It took me a while to write this one, but here it is, with lots of art!

As I crawled into bed Thursday night after a long day of remembrances, a feeling of excitement began to come over me.  The hard part of the trip was done and we were looking at two days of an impromptu family vacation in my hometown.

It’s something of a pet peeve for me that for many people, “Family Vacation” plus “Southern California” equals “Disneyland.”  Now don’t get me wrong.  I like The Mouse as much as the next guy…well maybe not that much…but I don’t really have anything against it.  It’s just Disneyland is fake and expensive when there is so much more to see and do in L.A.

We were staying in La Puente, a bedroom community out at the east end of the San Gabriel Valley.  It was not one of my usual haunts growing up and I knew nothing about it.  Still, we found a hotel with suites and breakfast at a pretty good price, so it worked for us.  This was our starting point for our adventures.  The first stop was going to be Exposition Park, except I messed up on the interchange from the 605 Freeway to the 10.  So we took a roundabout route through the foothill communities and then through downtown…with a trip through “The Donut Hole”, a drive through donut shop (L.A. seems to have a lot of donut shops, by the way. I’d never noticed that before.  Burger stands? Yes.  Donut shops?  Who knew?)  shaped like a donut on either end of the drive through, and a stop in Arcadia for Starbucks.  Ironically, it was across the street from the other hotel we had considered.

NOT Seattle in March…usually.

So, rather than three freeways to Expo Park, the 605,  the 10 and the 110 if you’re keeping score, we took 6, the 605, the 210, the 134,  the 2, the 5 and the 110.  Before long, we were inundated with the crimson and gold of USC as we made our way from the freeway to the parking structure for the California Science Center.

When I was a kid, the California Science Center was the California Museum of Science and Industry.  It was okay for a free museum, but really nothing that special.  Now it has a space shuttle, but more on that later.

It also has the A-12, mounted on the grounds. What?  You’re not an aerospace buff and don’t know what the A-12 is?  It was the trainer for the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane.  In other words it looks like a space ship.

The A-12 trainer.

This is about when the kids became hooked.  Aside from donuts and Starbucks, we’d spent nothing. The parking attendant had even let us off the hook because we didn’t have any cash.  I tried to pay as we left, but there was no one attending to the exit.

We actually went past the California Science Center, which was alive with school groups and walked past the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, also festooned in crimson and gold (grrr…I’m a UCLA fan) and headed for the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

I’d spent quite a bit of time here in my youth.  My mom had worked across the street, so I took science classes during a couple of school breaks.  It was the place in L.A. to see dinosaur fossils, and I’d spent my junior year in high school as part of a National Science Foundation research apprenticeship studying the overwintering ecology of Monarch butterflies.

I weighed and measured them, check the sex (you can tell by wing patterns; no magnifying glasses needed) and checked to see if the females were expecting. Then, I put stickers on the wings so we had a chance of tracking their north and eastward migration in the spring.

In all that time, I don’t think I really got to appreciate how great a museum it is.  It’s undergoing final renovations for its centennial, and they’ve upgraded the dinosaur exhibits quite impressively. The Allosaurus and Stegosaurus that were locked in mortal combat in the main atrium had been moved to the new dinosaur hall and replaced by a Tyranosaurus Rex and my favorite, a Triceratops.  It was here that Harry put his dad to shame in a conversation with a docent about how to tell the difference between the two predators.  Apparently the Allosaurus has three fingers to the T-Rex’s two.

That kid’s been watching too much Dinosaur Train.

Go Triceratops!

These two used to be where the T-Rex and Triceratops are now.

The Pacific Science Center displays a mold of this T-Rex skull

Lunch time.

As impressive as the new Dinosaur Hall and the Age of Mammals exhibit, which we only glimpsed in passing, are, the thing that really struck me about the museum was the old stuff.  The megamouth shark and the oarfish were still in their cases. I’m guessing that any attempt to re-display them differently would have hastened their decay, so they were there, just as they’d always been, biological oddities for museum-goers to stumble upon between the marquee exhibits.

The North American and African Mammal halls were just as I remembered them; tributes to taxidermy from a time before wildlife conservation but not before the thirst for knowledge of the natural world. I could spend hours there, wandering from diorama to diorama, each beautifully painted to create a picture of each animal in its natural habitat.  The background paintings are considered works of art in and of themselves.

