Discouraged

Today, I met with a group of teachers that I'm taking on my summer road trip about Energy Issues along the Wasatch Front. (That was not the discouraging thing!) But while I was talking about my own biases, in the interests of full disclosure, I explained that as a scientist, I believe that data trump everything. And I believe this so strongly, it's such a deep part of my being, that I don't seem to be able to even imagine seeing the world any other way. So I had this in my head, and I was trying to imagine what it would be like to not believe in graphs.

And then, in the car, NPR had American Routes on, and sometimes I don't like to listen to that. So I flipped around the channels, and ran into KSL. Where some lunatic was talking about global warming and climate change, and how they don't exist. And he was saying that 15 years ago, everyone was predicting an ice age (which is false), and then he trotted out this thing that George Will said in his column, that there has been no warming in the last 12 years. But that's been shown to be false, and George Will just got his facts wrong, and the Washington Post just refused to correct it, even though they admitted it was incorrect. But here's this guy, carrying along this false idea because George Will said it. And the interviewer was just eagerly lapping it all up. Probably because the truth is so desperate?

And I was suddenly not only raging, but seriously discouraged. Because getting to work on this problem (and the related King Rat of all the other appalling problems facing us today) is so imperative, so crucial, and so obvious to me, that I can't even comprehend how someone could fail to see it, much less argue against it.

So I went and bought stuff to make home-brew beer and I came home. And I puttered around with my vegetable starts and checked on the asparagus bed. And I picked my dog's nose (poor Smokey and his pneumonia). And I turned on the radio, and it was the 'plague report' about the swine flu in Mexico. So I turned that off, and listened to DMB instead. But then it was the dodo song, and so I turned that off too. And I went out back and checked on my chickens. And then I came back in and I made a big chart on a big piece of newsprint of all the things I'm afraid of, and then I shredded it and put it in the chicken coop for them to shit on.

And now I feel better.

A little.

What I've been up to...

just to catch up, a little...

I've given a couple of talks---at USU, at ATK, and am getting ready to meet with the teachers for the summer class. This means I spend a lot of time on hold with the power company in Brigham City, among other things. ; )

I'm organizing lessons again. Which is not as much of a drag as it sounds, now that I've made everyone else responsible for themselves.

Our new pup has pneumonia. Poor little tyke. I got him an emergency roast beef sandwich today, because he was so pathetic. We've been working on him for the last ten days, and now have pulled out the big guns, antibiotically speaking. I just wish he would be able to breathe through his nose.

Trinkie and I are sneaking up on a reliable canter pirouette. If only all our tests consisted primarily of collected canter... we'd clean up.

We have a new fence to keep the dogs and the chickens separate.

We have newly re-upholstered chairs.

We have starts for the garden. Lots and lots of starts for the garden. Pretty soon, J's going to start complaining that I moved his cheese, and put baby tomatoes on it.

We have an asparagus bed! Now THAT is a commitment.

I have shredded years and years of old bills, bank statements, etc. We now have a filing system. With things in their files. With labels.

We have a new chicken coop. I cleaned out the old one. It wasn't nearly as disgusting as you think.

We have turned the compost heap, sorted out the brush pile and the woodpile and the compost pile.

We are about to have a new picnic table.

We have a long-term landscape plan, which includes tearing up the old driveway, and replacing it with plants. Nobody should have more driveway than house.

Phew.

Off to water the asparagus...

Smokey

Mom! Calm down. Lots of people have two dogs. Now we do, too. It's ok! Really.

This is Smokey. I was thinking of a puppy, since I have time at the moment. But then I saw this dog on the internet at the shelter in Park City. And he'd been at another shelter for two weeks. And black dogs, for whatever reason, are nearly unadoptable. And everyone wants a puppy. But maybe nobody wants this dog. Except maybe us. And then he leaned against my legs in that completely endearing way that Aussies do when they want you to take them home. So we did. He's got the twinkly toes. He's got the soulful eyes. He's almost got the eyebrows. He sleeps at my feet while I write in my blog. He's got the softest fur imaginable. And he and Captain think this is the best thing that ever happened to them.

