.  Dad is a morning person.  After sleeping until noon one Saturday when I was home from college, I remember him chiding me, “The world’s a beautiful place.  How can you just lie in bed and miss it all?”  To which I replied, quite naturally, “The world’s a beautiful place.  How can you just go to bed at 9:30 and miss it all?”

The moon is waxing nicely.  Time was when I used to be intimate with the cycles of the moon and the planets.  I’d like to get back into that mode.  Jupiter is approaching opposition.  It’s that increasingly bright white dot that rises a little bit after sunset.  It was when Jupiter and Saturn were in conjunction back in 2000 that I started keeping tabs on the sky.  One day I bought a small telescope and was disappointed to see a smattering of tiny white dots surrounding the colorful disk of Jupiter -some kind of lens refraction problem I thought.  It turns out they were moons!  There are all kinds of beautiful things going on in the sky at night - planets, satellites, Iridium flares, meteor showers - if you just take the time to research a bit and go take a look.  Last week our friend Paul Hohenberger wrote a kind note - alas, still unanswered: sorry, Paul - in which he described going out to see a particularly bright space station flyover with his Gabe-aged son Andy.  This one was exceptionally cool because Endeavor, preparing for docking, had aligned its orbit and was following, just as brilliantly, a few finger-widths behind.  What got me was his observation that no one else in his neighborhood seemed at all interested in the spectacle going on over their heads.  It reminded me of Annie Dillard’s astonished reflection that, despite the miracle of a total eclipse going on all about them, there was still a line of cars on the highway wending their way to work in Yakima.  The next eclipse in Yakima comes in 2086.  “Perhaps in 2086,” she notes drily, “businesses will give their employees an hour off.”

Some of you may remember that Tina used to manage a large bookstore, one that eventually became part of the Barnes and Noble chain.  I thought of her and the many customer horror stories she used to bring home when I was standing in customer service line at our local B+N yesterday.  The lady in front of me derailed the queue for 10+ minutes by asking, roughly, “I left my book on the airplane.  It was one I had seen at the lending library.  Oh, I wish I had paid better attention.  I don’t remember the author, but he writes sort of in the style of Tom Clancey.  It had something to do with an intrigue in Italy or Iran or someplace, and I can tell you this… it was a New York Times bestseller two or more years ago.”  Had I not also been affected I might have laughed out loud at the helpless look on the clerk’s face.

Tina was the charter manager of that store when it opened, circa 1993.  At 5:00 am on Opening Day, B+N security woke her with an urgent call that the store’s burglar alarm had triggered.  Then the same call came again at exactly 5 on each of the following two days.  It was wearying to have to throw on our clothes and rush downtown to confer with the police officers that came to investigate.  They never did find any sign of a break-in.  Ultimately, Tina figured out that the heating system which came on automatically every morning was blowing the Opening Day balloons around, triggering the motion detectors.

Damon’s birthday is in a couple of weeks.  It’s a little known fact that Dad has written a birthday poem for D every birthday for 43 years, and no doubt he will produce a 44^th by the 18^th.  How many of you have written a poem that wasn’t a school assignment?  (Please respond if you have.)  Writing a poem is a curious exercise in both the intellectual and emotional.  When you are riding high the wave of creation, it produces a euphoria quite unlike any other.  You might wonder whether I feel unloved because Dad doesn’t write poems for my birthdays.  Not at all.  I delight that he refuses to subordinate his art to any tawdry notion of fairness.

The crisis at Dell has eased.  Through some carefully designed experiments we were able to root cause and correct, just before the deadline, the problem causing the fatal system errors.  (If you really want to know, the completion timeouts were caused by uncharacteristically high PCI-e latencies under Server 2008 R2 when two or more quad-port mezzanine adapters are installed in Barbaloot blade servers.  Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue, but when a driver is installed, R2 generates a D3 to D0 power state transition.  This of course causes the device’s completion timeout threshold to revert temporarily, per spec, to the default value of 50-500 microseconds.  Upon return to D3, Windows fails to restore the pre-programmed value, and, with measured bus latencies of 600μs and higher, well, it’s easy to guess what’s going to happen.) 

It’s good that things are quieting down, because I have an interesting writing assignment to work on this week.  More about that some other time…

Have a nice week.

Mikal