Universe!

At the public library the other day I picked up three nonfiction books.  The books were located in three completely different subject areas: from the Dewey 100's to the 500's to the 900's.

I love learning stuff.

Science isn't my only passion.  I really should have been a writer/architect/tennis pro/evolutionary biologist/astronomer/cult leader. Oh, and I forgot linguist.

The latest thing to capture my attention has been The Universe.  The planets, the solar system, our galaxy, other galaxies, time, expansion, the Big Bang, the nature of everything-- where it comes from and where it's going to.  Huge doesn't even begin to describe our universe, and when I consider all the mysteries it contains it makes me a little dizzy.

It may look like a collection of penises, but these enormous "Pillars of Creation" are in the process of creating new stars.  Our entire solar system would fit into that tiny finger-like object on the left one.  That is a huge erection!

When I consider all these mysteries, it's easy to dismiss any of the petty problems in my life, or in the lives of the people around me, or of humanity itself, or of our planet.  We are smaller than tiny.  Things I fret about, like a tennis match or an election or saving the environment-- they mean nothing.  We may destroy our environment and that of many organisms on our planet, but the planet itself, we can't touch it. 

The Earth has survived much worse than a case of the humans.  We're like a small rash on a world that's been around long before us and will go on long after us.  And that world itself is just one tiny insignificant dot among of trillions and trillions of things spinning around in space.

Perhaps it's escapist, but I love that I have the luxury of considering the universe, of thinking about what's really going on in all those places we can't see, hear, or touch (or haven't seen, heard, or touched yet.)  It is almost like a drug the way it takes hold of my mind.

Maybe this is what God does for religious people-- makes them feel like they are one tiny part of something much greater and more mysterious.  For me, I'll take science and astronomy and science fiction-- stories and fantasies and possibilities based on what we already know about the laws of the universe-- and escape into that.            

Unreliable Narrators

I love memoirs, but after years and years of reading them I've finally learned to hone my bullshit detector.  The way someone tells a story-- how they present themselves and their view of the world-- often tells me as much about them as the content of their stories.

I was reminded of this by two recent books I've read.  The first, Chelsea Handler's My Horizontal Life: a Collection of One-Night Stands, was kind of like a mafia movie: I was fascinated by it, but her world is so far removed from my own that I couldn't imagine living in it myself.

I wasn't far into the book before I started to question the veracity of her stories.  I mean, how could one person have such a fabulous, drunken, orgiastic life?  A lot of her stories (or details) seemed ridiculously far-fetched, and as they piled up it made it harder and harder for me to believe them.  Her reputation as a reliable narrator was not helped by the fact that she openly lied to people in almost every story.  In one passage she even talks about how her lies kept getting her into trouble, so she made a resolution to stop lying when she was drunk.  (Sober lying she held on to.)

Handler is a comedian, so it's not like she's doing top-level journalism.  She's just telling funny stories, and she's really good at it.  Still, as I've said many times before, whether or not a story really happened is part of the story.  "IT REALLY HAPPENED!" accounts have a much lower bar than fiction.

I just don't like feeling like I'm being lied to, ya know?

+++++

The other book I just finished is Andre Aggasi's memoir, Open.

The thing I noticed from the very first page of this book is: WOW, can Andre tell a story!  A few years ago I read Pete Sampras' book (I don't remember the title and it's not worth looking up) and although it was mildly interesting from a tennis fans' perspective, it really wasn't a very gripping story.  Maybe Pete is just too private, or he really is as dry and boring as his reputation, but his book was stiff and wooden.

Agassi's book, on the other hand, jumps off the page at you.  On the very first page he talks about how he hates tennis, and how he's always hated tennis.  What the what?  One of the best players in the history of the game hated it?  That's some interesting shit.

Although Agassi's book is much better written than Sampras', that doesn't necessarily mean that Andre's a better writer.  After all, these guys often work very closely with journalist/editors, if not outright ghostwriters. So I was under no illusions that Andre was a great writer.  But his voice was there, and it's definitely a more interesting and vibrant voice than Sampras'. Sampras may have been the more successful tennis player, but he can't touch Andre on personality.  

Sampras may have won more tennis, but Agassi has a better book

Even so, as Agassi's book progressed, my bullshit detector started to blink a little.  Details in the story seemed a little too convenient, like his childhood friend pointing to a magazine photo of Brooke Shields and saying, "She could be your wife one day."  (She became his first wife.)  Or when they were married, Brooke putting a picture of a very fit Steffi Graf on their refrigerator to motivate herself to get in shape.  (Graf became his second wife.)

