What I'm Reading Now -- Wanted: Rowing Coach

Since I'm coaching (as evidenced by yesterday's post about the sinking boat), I thought it might be a good idea to read this book. Well actually, I didn't even know about this book until after I started coaching, but as soon as I learned of it, I thought it would be good! It's a borrowed book, so it jumped to the front of the line (to the top of the pile?) of books waiting to be read.

It's the true story of an Olympic gold medalist who got his first coaching job at UCSB coaching varsity men, heavies and lightweights. That's big stuff for a first job. I have yet to find out if he sunk any boats though.

I saved a toad, sunk a boat, and injured a dog.

I think when you add all those things up, I lose. But I'll tell you the stories anyway.

The Toad
Two days ago, I was emptying the pool skimmer baskets and there was a toad (not a frog) in one of the baskets. He probably hadn't been in there long, because he was still pretty energetic. So when I reached in to pull out the basket, he grabbed onto the edge of it and jumped out. Well, to save my life (actually, to save his life), I couldn't find him. It looked like he had headed back out into the big pool from the little skimmer pit, but I couldn't find him anywhere in the pool. I put my face down as close to the water as I could get it to look in the little passageway between the two, but still no toad. Maybe, says I, he ended up back in the bucket and is hiding in the leaves. So I went ahead and took out the basket to dump the leaves, but I didn't see him. I was confused, and mostly hoping that he didn't get sucked into the cleaning system while I had the basket out.

Then yesterday I went out to empty the baskets again, and there he was. I thought he was dead. He was all curled up in a little ball with his eyes closed, just bumping around the skimmer area. Well shoot. But when I reached in to get the basket, he showed some signs of life. He opened his eyes, wiggled around a little bit. So I took him to a slightly damp spot where I thought he would be happy and dumped him out. He landed on his back, but didn't move. Didn't move. Didn't move. And then he did! He flipped himself over and took a little weak hop or two.

About 5 minutes later, I was headed off to the gym. I stopped to check on him, and he was gone. Hopefully he'll make it and live out his little toady life to its fullest.

The Boat
Today was not a good day at practice. It was really foggy, and it was the worst kind - it got foggier as the morning progressed, and it kept moving around the lake. It was clear in the cove the first lap around, but by the time I got back there a second time, it was fog-filled.

Right at the very beginning of practice, one of my novice coxswains ran her boat into the shore. Should I have been watching her more closely? Yes. But was it dark and foggy? Yes. Is that an excuse? Probably not. But when I have two boats of novices out, I can only pay attention to one at a time, especially when they won't stay close together!

So she put a pretty serious scratch in the bottom of the boat, so much so that the boat was taking on lots of water and they had to row straight back to the dock. And it took us 14 people to lift the water-filled boat over our heads. And we were all drenched.

R, the head coach, said he has the stuff to fix it and it shouldn't be too difficult. But still, the boat will be out of commission for a while, because it has to totally dry out before we can do anything, which will take a while because the insides were all full of water. Then we have to put on the carbon fiber and fiberglass, and secure/waterproof that with resin. (The boat actually has kevlar in the shell too, but we don't have any of that.) Then we have to let the resin dry. Then it has to be sanded and painted. And we have to let the paint dry. And you know what they say about that....

The Injured Dog
It appears that Radar is injured. He woke up at 2:45 in the morning yelping like crazy. Then he stopped and put his head down and didn't respond. I thought he died. That was scary. But I got up and turned on the light, and he was awake and alive and got mad at me when I stopped petting him, which seemed pretty normal, so I went back to bed. He looked okay at 5:00 this morning - went downstairs to go outside and was excited to get a cookie and go into his kennel.

But then when I got home from practice and let him out of the kennel, I was petting him and he yelped again! But he didn't appear to have any trouble getting up or down the stairs, and was excited as usual to go outside. I poked around on him to see if I could find where he was hurt, but he didn't indicate pain at all. No more yelping. So I'm not sure what to make of all this :-/

All aboard the Zooline Railroad!

