Tag Archives: Family

Wheels Are Turning, In Her Head

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Anne walked home from school one day this week. It was one of those balmy, at least for February, days. While she walked, with her iPhone, she was taking pictures of the wheel covers and hub caps of cars that were parked along the way. She had taken several photographs in a row, when a man approached her and asked her what she was doing. He had been watching TV, in his living room, and saw her taking a picture of his car and several more and he wanted to know what she was doing. Anne explained that she was researching a quilt project. She found the patterns in automobile wheel covers interesting. So to gather some data for this quilt project, she was taking pictures of them. Hearing her explanation, he asked her to email him the photo of his car. Anne emailed it on the spot. This seemed to mollify the man. I think that he just wanted to get her email address, in case there was trouble later. Anne didn’t take any more pictures, during the rest of her walk home.

This story didn’t come as news to me. For weeks now, Anne has been counting the spokes on the wheels of cars. When we walk together, she’ll call out her counts. This one has six spokes that one has ten and this one has sixteen. I found it interesting, at first. It has gone on long enough though that it is beginning to get annoying and shows some signs of OCD behavior. Don’t get me wrong. I love my wife and enjoy our walks together. I just wish that she would get her mind out of the gutter. I had to crop the three wheel photos with this post to cut out the adjoining curb and the gutter in-between. What is wrong with automotive hood ornaments?

America loves its cars. Cars are as American as mom, apple pie and dogs. One politician thinks that dogs riding on top of cars is also an American value. I must admit that I still love my new Prius. I am certainly spending a lot more time in it than before I took the job in St. Chuck. My longer highway commute does increase the MPG of my Prius, with the associated bragging rights, but with the recent rise in gas prices, it is more expensive. Some people have car fetishes that cost thousands of dollars. Anne’s interest in cars is no more costly than being featured as blog fodder. She is a good sport for putting up with my ribbing. Luv ya, Babes!

Direction of Flow

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The Three Rules of Plumbing

  1. Sh!t flows downhill
  2. Never chew your fingernails
  3. Payday’s on Friday

Direction of Flow

I’m not a Sanitary Engineer, like my Grandfather joked that he was, and I’m not a Hydrology Engineer, like my SIL [Anne's acronym], Jay, but I do believe that this sewer grate violates the first rule of plumbing. Maybe it doesn’t really matter, because you can see the river while standing on it. However, my wife, the former Environmental Engineer, might object having this sewer’s flow passing directly into the Mississippi. I’m guessing that her objection would broadly fall under the second rule of plumbing? Anyway, on Saturday, Anne kicked this decision over to her sister, my SIL. So Jay, which way is the correct direction of flow?

Like his father before him, my father is an engineer. My Dad graduated from Annapolis. He rebuilt aircraft carriers. He left military service with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. He followed that up with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering. His study culminated in the patenting of a medical device, the third rule of plumbing realized.

Like my father before me, I am a Jedi engineer. I am a third generation engineer. I started out as a Computer Scientist, albeit in the school of engineering. I tried to become an Automotive Engineer, but found that line of work was not for me. I’ve ended up an Electrical Engineer, which in some engineering schools is a close cousin to Computer Science. I’ve always found this transition strange, but it works. 

One of my sons is an artist and one of my sons is an engineer. I feel like the father of renaissance men. Dave, is the fourth generation engineer in the family, another Biomedical Engineer. I hope that he doesn’t feel that the weight of history, or the first rule of plumbing weighs too heavily upon him. I know that I chew my fingernails way too much. All this engineer crap is in honor of National Engineers Week. So honor your own favorite engineer, turn on a light, turn on a faucet, turn on your iPhone, start your car, feel free to fly about the country, say thanks for your very life, say thanks to an engineer. We earn it every Friday.

This final item is offered up by way of a postscript. Today, Dave flies to San Diego to attend a research conference. Purdue is covering his expenses. He plans on having lunch with his Rochester advisor.