These are amazing coincidences, and the details may be true, but maybe they leave out details-- like maybe Brooke was one of dozens of celebrities his friend said this about.  After 10 years of librarianship and teaching information literacy, I'm finally realizing all the subtle ways that people manipulate information to fit their narrative. (Also, I follow a lot of politics.) 

And sometimes people just outright lie.  Just like Chelsea Handler, Agassi admits to lying in his book.  He tells how he lied in interviews because he just said what he thought the interviewer wanted to hear.  ("I've always loved tennis!") He can't admit difficult things to people close to him, so he lies.  We all do it on occasion, but in this book it happens enough to add to the overall sense that he's not quite leveling with the reader.  

A tennis player is a different kind of celebrity than a comedian.  They usually have publicists to control their image in the media.  Plus there's the simple issue of privacy.  We're simply not entitled to know every intimate thing that happens in a celebrity's life.

But still, I often wondered as I read Agassi's book how accurate it was.  No doubt it was a good story, if a bit overwrought at times.  But how much of it could I trust?

In his acknowledgments at the end of the book, Andre writes quite a bit about the writer he collaborated with.  It seems this writer collected stories from Andre and was mostly responsible for the stellar writing.  Andre even wanted to include his name on the book as a co-author, but was talked out of it.  This is probably typical for a celebrity of his stature.  But it shows how even the book itself was misleading.  The whole time I was thinking about what a great story Andre tells, and it turns out someone else was taking his stories and shaping them for him.      

I'm a Librarian

The student was just loitering at my desk, trying to strike up a conversation when he asked, in that Bill-And-Ted's Excellent Adventure tone of his, "What do you... do you mind being called a librarian?"

I answered, No, I don't mind at all.  In fact, to be a librarian you need a Master of Library Science degree.  "Not everyone who works in a library is a librarian," I said, "just like not everyone who works in a hospital is a doctor."

The student said, "Wow! You just blew my mind!"

+++++

It's not that I equate what I do with saving lives, or that people in hospitals who aren't doctors (and people in libraries who aren't librarians) don't do important work.  Although several students have actually called me a "lifesaver" when I help them find what they're looking for, I don't have a God complex.  Hey, I'm not giving you a kidney-- I'm just finding you a book. 

I think my biggest pet peeve about being a librarian is how people misuse the title.  A librarian is more than just someone who works in a library.  I cringe when a part-time student worker in the library refers to herself as a librarian.  Librarian is a title I spent two years of graduate-level coursework to earn.

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Being called a librarian certainly isn't an insult, as the student's question implied.  I was more amused than annoyed by his question, though.  He was so earnest and curious, I couldn't help but appreciate how I had opened his mind.  He kept repeating.. "I had no idea..."

Invisible Obama

I needed a break from politics.  It was just too depressing to hear all the lies, misrepresentations, anger, and petty squabbling coming from both parties.

This was difficult to do, since I listen to NPR every morning and during much of my commute, and my two favorite TV shows are The Daily Show and Colbert Report.  Watching them was not fun anymore, though, because instead of making me laugh at conservatives, it made me angry.  Angry at their bullying, misrepresentation, hypocrisy, and propaganda.

Listening to the speeches at the GOP convention made me seethe with anger. Not because they held different opinions than me, but at how they mangled the facts.  

Then along came a chair.

Clint Eastwood's painful, cringe-worthy performance of a blathering old man berating a chair on national TV brought out the absurdity of the conservative position toward Obama.  And watching Jon Stewart eviscerate this performance made my day:

Eastwood finally revealed the cognitive dissonance that is the beating heart and soul and fiction of this party. They're so far gone, they're hammering Obama for things Bush did... [like starting the war in Afghanistan].... This president has issues and there are very legitimate debates to be had about his policies and actions, successes and/or failures as president...but I could never wrap my head around why the world and the president that Republicans describe bears so little resemblance to the world and the president that I experience, and now I know why.

There is a President Obama that only Republicans can see.

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I've also struggled trying to wrap my head around this invisible Obama.  I've gotten into arguments with people who don't like Obama because he's "arrogant", "pompous", "elitist", "a snob".  Despite the fact that this "snob" was the bi-racial son of a single mother and worked his way through Harvard Law School, then instead of making lots of money in the private sector, started out as a community organizer. These same people who label Obama a "snob" have no problem choosing the millionaire son of a governor over him.