Today one of the professional associations of which I am a member hosted a picnic at the Zoo. L and I had not seen each other in quite some time, so we went to enjoy the day. Problem was, it was frickin' freezing - 54 degrees! I had gone to the gym first, so I was in shorts. I piled on all the other clothes I had - a long-sleeved t-shirt, a fleece, and a parka, and it was still cold!

But despite the cold, it was fun. We wandered around a bit, and were quite entertained by the bears. There were a couple of enormous grizzlies enjoying the brisk air, as well as a sloth bear who kept kept turning around in circles. (Fun fact: according to Wikipedia - which knows everything - Baloo from The Jungle Book probably would have been a sloth bear in real life!)

Our tickets to the picnic included a ride on the Zooline Railroad, as well as one on the carousel; I rode the Siberian Tiger, L was on the Polar Bear Cub. (There were some other things included in our Safari Pass too, like the Motion Simulator, Sea Lion Show, and admission to the Childrens' Zoo, but we didn't take advantage of them.)

We also found ways to warm up on the cold day. Good options: (1) go inside and stuff your face with hot dogs and brownies; (2) go into one of the warm animal houses, such as the Climatron-style butterfly house (this does not include Penguin & Puffin Coast, btw - it is cold in there)!

Despite the weather, a lovely morning at the zoo!

National Punctuation Day

Actually, it was yesterday, but K didn't inform me until it was too late to post. But in case you want to have a Saturday night punctuation party, here is everything you need to know.

The song I'm loving today

Mrs. Potter's Lullaby (Counting Crows)

Well I woke in mid afternoon 'cause that's when it all hurts the most
I dream I never know anyone at the party and I'm always the host
If dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts
You can never escape, you can only move south down the coast

Well I am an idiot walking a tightrope of fortune and fame
I am an acrobat swinging trapezes through circles of flame
If you've never stared off into the distance then your life is a shame
Although I'll never forget your face, sometimes I can't remember my name

Hey Mrs. Potter don't cry
Hey Mrs. Potter I know why but
Hey Mrs, Potter won't you talk to me?

There's a piece of Maria in every song that I sing
And the price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings
And there is always one last light to turn out and one last bell to ring
And the last one out of the circus has to lock up everything

Or the elephants will get out and forget to remember what you said
And the ghosts of the tilt-o-whirl will linger inside of your head
And the Ferris wheel junkies will spin there forever instead
When I see you a blanket of stars covers me in my bed

Hey Mrs. Potter don't go
I said hey Mrs. Potter I don't know but
Hey Mrs. Potter won't you talk to me?

All the blue light reflections that color my mind when I sleep
And lovesick rejections that accompany the company I keep
All the razor perceptions that cut just a little too deep
Hey I can bleed as well as anyone, but I need someone to help me sleep

So I throw my hand into the air and it swims in the beams
It's just a brief interruption of the swirling dust sparkle jet stream
Well I know I don't know you and you're probably not what you seem
Aw, but I'd sure like to find out so why don't you climb down off that movie screen?

Hey Mrs. Potter don't turn
Hey Mrs. Potter I burn for you
Hey Mrs. Potter won't you talk to me?

When the last king of Hollywood shatters his glass on the floor
And orders another, well I wonder what he did that for
That's when I know that I have to get out 'cause I have been there before
So I gave up my seat at the bar and I head for the door

We drove out to the desert just to lie down beneath this bowl of stars
We stand up in the palace like it's the last of the great pioneer town bars
Aw, we shout out these songs against the clang of electric guitars
Well, you can see a million miles tonight, but you can't get very far
Oh, you can see a million miles tonight, but you can't get very far

Hey Mrs. Potter I won't touch
And hey Mrs. Potter it's not much
But hey Mrs. Potter won't you talk to me?

Hey Mrs. Potter won't you talk to me?

Hey Mrs. Potter won't you talk to me?

The Odd Couple

I was driving home from practice yesterday morning and pulled up to a stoplight very near my house. Poking his (or her) head out of the trunk of the Tahoe in front of me was a cute little Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Just as I'm thinking "Aww, how sweet," Mr. Big Shot hauls himself up to a sitting position. They made an odd couple indeed, but it was quite cute. I scrambled to get my phone out before the light turned green, and managed to snap a (slightly fuzzy) pic just in time.