Oh, and he needs to be taught to NOT chase the chickens. But he'll get that figured out. Soon.

Synchronicity

Yesterday, I went to give a talk at a nearby University. While I spent time thinking about it ahead of time, it took me all of an hour to prepare for this talk, and I wasn't nervous at all. In the middle of the talk, someone asked me about astroseismology and whether one of the oscillation modes could be responsible for the phenomenon I was trying to explain. Not that long ago, this would have made me nervous, and worked up. But I just said, 'I'm more or less completely ignorant about astroseismology, but I would guess that...' and it was fun to talk about. And fun to think about. And fun to argue about.

I was thinking about this afterwards, wondering what's different. Then, this morning, I was catching up with fellow bloggers, and find that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, and yes, I probably have much more than that invested at this point, and so of course I feel like I can admit ignorance, defend my ideas, discuss new ideas thoughtfully and generally just have a good time giving talks. Even to physicists. Because, apparently, I'm an expert. Huh.

Subtle changes

Before I went to Socorro, I'd developed a bit of a wind phobia. Sometimes the wind here, near the mouth of Strong's Canyon, is pretty extreme. It has been known to blow the Adirondack chairs right off the deck.

But Socorro might also be called Sirocco, because it's really windy all the time there. So much so that people build adobe walls around their houses to keep their stuff from blowing away.

After about three months of cowering at night in my A-frame, I started to get annoyed. The fine desert grit blew right under the door and through the window frames. It got in my food, it got on my toothbrush. It coated the floor and the bathtub and made mud when I showered. Then, after about another month, I stopped noticing it all together.

We've got a bit of wind here at home tonight, the kind that used to make me cower under the covers.

It sounds like the sea.

Random Findings...

On Friday, I was cleaning out the furnace room. We store our outdoor gear in there---snowshoes and skis and tents and sleeping bags and, well you get the idea. It occurred to me that some shelves would be helpful. So I was putting them in.

I bumped a shelf into the duct work, and a little metal rectangle, a bit larger than an index card, fell down onto the floor with a loud clatter. I gasped because I thought I'd poked a hole in the duct, and stood on tiptoe to look at the duct work. And I saw this piece of brown paper. Which, naturally, I pulled on. It was a paper bag. Whatever was inside was heavy. As I pulled it toward the edge of the duct, a perfectly ordinary quarter fell on the floor. My brows furrowed and my heart thumped. I pulled the bag out, and held it in my hand for a long moment. A moment fraught with this much sheer, unexpected possibility had to be shared with someone else. So I brought the bag inside and put it on the kitchen table. Then I went out and did a bunch of other things while I waited for J. It was 3:50, and he was supposed to be home at 4. I kept wandering through the kitchen to stare at the bag until 4:40, when he FINALLY came home. At that point, I was coming in from the chicken coop with four eggs in my hand.

I said, "Come on! I've got something to show you! I didn't open it yet, because I wanted you to be here! Four eggs! Look!" which, naturally, made no sense at all to him.

As I was putting the eggs in the fridge, J casually opened the bag. I was telling him all about it, but I don't think he heard me, because I had to tell it again later. Inside the bag? More than $1000 worth of silver coins (according to wikipedia).

I told the story again, dragging J out to the furnace room, where he looked all over for other hidden treasure.

Naturally, the response has been mixed---from disbelief to amazement to envy. But the most interesting one is the response from a friend of a friend, who warned us that we shouldn't talk about it. We should keep it quiet. We shouldn't mention it out loud. Because the old owners might come and want the money back. Or get a court order to tear the house apart looking for more. I think less than charitable things about his view of the world.

Which brings me to another random finding, this one inside my own head. Apparently, I have a sincere faith in the Universe's own peculiar brand of justice. If anyone showed up with a court order to tear my house apart over $1000 in coins, I wouldn't even have to do anything. Likely, the big pine tree in the front yard would fall on their heads, and drive them like a nail down into the sewer line. So I'm just not worried about this. Instead, I'm just childishly excited by the buried treasure that I found, and I'm having fun making up stories of how the money got there. All the sudden, I'm living in Nancy Drew's or Trixie Belden's universe. How fun is that?