Still, calling someone nasty names is just an opinion, not a fact.  If you feel someone is arrogant, there's no amount of evidence that will dissuade you.  However, there is also a complete fiction around Obama that seems to be gripping entire sections of our population.  He's a socialist.  He's not a U.S. citizen.  He wants to destroy America.  I actually had a family member tell me they think Obama is a Muslim.  Well, there's really no way to have a rational discussion with someone like that. It's like arguing with someone who thinks the moon landing was fake or that 9/11 was an "inside job" (whatever that even means.)

Such theories are ignorant, paranoid, and borderline racist.  Because our president looks different and has a funny name, I believe people are more willing to ascribe things to him that have no basis in reality. (Not that there's anything wrong with being Muslim or socialist, but the people who use those labels sling them as insults.)  In fact, whenever I hear people call him words like "elitist," I can't help but think that that is code for "uppity."  

What angers and saddens me the most about these attacks on Obama is that people have lame, misguided reasons for opposing him.  If you can give me a fair, informed opinion of his policies and why you oppose them, then fine, go ahead and hate him.  If you value your narrow interpretation of Christianity over science and education, he's not your candidate.  If you oppose abortion more than you value women's rights and health, he's not on your side.  If you're against gay rights, he's not so fabulous. If you think large corporations care about your health and well-being, and that the government is evil and has no role to play in solving our problems, don't give Obama your support.

If you want America to go back to the way it was in the 1950's, where Blacks, Hispanics, women, and other minorities knew their place, Obama's not for you.  I mean, seriously, can you believe that in 2012 we're actually having a political debate over birth control?  Republicans have turned a simple, fair mandate that requires all insurance policies to cover birth control (the same way they cover Viagra) into a battle over "religious freedom." ("Religious freedom" for them means "forcing my brand of Christianity on others.")

Let me stress this, because it blows my mind: Republicans don't think birth control is a women's health issue.  I don't know how any moderate woman in America who cares about her rights can reward them for that. Argh!  Poll after poll shows that among almost every demographic other than white men, Obama is leading.  As a white man myself, I don't know how the Republicans can continue to survive as a party that serves such narrow interests. 

Sorry, I have to cut myself off or I'll never stop ranting.  I could list dozens of similar issues that just make my blood boil.  And I hate that.  I hate that it's impossible to have rational, nuanced discussions about politics and how to solve our nation's problems. Because it feels like all I'm doing is playing defense, defending Obama and liberal policies.  And I'll admit it comes from both sides. I also get pissed off when I hear people on the Left say ridiculous shit.  There are times when The Daily Show oversimplifies a complicated issue in order to win rhetorical points.  That annoys me.   

I just want people to be fair.  And I don't see much fairness right now.  Sometimes I just want to give up.  Fuck it.  I have a good job, a comfortable life, health insurance, a supportive family.  I'm incredibly lucky to be living in this time and place. I've got mine, why should I care about people who are too ignorant to understand what's in their own best interest, what's in the interest of our country?  Why do so many poor and middle class people vehemently fight for the rights of rich white men? It makes me want to give up.

As John Steinbeck is purported to have said, Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

++++

Both sides want you to believe that if the Other Guy wins the election, it will be disaster.  The End of America.  I'll tell you a secret.  I'm trying to convince myself that a Romney presidency wouldn't be so catastrophic.  He loves America just as much as Obama does.  He wants to succeed.  And most candidates usually have to move to the middle to get anything done.  Romney was the Republican governor of a liberal state who instituted the model for Obamacare.  He's a centrist.  And to be honest, Romney might be able to get more done simply because Democrats are more willing to work with a Republican president than vice-versa.  All that Obama's accomplished the past four years (and it's been a lot, despite the GOP's empty chair narrative), he's had to do with Republicans blocking him at every turn.  He's bent over backwards to accommodate them, and they still shit all over him.  Presumably they wouldn't do that to Romney.  And if they did, then let the country see what asshat obstructionists they really are.  Ugh, sorry, another rant. 

Whoever wins the election, the world won't end.  Obviously, I know who I'm voting for and why.  I have solid, informed, legitimate policy reasons to think he's the better candidate.  It's not a popularity contest to me. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I believe my reasons are more rational than most of the people who are voting for the other guy.  I don't have to turn one candidate into a caricature in order to vote against him.  

My choice is not between a real person and a chair.

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Social Scientist

I was trying to tell someone recently about the Five (+ 1) Tenets of Timicism, and I think I got most of them right.  I'm such a horrible timvangelist, I have trouble remembering the tenets of my very own cult.  (After a quick review I see that I forgot the third tenet, Humor. D'oh!)