Does your teacher measure up?

Teachers have been all the rage in the news lately. First, the Los Angeles Times got their hands on data ranking teachers based on their students' standardized test improvement from the beginning to the end of the year. Then they announced that they were going to publish those results for everyone to see, and what a controversy that caused! The head of the AFT said the rankings should be published, but teachers across the country disagreed.

Since the ratings came out, there has been a flurry of commentary(example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4) of which this post is just one more example.

This was all followed by last week's Time Magazine, which had a cover story on education (which I have, in case you are interested in reading it - they don't post full articles on their site). Discussions in the spread included what make good schools, how to recruit and keep quality teachers, the new documentary by Davis Guggenheim (of An Inconvenient Truth fame) called Waiting for "Superman", and Race to the Top, among others. It's quite a read.

This is really more of an informational post than an insightful one, if for no other reason than that I've been too busy to come up with my own original thoughts lately (hence the general lack of posts). But if anyone (K?) has any comments, I'd be interested in hearing them.

The Space Between Us -- Take 2

Did it take me forever to read this book? Yes. Is that because it was bad? Not at all. But it is a bit depressing - not so much the story itself, but the backdrop.

As I said in the first post, this book tells the story of two women in India: the wealthy Sera and her servant Bhima. They are both widowed, and both are relieved about that, but feel guilty about it also. Left in the rubble of their broken marriages are Sera's son-in-law and pregnant daughter, and Bhima's pregnant granddaughter.

Flashbacks fill us in on how the women came to be where they are; they are friends for the same reason most people are - they have been through so much together. But what is unsettling about their relationship is that they aren't really friends. The strict class rules in India prevent them from ever being equals - the women occasionally take tea together, but while Sera drinks her tea at the table, Bhima squats on her haunches on the floor.

In addition to that are the gender barriers; no matter the class, Indian women have a drastically different relationship with their men than we are used to seeing. Regardless, there was still something painfully familiar between their relationships and every other relationship you've ever heard about.

The writing is simple, with just enough Indian phrases to keep it charming and authentic. But there is a weighing sadness about this immovable boundary between the women which doesn't end with the end of the story.

Quotes:

"From the time she was in her teens, Sera had been fascinated by this paradox -- how a body that we occupy, that we have worn like a coat from the moment of our birth -- from before birth, even -- is still a stranger to us. After all, almost everything we do in our lives if for the well-being of the body: we bathe daily, polish our teeth, groom our hair and fingernails; we work miserable jobs in order to feed and clothe it; we go to great lengths to protect it from pain and violence and harm. And yet the body remains a mystery, a book that we never read. Sera plays with this irony, toys with it as if it were a puzzle: How, despite our lifelong preoccupation with our bodies, we have never met face-to-face with our kidneys, how we wouldn't recognize our own liver in a row of livers, how we have never seen our own heart or brain. We know more about the depths of the ocean, are more acquainted with the far corners of outer space than with our own organs and muscles and bones. So perhaps there are no phantom pains after all; perhaps all pain is real; perhaps each long-ago blow lives on into eternity in some different permutation and shape; perhaps the body is this hypersensitive, revengeful entity, a ledger book, a warehouse of remembered slights and cruelties."

"Bhima wants to correct Maya, wants to point out that it's not clear to her whether she indeed felt sorry for [the balloon seller]. She wants to say: But beti, it's more than that. He wasn't the kind of man you felt sorry for, exactly. Rather, looking into his fine, sad eyes, you felt a deep sorrow, the kind of melancholy you feel when you're in a beautiful place and the sun is going down. And mostly, now, when I think of him, I feel sorry for myself. Because that old Pathan had something that I need now. I don't know what it was, don't even have a name for it. All I know is that he could've taught me something, if only I had not been young and shy and afraid to ask."