The animals don’t move.  There are no animatronics or sound effects.  They’re not needed.  Their reality speaks for itself and literally stares you in the face.

The museum itself is a work of art.  Its architecture combines Spanish Renaissance, Romanesque and Beaux Arts styling.  The floors, the columns, even the elevator doors combine to give a sense of grandeur, of history.  The footsteps sounding through the galleries echo the tread of prehistoric predators.  The fossilized skeletons have far more power and import than some mechanized robot covered in what someone thinks the animal’s skin looked like.

In the rotunda stands a stature of The Three Muses representing the disciplines of art, history and science.  Together, they hold aloft a lighted sphere, representing enlightenment (I would assume).  That’s the feeling you get in the Natural History Museum.  It’s big and grand. You walk through the doors, and you are practically assaulted with the feeling, the certainty that the knowledge you are about to glean in those grand galleries is valuable, critically important to the enlightenment and advancement of humanity.

The Three Muses: Art, Science and History

We didn’t have time to see everything we wanted to see. We skipped the gem collection, the insect zoo and the Becoming Los Angeles exhibit.  We had a space shuttle to see.

If the Natural History Museum stands as a monument to the knowledge gleaned from investigating the natural world and human interactions with it, the California Science Center is all about the application of that knowledge to the future. It’s sleek and shiny.  There are jet fighters hanging in the atrium.  It’s filled with interactive exhibits.  But those exhibits were not our destination.

Growing up, the Space Shuttle was the pride of the aerospace industry, and the orbiters were assembled in Southern California.  Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena was heavily involved in the science around the shuttle. Early in the program, before they built a long enough runway in Florida, the shuttles landed at Edwards Air Force Base in the high desert. Sometimes, depending on the approach route, the twin sonic booms that marked the orbiters’ reentry into the atmosphere would echo across the southland and reach my young ears.   I remember, in detail, learning about the loss of the Challenger, just as my mom remembered the Kennedy assassination, and my dad Pearl Harbor.

So it was with jealousy that I watched the Facebook posts roll in from my friends in LA, a wildly diverse group in every way you can imagine, united in their excitement as they chronicled the return of the Space Shuttle Endeavor to its final home in Los Angeles last fall.  First came pictures from all over the southland of the orbiter’s on the back of a 747 escorted by a pair of T-38’s flying low and slow in a grand tour of the Los Angeles basin.  Then there was the land segment in which Endeavor was towed through the city streets from the airport to the California Science Center.   Crowds lined the route to witness Endeavor’s final voyage.

Oh to have been in that crowd!

For a generation, Endeavor and her sisters, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery and Atlantis, had embodied that impulse as old as humanity itself to reach skyward.  The orbiters were meticulously designed and built, using every bit of relevant knowledge gleaned over millennia of scientific inquiry. Time and again, the sisters were hurled skyward, powered on their missions of discovery by rocket fuel and audacity. Time and again they returned on mighty wings engineered to protect them the heat of reentry and the  fate of Icarus.

Twice, they didn’t make it back. Twice our nation mourned. Twice, we returned to space, wiser, but no less bold.

And then the surviving sisters were retired.

We journeyed up an escalator, through a number of exhibits about the shuttle, including a virtual reality shuttle simulator which the kids enjoyed thoroughly, down another escalator and finally across a breezeway and into Endeavor’s temporary home.

We walked in, and there it was, mounted  above us, massive, scarred, and inspiring.  The kids thought it was cool, but Alissa and I were struck by the emotional impact of seeing a shuttle up close. We could make out the heat-resistant tiles.  There were scorch marks from reentry on white fuselage.  All the hatches and access ports were visible, as were the tiny cockpit windows and the massive exhaust nozzles of Endeavor’s engines.

Wow!

This may grace our family Christmas card this year.

All along the wall were pictures of each shuttle crew. I didn’t remember all of them.  Young and Crippen from STS 1 stuck in my mind.  Sally Ride, breaking the gender barrier was there, as was John Glenn’s return to space.  The doomed crews of Challenger and Columbia were shown in black and white.

The iconic images of the shuttle program came to life in that room, from the first satellite launch, to the use of the robot arm to un-tethered EVA’s in the manned maneuvering unit.  The launch and repair of the Hubble and the construction of the International Space Station helped us look back to the origins of the universe and forward to a future in which humanity is no longer earth-bound.

