What Matters?

A quote from Canadian ecologist Stan Rowe from Wendell Berry's book of essays What Matters?:

"After all, well-educated people, not illiterates, are wrecking the planet.  Schools and universities are morally bankrupt [and] most research is worthless busywork..."

Berry himself continues:

"I would add that some research is worse than worthless; it contributes directly to the wrecking of the planet."

I thought of this when a friend and physics colleague pointed out that...

"...people expect science and technology to solve the current problems, but if you walk the halls of physics programs in the nation and look for what is being done about this," -- This being peak oil, environmental damage, climate change, the population "hockey stick", etc -- "you hear nothing but crickets."

My dissonance is further compounded by a recent blog post of one biologist claiming that the entire field of astrobiology is an irrelevant exercise designed to secure NASA funding.  As I posted a few pointed Facebook comments defending my field of research, the two quotes above came back to me.

Meanwhile, S. is on the farm holding back the flood waters and trying to keep our place "afloat" through a wet spring, while I sit in an apartment in Seattle worried about my veggie starts and baby chicks 800 miles away.

So, what matters?

The "Re" in Research

I was nervous about coming back to the University of Washington.  Much of this was due to the normal nerves of starting a new project with new people, that nervousness that is really the energy you need to perform well and make a contribution.

Some of it was the anxiety of returning to a place you'd loved, a place that, at the time, you never wanted to leave.  Some of it was seeing people again when you knew you weren't at your best the last time you saw them.  Returning to UW felt a bit like I was going home to see family.  You want to see them, tell them you love them, but there is all this...baggage.

Also, when I come back to someplace I love, I am always apprehensive of the changes that inevitably occur.  People leave, restaurants close, new buildings arise.  There is this tension between wanting the place to stay as it was and being excited about what it has become.

But arriving on Monday, it's as if someone had hermetically sealed the Physics and Astronomy Building for the past eight years, only to unearth it for my arrival.  The classrooms and halls are exactly the same, down to the scratches from the handles on the bathroom doors.  And while there are new posters and demonstrations showcased in the halls, nearly all the ones that were there when I was a grad student were still there, along with many I had prepared myself.  The photos on the faculty board were the same, except for the addition of several researchers and postdocs, many of whom were graduate students with me.  Even a faculty member from another institution, visiting on sabbatical, was a postdoc here in 2001.  To top it off, one of my very first undergraduate research students is currently a postdoc in the department.  While many people are missing, there is a critical mass of faculty and former students that it gave me the strange impression that I had never actually left.  Feeling that I suddenly had been transported back in time, I spent much of the Monday and next day sitting in the visitors' office staring out the window, or roaming the halls in search of former colleagues.

On Tuesday afternoon during the Astrobiology seminar (same time, same channel), I noted one faculty member eating the same cup of soup, dozing off after the same number of minutes, watching a talk that could have come right out of the Mars Exploration Program, circa 2001, with somewhat more sophisticated robotics.  A prominent faculty member asked the same clarifying question the grad students already knew the answer to, the graduate students rolled their eyes in exactly the same way I used to, and another gruff researcher lobbed the same softball questions he was famous for in 2001.

This performance was repeated during the Astronomy Seminar on Thursday.  Except for a significant upgrade to the cookie and coffee selection, something in Seattle that is always immune to budget cuts, everything was the same.  I took the same seat I always took, near the aisle behind Emeritus Prof. G., who could snore through the entire seminar and still wake with enough time to ask for clarification on a subtle point we all happened to miss.  The speaker, from a prominent eastern university, still went over time by a number of minutes proportional to the prestige of his institution.

Surprisingly, the mainstay of my time at UW - pizza lunch - has changed the most.  All of the graduate students are new and shiny, the pizza is from a new (and better) pizzeria off the Ave, and the prices have gone up from $2.50 to $2.50 per slice.  They must be paying the grad students more, or instituted some tiered payment plan, because no one was complaining.

Pizza Lunch kicked me out of my timeloop revelry enough to remind me what I'm doing here, and by Friday afternoon I had made significant progress on my work.  The conversation helped during lunch, with everyone asking me about Utah, our farm, and our life, reminding me that I have roots elsewhere, and someplace to call home, that the last eight years were not just a vibrant, beautiful dream, but reality.

