Happy Birthday, President Lincoln

OK, it's a bit complicated, but here's the story.  I'm walking to school with Felix the other day and apropos of nothing he asks "What does 'perish' mean?"  ("Uh oh," I thought to myself.)  "It means to die or disappear."  Pause, pause.  "What does it mean to 'perish from the earth'?"  ("Perish from the earth?  Where have I heard that before?")  "Like the dinosaurs, that all of them are dead forever."  This seemed to satisfy him.

On the way home, just me and the Gid, I realized where I'd heard that phrase:  the final lines of the Gettysburg Address.  Allow me:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

And sure enough, this is where he got it.  As you may recall from my posting on our trip to Hawaii, we gave Felix an mp3 player and headphones, noting that "With books you can at least judge them by their covers. With audiobooks, who knows? I hope it's good for you, whatever it is you're listening to so intently."  One of those books was Just a Few Words, Mr. Lincoln, a read-along version, book and CD, I'd borrowed from the library intending to read with him on the trip.  This plan never came to fruition--vacation plans, or rather plans for vacation, rarely do--and having returned home I took back the item.  But it did not occur to me to erase the mp3 file still on his player, and apparently, having listened to Ozma of Oz, some Just So Stories, Amelia Bedelia, and quite a lot else, he arrived at this.

Truth be told, you often can judge a book by its cover, at least if you take the trouble to look at it.  I admit I didn't, at least not closely enough to notice the subtitle, "The Story of the Gettysburg Address."  I picked this up for Felix assuming it contained a few short, humorous tales about Lincoln and about why he was so great.  You know, the "Honest Abe" one about him walking miles to return a few pennies to a short-changed customer, that kind of thing.  It did not occur to me that it would discuss the Battle of Gettysburg--bloodiest battle of that most bloody of wars--or Lincoln's leaving his son's sickbed to travel to that place, or the speech itself, which, though elevating, contains a good deal about death and the dead.

Ah well, there's no undoing it now:  things have a way of sticking with Felix.  Indeed, the only way is forward:  I'm going to make him memorize the Address, that's what I'm going to do, and I'm going to make sure he understands it, too.  Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln, and thank you again for your words.

Libraries I have known and loved

I love no place so much as a library.  I love what they contain (books and readers), I love what they represent (careful storage, all-inclusive organizational schemes, the hush of concentration), I love what they look like (the sole exception being the disaster that dominated what little skyline my hometown boasted), and somehow, while I do not love the masses, I feel a real sense of charity toward all whom I encounter in a library, not least that sexiest of beings, the librarian.

My earliest library-related memory is from elementary school. Here's a picture of that memory:

Ignore the children, I don't know them, but the pit to the left I know very well for I spent most of my first and second grade years there. An adventurous school, influenced I suppose by Montessori, it allowed children of tender years to design their own schedules. This was a problem. More precisely, the fact that they allowed the children to do their designing in pencil, that was a problem. I quickly developed a routine whereby each Monday I would structure my week such that I took a week's worth of library time all on Monday and Tuesday, with less desirable subjects, penmanship in particular, left for the end of the week. On Wednesday morning, eraser in hand, I would reverse my week. One result of this is that my handwriting is totally illegible. Another, I argue, is that I really, really love books.

My hometown contained wonderful public libraries, too, in particular this one, the Jones:

This fine building contained the entire Oz series (which I am now rereading in company with Felix:  what a bizarre world that is!), Flash Gordon serials, Tintin, dozens of volumes of Tom Swift, and so much more, most of which I had to read within its stone walls: my mother being congenitally unable to return a book on time (or ever) and not above stealing her children's library cards, borrowing privileges for the entire family were in a more or less permanent state of suspension.

I was a librarian myself once, or at any rate, I worked in a library.  And not just any library, but one of the world's greatest, the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, core library of the Harvard system, the grand staircase of which is shown here:

At the time this single library contained 4 million volumes held in stacks extending over a dozen or so floors, four of which were deep underground.  On my way to work each day I routinely ignored the doorway shown in the center of the photo (others might not: it leads to a room at the very core of the building which houses one of the world's few complete Gutenberg Bibles), but I never failed to note the mural to the left of that doorway, which I first encountered as a summer school student a few years previous. Here it is more clearly:

