2008 in review

Following Heather and Seb, I've prepared a 'year in review.' But I cheated. Instead of taking the first line of the first entry for every month, I selected the lines I most remember writing.

January
It was a deliberate attempt to appreciate the little things.

February
We have every reason to be pissed as hell.

March
It can take a deep faith in democracy to stand up for "one person, one vote."

April
Interact with real people, and by real people, I mean poor people.

May
I sometimes try to imagine what being incarcerated would feel like.

June
So I flick 'em off and keep cycling. I flick off a lot of people.

July
It would have been easier to cooperate if they hadn’t jumped me from behind.

August
In Sossusvlei, Namibia. Be jealous. :)

September
I'm a newbie in Cincinnati, still looking for a regular crew.

October
"They don't need the presidency, too."

November
We danced like paraplegics healed by Jesus.

December
Damnit, we should incarcerate dangerous people, not those we're mad it.

Rockin' the vote

My forty-year-old literacy student registered to vote today.

It was one of his goals when we started meeting weekly last July. We tackled some new words, including registration, citizen, and affidavit, but spent most of the time on his regular word list - words like "provide" and "store." It's an odd experience, teaching somebody to read. Paul is not a sharpest pencil, but he keeps his pencils sharp. (Okay, that was an awful use of metaphor. I meant: he may not be too bright, but he's dedicated.) Paul works two jobs, at a dry-cleaners in the morning and as a custodian at night. He never complains about taking the bus. There's a reason why this relatively poor uneducated black man, whose gentle demeanor I've mentioned before, hasn't ended up in prison.

"How long you been on crutches, Eli?" he asked today.

"Well, tomorrow will be one month."

He laughs. "And you thought it was sprung!" That is, sprained instead of broken.

After the addresses and birth-dates, the voter registration form asks whether you'd like to affiliate with a political party. He reads the question himself (it's been a long time since we did bat, cat, hat, and mat) and before I can say anything, he checks off the box for "Republican."

"Republican, eh?" I say, trying to sound neutral (if a little Canadian).

"Yea, 'cause I don't think the government should give things away. I like to work hard," he says. Classic conservative mentality. Of those who think that everyone in America has a chance to succeed through hard work and persistence, 46% are Republicans and 26% are Democrats.

Still trying to be neutral, I give a one-paragraph description of how Republicans and Democrats differ on health care, Iraq, climate change, and taxes. We talk a bit about Barack Obama. Like the black men I've tutored in prison, Paul doesn't think America is ready for a black man. He then picks up the pen and re-registers himself as independent because, he says, there's too much he doesn't know. I remind him that independents can't vote in New York's primary on February 5. He says he wasn't planning to vote in the primary anyway, only in the general election. "Life's real stressful right now," he says, "things need to be more simpler" [sic].

An excerpt from our conversation:

Me: "The Democrats pick a candidate and the Republicans pick a candidate and they face off."

Paul: "Oh, sorta like the Superbowl."

An apt and very seasonal metaphor.

Crutchin' around town

Crutches countdown: 4 weeks done, 1 (and maybe more) to go.

Things I can no longer do on my own: bike to work, carry laundry downstairs, take out the trash, sweep the floor, stand in one place (on one foot) for longer than five minutes, water the houseplants, shovel the driveway, and carry dishes from the kitchen to the dining room. More frustratingly that I would have imagined, I can't walk and talk - on my cell phone - at the same time.

People, strangers definitely included, are suddenly very kind to me, quite unnecessarily in fact. They stop to open doors that they themselves aren't going through; they hold open the elevator though it isn't closing; they suggest that I cut in line at the bakery; they carry little things for me - things I could carry even while I crutch - as if to say, "No, don't move your arm! Not while your ankle is broken!" Meanwhile, I often have little choice but to say thank you. Saying "really, I'm alright," is seen as just pain rude. Yesterday as crossed the street, a driver actually backed up as I crutched by so the tip of her car wouldn't be in my way. Really?

And unconditional plus, though, is having friends sign my cast. That's really fun.

Messiness of serendipity

It's been a rather uninspiring holiday season. My plans to go caving in Alabama for a week collapsed with my broken ankle. I didn’t feel much urge to make other plans since I didn't have the stomach for another coffee-shop-vacation. And travel would not have been easy on crutches. So I spent the time in Syracuse, working at the bioethics center during the day, watching season two of The Office (which was excellent) by night. I also cleaned out my inbox and found a note-to-self listing various "joys and shits of life." It was a deliberate attempt to appreciate the little things. You see, the big things (life plans, world peace) can cause anxiety, as Ian McEwan understands so well in Saturday.