In one corner of the room, next to a case with high end scale models of the shuttle fleet there’s a small display showing the future of the exhibit.  It’s just a architect’s mockup, but what it shows, what it predicts is beyond awesome.  It shows a building that features a spiral ramp circling around the shuttle.  But the shuttle isn’t mounted horizontally.  It’s in launch configuration with the orange external fuel tank and the white solid rocket boosters.  It appears to be an open-air display that would make Endeavor a permanent part of the Los Angeles skyline.   Maybe it’s just a dream, but if it is, it’s a dream worth reaching for.

It was time to go, but the science center does a great job of self-promotion. To get out from the Space Shuttle exhibit, you have to go through the new ecosystems exhibit which could warrant a visit all its own.  And the admission is free!  They do suggest a five dollar donation, and even at that rate, it’s a steal.

We had dinner plans, but we had hopes of a little downtime in the hotel in between.  However, we accidentally caught the 60 freeway out of Expo Park and began a slow crawl eastward.  It was as if it was Friday afternoon and everybody was going home from…oh….

Ahem.

Compared to Seattle, the L.A. weather was positively balmy, but it was still late winter and the day had ranged from sunny to partly cloudy with occasional showers.  But as we made our way out of downtown with the rest of the world, the clouds rolled in to blanket us in gray.  The slow pace, the warm car, and the leaden skies quickly lulled everyone else into much-needed naps.

There weren’t a lot of landmarks for me to relate to in this part of the city, but there was one; a Sears warehouse.  It even made an appearance in a song on a CD that I once bought from the singer at a coffee house in Sierra Madre.  As a complete work, the CD is something of a love song for L.A, a reminder of my hometown.

Of course, the warehouse wouldn’t have stood out in the song  if it didn’t carry memories for me.  I’ve never been there, but my dad worked nearby at the L.A. County Metro-East office.  On occasion, I’d go to work with him, spinning on his office chair, going on rounds to collect mail with him, and helping him run letters through the postage meter.  (I don’t think those childhood experiences, led me to work for four years in my college post office, but one never knows.)

It was a long drive from Eagle Rock to East L.A., but the sight of that Sears warehouse was a sure sign that a spinning chair and a postage meter were close by.

What was not close by was our hotel.  We were not going to get that break,  so when we came across the exit for the road that traversed the San Gabriel Valley all the way to our destination, I took it.

And so it was that we found ourselves at the home of a mouse; not that mouse, mind you, but another famous one.  This one is in the business of letting kids be kids and separating their parents from their money for “pizza” (I use the term loosely) and video games.  Oh, and he has an animatronic band, although they did not play while we were there.

Our dinner hostess (since she unexpectedly insisted on paying (Thanks, Karen!)) was there when we arrived.  She’s a good friend from college.  We had somewhat overlapping majors (Politics and Public Policy), but more importantly she was one of the officers who worked tirelessly to get our college’s Circle K Club (not the convenience store) off the ground, and most importantly, she was part of a close knit group of friends who formed out of that service club and are still in touch with each other to this day, even if we are rarely, if ever, all in the same place.

It was good to see her and to catch up a little.  She was two weeks out from running the L.A. marathon.  We chatted and ate “pizza” until “midnight” began looming, threatening to turn our two charming little mogwai into very tired and cranky gremlins. (And it wouldn’t even take feeding them after midnight.)  The time was too short, but parental responsibility demanded that we get our kids to bed.

An hour, a shower, and a bedtime routine later, I was with two more friends, one from that same Circle K group and one from elementary school who had been my best man, having drinks and appetizers at Denny’s, an echo of a scene played out far too many (from a dietary perspective) and far too few times (because it was time with friends and there can never be enough of that) in our early adulthood.

The conversation was far from earth-shattering. It was more catching up and sharing experiences.  These two knew everything.  They’d been there through everything that passed for drama in my life, he since third grade and she since my sophomore year in college, and I’d been there for theirs.  They knew the context, the larger arc of my life story, and I theirs, so we could pick up right where we left off.

As I crawled into bed that night, I felt exhausted. It had been a long day, a whirlwind through the city with which I will always identify. But in reality, it had been too short. I wanted more.  I would get more the next day, not nearly enough, but more.

