The Simple Abundance entry for today touched on women who read too much and how that is impossible... that a person cannot read too much. However, I wonder is that is completely true. Yes, we can constantly gain more from each new reading; however, do our brains have a maximum capacity? Perhaps some can continuously fill their heads with information, but I seem unable to access information I have not readily used. Maybe my brain operated on a use it or loose it regime.

Additionally, I wonder if becoming more educated hinders us in some way. I know, I know, how could I possibly say that? Well, it's just that it's just that when we gain more knowledge and then need to gain more, and more, and more... it's a greedy cycle and of what benefit? Does it make us happier? Healthier? More like fatter and miserable. I'm not saying that knowledge and it's repercussions are all... I just think that perhaps it clutters our lives in way... and after awhile, it can be hindering and/or suffocating.

I think it best to keep it simple. Perhaps this merely means filtering through the mountainous information and picking out only that which is necessary and implementable. A feat easier said than done.

Remembering Mr. Roger

Growing up, I was never a fan of the TV show, Mr Roger's neighborhood. I could not understand why he would change his shoes and sweater when he went inside his house and I wasn't a big fan of The Neighborhood of Make-Believe. However, while listening to a This American Life episode, Neighbors that was originally aired in 2001. In the first act of the episode, Davy Rothbart, the creator of Found magazine, goes to visit Fred Roger's. As the story goes, on a family trip, when he was a child, following a correspondence between his brother and Mr. Roger, the family stopped by his house for a visit. Some number of years later, Davy Rothbart sets up a meeting with the aged Fred Roger. While listening to their conversations, focusing on neighbors and the general goodness that seems to be what comes out of Fred Rogers, including the following answer when Davy Rothbart asked Fred Roger about why neighbours are afraid to eachother and don't get to know eachother:

"I can tell you what i hope that I would do. I would hope that I would be brave enough to visit. It's so easy to condemn when we don't know, and if I would visit you and find out that you are a reasonable person, I could tell you about my sensitivities and see if it would make any difference to you."

After hearing the sensible good hearted responses Fred Roger had to say, I googled him and came across the PBS website for the television show. Within the website there are a few links on various topics of Thought for All Ages by Fred Rogers. Under the link for Growing in Adulthood, it lists three 'thoughts':

I recently learned that in an average lifetime a person walks about sixty-five thousand miles. That's two and half times around the world. I wonder where your steps will take you. I wonder how you'll use the rest of the miles you're given.

It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff. That's what makes growing humanity the most potentially glorious enterprise on earth.

Please think of the children first. If you ever have anything to do with their entertainment, their food, their toys, their custody, their childcare, their health care, their education—listen to the children, learn about them, learn from them. Think of the children first.

Even though I may not have cared much for the children's show, I find it touching what Mr. Roger has to offer. I don't know if the show is still on the air, but I hope children growing up today are influenced by the mores and perceptions he offered.

Death... or something

While driving to work this morning I caught a bit of the UK broadcast discussing the airing of someone taking their own life. Apparently, it is part of a documentary that was filmed a few years ago and will be seen on the British airways sometime soon. What caught my attention, more than the content of the radio broadcast, was how those interviewed never made a statement as to "... they should not be able to air such a thing...", the persons interviewed spoke more so as to say "... I hope that the content of the footage is done in a respectful manner..."

Perhaps this is not a significant point to be made, but it got me thinking about how Americans are so quick to point fingers and tell others what should and should not be done. Americans rave about their freedoms and opportunities, yet somehow it seems fictitious in a way. More and more, others are deciding what is best the public, instead of letting them decide for themselves. The opportunities are disappearing because there is too much of a liability. What ever happened to responsibility?

Silence

There is a silence where hath been no sound,

There is a silence where no sound may be,

In the cold grave—under the deep, deep sea,

Or in wide desert where no life is found,

Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;

No voice is hush'd—no life treads silently,

But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,

That never spoke, over the idle ground:

But in green ruins, in the desolate walls

Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,

Though the dun fox or wild hyæna calls,

And owls, that flit continually between,

Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan—

There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.

~ Thomas Hood (1798–1845)

Ramblings

look into my eyes
what a big surprise
oh, how can this be
forever we must see
hand in hand we move
through life's uncertainties
is it you
or is it me?
together, will we make it three?
a new life
yet unstarted
distantly appearing
free from life's rigidity
pleasant in uncertainty
how else can this be
that you are I
and I are we
circles, circles
everywhere
yet we end
where we began
moving forward
to start again
a lesson
yet unlearned
to be repeated
each time anew.