"It was over. Her marriage was over. Just like this, in the blink of an eye, Feroz was gone. Feroz -- husband and oppressor; lover and tormentor; victim and victimizer. No man had ever made her happier or more miserable. No man had lover her as passionately; no man had done more to strangle the love she felt for him. Feroz had held the keys to her happiness, but those keys had unlocked the gates of hell. He had been a mercurial man -- aggressive, brilliant, violent, jealous, but also loving, generous, and capable of largesse. Perhaps it had been her fault that she had never learned how to handle this man, how to steer through the choppy waters he left in his wake."

"Bhima sits still, listening to the music. And soon the shenai stops its shrill, tragic wail, and after a few minutes the sitar ceases its heart-numbing drone, and then all that's left is a tabla beat -- incessant, surging, powerful. Soon, the loneliness stops its wailing, and then the fear ceases its numbing drone, and all that is left is freedom -- incessant, surging, and powerful."

What I Watched -- Lust, Caution

Ang Lee's 2007 film Lust, Caution never made it to theaters in the US. Having seen the movie, I can see why. It's racy and complicated and emotionally conflicted. In short, it's everything you would expect from Ang Lee.

The movie is set in WWII China. The main characters are a group of students who feel it is their patriotic duty to resist the Japanese occupation and the Chinese collaboration government. One member of their group, known as Mak Tai Tai (played by the beautiful Wei Tang), must infiltrate the personal life of a powerful government minister named Mr. Yee. What ensues is a confused bond forged from trust and secrecy, passion and sexual violence.

This is an era of Chinese history which I feel often gets overlooked in the history books. China is famous for its ancient dynasties, and by the time we get to the 1930s and 40s, we're too concerned with Germany and Japan to pay much attention to China. I'm not sure how accurate a historical portrayal this film is, but it is interesting to get a glimpse, even a fictional one, into that world.

There are aspects of the film that are frustratingly unsatisfying. There is another student in the group who has feelings for Mak Tai Tai, but he fails to act until it is too late. Then there is Mr. Yee himself, who's callous, cold exterior cracks just enough to make you want to believe there is a kind man underneath. But can you be sure?

Bottom line: the convoluted emotional plot makes it easy to forget this is a spy movie, until you find yourself on the edge of your seat. Definitely worth watching, but not always easy.

Firefox features

I may be (a) slow and (b) totally nerdy, but I'm loving this feature of Mozilla Firefox I just discovered! If you have a bunch of tabs open, click Ctrl + Space Bar (Option + Space Bar on Macs) and you will see "Firefox Panorama," which is a thumbnail view of all your tabs.

If you watch the video on that page, it shows how you can drag tabs around to rearrange and create groups. This is awesome for me because I always click on links in e-mails and on web pages, which open up in a new tab. Then I have a string of 25 tabs of "things to look at later." And now I can manage them all!

Mad Men - The Dinner Series, Part II

Mad Men is on a roll. The last few episodes have been fantastic, and have brought about big changes for both Don and Peggy. Meanwhile, Betty continues her tumble.

Some quality quotations from Sunday's show (as I best recall them - they may not be exact):

Don: "People tell you who they are, but we don't listen. We want them to be who we want them to be."

Don: "We are flawed because we want so much more. We are ruined because we get these things and wish for what we had."

Don: "When a man walks into a room, he brings his whole life with him."

And thanks to J for our delicious Italian-themed dinner: gazpacho, penna a al vodka, and gelato!

Peggy: "It takes three ingredients to make a cocktail. Vodka and Mountain Dew is an emergency."

What I Watched -- Primal Fear

This is a creepy movie, but Richard Gere is at his best. He plays Martin Vale, a high-powered Chicago defense attorney who offers his services, pro bono, to the 19-year-old kid (played by Edward Norton) who is accused of murdering the local archbishop.

What follows is an investigation into the legal profession and the church, and into the minds of those who are a part of each. And there are some really messed up minds, to be sure. Martin Vale is smooth, egotistical, and arrogant, but appears to have the goods to back it up. Janet Venable, the prosecutor (played by Laura Linney), is stubborn in her pursuit of the truth, sometimes to her own detriment. And Aaron Stampler, the defendant, is a mystery. He stutters and seems uncomfortable when the psychiatrist (played by Frances McDormand) examining him gets too close to certain areas of his life. There's something there, we're just not sure what.

