MN Monday #3 - I went to see the doctor of philosophy.

The whole reason for coming to Minnesota was to go to grad school and I have to say that it was nice to feel academically desirable again for the first time since high school.

About to head home from a
class trip to the Badlands
of SD.  May 1999

At NCSU, as a physics major, I left a lot to be desired.  I spent most of my time in the music department and was average at best amongst my peers in coursework.  I had better luck in Math all the way up to when math ceased to be about numbers.

But when I applied to the University of Minnesota, it felt like I sent in my application on Friday and got a call on Monday to find out when I wanted to come check out the campus.  Turns out, the Geosciences were (and still are to some degree) hungry for people who aren't scared of math and technology.  So I was heavily recruited even though my GPA wasn't all that stellar.

When I finally got here, it was like getting to be successful again.  The coursework was accessible and I did pretty well across material science, geology, and computer science.  The faculty were interesting and  the subjects seemed to make sense again.  Maybe I'd just found a second wind.  I also made some good friends that I'm still in touch with today.  And even though I was working on laboratory research, I did get the chance to go out into the field some and rediscover why I had considered geophysics as a degree right after high school.  If those two NCSU faculty hadn't left before I got there, things might have turned out very different.

Ted, Nate, and Me in the lab at Kohltoff
Hall.

But the research....  uffda.  My project ended up being a year of chemistry, a year of auto mechanic, and a year of experiments to get one (1!) data point.  I had pretty much had it by that point and decided a Masters degree was just fine, thank you very much. So I hit the eject button. My advisor and I also never really came to an understanding about a lot of things which didn't help matters.  Looking back, I can see that I didn't have the attention span or the focus necessary to have gone all the way to a PhD.  At the time, there was some feeling of failure mixed in with disappointment at how things ended up.

But as frustrating as those three years were, they set the stage for what I do now.  I am a geoscientist. I have taught at the college level.  I understand some of what faculty members go through.  These have all been invaluable tools in working with those same faculty now to help them teach more effectively.  Many of those people that I met during that time (both fellow students and faculty) have become colleagues in various ways over the intervening years.  I am proud to associate myself with some of the most innovative and amazing college educators in the field and those years getting my Masters made it possible to be where I am.

Group picture on the class trip to the Badlands of SD.  Photo
taken at Dinosaur P.ark

MN Monday #2: Burn the Ships

We pulled out of Raleigh, NC on June 25th, 1997. Jonathan and I were in my car and mom and dad in his truck.  They were pulling the U-haul trailers I had rented.  There was stuff piled in my car, in the trailer, and in the bed of the truck.  We were good to go.  The plan was to take 3 days to drive the ~21 hours to Minneapolis.  Mom and dad would drive back the 29th and we'd spend a few nights in a hotel before moving into our new place on the 1st. Simple.

Yeah, right.  Remember the story of how the vikings would burn their ships when they landed someplace? Conquer or perish, with no chance for retreat.

I'm pretty sure we were somewhere in West Virginia, going up and down mountains in Appalachia, when my car's head gasket blew.  We were lucky that the engine kept running long enough to reach the top of that hill where there was a gas station.  We pulled off and realized there was nothing for it.  We offloaded everything out of the car into the trailer or the truck.  Dad talked to the owner of the station and arranged to leave the car there and he'd come back to pick it up and tow it back home to sell.  Fine.  All taken care of.

Except that dad's truck was a two-seater...  So what choice did we have?  Jonathan and I joined the remainder of our belongings in the back of the truck.  It's like the south was getting one last dig in before I escaped, forcing me to enter Yankee territory like something out of the Beverly Hillbillies.  We spent the rest of the day riding in the back of the truck, all the way to Indiana.

At which point we were saved from our predicament by my dad's truck deciding to drop its transmission on the highway, south of Indianapolis.  We managed to get a tow truck to drag us to a shop and hotel.  In the dark of late evening, we rolled into Seymore, IN where we would be marooned for 2-and-a-half days.

The next morning, dad set about pulling some kind of success out of the wreckage of this trip.  He knew a guy in NC who agreed to drive to IN and pick up his truck to tow back.  We set to looking for a U-haul truck to pull the U-haul trailer the rest of the way to MN.  We finally found one, seems like it was the only one in town - a 15' truck to pull a 10' trailer.  At least we'd have plenty of space.