Anyway, after my spiel my friend replied that Timicism sounds more like the rules of a social scientist than a religion.

Hm.  I kinda like that description.

Timicism: the "religion" for social scientists. 

Love and Mix Tapes

While browsing the audiobook shelves at my public library, I found this book in the Biography section: love is a mix tape: life and loss, one song at a time by Rob Sheffield.

The back of the case said:

It was... when a shy music geek named Rob Sheffield met a hell-raising Appalachian punk-rock girl named Renee, who was way too cool for him but fell in love with him anyway.  They had nothing in common except that they both loved music... And it was music that would help Rob through a sudden, unfathomable loss.

In [the book]... Rob uses the songs on fifteen mix tapes to tell the story of his brief time with Renee...This is Rob's tribute to music, to the decade that shaped him, but most of all to one unforgettable woman.  

Well, I had to check that out!  As someone who's a huge fan of the movie High Fidelity, I just naturally assumed that Rob and Renee had broken up.  (Rob even has the same name of John Cusack character in the movie.)

Rob from High Fidelity, not Rob from Love is a Mix Tape

So it came as quite a shock to me when, as I listened to the end of the introduction, Rob reveals that Renee died suddenly at age 31. She didn't dump him, she died on him.  Wow, I didn't see THAT coming. It was like a twist beginning.

The book took on a whole new meaning after that.  It wasn't High Fidelity, but Love Story, told from the point of view of a couple of hip music geeks who spend all their time listening to music, going to concerts, talking about music, and falling in love to music.  I thought I knew a lot about pop music, but I had to admit that only about one out of every ten songs Rob lists from his mix tapes were songs I knew.  And only about 50% of the musicians/bands were ones I'd heard of.  

+++++

It's funny that I ran into this book, because I was just talking to friends recently about the culture of mix tapes.  This is a culture I know well, since I grew up making mixes for friends, myself, and girls I was into.  I don't know what the kids do these days when they want to share songs.  Do they make ipod playlists?  Over the past 10 years I've moved on to making mix CDs.  I remember when I first heard the soundtrack to Avenue Q, in the mid-2000's, I thought that the story must be somewhat dated, since they have a song called "Mix Tape." That's sooooo 1990, I thought. 



Nevertheless, it's a great song that I now like to include on CD mixes.  As Sheffield points out, the technology might have changed, and even improved, but there's something special about a mix tape.   

+++++

There was also something special about Renee.  In a hundred different ways Rob writes about how special she was, how & why he loved her.  He tells the story of how they met, fell in love, got married.

According to the intarwebz, this is the happy couple.

When she literally dropped dead from a pulmonary embolism, she wasn't even sick. They'd only been married five years.  The ensuing account of Rob's shock, grief, and depression is heartbreaking. As he writes, "After Renee died, I assumed the rest of my life would be just a consolation prize."  It feels that way in the book, too, as he describes day after day of drudgery and pain.  He writes about being a young "widow" and what a strange role that was for him.  

It made me think about my divorce, and what a vastly different experience it must be to lose your spouse to death.  Sheffield addresses this in his book after people try to console him that at least Renee didn't choose to leave him: “Love dies in many different ways, and it's natural for the grass to seem greener on the other side. But it's not a competition; there's plenty of pain to go around.”

The book ends on a happier note, though, as Rob has learned to move on.  There is a quote about the fact that always looking back was preventing him from moving forward.  Or something more profound than that.  I don't have the book anymore so I can't look it up.  I did, however, find a whole webpage of great quotes from the book here:  http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/45332-love-is-a-mix-tape-life-and-loss-one-song-at-a-time

It was there that I re-read this gem from the book, about how there are certain songs he can no longer listen to:

“Sometimes great tunes happen to bad times, and when the bad time is over, not all the tunes get to move on with you."

Funeral, Wedding, Lemurs, Tennis

It's been a hectic several weeks, readers.  I've been yanked from place to place, event to event, with the intensity of a tennis player running down shots from sideline to sideline.

Chicago skyline from the plane

It started when my mom's husband, Ken, went into the hospital with pneumonia.  While there, he had a stroke.  He already had diabetes, alzheimer's, high blood pressure, and a bucket of other ailments.  Just a month earlier he'd had a pacemaker put in.  And he was 86.  He was not doing well, and passed away surrounded by his family on August 4.

