Godzilla

One of the requisite skills for my job as a scientist is the ability to communicate the details of my work to a wide range of audiences, from the general public to a group of my peers. For this latter group, one form of communication is through publication of my research in peer-reviewed scientific journals. However, another equally essential avenue is to be able to give oral presentations at various scientific conferences. By the time I was an assistant professor, I had given talks at several dozen meetings and experience had taught me how to give an effective presentation. During my first year at the university, I was invited to give a talk at a conference in Japan. It also turned out that one of the senior professors in my department was also attending the same workshop. During the presentation the audience of about 100 scientists seemed to follow along with my talk and I got a number of very good questions when I was finished. At the end of my session there was a coffee break and I had further discussions and answered questions from a number of other individuals. Everyone I talked with commented that they enjoyed my talk and that I had given a strong presentation.

Just a few minutes before the next session resumed, my senior colleague called me aside in the hallway and began to tell me how disappointed he was with my presentation and that he believed the room was abuzz with dissatisfaction with my talk. As he was a full professor in my group and we shared a research grant, I did my best to hear him out. However, I knew that my talk was good and I had heard from more than a dozen folks who specifically told me that I had done a good job. Something wasn't right here. I wasn't until we got back home that I learned that the government agency that was considering our latest funding proposal had rated my part of the research proposal significantly above that portion proposed by my colleague. It seemed that his attack had nothing to do with my presentation, but was entirely associated with his bruised ego. He was aiming to try to put me "in my place".

There is an important lesson here for all of us when we move to have a serious talk with someone or to criticize their work or their effort. We all need to search our hearts to understand our motives. If we aim to have strong, frank words with someone, we had better be certain that they do not come from a place of selfishness, of envy, or of pettiness, else we become Godzilla. Ultimately my colleague and I learned how to work well with each other and, in fact, we still interact regularly on research more than 15 years after this episode.

Rabbit Remembered

The final entry in the Rabbit Angstrom series by author John Updike is entitled Rabbit Remembered. This book was published in 2001, a little over a decade after the last full novel in the series, Rabbit at Rest. At the end that story, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom had died of a massive heart attack. Now, we enter in the life of those he left behind a decade after his passing. Even after all this time, Harry's presence still looms large over his family. Janice, his widow, now in her early 60s has grown into the family matriarch. Although more seasoned and more in control of her life, she still battles with her same demons. She has married Harry's old childhood friend, Ronnie Harrison. It turns out that Harry actually despised Ronnie and saw him as a brute and a classless loser. Ronnie also resented Harry for so many things, not the least of which was his long affair with his wife Thelma who died of lupus more than a decade ago. Eventually we learn that Ronnie courted and married Janice not so much out of love for her, but as a way to get back at Harry, to claim something that was his. To finally beat Harry at his own game. Ronnie is clearly a bit of a low-life weasel, but he is good for Janice and provides her stability and someone to grow old with.

The story also follows Harry and Janice's son Nelson who has stayed cleared of drugs for more than ten years. After he stole more than a quarter of a million dollars from his parent's to support his habit, which eventually cost them their Toyota dealership, he went into a career in helping the down-and-outs of society. He went into this life not so much because he wanted to help those who struggled as he struggled, but because he has taken on the role of martyr to deflect the blame he still feels for what he put his parents through. He still feels that everything he did was not his fault, however, he has finally become at 43 years old, something of a responsible man. He has gained some perspective and respect for his father. Also we are reintroduced to Annabelle, Harry's illegimate daughter from his liaison with Ruth after he walked away from his marriage back in the 1950s. Annabelle has her own life's baggage, and now at 40 and single, was encouraged by her mother to seek out the Angstrom clan as her only remaining family. This reunion is initially painful and awkward, but ultimately serves as a positive thing for both Annabelle and Nelson. We finally get a bit of a happy ending after so much negativity and scheming and selfishness. A great way to end a most enjoyable series.

This novella was included in Updike's book Licks of Love, that included as well a dozen random short stories that I will review in an upcoming post.