Joys: walking around shirtless, speeding through a book but savoring the last chapter page-by-page, reading the newspaper (or even a magazine!) in print on a Sunday afternoon, going to bed before 10 pm, walking through museums, mocking religion, mocking gender, belting Tom Petty's "Free Falling" in a full car, trying to remember the words of Puff the Magic Dragon, leaving a potluck with an empty dish, blowing your nose with your hands, finishing a cut-throat ultimate frisbee game, 9 to 8, not remembering who had 9 and who had 8.

Shits: when people in the library deserve to be shushed, when the guy in front of me leans back his bus seat, when pressing apple-d means duplicate on a Mac and delete on a PC, when the city park service mows the grass so short that they chop off the yellow daffodils, when motorists don't share the road, when a high anticipated movie contains too much violence - and of course, the usual suspects: prisons, patriarchy, religion, ethnic nationalism, pollution.

Pluses and minuses and vicissitudes of life... But whither? In one ear, I hear Martin Luther King Jr., in a speech delivered the week he died, resolutely declaring that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." In the other, I hear the pangs of a mortal universe. It has no teleology; there will be no second coming, no great rapture, no redemption. All is not, in fact, for the best. Failure is indeed an option. Shit happens, sometimes for no reason. But in denouncing the idea of fate, I come away feeling empowered. That's as close as I'll come to a New Year's resolution. Don't settle for the status quo. Be an activist. Lest you become a pillar of salt, seize the year.

Daily dose of cynicism

As friends in Syracuse know perhaps too well, I've been thinking about working for an international development or health organization when I leave my post here at the bioethics center, perhaps as early as this summer. But I'm hesitant to do so, not for lacking interest, but for lacking usefulness. I don't want to get in the way. In fact, I don't see how I couldn't get in the way given that I speak no relevant languages. I'm worried that I'll become a bureaucrat or get stuck producing the sort of "water is wet" studies (e.g.) that David Tuller describes in a NYT blog today:

"I wonder sometimes what is the point of researching this [the impact of "food insecurity" on HIV drug adherence in rural Uganda]? Why not just give food to people so obviously in need? But international donors demand data and documentation. They want proof that an intervention will reduce the total misery index before they will shell out millions of euros for new programs, even if the need appears self-evident. ... I will analyze my data, write up my findings and hope that what I have done makes some small contribution to change."

I'm cynical about how much can really be accomplished on the research front (where I'm most likely to land, I think). I worry my experience would amount to little more than that: an "experience." I don't want to be a leech or a self-righteous deadbeat working on some heartbreaking human rights issue like human trafficking, food insecurity, malarial protection, or land rights, as if my work on the subject actually did anything to alleviate people's suffering.

With the future still undefined, I go through one of these episodes several times a day.

Accident report

It's midnight on a Friday night (a week ago), and I'm sledding with friends. I'm feeling adventurous and jolly. The snow is a bit loose, flying everywhere as we fly south down the hills. I take off my glasses which keep fogging up during the fast descent. The visibility is awful, but I'm content to take in the world through my other senses: the unmistakable smell of winter, the cold against my face, the good-natured yelps of my fellow sledders, having fun. And then, in the delight of unrestrained youthfulness, I sled head-on - well, actually foot-on - into a tree.

I hobble back to the car, friends take me home, and my housemate Jake helps prepare a few bags of ice that I saran-up around my ankle. I sit mostly stationary through the weekend. On Monday, one of the med school professors I work for examines my ankle, and says: "Uh Eli, that's not good." She insists I go to the emergency room, and since all the local orthopedists seem to be booked (except the one who could only see me two days later), I said what the heck, this could be fun.

It turns out I broke my medial malleolus at the base of the tibia. Of course that wasn't obvious at first. I spent the downtime investigating ER culture: the EMS personnel rushing in with patients strapped to gurneys, the ER staff telling them to wait their turn, the secretaries too busy to look up when asked for a tissue, the elderly woman to my left pulling out her IV and yelling for attention... Over the course of the 4.5 hour visit, I spoke to four doctors, three nurses, a half-dozen x-ray technicians, and one very pretty resident who stopped by only to ask if it would hurt if she flicked my big toe. One or two asked about the book I was reading, Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle. I had arrived at 10 am. It was now 1 pm, and I had to leave by 2:30 to make a 3 pm opthalmology appointment. Time was running thin.