Fat Tuesday

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Beads

Today, is the official Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday, and today there was another Mardi Gras parade in Soulard. School and work, prevented Anne and I from attending this event, but I’m sure that Gary and Linda were there. Just like there are two Mardi Gras parades in town, next month, there will be two Saint Patrick’s Day parades, one on a Saturday and one on the actual date. As I’ve said before, Saint Louis loves its parades.

In the run up to Valentine’s Day, I was queued up for lunch in the café at work, and I entered into a conversation with a female colleague. I started to rattle on about my romance for Anne and mentioned that we had had a beach wedding. “Oh, you had a destination wedding”, she exclaimed. It certainly was a destination for some of our guests. My family had to travel clear across the country to attend, but I never thought of our wedding as a destination wedding. The other day, after Anne had jumped into a classroom infected with stomach flu, I didn’t mean to imply that she wasn’t still osculable, because she is.

We discovered that the bank had charged a $500 check to Dave’s checking account in error. The check is from an account that is only one digit off from his, so a human error could have accounted for it. Messages to the bank finally got the error corrected. The coincidental aspect of this bank error is that the check is from one of Dave’s high school classmates. Dave’s graduating class was less than a hundred, so the magnitude of this coincidence is pretty big. Dave’s summary comment about this incident was, “I never really did like [this person] in high school and now I have a reason.”

I’m sure you have all been wondering about what has been happening in the bicycle borne mileage horse race, between Anne and I. No? Well, I’ll tell you anyway. I am now officially in the lead, by one mile. I rode on Sunday and Anne did not. I won’t disclose our actual mileages, for fear of ridicule from some of our more bicycling active friends. I could claim age related grade inflation points, over some of these friends, but not Captain Don.

At work, I started a new project. The one thing that I can tell you about this project is that it is situated in Saint Chuck. Saint Charles is located across the wide Missouri from Saint Louis. It was the first state capital and is now a more rural and Republican county than Saint Louis, a self-proclaimed God’s country, home for real ‘merkins. It seems nice, except for doubling my commute. It is suppose to be a temporary assignment. We’ll see how long it lasts.

The Right Stuff

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Army WW II Biplane Trainer

It has been fifty years since the first American, John Glenn, orbited the earth. His spaceship, Friendship 7, was built here in Saint Louis. When I first moved to Saint Louis, I was a still wet behind the ears, young pup. Merle, one of the older engineers at that time, took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. Merle enjoyed our social interaction, not to put too fine a point on it, he liked to talk. One of the things that he loved to talk about most was his involvement in the space program, in particular, the Mercury space program. His face would always light up, when he spoke of the day when President Kennedy came to visit the plant. There is an old photo from that day that shows old Mac, the company president, driving Kennedy around, the sense of pride self-evident upon his face. Merle worked in flight simulation, so he worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the astronauts, training them for their space flights. He never said anything bad about any of the Mercury astronauts, but you could tell that he had his favorites and those that he didn’t really care for. One that he always spoke highly of was John Glenn.

The genesis of this post has been mulling in my brain for several weeks now. It all started with a biopic that I saw on Netflix, “The Legend of Pancho Barnes”. In the movie and book, “The Right Stuff”, the character of Pancho Barnes and her Happy Bottom Riding Club make a cameo debut. They appear as part of the Edwards, breaking the sound barrier, prelude to the history of the Mercury space program. Pancho Barnes, born Florence Barnes, was a pioneer aviatrix, one of the original amazons on the air. She raced Amelia Earhart, flew for Howard Hughes in his movie “Hells Angels”, then organized the rest of the pilots, for more pay and had a mouth on her that would make a Marine sergeant blanch. Pancho Barnes once asked, “Why use a 5 letter word, when a 4 letter one will do?” She got the nickname Pancho, because she once ran away from her husband, to Mexico. A revolution broke out, and she got stuck there for a while. She eventually obtained a divorce from her minister husband, by riding Lady Godiva style, bareback, into his Sunday service. When she retired from flying, she opened Happy Bottom. Never a beauty herself, she hired the prettiest waitresses, “sugar to catch flyboys”.