 

A couple of days after my last post, we received some very sad family news.  My aunt had passed away.  There was no question that we would go down to L.A. for the memorial service.  Naturally, this resulted in a significant flurry of activity and little time for reflection and grief until the actual services.

The day was an odd mix of sadness at the loss of my aunt and joy at seeing many old friends whom I haven’ t seen in a very long time.

When we got back, I planned to write two posts.  I actually completed the first. It was a more detailed reflection on losing a loved one and the complexity that enters into intergenerational relationships as children grow into adults.

Barring some proofing and minor edits, it was done.

But I couldn’t pull the trigger and post it.  It felt too personal, like letters that turn into journal entries.  Could it be my most brilliant writing ever?  I’d be surprised, but I’ve heard from another writer that when something is less than comfortable to post, you’re probably onto something.

It may see the light of day at some point in the future.  I’m certainly not ruling it out, but the hemming and hawing about whether I should post that one essay has stalled my other writing, hence the four week hiatus.  So, I’m punting for now.

But what about the second post?  Oh that will see the light of day.  You have no need to worry about that.  You see, the memorial was on a Thursday, and there was no way we could get back to Seattle in time for any of us to function at work or school on Friday.  So we decided to extend the trip and fly home on Sunday, giving us two full days in the City of Angels?  And they were awesome enough that I felt guilty having such a fun time given the reason for our presence in L.A.

But that story will be told.

There’s something about this season I’m in right now.  It’s not that there’s nothing happening.  There’s plenty going on, but nothing really imminent.  Does that make sense?

I can feel change coming, positive change in many areas of my life.  But nothing is coming to fruition just yet.

It’s not unlike this current season in Washington.  It’s light when I leave in the morning.  The days are trending warmer.  Spring is coming.  There could still be storms and wind and even snow, but sooner or later that threat will subside.

There’s a difference, though.  Spring will come of its own accord, but the areas in which I’m trying to progress and improve all require work.  I can’t sit contentedly and expect things to happen.

That’s okay.  I can do that.  I’m enjoying the journey.

 

February 14, 2013  Alissa and I have never made a huge deal out of Valentine’s Day.  We have nothing against it. It’s just never really worked for us as a romantic event.  Someone typically gets sick or something else goes wrong and we end up laughing it off and see about commemorating our love later in the month on the anniversary of when we started dating.

Still, Valentine’s Day looms large as a, if not the, key event that led to that anniversary existing.  I’ve told this story before, and while I am working on fitting it into a larger frame that goes into how we met and the circuitous journey to Valentine’s Day 1999, I still love this version of the story.

So, without further ado, I present to you a rare “Great” Thoughts repost of 2011′s  When Jealousy Was Good: A Love Story.  To all my readers, I wish you a very Happy Valentine’s Day.  May it and each day that follows be filled with love. Lastly, to Alissa Viertel, the love of my life, no words can express how blessed I am to be your husband.  Happy Valentine’s Day, my love.

Okay, so there was a little bit more ado.  Now, on with the story…

Alissa and I had known each other for nearly two and a half years at the point where our story begins.  She’d helped me struggle through my adjustment to life in Seattle.  She’d seen me struggle through feelings remaining from an unrequited love for a college friend.  We talked each other through the angst and uncertainty of those first post college years.

She was my best friend.  We were not oblivious to what everyone else saw in the time that we spent together.  We’d even talked about it, explored the question of dating, but I remained steadfast in my certainty that we were just friends.  I continued to nurse my crush on her roommate, and Alissa began to pull away, seeking opportunities to be seen apart from me.  I noticed, but there was always an explanation.  This accelerated when we saw Shakespeare in Love.  If there was ever a night for romance, it was that one: a romantic movie, hands almost touching during a walk through the misty Seattle night to an all-night café for coffee and dessert next to foggy windows.  Two people who were truly “just” friends could have kissed at that end of that evening and written it off to the mood getting the better of them.  But I was (too much of?) a gentleman and “nothing” happened that night.  After all, we were just friends.

Life went on, setting the stage for Valentine’s Day 1999.  It was a sunny Sunday.  We had gone to church and were stopping off at her apartment before going to a party some married friends were throwing for their unattached single friends.  Walking along the breezeway to her door, we found a note telling her to stop in next door.  Alissa let me in and went to knock on her neighbor’s door.