Sin = Sin

The starting pitcher for the winning team in game 1 of the baseball World Series was accused after the contest of doctoring the ball using Vaseline. Through the years folks have always given pitchers who have been suspected or caught doctoring the baseball cute nicknames and treated their antics playfully. Yet the same people who have winked and nudged at their friends about the baseball spitballers, utter much more definitive statements about blackballing any pitcher proven to have used steriods. However, one thing is perfectly clear, both the player applying a foreign substance to the surface of the ball and the player injecting themselves with drugs, were cheating. Both were seeking to gain a competitive advantage. Is one better than the other under the law? Well, in fact, yes. If caught, the baseball doctor would only get disqualified for the remainder of the game. The steroid user, if caught, would be banned for at least 50 games. So under the written law, there is a difference. However, under moral law as defined by sin, there is only one color of sin. There is no black, white, and gray. All sin is an abomination to God. The baseball doctor and the steroid user are equally guilty.

It's funny how we like to compare our sin with that of others. We make ourselves feel better by thinking that we are not as bad as some others that we know.

• I only cheat on my wife when I am drunk. Bob does it all the time and with anyone that even looks at him.
  
• Sure I may take assorted office supplies from work every now and then. But Marcia worked herself a kickback in the recent contract.
  
• I got into a scrum with that jerk who bumped into me at the bar the other week, but Carl got into a knife fight.
  
• I only cuss when I am upset or frustrated. Susan has a mouth like a sailor.
  

We have developed great skill at rationalizing all of the sinful behaviors in our lives. We seem to be able to look into the mirror and not see ourselves as we truly are. Our sins are either no big deal or are the fault of someone else. Yet the math is clear, sin = sin. There is no escaping that.

Observations 36

My occasional blog series "Observations" was created to be an outlet to share a variety of topics that pop into my field of view as a result of a condition that many bloggers are afflicted with known as "blogger's eyes". In this state we view the world on the constant look-out for topics on which to write about. Today's blog came about from random odds 'n ends of things that I have noticed over the past few weeks.

• I always find it a little creepy when an old(er) person tries to sport a hairstyle meant to be worn by children.
  
• At my workplace next to each trash can is a recycling bin for aluminum cans, glass bottles, and paper. Yet if you look in any trash can, you will nearly always see discarded cans, bottles,
  and paper. Can folks not see the value of conserving our finite natural resources? What is going on here? I mean the recycling bins are right next to the trash cans. It couldn't have been made any easier.
  
• I don't know what the reason is, but folks always seem to go completely insane when they are offered free food. They will stand in line to eat sickening amounts of whatever second rate food stuffs are placed before them. I just cannot figure out the appeal.
  
• The other day I spontaneous began to sing aloud, "Sprite makes better holidays, limon is the reason ..." However, I was not drinking a Sprite. Curious.
  
• After a couple of sessions working on repainting the railing of my deck, I can completely understand the mindset of Tom Sawyer in this regard. It is hard and tedious work. Perhaps literary history should not judge ole Tom so harshly.
  

First Impressions

Sometimes I can be a nasty, prejudiced, small-minded so-and-so. I see someone, make a snap assessment, and apply my opinion-laced first impression label with indelible ink. All too often I do this with a smile and a chuckle, thinking that I am being cute, that I am playing a harmless game. After a recent episode, my daughter told me that my behavior was not nice. She was 100% correct and I learned a valuable lesson. All it took was 40 some odd years of living and a trip to the home improvement store.

My daughter and I are presently engaged in repainting our living room. As part of this project we have made several trips to the home improvement store to visit their paint department. As we returned over several consecutive Saturdays, the same man was working the counter there. When I first noticed him, he wore a solemn expression and was a bit curt with me when I asked him a question. In that moment, I branded him with my label maker as "Mr. Gruff". Over the next couple of trips to the paint area, I would tell my daughter that we were going to visit grouchy Mr. Gruff. At one point, my daughter and I were waiting for our paint to be mixed and I had chance to watch the man in action. The number of folks coming up to the paint counter on a weekend is huge and folks are typically demanding and have a lot of questions. I recognized why he might have to be short and to the point with folks so that he could get his work done. As we sat off to the side, I watched him interact with a young girl, waving and smiling at her. In that moment his face did not seem all that severe any more. The next weekend, he spent time with me trying to alter a gallon of paint that I had purchased to better match what I was after. He was patient with me, explained what he was doing, and then didn't charge me anything after he did the work.