"Your particular fracture," says the doctor, "is commonly associated with a second fracture higher up on the tibia. So we'd like to take a second x-ray to rule out such a break."

"But doc," I say, "I've got no pain or tenderness higher up on the tibia."

"Well, you see," he says nervously, "it's a liability issue, standard of care."

"Ah, I understand.... I'll tell you what. I'll consent to it if you can get me out of here by 2:30."

It worked. A friend Nate drove me to the ophthalmologist with six minutes to spare.

It's been a week now. Probably 1-2 more on crutches, and another 3-5 with a cast.

Tuesday, Saturday

I’ve been busy lately, though not very productive. My housemates and I (though mostly my housemates) have been re-tiling the shower. In the process, we unleashed an army of dust, which has exacerbated (and perhaps caused) a tormenting cough. I can feel the dust in my throat. It’s depressing to think that the air in the place I call home is somehow toxic to me.

It snowed last night so I commuted to work by foot. Shoulda taken the bike. The roads weren’t exactly clear, but they were better than the sidewalks. Feeling sorta crummy, I treated myself to a strawberry smoothie - a shameless attempt to boost the day’s languishing work ethic and to remind myself of the more palatable side of slush. It’ll be a few more months of this weather.

A book I read this fall is due back to the library, so today I shuffled through the pages to review a few passages I tagged. The book is Ian McEwan’s Saturday, which I enjoyed almost as much as his book Amsterdam. In fact, I’d recommend anything he’s written. Saturday follows a neurosurgeon named Henry Perowne through a rather tumultuous 24-hour period, which unfolds over 289 pages. At times, the book seemed a little forced, a little too clever, but McEwan's keen sense of the way people think made reading it entirely worthwhile.

An example: I try to be physically active, mainly through ultimate frisbee and biking (and recently, caving). I sometimes dread the upcoming games, fearful of that burning sensation in my calves and the desperation in my lungs. But I play anyway. It keeps me sociable, and I enjoy the camaraderie and even the self-scrutiny. Athletes have a way of seeing their athletic performance as a reflection of their larger personal aspirations and character. I posted a cartoon (here) about how people judge themselves in sports. We see our truer selves - anxieties, priorities, deficiencies, demeanor - when the going gets tough, and we judge others similarly, e.g., see the NYT's analysis of Barack Obama’s basketball game.

Well here's McEwan, describing Henry Perowne's thought-process during a game of squash:

"He twists back to life balls out of the rear corners, then dashes forwards at a stretch to connect with th drop shots. The constant change of direction tires him as much as his gathering self-hatred. Why has he volunteered for, even anticipated with pleasure, this humiliation, this torture? It's at moments like these in a game that the essentials of his character are exposed: narrow, ineffectual, stupid - and morally so. The game becomes an extended metaphor of character defect. Every error he makes is so profoundly, so irritatingly typical of himself, instantly familiar, like a signature, like a tissue scare or some deformation in a private place" (108).

I'm rarely pleased with my performance on the ultimate field. My body usually gives out
before my mind, and I start to imagine magnificent plays that I have no energy to do. I wonder now whether that's a symptom of inhabiting an academic universe these last six years.

Self-esteem boost

This cartoon reminds me of something I wrote over the summer but didn't post. I don't know who drew the cartoon or when; I saw it in the collection of a social psychology professor I work for.

Here's what I wrote:

At ultimate yesterday, the two-hour game, the final point. Seeing an opening, I run deep to the endzone. A teammate launches the frisbee over my head, as if to say "Go for it!" I watch the game-winner fly away; gosh it's far. But there I am, arms pumping, instinctively sprinting down the field. The frisbee sails over my shoulder in the last arc of its descent. As it nears its final plummet, I reach. I don't quite remember what happens next, but I imagine: the finger-tips of my left hand come into uncertain but lasting contact with the outer rim of the disc. I am horizontal. Heaving lungs are shoved up my throat. But I'm holding it, gripped firmly by two fingers and an opposing thumb, my body now planted in the dirt. A defender behind me mutters, "No way." Down the field, the players are shaking hands. Game over.