Is this when to say 'when'?

I find myself in a spot that's unusual for me. I'm uncertain. And because I note that it's unusual, you know I usually just plow ahead, without worrying too much about the consequences. But, at the moment, I find that I'm dragging my feet on a project that I wouldn't usually drag myself to. Instead of getting to work on it, I find myself vacuuming. (!) Washing dishes. Doing laundry. All things that are necessary, and so I can convince myself that they need doing RIGHT NOW.

So here's the thing. I'm looking at this grant proposal, which, if we got it, would be huge. Enormous. Challenging and of national impact. I would more or less devote myself to this effort for the next four years. Everything else would take a backseat, because running this effort would be a full time job, in addition to the half time teaching load that is more or less necessary to keep my actual job. Not to mention committee work. And research with students. Ah. And so there I see the problem, even as I start talking it out, I see what's bothering me. More than 150% time for the next four+ years. Given that 100% time at my job typically means many more than 40 hours per week, 150+% time typically means... well, no time for anything else. Not only that, but I'd be working 150+% time for 130% pay.

Having just done pretty much that for two years, I can tell you that I always felt like I wasn't giving adequate attention to ANYthing I was doing. I always felt a little bit behind. Always not quite ready for class. Always not quite having the homework done before I assigned it. Always having emails piling up, reports slapped together, some purchase or requisition not quite properly tracked or accounted for. Always leaving my tack uncleaned, my clothes unwashed, the dog unwalked, and the bed unmade. Is it too much to ask to have time every day to pull the comforter up? Some days, I didn't have time to take a shower.

And then today, on Radio West, comes this guy: Tom Hodkinson, who wrote 'How to be Idle', and he talked about the Western obsession with work. And he said, 'What if you woke up every morning and thought, 'What shall I do today?'' And I was struck by that. Because here I am on sabbatical, having done some really pretty important work for the last five months. By all rights, I should spend the next five weeks trying to figure out what I would do if I didn't HAVE to do anything. Instead, I'm beating myself up over not really feeling all that gung-ho about taking on a future four years that are going to put me in the same position that made me need the sabbatical so desperately in the first place.

But then, I think about what it would mean to the University and the Department to have this grant come in. It's not everyone here that knows how to do this kind of thing. And I can see it all laid out in steps ahead of me. First, we'd do this, and then we'd do that, and then we'd do this, and then we'd have a finished product that was better than anything that currently exists, and it would really be a big help to teachers everywhere. And I have a big enough ego that I think that maybe we are the only ones who COULD do it. And I have a small enough ego to think that this kind of grant-getting is the most useful thing that I contribute. And I think about what would it mean to have this kind of influx of cash in the current economic climate.

But then I heard this story about someone who got facilities from the University---new space for new offices. But no furniture. Seriously. Not a chair. Not a pencil. Not a stapler. Nothing. And I've been promised that 'we could find the space'. But I never asked about furniture. Because why would I, right? What good are offices without desks? Grant agencies don't pay for furniture. That's supposed to come out of the overhead. That's obvious, right? But in the last grant, I was scavenging furniture from surplus. Do I really want to go through all that sort of thing again?

And maybe I should just worry about keeping the job I already have. I mean, I really, really love my job. Would I love doing this other job as much? Would it be as valuable as being in the classroom? Would I ever find time to walk the dog or ride my pony?

So mostly, I'm just wondering if I've gone completely mad... I guess I feel that applying for the grant means stepping off into a whole other career, in addition (not instead of) the one I already have, and I'm not sure I want to go there. On the other hand, we probably wouldn't get it (those are the odds). But on the other, other hand, if we did, it really would mean a commitment of cosmic proportions, for at least four years. And if I'm not sure I want to make that commitment, should I waste everyone's time by applying?

And isn't this, maybe, one of the whole points of a sabbatical, to step back and try to get some perspective on what you do every day, and what it's good for, and what it's about, and why you do it, and how you could do it better, more authentically? And to try to figure out, maybe just a little, when it's time to say 'when'?

Or maybe I'm just thinking too hard.