What really brought this post home, was a retirement party, at work today. John, also-known-as “The Bogs”, retired after 42+ years. So you might call this post, a Bogs post, instead of a blog post. I haven’t worked with John for over ten years, but I treasure the opportunity that I had to work with him and I appreciate the way he treated me. He kept in touch over the years, sometimes asking be about things that I had not worked on for decades. A recent chapter in his life involved the illness and death of his wife. He spoke movingly about this and reminded me of my father and mother’s similar struggle. John is trying to move on from his wife’s death and made light of some of the antics that he has encountered, as he tries to live his life now, day-by-day.

True Love

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Inigo: True love! You heard him! You could not ask for a more noble cause than that.
Miracle Max: Sonny, true love is the greatest thing in the world. Except for a nice MLT: a mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe. They’re so perky, I love that. Except that’s not what he said: he distinctly said “To Blave,” and, as we all know, “to blave” means “to bluff.” So you were probably playing cards, and he cheated! [Valerie storms in]
Valerie: Liar! Liar!
Miracle Max: Get back, witch!
Valerie: I’m not a witch, I’m your wife! But after what you just said, I’m not even sure I want to be that anymore!

Some say that to define true love, would be to ruin its purity, therefore, it can have no definition. That may be, though I think that we can all agree that true love is greater than a MLT. Billy Crystal jokes about this in the movie, “The Princess Bride”, excerpted above. In that comedy, the closest approach to true love comes in the interludes between Peter Falk and a young Fred Savage, as grandfather and grandson. It is epitomized at the movie’s end, when the grandson asks his grandfather, if he could come back tomorrow and read the story again. With a knowing smile, the grandfather answers, “As you wish.”

Fiction plays false with true love, because real life is never so scripted. Some say that true love is when you would give up your whole world, give up your life, your everything, for another person. Fiction would have one rush into a burning building to demonstrate one’s true love. A better show of true love is a life lived together, because it is only after the long haul that true love can be seen. Time, the most precious of all human quantities, is the metric for true love. Dashing into a burning building is an act of heroism, an act of passion. Afterwards, when the pulse subsides and the adrenaline ebbs, one is left with gratitude. You can build a life on gratitude, but it is not true love, not alone it isn’t.

I’m not saying that true love requires a minimum of sixty years of marriage. Few of us will enjoy that longevity. But just like the best friends are the old friends, so too, a life long love is the truer love. This brings me to the one true love escape clause, the till death do us part clause. Life is short and all too uncertain. Sometimes, we have the forethought to eat dessert first, sometimes not. Losing a loved one is always painful. When you give your heart to another, and the other person dies, part of you dies with them.

This is the feast of Saint Valentine, a day now dedicated to romance. So let us banish our melancholy. To true loves lost, raise a glass to them and remember the good times together. To true loves present, hold them, hug them and kiss them. There is a certain heroism to living a life together, maybe raising a family, being a member of society. It is so much easier, but cowardly to take the other path.

Fiction can be precisely written, but life is messy. In life, in true love, you have to get your hands dirty. You have to roll up your sleeves and work at it. The magical fairy tale of true love can be broken down into these simple spells, listening, caring, giving and respect. These are the same magical spells that we were all taught to follow in kindergarten. Remember them, practice them and you too may find true love, in time. I love you, Babes!

Get the Hell off My Lawn

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I missed it, but 111 million Americans didn’t, Chrysler’s 2012 Super Bowl commercial, “Halftime in America”. Staring Clint Eastwood, with enough vocal fry in his voice to outfit the entire McDonald’s hamburger chain, he growl’s out this two-minute ad’s narration. He gives America a pep talk, like the two other pep talks that were occurring simultaneously in opposing locker-rooms. He recounts how our country was first knocked down, and then it picked itself up and dusted itself off again.

This country can’t be knocked down with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do, the world’s going to hear the roar of our engines. Yeah. It’s halftime, America. And our second half is about to begin.

This year’s ad comes on the heels of last year’s Super Bowl ad, starring Detroit’s own Eminem and introducing the tag line “Imported from Detroit.” That ad was content to wrap itself in the Michigan flag, this ad has national aspirations. The ad was not overtly political, nor partisan. No politician or party is explicitly mentioned, but it wasn’t just a car commercial. Both David Axelrod and Karl Rove quickly acknowledged this fact. Axelrod tweeted, “Powerful spot”. While, Rove said, “I was frankly offended by it,” and that Chrysler executives “feel they need to do something to repay their political patrons.”