Bus Bingo...a new mobility game

Here are rules for a game I am inventing:

1. Disable smart phone or other mobile device.
2. Go for a walk in the city.
3. If you pass a bus stop when the bus arrives, get on the bus.
4. Check the bus number.  The smallest number greater than 0 is the number of stops you stay on this bus.
5. After the prescribed number of stops, get off the bus.
6. Continue your walk.
7. Repeat.

Note: This can become a very expensive game as soon as you are out the Seattle free ride district, so make sure to get a transfer.

Wendell Berry

Tuesday night I took advantage of living in the city to take in a reading by one of our favorite authors and activists, Wendell Berry.  This opportunity came in a moment of serendipity when I downloaded the Seattle Times, saw the blurb in the paper, and decided to go.  After all, this was the whole motivation for staying **right downtown**.  The blurb read

"Sold out, but a few tickets may be available at the door"  

If I read something like that and I was living in the U District, I would not have bothered.  But since it was within walking distance from my apartment, I figured, what the hell.

Leaving work by bus at 4:30 pm straight to Benaroya Hall, I figured I'd grab a ticket if they had one, then stroll back to my place for dinner before the show.  If they didn't have one...well, I'd stroll back to my place for dinner and no show.

When I arrived, a sign out front informed us

"Wendell Berry Ticket Sales and Will Call to take place at this window AT 6PM"

This prompted me (and about 20 other people) to ask the guy selling Seattle Symphony Tickets "Are you selling Wendell Berry tickets now?  Are they sold out?".  He politely pointed to the sign and responded as if this were the first time anyone had ever asked him this question.

"I'm sorry, sir, but those tickets will go on sale at this window at 6 PM".  What a great guy!

I had an hour to kill.  My options: walk back to my place and drop off my stuff or grab a bite out and come back at 6 PM.  As I walked out the door, I noticed some folks who looked suspiciously like Wendell Berry fans walking in.  "Oh no you don't" I thought, and popped back in to secure my place in line.

When 6 PM rolled around, I learned that there would be tickets available for the "Rush Line" at 7:25 PM, which was already forming outside the theatre doors.  I "rushed" over and took the fourth spot in line. 

It dawned on me that I was standing in line for Wendell Berry tickets.  Not Star Wars.  Not U2.  Wendell Berry.  It further occurred to me that on a Tuesday night in Seattle, a self-proclaimed back-to-the-land local food activist had managed to sell out a 2,500 person performance hall.  No other show this week, or on the weekend, managed to do that.  Something tells me the wave of urban agrarianism is swelling.

WB read a number of poems, followed by a story, and a few more poems.  What he called a "prose sandwich".  The story, about Grover and Beulah facing down the sale of the family farm to a developer, had me swearing that I would never let that happen to our neighbors.  We'll outbid the bastards if we have to!

Afterward, he spoke a bit about what it means to be an agrarian activist.  He said there are a lot of smart people leading from the bottom, and that it might be possible for some of the leaders at the top to help as well.  "But I kinda hope they don't get wind of it and mess it up!"

He also introduced me to a new concept called "perennialism" (in lieu of "sustainability").  "In the 200 years of American History, we haven't been able to sustain anything."

Afterward, he was asked questions from the audience.

Q:

"What is the best advice you have for a young farmer?"

A:

"Listen to the old ones"

Q:

"What is the single biggest problem we face?"

A:

...(this one stopped him cold)...

Q:

"What is the second biggest?" (laughter)

A:

(now that I think about it, I don't think he ever answered this one)

Meeting an old friend

I met with C. today
My advisor from graduate school
He is dying, gracefully

He's mobile, but frail and in pain
Yet he remains charming, humorous
Interested in others
Still the conversationalist I recall from years ago

I saw a new side of him
His poetry and art
He's a big Wendell Berry fan
And charitable, working on community projects

Confined to the house
He takes breathtaking photos
Of the Lake from his veranda

He told me, "See, there is life after science"
I get to visit with him again next week.
To return the poetry he lent me
That he wrote

Views from my apartment

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The person you'd like to be...

Whenever S. and I go to southern Utah, she tells me the red rock makes her feel like the person she would like to be.