Say what??

“Communication is depositing a part of yourself in another person.” ~ Unknown

After the emotional roller coaster of effortlessly trying to meet with my adviser to discuss my still unfinished thesis [although that I am working towards finishing it... hence the purpose of the meeting], I walked way midday after the meeting practically glowing... not because he praised my work, not because I came to some profound understand, merely because we FINALLY communicated. In an age when one has a multitude of communication avenues, it seems that little communication actually occurs. However, the positiveness of today's meeting has set the tone for the weekend and hopefully the weeks that follow. With deadlines and much to be done, it's a pleasure to move through it all with a head raised and a smile on one's face greeting the mac truck coming straight for ya. At least that way one can enjoy the look on the driver's face as they are inevitably thinking, "OH SH*T!!"

“The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives” ~ Anthony Robbins

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.

~Albert Einstein

2nd Annual Friend's Seafood Thanksgiving

A full table, full stomachs, and a kitchen full of dirty dishes. What more does one want on the biggest poultry eating holiday of the year? How about a late Thanksgiving Eve trip to the local seafood market for get crab cakes and stuffed clams to go with the creamed corn hush puppies.... oh yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about.

Ah, I'm already looking forward to next year.....

Even Albert agrees

If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.

~Albert Einstein

Sometimes falling in love is as much an act of criticism as criticism is an act of love.

~William Logan

A line or circle?

Who'da thunk it?

After reading Schwartz's essay [below] a light shined over the previous numerous years and I realized... I don't want to feel stupid ANYMORE! That said... perhaps a career change is in order.

-----------------------------------------------------
The importance of stupidity in scientific research

"I recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science, although in different areas. She later dropped out of graduate school, went to Harvard Law School and is now a senior lawyer for a major environmental organization. At some point, the conversation turned to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else.

I had thought of her as one of the brightest people I knew and her subsequent career supports that view. What she said bothered me. I kept thinking about it; sometime the next day, it hit me. Science makes me feel stupid too. It’s just that I’ve gotten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I actively seek out new opportunities to feel
stupid. I wouldn’t know what to do without that feeling. I even think it’s supposed to be this way. Let me explain.

For almost all of us, one of the reasons that we liked science in high school and college is that we were good at it. That can’t be the only reason – fascination with understanding the physical world and an emotional need to discover new things has to enter into it too. But high-school and college science means taking courses, and
doing well in courses means getting the right answers on tests. If you know those answers, you do well and get to feel smart.

A Ph.D., in which you have to do a research project, is a whole different thing. For me, it was a daunting task. How could I possibly frame the questions that would lead to significant discoveries; design and interpret an experiment so that the conclusions were absolutely convincing; foresee difficulties and see ways around them, or, failing that, solve them when they occurred? My Ph.D. project was somewhat interdisciplinary and, for a while, whenever I ran into a problem, I pestered the faculty in my department who were experts in the various disciplines that I needed. I remember the day when Henry Taube (who won the Nobel Prize two years later) told me
he didn’t know how to solve the problem I was having in his area. I was a third-year graduate student and I figured that Taube knew about 1000 times more than I did (conservative estimate). If he didn’t have the answer, nobody did.

That’s when it hit me: nobody did. That’s why it was a research problem. And being my research problem, it was up to me to solve. Once I faced that fact, I solved the problem in a couple of days. (It wasn’t really very hard; I just had to try a few things.) The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn’t know wasn’t merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of
being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can.

I’d like to suggest that our Ph.D. programs often do students a disservice in two ways. First, I don’t think students are made to understand how hard it is to do research. And how very, very hard it is to do important research. It’s a lot harder than taking even very demanding courses. What makes it difficult is that research is
immersion in the unknown. We just don’t know what we’re doing. We can’t be sure whether we’re asking the right question or doing the right experiment until we get the answer or the result. Admittedly, science is made harder by competition for grants and space in top journals. But apart from all of that, doing significant
research is intrinsically hard and changing departmental, institutional or national policies will not succeed in lessening its intrinsic difficulty.