One year anniversary

It's been more than a week since I've written here. A friend called yesterday to inform me "your readers are pissed." So I'm back, and not only back, but celebrating a whole year of blogging (!).

Some stats: In the last year, I've written 140 posts (or 1 per 2.6 days), for a total of 55,418 words. That's 121 pages, single-spaced. My favorite subjects have been: global responsibility (27), politics (20), health (16), feminism (16), and vegetarianism (11). I've sometimes succumbed to the narcissism of blogging, once rating my blog and another time listing my top 10 motivations.


I started this blog on Halloween last year. I didn't have many friends in Syracuse then, so I spent the evening at home, alone. Not one person rang my doorbell, and I ended up eating a whole bag of tootsie-pops myself. So, reaching out to the world, I wrote: "I wonder whether my life in suburbia is exciting enough to merit a blog.... I wonder if my standards will slide over time, or whether, like any good blogger, I'll fill this space with inchoate musings and witty chatter. I wonder whether I should disclose my love affairs and ideological battles, and whether my spicy secrets will lose their flavor if spread too thin. But, but, in my post-college anomie, I am driven by a need to record and an urge to connect." Yes, to record and to connect. I think, a year later, I've done that okay.

I have not disclosed my love affairs. I have disclosed some of my ideological battles, but not really. I rarely write about my uncertainties, say over apparent nobility of veganism or the justifications for war or my life plans - items for which I lack a steady argument. On this blog, I mostly assess the news, talk to myself (albeit a little more formally than I usually do), and try to get used to sharing my writing, of which I am sometimes quite protective. If this blog were a 'live journal,' perhaps I'd be more inclined to share personal anecdotes. Somehow I'm stuck in a formal tone: complete sentences, proper grammar, etc. I'm been trying to break out of it, but maybe it's not a indication of my novice blogging as much as a side-effect of my overall demeanor.

What else? It is one of the great luxuries of my life that I have time for fiction. I keep a book list - check it out here. A month ago, I went to a library booksale and bought a great mass of books. But now, paralyzed with choices, I just curl up with back issues of the New Yorker. I'd love your recommendations. For my part, I'll recommend J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace. A phenomenal book.

I do love keeping this blog, but I don't know if I'm going to write as regularly in the next year as I did in the last. Blogging takes time. There's an opportunity cost. For example, I recently called up a friend who's also a blogger to see if she'd like to go to a street carnival.

"Hold on," she says, "I'm finishing a blog post. I'll call you in a hour, k?"

I smiled: the life of a blogger. I do it, too. Indeed, we all need to remind ourselves that as much as we enjoy these forums (and I really do), blogging is not a substitute for human interaction.

Pop

Only a few activities are well-suited for both moments of amusement as well as moments of agitation, anger, frustration, and sorrow. Bubble-wrap is one of them. Click here for a try.

Like winners

My team lost our ultimate frisbee game last night. Final score: 15-13. But we came back from a 8-3 deficit to score 10 points in the second half while they scored only 7. At one point, it was tied 13-13! So, strangely enough, the winners felt like losers and the losers felt like winners.

Something frustrating: One of my teammates doesn't seem to realize how terrible a player she is. She routinely positions herself at the back of the stack, making her responsible for the first cut. But she can't beat her defender and just ends up clogging the lane. And she can't catch very well. Three times I saw the disc float beautifully into her hands - and then bounce off and onto the ground. Even if she does catch it, she can't throw it. What never ceases to surprise me, some six weeks into the season, is how oblivious she is to her own ineptitude. She picks up the disc on a turnover instead of leaving it to a more experienced player. I've sometimes heard, as inspirational advice: What would you try to accomplish if you were blind to your limitations? But at least on the frisbee field, that seems like lousy advice. My guess is that her mistakes singlehandedly cost our team three or four points, i.e., the game itself.

Still, I love this game of ultimate, even when we lose.

Lest I leave on a sour note, let me add: I have a tremendous job that I love. It's a constant stream of research requests, complemented by all sorts of lectures (next month on Abu Ghraib and medical ethics), advocacy talks (last week on single-payer health care), and even poetry readings (this morning, former US poet laureate Donald Hall). I'm headed south to DC tonight for the annual conference of 'bioethics professionals,' so to speak. I'll be staying with my folks, catching up with old friends, and living large. So this page will be quiet for a week.