In Las Vegas, on Super Bowl Sunday morning, Chrysler’s CEO, Sergio Marchionne, was addressing the Chrysler dealers at the annual meeting of the National Automobile Dealers Association. He unveiled the ad there, for the first time. At its conclusion there was a pregnant pause, followed by a thunderous standing ovation. “Nothing more needs to be said”, concluded Marchionne, who then overcome by emotion left the stage. By happenstance, former President George W. Bush was also at this meeting. “I’d do it again,” Mr. Bush said, “I didn’t want there to be 21 percent unemployment.” The $80 billion dollars lent to the auto industry came from both Bush and President Obama. A fact that Rove has somehow forgotten.

What about Mr. Eastwood though? He is a self-professed libertarian, who has only voted Republican and can’t recall ever voting for a Democrat. He has publicly spoken against the auto industry bailout in the past. Was this ad just a paycheck for him or did he, as he and his pressman have stated, not view this advertisement as anything political? Eastwood is a fine actor. He has demonstrated this many times. This statement, coming from a spokesman, from the opposite side of the aisle, only serve to give his words more gravitas. While political troupes run through and through this commercial, their origin here gives them a freshness that won’t be surpassed before Election Day.

In People Magazine, Obama recently quoted Mario Cuomo, “campaigning is poetry, and governing is prose”. The lofty rhetoric of the candidate can’t match the day-to-day communications of the official. Has President Obama matched every promise of candidate Obama? No. Could things have been worse, if Obama didn’t do the things that he did? Yes. I guess it all comes down to whether you feel that things are getting better, or that things still suck. Is the cup half empty or half full? “Yeah. It’s halftime, America. And our second half is about to begin.”

On a more personal note, my mother, God rest her soul, once had a close encounter of the automobile kind with Clint. It was in Carmel, she in her Benz and he in his Rolls. There was no metal contact, so no harm, no foul.

Sunday in the Park With George

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Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - Photo by UGArdener, Flickr Creative Commons

Date night! Dinner and a show with my Honey, dinner at CJ Muggs and a show at The Rep, Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park With George”. The point of departure for this Sondheim musical is Georges Seurat’s most famous painting, “A Sunday Afternoon the Island of La Grande Jatte”, pictured above.

A 19th century, French painter, Seurat, pioneered the painting technique called Pointillism. He created his paintings by dabbing just the tip of his paintbrush onto the canvas. You might call this a quiet, but absorbing painting technique. Up close Seurat’s painting looks abstract, atomized color into thousands of dots. Step back though and the painting resolves itself into a picture of the artist’s vision. The engineer in me likens this technique to an early analog version of digitization. Unfortunately, Seurat never sold a painting in his lifetime and died at the age of 31.

Seurat, a modernist artist, is the perfect inspiration for this contemplative modernist musical. George, like his play, which thinks as much about itself as the rest of the world is too self-absorbed to even see his female lead, the aptly named Dot. His art is more important and if she cannot realize this, well then. The first act ends with a tour-de-theater on-stage recreation of Seurat’s famous painting.

Flash forward a hundred years and through intermission to the second act. George is now Seurat’s great-grandson. His grandmother, Seurat’s and Dot’s daughter is still on hand. George is still wrestling with the complexities of art and love, but this time around his art is just all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

This play about an artist that failed in love, in life, struck close to home. Our son, Dan is an artist and we worry about him. Art is a tough profession, as Seurat’s life testifies.

Pointillism is art composed of a thousand dots, nay a million, anyway quiet and absorbing work. So is making a thousand squirrels. Is making a thousand squirrels as lucky as making a thousand origami cranes? Only time will tell. No one, save Seurat, realized the greatness of his work, at the time. Dot realized the greatness of Seurat, the man, but her love was unrequited. His love of art, love of self, overshadowed her love, but, at least in the play, they both endured. I wonder it there will be any black squirrels?