Second, we don’t do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid – that is, if we don’t feel stupid it means we’re not really trying. I’m not talking about ‘relative stupidity’, in which the other students in the class actually read the material, think about it and ace the exam, whereas you don’t. I’m also not talking about bright people who might be working in areas that don’t match their talents. Science involves confronting our ‘absolute stupidity’. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown. Preliminary and thesis exams have the right idea when the faculty
committee pushes until the student starts getting the answers wrong or gives up and says, ‘I don’t know’. The point of the exam isn’t to see if the student gets all the answers right. If they do, it’s the faculty who failed the exam. The point is to identify the student’s weaknesses, partly to see where they need to invest some effort
and partly to see whether the student’s knowledge fails at a sufficiently high level that they are ready to take on a research project.

Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries."*

*Schwartz, M. A. 2008. The importance of stupidity in scientific research. Journal of Cell Science 121:1771

Participation required

How quickly someone can become such a significant part of our lives, and how just as quickly they can disappear from it. I always try to be open to new experiences and interactions with people, but still I have a hard time moving through this time. The awkward time, where you are trying to get your bearings and find the ground under your feet... like the slack line that is created when tension on a rope seizes. You have to prepare and brace yourself, for when the tension returns, it can throw you, if you are not ready. However, I find it hard to ground myself after such experiences. I feel deflated, as though I expanded myself to include another and now that they are not there anymore, that part of me sinks, like a deflated balloon. Perhaps over time the elasticity will increase, otherwise the only way to not get to this point is to not make a space for others. But that just seems wrong... to not let others in? That is one of the few things that make life worth living to me... becoming apart of other people's lives... occupying a small fraction of their world and vica versa.

It just hurts when they choose not to participate anymore.

Today is a good day

We see the world through our own two eyes
a personal view
subjective
some don't realize.

When the weighted pain
and hurtful acts
are gone
one questions,
Will a sequel come?

For the cycles of life
and ruts yet unfilled
keep repeating the actions
that can make one ill.

Yet each day
we live and learn
a new experience embraced.
As the sun rises and sets
our love's spread through its rays.

Plumbing issues

The days blur by like the stationary memories caught out of the corner of one's eye as this carousel of life rotates out of control. While the carousel generally stays in motion, I feel like the intermittent short stops and starts [once thought of as peaks and valleys] are temporary clogs in the flow of life's pipeline and I wonder if it somehow is simply inertia. Perhaps we accumulate these small and slight resistances over time to the point where we clog the fluidity that ignites our lives.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote of the week

Happiness is not a station to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.

~Margaret Lee Runbeck

Morning thoughts....

The charm and simplicity of a small towne have a way of mesmerizing you into forgetting about all the material obsessions and distractions that large cities offer. Although after moving here, I was a bit unthrilled with not having certain things readily accessible, such as a funky local coffee shop, bike shop, independent/foreign movie house, or available dog friendly housing opportunities, the change has enabled me to focus more on what is really necessary. Always one to aiming for the simplistic approach, I see this move as a catalyst in that direction in a way. Granted, I would like to have a full sized couch in my apartment and eventually a television [to watch movies on... this is a cable free zone, except internet of course... I do have some frivolous expenses], these are material things I can live without. As with other things in my life lately, even though I don't think this next chapter that I have begun is necessarily what I wanted, it is, in many ways, what I needed.....

Morning walk spider web siting

Blah.......

Sitting in my office looking out at the sun glistening off the water, wishing I could turn time back... back to the 4th of July, where the air AND water were warm, sweat poured as fluid as the beer, music was in the air, as well as good conversations from good company. It was a good weekend.

As of late, I feel like the world [at least the US] is crumbling around me. NPR has turned into a negative nancy with little positive information. Generally my preferential choice of media, the recent catastrophic events leave me with a sour outlook. Waking to that every morning is a sure way to keep the suicide hotlines and the antidepressant corporations in business.

Coincidentally, as the world around me is falling apart, so to is my personal world. Or should I say my personal world is giving way to the world around me. Through all I have endured over my short 20 something stink thus far, I seem to cower when faced with the pressures of benefit plans, retirement options, and other what seem like monumental money missions that I have yet been briefed on.

While dealing with these monetary muddlings, I am also trying to keep a logical and emotional balanced perspective in a new relationship. Something that should not be difficult for a well-adjusted person. Unfortunately, that is not me and the current battle is can and when to trust that another isn't going to pull away and disappear. Sometimes is seems better to just keep them outside, to not let them in.... and I question, is it worth it? The voice inside my head says yes, but my heart stays silent.

As I listen to Tristan Prettyman's You Got Me.... I hope my heart will speak up......