Fortune cookies from hell

A few days after the NYT ran a story on fortune cookies with "downbeat advice," I got one myself. My department ordered Chinese food for lunch today (yes, I know I live well).

My fortune read:

"Solid gains are possible today, but with a headache."

Another faculty member (who works in an ethics department no less) received:

"Before asking 'Am I doing things right?', ask yourself, 'Am I doing the right thing?'"

My health policy professor opened his cookie to find:

"You need to control your emotions. Keep them under wraps."

In bed?

Anyone have a favorite fortune?

Reincarnation

In your next life, what kind of animal would you be?

That was a topic at dinner last night. (Yes, I have wonderful friends.)

I said I'd be a moose. Years ago on a family trip to the Rockies (or maybe it was the Grand Tetons), we saw a moose from our white-water raft. It was gorgeous, and for some reason, though I haven't thought about that moose in ages, it came back to me last night. Why a moose? For one, they aren't factory farmed the way other animals are. And more than that, I have the sense that moose (yes, that's the plural) don't interact much with human populations. If I were an animal, I wouldn't want to bother with humans in my next life. How cruel they can be.

Fresh in my mind was a squirrel that lost its life just the previous day. I saw the whole episode unfold as I biked down the street: the furry beast jogging and then, sensing danger, darting across the road. "NO!" I called out, but to no avail. Its brittle bones crackled under the car tires, reverberating in my ears, death before my eyes. It's been two days since the massacre, but its body still rests on the pavement, ever flatter by the day. Sorry little guy.

I would not want to be a squirrel.

What if I could be a human again? I'm leaning yes. One friend at the table, who'd like to be a koala bear or maybe a sloth in her next life, suggested that she'd probably need a break.

What would you be?

Take no gaff

I arrived early to a reading by poet and memoirist Mary Karr and saw a gathering line of eager admirers all with books in their hands, each waiting for an autograph. What the heck, I thought. I had brought a tattered copy of her childhood memoir, The Liars' Club, so I got on line.

"And who should I make this out to?" she asked once she'd finished struggling with my pen, which I had stupidly forgotten to uncap.

"To me, Eli."

"Eli," she looked up, "should you be at, what is it, Rosh Hashanah?"

"Ya know," I said, "I never really thought of Eli as a Jewish name." Damnit!, is what I was really thinking. How could I be having this conversation for the second time in one day?! "Well my parents are Jewish," I said to sum up the point. "I, well, I'm a bad person."

"My boyfriend over there" - she pointed to a nearby chair - "he's also a bad Jew."

"Aren't they all bad Jews?" I asked. And almost added, "or is that Catholics?"

She laughed, one hand reaching out to my elbow, and signed, "For Eli - Take no gaff." [Updated: See comments.]

I had to look it up later. Gaff: noun, harsh treatment or criticism.

Stepping away, I realized I had neglected to mention the name of my own writing professor, the one in whose class I had "read" (i.e., skimmed in one sitting from 1 to 3 a.m.) Karr's memoir The Liar's Club. Poet and professor Catherine Imbriglio was a brilliant teacher whose charm lay somewhere between her insanity - "Write!" she'd yell, "WRITE!" - and her ability to recall any piece of writing from any of the hundreds of students she had taught over the years. When I took a second course with her two years after my first, I was amazed to see she could recall details from a piece I wrote about my brief high school wrestling career. Damn. Shoulda mentioned Imbriglio.

So I squeezed my way back front after the poetry reading, and I did.

That led to another conversation, and I managed to solicit a poem for the literary journal my department - with one foot in bioethics and the other in 'medical humanities' - publishes.

7:38 a.m. on a Sunday

It was drizzling when I woke. I slept with the window open, seeking reprieve from the heat. It worked. I stay beneath the covers for a while, soaking in the coolness. I love waking up early on a Sunday. In the afternoon, I breathe in the day. There’s much to do: unfolded laundry on the bed, a friend’s essay to proofread, a book to review (for the blog, of course, where else?). It’ll get done. I’m not worried. I’m not dead yet – or dying – so there’s time for fiction. Contrast: SENSE OF URGENCY! NEED CAREER NOW! Revert: I crack open Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam and lean back, a conscious attempt to be taken by it all. Sometimes it works. The covered porch shields me from the drizzle and yet preserves the breeze. But ya know, I want to get wet. I leave this porch - my perch - and stretch out on the lawn that my housemate graciously mowed last week.