I was in the small dining room shedding my coat; it was sunny, not warm, when Alissa entered carrying a mass of red that quickly resolved into roses: two bouquets of them.  One was for Alissa and one was for her roommate.  The messages on the cards were identical, ambiguous and anonymous.

My initial reaction was a sort of male territorial jealousy centered on her roommate and the not-so secret crush that I harbored for her.  There was a silly feeling that someone was moving in on “my” territory.  (It’s important to realize that pretty much everyone knew about my crush and everyone, including me knew that nothing would come of it.  In other words, I did not have the faintest glimmer of a reason to believe that I had any territory for someone else to move in on.)

Still, something was off.  The bouquets were from the same person, so that brought the motive into question.  We were in a Christian community of people who are very caring, and are particular about supporting people in whatever circumstance that God had placed them, including singleness.  That was the genesis of the party we were going to.  We thought that maybe the flowers were sent for the same reason.  A single guy sending flowers to two single female roommates for romantic purposes seemed unrealistic, so the sender remained a mystery.  (We later found out that it was a single guy, but he never admitted to a romantic purpose.  It was never truly clear what his purpose was.)

Anyway, this speculation was just beginning when I turned to Alissa.  She was beautifully, stunned.  Her face was graced by a faint blush over a self-conscious smile.  I had never seen her that happy, and something stirred in me; a deeper jealousy that made the territorial feelings of a moment before seem less than insignificant.  Someone had made her incredibly happy.  Someone had touched her heart with a simple gesture and brought her some much needed joy.  That someone was not me, and I did not like that.

The thought dogged me for the next couple of days.  The next night, I spent some time talking to a close friend.  I related the story to her, but I didn’t share my feelings on the matter.  Those were deeper, more personal and a whole lot more troubling.  Our conversation focused on the mystery of who would send flowers and why.  We didn’t reach any great insights in that conversation.

I hung up the phone and sat in my darkened apartment thinking.  Suddenly, the fact of the matter became crystal clear to me.  I was in love with Alissa.  I had never felt love with such power and clarity before, and I sprang into action.  I wrote her a letter explaining everything.  I wrote her a poem entitled Two Bouquets.  I knew when I would approach her.  We were working in the drop-in center the following Saturday, so I’d approach her after we were done.

Learning the identity of the sender three days later actually added to the mystery, but it did not alter my course of action one iota.  The only hitch in the plan was that she was doing street outreach before dinner in the drop in center while I was the evening lead.  That meant that she would be going home at 8 and I wouldn’t be leaving until 11.  (This was part of her distancing strategy.)  I made arrangements to stop by afterward.

Her roommate was out of town and Alissa was watching Star Trek: Voyager when I showed up at 11:30 carrying an envelope containing my lengthy letter and poem and two small bouquets. At the time of the first posting, I couldn’t recall the type of flowers, but I’ve been reminded that they were tulips.  I could not compete financially with two dozen roses.  If the battle for her heart was going to turn on the quality of the flowers, I would lose.  No, I brought my best weapon to bear:  words.  I’m not going to repost the letter or the poem.  Those are for Alissa and always will be.  But I told her, in writing, unequivocally, with absolutely no room for misinterpretation that I was in love with her.

I sat in a straight-backed dining chair and kept my unseeing eyes trained on the exploits of Captain Janeway and her brave crew while Alissa sat on the couch and read.  I don’t know how long it took, but the wait was interminable.  Finally, she threw herself down on the couch and lying on her back placed a pillow over her face and screamed.  After composing herself, she sat back up and told me that she couldn’t talk about it right then, that she needed time to think.  That was about what I expected, and I left feeling pretty good about the situation.

Church and lunch at TS McHugh’s the next day was a bit awkward.  Alissa still had some processing to do, but I could not stop saying how in love with her I was.  It was like a switch had been flipped and I couldn’t shut up about it.

I got some pretty positive signals throughout the week.  Her roommate sent me a congratulatory email on my boldness.  The two of them borrowed my apartment to watch a video while I was at Bible study that Wednesday, and Alissa and I took advantage of a cancelled meeting to meet for dinner on Thursday, February 25.  We were at TS McHugh’s again.  She was 45 minutes late because she was trying to figure out what to wear. (I’ve been corrected.  She was late because she missed the bus.) Still, I was not worried, unlike the waiter and the two elderly women who kept looking at me with expressions of pity as the evening wore on.  Finally, Alissa arrived.  We ordered, and then she presented me with a note of her own asking the question that, despite my bold declaration of love, I had managed to leave out of mine.  “Would you like to try dating?”