It all went down pretty fast, and since I live four hours away from them, I didn't make it to the hospital in time to be one of those surrounding his hospital bed when he expired.  But it sounds like it was a pretty crowded place to be, what with his three daughters, son-in-law, grandson, my mom, two of my siblings, and several of my mom's siblings there.

Luckily, I was able to spell my sisters, who had been keeping Mom company at the hospital for three days, during the next three days of funeral arrangements.  We had to work out all the details of a showing and funeral in Indiana, and a burial service and memorial service in Illinois.  We met with with the funeral director, the most patient and friendly man I've ever encountered, in a four-hour meeting on Sunday and another hour on Monday.  We met with the pastor who did the funeral in Indiana. We called the ministers who would do the memorial service in Illinois.  We coordinated with his daughters.  I've never written down so many phone numbers in my life, trying to get all these people in touch with each other.         

I spent four days at my mom's. One of the jobs I did during that time was to collect pictures from Ken's life to give to the funeral home for a memorial DVD (and to put on their memorial website.) This was a fascinating experience, since I was able to see a glimpse of his life before he came into my family.  He'd already lived a lifetime, 75 years, before I met him.  He was married to his first wife for 40 years, and they had three daughters together, but after she passed away, he met my mom and started over.  It's amazing to think that someone can experience new life & love in their 70's.  Imagine if the people who will be there when you die, the people who will speak at your funeral, only know the version of you when you're 75+ years old? Seeing old pictures of him as a young(er) man was fascinating.

Ken and my mom.  They were only married 10 years, but they made each other very happy.

+++++

It was an emotionally- and physically-draining couple of days, but I didn't have much time to decompress.  The day after the memorial service, I had to drive up to Chicago with my girlfriend, so we could fly to Raleigh, NC, for her cousin's wedding.  A funeral and a wedding in one week.  I think that ratchets up our relationship status, doesn't it?

The wedding ceremony was outside in a flower garden. In North Carolina.  In August.  The officiant (the bride's mother, who was very nervous and clearly hadn't done this sort of thing before) forgot to tell us all to sit down after the bride walked down the grassy aisle, so we had to stand during the entire service.  Mercifully it was a short service-- literally five minutes.  Then we went to an Irish pub in downtown Raleigh for a brunch reception.   

We stayed in Raleigh for a few days after that, visiting the scenic downtown, the historic statehouse, an old plantation, and making stops at the campuses of the three major research universities that make up the "research triangle": Duke, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and NC State.  We argued about whether the students at Duke are too isolated from their urban surroundings and whether the three tall buildings of downtown Raleigh can be called a "skyline."

My position: Yes, it's a skyline.  It's no Chicago, but it's still  a view that defines the city.

One treat of the week was that we discovered the Duke Lemur Center, a research sanctuary that has the world's largest collection of lemurs outside of Madagascar.  Well, we absolutely had to visit the lemurs!  Although you had to make an appointment to see them, as luck would have it, they could accommodate us that very morning.  So we took a tour and saw lots of different kinds of lemurs.  Apparently there are up to 70 different species.  I had no idea.

Ring-Tailed Lemurs: the most awesome of 70 different varieties!

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I was only home from my trip to Raleigh for one day before I left again, this time for a road trip to Cincinnati.  My tennis friends and I had tickets to the Western & Southern Open in Mason, OH, for the second straight year. Since I already wrote about it last year, I won't go into detail about every match and player I saw. We saw a lot of great players: Federer, Djokovic, Murray, Del Potro, the Williams sisters and Bryan brothers, and many more.  It was a good time.

We got to see several lower-profile matches from the front row of an outer court.  Arguably the best seats in the house.  We were spitting distance from some of the best players in the world (but not household names like Federer or Venus.)  At one point, the TV camera pointed right at us, but when I got home I looked on my TiVo to see if they showed us, they hadn't. The closest we came to being on TV was after one of the matches I saw in the front row a green blob next to a red blob next to a black blob.  From knowing where we were sitting and what we were wearing, I could tell that was us.  Those blobs were us on TV!

Can you see us? (Not actual image.)

+++++

When I came home from the tennis tournament, the cats showed their displeasure at my frequent absences by leaving the largest collection of fur and vomit on my carpet I've ever seen.  Welcome home!

The fur and puke corridor

It was nice to have two days in a row at home this weekend to catch up on home stuff.  I'm still way behind on my Facebooking, blogging, emailing, and general intarwebz activity.

Next time I'll try not to schedule a funeral so close to other events.  ("I'm sorry, did my dying interfere with your schedule?")  Because, you know, it's all about me.