Up above is Syracuse’s characteristically grey canopy. I am fond of it.

I thought it was time for an update. Snippets:

I played an incredible game of ultimate frisbee last week. Maybe it’s the nature of the game or maybe just the people I play with, but we never succeeded in keeping score, even when we tried.

I spent a weekend with my grandparents in Pittsburgh last month. They talk about the future, the future without them, but both are doing wonderfully. Grandpa’s still kicking even with two fake hips. At 84, he says: “I don’t care what the doctors call it. I’m gonna die of old age, damnit.”

On the way home, I arrived at the airport to find that my 6:30 AM flight to Syracuse via NYC was delayed “at least an hour.” So much for getting home by 11 AM. But all was not lost. I was re-routed through Cincinnati and arrived back in Syracuse at 10:30 AM, half-an-hour earlier than I would have on the original flight. Only with the airline industry can you be early when your plane is late.

At the Syracuse airport, it took half-an-hour of shamelessly making announcements before I found someone willing to split a cab. With Syracuse’s public transportation system, I had little choice but to take a cab. The driver, a scruffy-looking guy in his thirties, of course had a story. For seven years now, he’s worked the 3 AM-to-noon shift for a total of fifty hours a week – on minimum wage. No benefits – no paid vacation, no health insurance. He says he’s looked into private plans but can’t afford them. I ask why he keeps this job. Answer: Flexible vacations. Well, I assure him, we’ll have figured out universal health care by the time you really need it. I sure hope so.

What else? I tutor a 39-year-old recovering alcoholic who is learning to read. We usually meet on Saturdays at the public library, but it was closed last week for the Labor Day weekend (nevermind that Labor Day is Monday! lame!). We met at the front door and meandered over to a park bench before deciding to walk around downtown to find signs and posters to read.

On the walk, we discuss why cigarette smoking remains legal despite its proven dangers. I blabber about the influence of industry lobbyists. Plus, I add, “we didn’t know how terrible cigarettes were for ya back then – so to some extent, we have inertia to thank for our lax tobacco laws.”

“Inertia,” he says excitedly, “I hearda that, in a movie once, I think. Whatzit mean? Oh right. When you’re in a relationship and you get bored but you can’t get the freak out.”

He says “freak” because he’s gentle like that.

Back at home, I indulgently smother an apple in peanut butter and devour it standing up.

It’s a good life.

The future with a capital F

I don’t usually post about my feelings, but here’s a go.

I feel exasperated. Socially, I’m steady (though some romance wouldn't hurt). Financially, I’m stable. And I have a wonderful job that provides me with challenging work and close mentorship.

But don’t ask about the big picture. In the last day alone, I’ve read or skimmed articles on HPV vaccination, US incarceration reform, health policy impacts of climate change, WTO agreements on pharmaceutical patents, and the very idea of distributive justice. I’ve been reading about conscientious objection in health care and about PhRMA's absurd influence. It's all worthy of study. So I'm left overwhelmed and bewildered, not knowing what to do with my life. Should I work abroad? How? Should I apply for a MPH? For a PhD? In what? I know that too much emphasis on the future can make for a less happy present, but I can't help but wonder where I'll be in a year.

As an undergrad, I was perhaps too specialized, taking small seminars on obscure topics. I loved them for their long papers, good discussion, and faculty contact. Now I have the opposite problem - I'm not specialized enough. As I peruse websites of various social justice organizations, obsessed by The Future, it seems I'm interested in everything but qualified for nothing. Perhaps I overstate the case – people are more aware of what they lack than what they have, and I guess that includes me. But still, I speak no relevant languages, have no engineering skills, have no clinical skills, etc.

An analogy: In organizing the small seminars, professors faced the age-old question of fair resource distribution. In this case the limited resource was class enrollment. Some professors tried to spook the crowd by requiring long papers; others scheduled the class for undesirable times; some resorted to a lottery; some judged by a writing sample; some asked, simply, “Why should I let you in? State your case.” This last method was my favorite, as I could usually make the cut. And my neat handwriting probably helped. But it did inspire a joke among students, with its kernel of truth: The best way to get into a course is to have taken it already. And so it is with careers.

100th post!

Hurray!

Thanks to all the readers who make my blogging worthwhile. Please feel free to drop a note!