Dad's friend arrived on our second day in Seymore.  He and his some had driven straight through from Asheville and they were going to hook up dad's truck, turn right around and head back.  And mom was going with this so she could make it back in time for something she had going on.  (She wouldn't actually set foot in Minnesota until 2007 when she visited Jacob and me with my Uncle Bruce.)  Once they left it took another day to get the truck squared away and then dad, Jonathan, and I set out for MN.

We made the entire rest of the way from south of Indianapolis, past Chicago, all the way to St. Paul in one very long day. I think we arrived at the hotel about 2 in the morning on July 1st. We checked in, slept, and got dad in a taxi to the airport to fly home bright and early (later) that morning.

Driving an enormous truck and trailer combo into downtown Minneapolis, right to Loring Park where we have to try and find a way to unload was not the way I envisioned things happening.  We ended up driving around until we found a grocery store with a large enough parking lot where we could take everything out of the trailer and put it all into the truck.  That meant we could go drop off the trailer and only have to maneuver the giant truck behind the apartment building where we could access the freight elevator.  No problem.

Of course, the afternoon of July 1, 1997 saw tornado sirens and one of the year's most serious thunderstorms.  But then, what could have been more appropriate?

Yep, all the boats got burned.  Even before we got to shore.  So it's a good thing that what I found here was My Place (tm).  Nothing more, nothing less.

Can't Get Over Her

My nephew is distressed that he's still

in love with the girl who went back to her boyfriend—

the one who's not good enough for her.

When he ran into her again, she had that same bright laugh,

like the shine on an apple, and the wind rose

reaching up into the limbs and fluttering

the leaves in the whole apple tree.

But when she left, it hit him all over.

She was headed for her boyfriend's house, she'd walk

quickly in the brittle March night.

He'd have a fire going. She'd unlace her boots

and offer him her mouth, her lips still cold,

velvet tongue warm in that satin cape.

He didn't tell me all this,

of course, but who hasn't longed

for that girl? that boy? He's mad

at himself that he can't get over her.

He's young and he's got goals, quit

smoking, gave up weekend drunks. Now he tackles

model airplane kits, one small piece at a time.

He wants to learn mastery. Sweet man.

Should we tell him the truth?

That he'll never get over her. Love

is a rock in the surf off the Pacific. Life

batters it. No matter how small it gets

it will always be there—grain of sand

chafing the heart. I still love

the boy who jockeyed cars, expertly

in the lots on New York Avenue,

parking them so close, he had to lift his lithe body

out the window those sultry August afternoons.

He smelled of something musky and rich—distinctive

as redwoods in heat.

I still long for him

like a patriot exiled from the motherland,

a newborn switched in the hospital, raised

in the wrong family. Each year that passes

is one more I miss out on. His children

are not mine. Even their new

step-mother is not me. When she complains

how hard she tries, how little they appreciate it,

I think how much better off he'd be with me.

And when he has grandchildren

they won't be mine either. And when he's dying—

even if I go to him—I'll be little more

than a dumb bouquet, spilling my scent.

We don't get over any of it. The heart

is stubborn and indefatigable. And limitless.

That's how I can turn to my beloved, now,

with the awe the early rabbis must have felt

opening the Torah. And when she pulls me to her,

still, after all these years, I feel like I did

the first time I stood in front of Starry Night.

I had never known, never imagined

its life beyond the flat, smooth surface

of the textbook. Had never conceived

there could be these thick swirls of paint,

the rough-edged cobalt sky, the deep 

spiraling valleys of starlight.

Ellen Bass

MN Monday #1

Twenty years....

I came to Minnesota July 1st, 1997 which means that this July 1st I will have lived here for 20 years.  So over the next 20 weeks, I'm going to publish a picture and/or a memory of my time becoming a Minnesotan.  These aren't necessarily going to be the biggest, most important things that happened in a particular year (although some of them will be).  They are just a way for me to celebrate my adopted home and the life that I've built here.

The left image is May 1997.  I had graduated and was working the first part of the summer at the Physics prop shop creating digital images of a bunch of laboratory instrumentation.  Presented with a digital camera opportunity, even in the stone age, naturally a selfie emerged...  The right one is the end of January 2017, just a few weeks ago.  Random Tuesday morning video conference call.  So... yeah selfie opportunity...  

Looking at them side by side... wow.  Separated by a dozen or more lifetimes but some things really do persist.  

#mnmonday