We were married 17 months later.

Happy Valentines Day to my one true love, Alissa Viertel.

I’m still in love with you and always will be.

And to my readers, a very Happy Valentine’s Day.

I wasn’t planning to post tonight, but I couldn’t resist.

1. The GOP Response seemed a bit watered down
2. Marco Rubio: Bobby Jindal, just add water
3. Rubio definitely threw some water on his presidential ambitions
4. Office space available for four-year sublease in downtown Des Moines, contact Rubio 2016
5. Maybe I’m writing Rubio off too quickly. He clearly has a thirst for power
6. What’s that behind the Capitiol Rotunda on the MSNBC Backdrop? The Moon? A reflection?
7. That’s no moon. That’s Chris Matthews’ head!
8. Will Boehner lose the house by obstructing good legislation?
9. Or by putting his caucus on record voting against good legislation?
10. They deserve a vote!

And a bonus: Looks like the Dems won the SOTU Drinking Game.

It’s about as Monday as a Monday can get, but out of Monday-ness, I was able to find a little inspiration.

Turning Toward Summer

Winter wears on, day by day,

Dreary, wet, frigid gray.

Winter’s novelty gives way,

Drudgery beyond what words can say.

But far away from winter’s shroud

‘Neath skies unmarred by stormy clouds

The boys of summer begin to stir

To put in the past the games that were.

From sparkling coasts and desert palms

Comes the news that’s like a balm

To make winter-weary spirits gay

Pitcher and catchers report today!

In the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school, our nation has entered into a necessary and overdue debate about gun violence.  While the debate is necessary, we can never lose sight of the fact that it took the murders of 26 people, 20 of them kindergartners and first graders to bring this dialog to the forefront of our national conversation.  That’s an incredibly high price.

The discussion has been wide ranging.  Some blame the mental health system.  Some blame violent video games, movies, TV shows and music.  Some blame the lack of prayer in schools.  Some blame guns.  There are no simple solutions, certainly none that will prevent every future act of gun violence, and certainly none that will satisfy the demands of the entire spectrum of public opinion.  The fact is that there will always be guns.  There will always be criminals and mentally ill people and gun owners who are irresponsible, maybe by habit, maybe in an ill-timed momentary lapse.  The mixture of these factors can and will result in fatal tragedies.  Anyone telling you that their solution will change these basic facts is either lying or naïve.

Now, it’s interesting to note that while the pro-gun control side of the argument is willing to look at mental health and violent media as factors, the anti-gun control side is  willing to blame everything but guns.  The loudest voices claim that the Second Amendment places fire arms beyond regulation, or at least beyond the current meager regulatory scheme that has failed to stop far too many massacres.  At the same time they are willing to attack First Amendment protected areas like media and even church-state separation, although I’m not aware of any policy suggestions in those areas beyond putting prayer back in schools (which would fail a court challenge in any case).

Ultimately, the two sides offer a stark contrast over views of how to strike a balance between safety and freedom.  Ultimately, on the freedom issue it’s a question of a tipping point.  Some believe that any increase in regulation jeopardizes our individual freedoms and America as we know it.  I see it differently.  I think there’s a tipping point, an unknown one and a variable one.  I believe that we can engage in trial and error under the guise of reasonable regulation.  I have enough faith in our nation and its citizens to recognize a policy that takes us down the wrong path and to correct that policy through the political process.

That leaves the question of safety.  The fact is that we live in a fallen world.  My kids go to schools nestled in neighborhoods.  All around the schools are homes and in those homes are people who struggle with finances and job loss and divorce and alcoholism and drug addiction and mental illness and any of the maladies that afflict modern society.  This is true for all of us, all our kids.  What is also true is that some of these people have guns.

Under these circumstances, how can any of us feel safe sending our kids to school?  How can we feel safe going to work for that matter?  Some people believe that such a sense of safety and security could be bought by placing armed guards at schools or even arming teachers.  The idea is that the best way to defend against a gun is with another gun.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  If there had been an armed guard at Sandy Hook and that guard had killed the gunman in time, no one, least of all me, would find fault with that.