Eventually, inevitably, all that something that was hidden comes tumbling out. And, surprising though it may be, it isn't nearly as interesting as the questions it leaves you with about the psyches of the characters in its aftermath.

Bottom line: fantastic but very creepy movie with a great cast up to the challenge.

USS Kirk

Recently there was a fascinating series of stories - 3 or 4 of them - on NPR about the USS Kirk. The Kirk was a destroyer escort, and was one of the last ships in South Vietnamese waters after the Americans evacuated Saigon. It was ordered to go, unaccompanied, on a daring rescue mission to collect members of the South Vietnamese Army and their relatives. Incredible stuff.

September 11th

A lot of people have even more to say about September 11th. I just have three things.

I think it's important to remember because thousands of people died, and keeping them in mind will motivate us to prevent it from happening again.

Remember the outpouring of support for, well, everything? All of the sudden, everyone was proud to be an American, as the song goes. That was an amazing period of national unity, probably the most pronounced since WWII.

And last but certainly not least, whether you're for or against the wars we're fighting for whatever wise or misguided reasons, make no mistake that there are men and women out fighting every day, making the greatest sacrifice of all so that we can be here. It might be nice to say thanks the next time you see one.

Army Strong?

Perhaps not. The Army has rolled out a new fitness program, according to the New York Times, which looks a lot more like yoga than like sit-ups and push-ups. This re-jiggering was done to accommodate overweight recruits.

Let me say that again: overweight recruits. In the Army. How do you feel about our national security now, knowing that recruits can't run 2 miles in 20 minutes?

In fairness, it does appear that some thought went into the redesign of the fitness standards. Soldiers were focusing too much on sit-ups and push-ups because that's what was tested, but it turns out that they weren't terribly practical skills once the soldiers arrived in Afghanistan. And the program does increase in difficulty as the weeks go by. And perhaps my favorite part: they've planned a change in the mess hall diet as well, which should improve overall health, rather than just physical fitness.

Even knowing that though, I still can't get over the big idea: "our recruits can't meet standards, so let's just change the standards." Sure, some of them will be in support positions, probably sitting at a computer all day (which is one thing that led to this problem in the first place), but that won't be the case for all soldiers. Which begs the question the CBS News report asked: "Can they defend us?"

Autumn

"There is a time of year in New York when, even before the first leaf falls, you can feel the seasons click. The air is crisp, summer is gone, and for the first night in a long time, you need a blanket on your bed."
- Carrie, Sex and the City, "I Heart NY"

It's getting to be that time!

Strawberry Jam

I made strawberry jam last week! This probably does not sound like a big accomplishment, especially since it's not that hard and I didn't even seal up any of it with wax, but still! It was something new and exciting!

Turns out, not only is it "not that hard," it's actually super easy. I sliced up about a pint and a half of strawberries and mixed them in a heavy saucepan with about 1/2 cup granulated sugar. Cook over low heat for 3 hours or thereabouts, stirring a few times every hour, until the mixture thickens to a jam-like consistency. Voila! You have strawberry jam! Or probably any other kind of jam, if you have an alternate fruit preference.

Reunion Weekend

Howdy! Sorry for the lapse in posting, but I was very busy all weekend attending my high school reunion. Okay, it's not actually my high school, but I was there for 4-1/2 years in grade school. Since it's such a small place (graduating class of 40), the organizers decided to invite along everyone who had been a part of the class at any time, even if they didn't stay through graduation. So I got to go!

And it was amazing. It was the most fun I've had in a long time, and it went on all weekend!

I was having so much fun, in fact, that I didn't take but a couple pictures, and they're not even that good. Sorry.

Happy Labor Day!

Hope everyone enjoyed their day off!

Plungerhead

It's almost like a dunce cap, except it's way cooler because it's drinkable. K and I know this, because we drank it.