I have the same reaction to the water of the Puget Sound.  I sit at a Market cafe (my favorite is the Sound View) and my eyes lift up and over the water.  I can hear the seagulls and I can smell the fish from the market.  I feel like someone who is reflective, someone who has the confidence to take a few moments to think about things and contemplate a new idea.  That ever-present push to be someplace else goes away.  I am someone who can take the time to pause for the view or look into store windows, to marvel at a small city park, or take the longer road up the side street just to see where it goes.  It no longer matters so much that everything is on the way to where I need to be, because where I need to be is...right here.

I am not sure if this is the type of person S. becomes when she hits the red rock, but I think it is, or someone very much like it.  I also think this person is not as dependent on place as I once thought.  I become this person when I am near the Puget Sound because it is here that I have always taken the time to be that person.  Since I was 13 and rode the Seattle ferry to Bainbridge in my first outings by myself, to the time I'd take as a grad student to sit in the Market and enjoy the view.  This is the place I have always come to remind myself what it is like to slow down and think, savor, recollect, and enjoy.

The funny thing is, this place could be anywhere, including my own home, if I work to endow it with that same sense of importance, the same reverence and gratitude that I reserve for this place.  Shouldn't our homes be the place we become the person we'd like to be?  Even in Utah...especially in Utah...being able to sit and gaze at Ben Lomond or Mt. Ogden, which can be done from nearly every block in the city.  Letting that vast mountain take your eyes up and over, giving you that sense of calm that you are the type of person who can take a moment to think, to contemplate, and to go out of your way to see something new in your home town.

Much of these thoughts, I think, come from reading Wallace Stegner and his appreciation for all things in the West.  An eloquent essay on Capitol Reef will be followed by an equally thoughtful and moving piece on Salt Lake City.  And you suddenly realize that the only difference between your house and a national park is that you live there.

Some people would love to have a houseboat in Seattle.  Some of those same people would probably love to have a house in the Utah mountains.

Aren't I the lucky one?

Sabbatical Officially Begins Today

I've arrived in Seattle, to start a year of re-awakening and re-envisioning my professional life. I'm here to start a new research project capitalizing on the wealth of data on extrasolar planets. I plan on writing about this to help me document my year-long sabbatical.

To help you and I remember them, here are my goals:

1. Complete new, original research.
2. Write a book proposal.
3. Renew my interest and excitement in teaching and learning.

But at the moment, there is a glassblowing studio down the street that offers CLASSES!  Must focus!  Wait, a class in glassblowing would help with #3.  Hmmmm.

Enough! To help direct my energies, I have set about to secure the necessary components of city life. In the last two hours, I have located:

1. A really good Thai restaurant.

2. A grocery store that sells "food". More on the quotes in a later post.

3. Very hoppy beer. It is the Northwest, after all.

4. Coffee.

Tomorrow morning, I plan on waking early (at 6:05, pony feeding time) to explore the neighborhood before making my way to UW for my first of many scientific meetings.  I plan to walk the 3.8 miles, weather permitting.  I need to do something to make up for the lack of stall mucking and other farm chores I usually do.

This is the strangest transition I've experienced.  This morning, Stacy and I were drinking tea while our four horses basked in the sun, our two dogs wrestled in the grass, our ten chickens rooted for insects, and our 12 baby chicks waited to go outside.  Now, a mere 12 hours later, I am listening a one poor, barking dog that has been left in the apartment all day, and I am completely alone.  No dogs to feed, no ponies to ride, no eggs to collect, no partner to share it with.

There was a time when I really thought city life was for me, but now I am not sure how people can stand it.  Seattle is a good place, far better than most, where people have gardens and go to great lengths to keep their dogs and cats in the city.  But what will I do in the morning?  Maybe I can get a part time job throwing fish in the market.  That is almost like having a farm, right?

This makes me think of S's peeps in Pasadena, who can raise enough food for 4+ people on a 10th of an acre.  Or the fact that the people of Taiwan grow a large fraction of their own produce, in the city.  Right now, there is an empty pot of the veranda of my apartment.  It begs to be filled with something living.  Maybe I'll buy some herbs to grow in it for the month I am here.