Could it happen that way?  Sure.  Is that the only was such a scenario might play out?  No. It’s never that simple.  The guard could be killed first.  The guard could miss, leading to a running gun battle in a school.  What about a hostage situation?  What if the gunman is a student?

Do we want to rely solely on deterrence?  That’s what it is.  It’s saying that a gunman attacking a school would be met with deadly force.  It’s comparable to the Cold War when a big part of our strategy was to tell the Soviet Union that if they attacked us we would annihilate them and vice versa.  Some people say that worked, but that entire period was characterized as having been held in a balance of terror.  I for one don’t want the safety of my children reliant of being on the right side of a balance of terror.

We can do better.  I would much rather have a society secured by an adequate mental health system, a robust social safety net,  a cultural turn away from violence and effective and reasonable gun control legislation.  Let’s face it.  Implicit in the pro-gun argument is that the best way to protect against violence is to promise more violence.  The answer to violence is violence.  Is that what we teach our kids?  I don’t think so.  The answer to violence is to divert violence before it happens.

Now, is there a place for police in schools?  I would not rule it out.  My high school had a resource officer.  He was a plain clothes cop and carried a service revolver in a shoulder holster under his sports coat.  He was a popular and respected part of our school community.  As far as I can tell, he was an asset in making our school safer, but it’s not because of the gun.  It was because he knew and cared about the students.  I think he made the school safer, but I can’t remember an incident that would have had him drawing his gun.  He helped to divert the problems before he had to.

That’s what we have to do as a society.  Let’s put all our collective creativity and problem-solving skills to work to find solutions to the problem of gun violence. No solution would be perfect.  No solution will satisfy everyone.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t try.  Isn’t the safety of our children worth the effort?

 

Today is a day of words and the ideas that they form. It’s a day in which we, as Americans, celebrate our national heritage. The words of those documents that define our nation are writ large on Inauguration Day. The words of The Declaration of Independence boldly proclaimed to the world that we are all equal and endowed by our Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The words of our ever-evolving Constitution established our government, the system of checks and balances, of Federalism, of majority rule and minority rights, of the ability to amend to form a more perfect union. For nearly a quarter of a millennium, we have come together every four years to celebrate the peaceful transition or maintenance of political power. There have been great speeches in those gatherings, that echo across the centuries as thunderous whispers reminding of us who we are as a people.

Then there is the other celebration today, a celebration of a man and a movement that used words and nonviolent action and sheer moral force delivered from the margins of power to shatter segregation’s chains and move us further and further along the path to that more perfect union.

Inauguration Day and Martin Luther King Junior Day are days about big ideas, about hope and our deepest values, ideas expressed with big words that are meant to inspire the angels of our better nature and spur us on to our greatest values.

On a day marked by the words of giants, the words of one little blogger don’t add much profundity, so I will simply say that today, I’m proud to be an American.

It was my senior year in high school, and I was sitting in Mr. Miller’s Physics class.  He was a great teacher with a clear passion for conveying his knowledge of the natural world to his students.  His third-floor classroom was a riot of geeky physics-oriented posters.  “Black holes suck.”  “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”  “186,000 Miles per Second: It’s not just a good idea. It’s the law!”  The shelves were crammed with lab equipment and toys that he used to demonstrate one physics principle or another. It was a popular class with seniors. Even among the honors and AP students, all but the most hard core academic achievers opted for “Miller Time” over AP Physics.

We were talking about capacitors and their ability to hold a charge and then discharge it later.  I raised my hand and he called on me.

“So, if a capacitor could hold a charge, could that charge be released in a targeted way, sort of like a direct fire energy…”

My mind knew where this was going, and it was not good.  Don’t say “phaser”! Don’t say “phaser”!

“Well kind of like a…um…”

Don’t say “phaser”!  Don’t say “phaser”! Don’t say…

“…phaser?”

You. Are. An. Idiot.

I know.

I don’t remember the specifics of what happened next, but it was as one would expect, and it resulted in Mr. Miller signing my yearbook months later with an admonition against building death rays.

The thing is that, while that particular incident was unintentional, my geekiness was well known, particularly when it came to Star Trek.  I had, after all,  helped to charter a Star Trek club at school, going so far as to speak about it at two school-wide assemblies and then serve as Captain for three terms before being term-limited and promoted to Commodore and later Rear Admiral.