At that point I still made a little needling Mr. Gruff reference and that was when my daughter said that my behavior toward the man was not nice. She was absolutely right and I immediately threw my tin of labels into the trash, hopefully for good.

Full Circle

A few years ago I wrote a post entitled Chalk Dust about an experience that I had with some former university students of mine. Basically they constantly moaned and complained about why I pushed them so hard until I was not there to push, and then they found out that their own approaches were much less successful. Today's post is another in that same vein. It began back in 2008. A graduate student who was working on an experiment at my lab for his Ph.D. was in a bit of a professional and personal jam. His faculty research advisor had died after a battle with cancer. Ultimately, I agreed to take over as his advisor.

With less than a year left before he completed his degree work, he began to apply for jobs. Usually in my field, a recent Ph.D. will seek out a temporary term position where they can begin to develop their own research program and get some "real world" experience before they begin to look for a permanent position. As my student had labored long and hard along the path to completing his Ph.D., he began to experience burn out toward the end. This is very typical among students. As such he was more than eager to move on to new challenges, even if that meant not crossing every "t" and dotting every "i" in his graduate student career. What it came down to is that as soon as he started his new position, he lost any and all motivation to complete the work necessary to bring his thesis work through to publication.

Today my former student has been applying for permanent positions for more than a year without so much as a nibble. The main feedback that he has heard as to why he is not getting interviews, is that his publication list is not sufficiently developed. He stopped by my office the other day to say hello as he was in town for a meeting. He immediately stated that he sure wished that he had heeded my advice about publishing his thesis work. He heard me time and again tell him how important and necessary this step was for his career. For whatever reasons he just never managed to get the work done and is now paying for his decision.

I think many of us can relate to this story. We get wise advice from someone who knows what they are talking about and we think we know better or can succeed doing things our own way. It's one thing to get bad advice and set it aside after careful consideration. It's another when we get sound advice and don't act on it even though we have the opportunity and the ability. In such cases we can pay a steep price.

Rabbit at Rest

The final novel in the "Rabbit Angstrom" tetralogy by John Updike, entitled Rabbit at Rest, was published in 1990. As was the case for each novel of this series, this book was released a decade after the previous, and we are re-introduced to our protagonist a decade after we had last been part of his life. Here we meet up with Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, now in his late 50s, and his wife Janice. They have somehow managed to stick together despite the fact that they have always been an ill fit and each has had multiple affairs. Each bears more than a small distaste for the other, but this is somehow outweighed by their bond of familiarity with each other. Harry and Janice are both semi-retired from the Toyota dealership Janice's parent's left her when they died. They spend half the year in Brewer, PA and the other half in Deleon, FL. Each seems to simply mark time by finding some way to fill their day with activities that don't involve the other.

Meanwhile, their 30-something son Nelson with his mother's blessing has taken control of the car dealership. This is a painful development for Harry because he has basically been forced out of the job that kept him active. It has also made his already difficult relationship with Nelson even more tense and spiteful. After a while, Harry gets a sense that the financials at the dealership somehow are more than a bit screwy. When he finally convinces Janice to look into it, they learn that their son has been robbing them blind to support a serious drug habit. The completely maddening aspect of this finding for Harry is that Janice and Nelson's wife Pru seem happy to take this all in stride, which continues to enable him. All of the stress is helping to slowly sap Harry of any life spirit that may have remained in him. After a heart attack he just cannot seem to take seriously his doctor's advice for lifestyle change. The more stress that comes out of the interactions with his family, the more he abuses his body. Ultimately he cannot escape his fate, yet he has a last moment to savor the victory so often tasted in his youth, to reconcile with Janice after his one-night stand with Pru, and to interact with his son Nelson who has been working hard to turn his life around.

This book, just as the previous book in the series (Rabbit is Rich), won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. A masterful series that perfectly captured life and times through four decades from the 1950s to the 1980s. A gritty portrayal of a flawed man. If you like literature at its highest level, this series is a must. Now, onto the last part of the "Rabbit Angstrom" series, a novella postscript published in 2001 near the end of Updike's life, entitled Rabbit Remembered.