To mark the occasion, I went to Rate My Blog, a service that evaluates websites with a rating in the style of the Motion Picture Association of America. I am pleased to announce that my blog is rated:

That's right. Don't read my blog without being accompanied by a parent or adult guardian.

Why? I offend by using the following words: sex (6x), dead (4x), shoot (2x), kill (1x), and quite a few others. It seems silly to rate a blog simply for the presence of "dirty words." Shouldn't it matter how they're used? Then again, Rate My Blog is just a silly website that's best used for giggles - and to mark celebratory occasions. I don't know if blogging in the long-run is a worthwhile endeavor, but for now, I enjoy it. It keeps me curious about the world. Thanks for checking in.

The sun's radiance

I took two weeks off blogging, but not by design. It's good to be back. Since I'm recovering from a week in Providence and since I'm still living out of a box while I move apartments, I'm not ready to post anything substantial. But something is coming. I've been thinking about the campaign to make medicines available to the destitute poor, and how this campaign collides with intellectual property rights. I've been getting excited for the ultimate frisbee tournament I'm staffing this weekend. And I've been treating myself to fancy dinners - nutritious but no less indulgent.

I'm lucky to have a job where my duties include surveying incoming journals. So I saw that the Journal of the American Medical Association devoted an entire issue to the fight against malaria, which still kills a million people a year. What a great imperative for the research agenda and for the rest of us: Malaria "can be controlled everywhere the disease still exists, no matter how poor or remote the location or population." Besides reading JAMA, I spent part of the afternoon with the New England Journal of Medicine, the Annals of Internal Medicine, the American Journal of Bioethics, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the New York Review of Books. Not a bad day.

For one professor here at the bioethics center, I've been compiling an annotated bibliography on issues of disability, genetics, and law, focusing especially on reproductive choice and genetic discrimination. For another professor, I've been digging through recent reports of the IPCC to understand how climate change is impacting the economies of developing countries. Yes, there are days when my job is simply my job. But on other days, there's nothing I'd rather be doing.

I moved in this week with a friend who recently purchased a house. For several hours last night I schlepped over everything I own, finishing around 3:00 AM, utterly exhausted. To my dismay, I woke a few hours later when the radiance of the sun flooded the naked windows. Note to self: Buy window shades ASAP. I hadn't anticipated that moving apartments would take so long, but over the last year in Syracuse, I seem to have acquired kitchen supplies, nonessential furniture, and other household amenities that are generally associated with adulthood. In this new house, I feel quite grown-up - pleased that I will no longer have to drown quarter after quarter in public laundry machines. Then I remember that starting a fifteen hour day on just three hours of sleep is exactly the kind of feckless, youthful indiscretion I quietly adore. Oh, be still my heart.

An Indiana Jones Moment

The stacks in the library basement stretch from floor to ceiling. I've long found these quiet aisles a trusted refuge, perhaps because the books have a permanence - and a smell - that the internet can never match. The volumes are endless: Neurobiology, Neurological Clinics, Neurology - bound in dark blues, violets, and greens. The article I'm seeking - I check over my notes - was published in 1982, vol. 1204, pg. 634. I know these journals well: I run my fingers over the spines, pull out a heavy volume, and shuffle through the pages. It's second-nature, as if I'm tying my shoes.

Then I hear a soft rumble. Behind me, the massive wall begins to move. The aisle is thinning.

Interesting, I think. I should leave.

I look up one way, then down the other, then back to the first.

Like I'm Buridan's famous ass.

Oh screw it, I realize. RUUUUUNN!

I dash out, tripping over myself. The stacks heave closed behind me. I've sometimes wondered whether these electronic sliding stacks have movement sensors. Judging from the narrowness of my escape, I'm guessing they do not. The person who absently pressed the close-button is now standing beside me. She's as startled to see me as I was to find myself in the meat grinder.

"OhmygoshyouweresoquietIswearIlookedohmygoshohmygosh..."

I spend the next five minutes calming her.

Such are the perils of being a research assistant.

Springtime

In today's gorgeous weather, I biked to work in a t-shirt. Outside, the students came out of hibernation, sporting sandals and shades, lounging on the grass, frolicking and flirting.

Then (of course) the wind picked up. A few drops fell from the sky.

They ran hard, in mobs, the girls clutching the bottoms of their skirts.