There was the typo at the end of a Star Trek  club announcement on the school-wide PA system in which someone typed “Live long, Andrew Viertel” instead of “Live long and prosper.” I heard about that one a lot.  My Algebra 2 teacher, in particular, got a kick out of it.  That one was accidental, but there was far more overt and intentional geekiness on my part. I did oral reports in English class on role-playing games and fantasy novels.  I even put on a one-man show in which I subjected my AP English class to me acting out Q taking Captain Kirk and company on a tour of the Star Trek version of Dante’s Inferno.  I threw myself all over the classroom playing something like…Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Checkov, Uhura, Q , and red-shirted ensigns Target and Bullseye…yep, ten characters. Or eleven?  Did Yeoman Rand make an appearance?

My performance was most definitely a tour de farce. 

The fact is that I’m something of a geek. (Yes, present tense.  Alissa recently caught me critiquing the Dungeons and Dragons session on The Big Bang Theory.  Really, the guys weren’t doing it right.) Still my school days were far from the social hell for geeks that is depicted in pop culture.  No one stuffed me into lockers or gave me wedgies. My friends did find great entertainment in making me snarf beverages, but I laughed as hard as they did.

I was generally accepted socially, even if I wasn’t “popular”. Though I was on the swim team, I wasn’t a standout athlete.  My seventh grade PE unit on track and field was a particularly epic failure. My hurdling test featured me tripping over 4 of 5 hurdles and face planting over the other one, and somehow I managed on at least one occasion to miss—not fall short of, completely miss—the long jump pit. Perhaps I should have asked Mr. Miller to explain the physics of that particular maneuver.

 I never ran for student body office until college (that’s its own bizarre story), and with the exception of one strange week in 1987 (and the ensuing relationship) that I quickly decided not to question, I was not particularly popular with girls.  I wasn’t ostracized by them by any means. Many were wonderful friends, some with romantic potential, but as far as I know, there were no young women swooning in my wake as I walked the halls of Eagle Rock High.

I wasn’t even at the top of my class, but I had my niche in the form of extra-curricular activities. Most importantly, I had a solid group of really good friends.  On the whole it was the type of experience that I hope my kids can have.

So what’s my point?  Well, I have an odd little fear as a parent.  What if my kids do, somehow, turn out to be “popular” or standout athletes or the toast of their peers in some way that I don’t have any experience with?  I don’t know how to play such a role, let alone parent it.  I know how to be a nice, quirky, geek who has enough social skills to find a group of friends with which to sample the smorgasbord of experiences that is childhood. 

Fortunately, I don’t think I have to worry too much.  Harry is in love with Star Wars, Voltron, and even the 1980’s Transformers. He’s constantly asking me about the minutest details of the most obscure vehicles. He questions the colors of light sabers and laser bolts.  Yesterday he was asking why clone pilots and TIE fighter pilots have enclosed helmets while rebel pilots don’t.  I had told him earlier that the more open face plate of the rebels helped with visual tracking in a dogfight, so he didn’t understand why the Empire didn’t take that into account as well.  It led to a brief discussion about how design can reflect the values of an organization.

Annie loves her princesses.  In fact, she needs more princes so Cinderella doesn’t have to share hers during the “dancing and kissing” parts of her dollhouse parties. (She’s not allowed to date until she’s 40 and will not be attending any parties, by the way.)  

He doesnt’ seem to mind.

Of course, when it comes to sci-fi, she seems to prefer fighting princesses.  She prefers Leia to Padme.  Admittedly, both were fighting princesses but Leia’s wardrobe was more utilitarian on the whole.  Likewise, when it comes to Voltron, she seems to prefer the flight suit clad women of the 1980s’ Vehicle Voltron and 2011’s Voltron Force to the 1980’s version of Princess Allura in her pink ball gown.

She’s also lamented that she doesn’t get Star Wars stuff; apparently her light saber doesn’t count. She can discuss the intricacies of Voltron with confidence.  She sought a ninja turtle Happy Meal toy because the “girl” toy was lame.  She went to a comic convention and was not intimidated in the least by the cos-players (except for the flaming skull guy) and even waved at Darth Vader as he strode the convention floor. 

So I guess I’m not too worried.  I mean, how can you not be headed down the path of geekiness when you get this for Christmas?

Form Blazing Sword!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,900 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 7 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.