Sargent's "Death and Victory," an entrancing horror showing a representative of the Entente trampling a German corpse even while stumbling beneath the load of a couple of Concepts. Few works of art have made such a deep, albeit indefinable, impression on me, and none have been so fatefully influential: I attended Harvard, rather than Stanford, my other great option at the time, because of this mural and the fascination it held for me.  Really.  It was a close call, and the mural decided it.  (I was 19, what do you expect?  As it happens, many years later I was a visiting scholar at Stanford, and I can say with certainty that their libraries, as a system and each taken on its own, do not compare.  On the other hand, they have the sun.)  The mural decided me, too, on getting a job in that library, which job was to keep people out of the stacks:  I examined the IDs of those who tried to get in via the portal to those stacks, separating thereby the Doughboys from the Huns. And occasionally I was tasked with running some errand or another in those stacks.  Holy was that place to me, and my lifetime right to access it is the only benefit of being an alum I treasure.

There have been other libraries since then, of course. I had access to and found excuse to use the LoC when on the Hill. I spent some time in a grad student carol in Olin Library at Cornell. I wrote most of my dissertation in various of several branches of the SF Public Library system, and researched more than a little of it in the NYPL main branch, a great library if ever there was one. However, I made little use of libraries in the Netherlands, which are typically closed stack and not much worth exploring even if you can get by their guardians (the Amsterdam public system just built a lovely new main branch but the collection was and remains poor). The one really notable exception to this last is Johannes's library, which I have spent more time in, or at any rate sitting next to, than any other, but that's a story for another time.

And so we arrive back at the present day when, I am happy to report, I once again have a really fine library at my disposal:

Fairfax Public. A solid collection, both for adults and--of increasing importance these days--kids; functional carols with wireless and outlets; a sundeck; coffee allowed. Most of my (paid) work these days is done from here, one of the very most special privileges in what I am increasingly recognizing is a very privileged life indeed.

Our Hawaaiiaana Vacation

Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.  That could be the motto for the blog's current lapsed state.  Well here's one where the photos speak for themselves, and are captioned to boot.  Oh, and there's a soundtrack.  So, without further ado, our trip to Kaua'i, in pictures.



Seems like a lifetime ago already.

Day 2000...or so

 You may recall our wedding counter:  a gift from Jay, it started counting, day by day, at 5 PM CET, oh, about 2000 days ago, and is guaranteed to run as long as we do.  (Back of same shown above, for reasons that will soon become apparent.)  You may also recall that on previous big round number days we have seized the chance to throw a party.  This time, 2000 that is, we chose instead to commemorate the day by going to a photo studio for a family portrait.

Oh the preparations.  Got sick last week, we all did, and I've been limiting my intake of palliatives on the theory that the worse I felt the sooner it would be over.  Then yesterday, still fighting the cold bare-handed, a rainy gray day out, I took the boy to get his haircut, a 15 minute walk each way, loaded with foul weather gear that, I suppose happily, wasn't needed.  Did get a shot of the ultimate sumo battle--

--at the studio, and the haircut turned out pretty nicely, too, but it was a drag.  The last several days on hyper-alert to ensure the newly-crawling GM didn't bruise his head against something, dog or otherwise, were especially wearing as well.  And all this so we'd be in the studio right when our counter showed the magic 2-0-0-0, rather than, say, after we get back from Hawaii, tan and presumably cheerful, @ day 2020.

Then this morning.  What to wear, rush to prepare, the baby thankfully napping on time but Felix at his most cheerful and obstructive self.  Finally, elder son gives us a break, disappears into the living room and falls silent.  Silent.  Never good.  This time very bad.

Our counter
Placed next to the door so we wouldn't forget it on our way to the studio
Our counter, reading 2000, ready to go
Our counter now reads zero zero zero zero

We got to the studio, we did the shoot, we'll Photoshop in the correct digits.  We've already figured out how to make the counter climb, too, though we don't know the correct dip switch setting to make it a day counter again, rather than a simple timer, which is what it is currently pretending to be.  And we still don't know how Felix zero'd it, though we're pretty sure he won't do it again.  Ever.

I can't say this has been the worst day of our marriage, but at the moment I can't think of a worse one, either.  Here, though, is the one authentic day 2000 shot we got, and kudos to T for insisting we do it while we had the chance.

 Counted or not, tomorrow's another day with the woman I love.

What I do now

I mentioned recently that, having publicly trashed my previous career, I'd be posting soon about what I do do for work.  The short answer is:  I take care of our second-born.  It is the hardest work I have ever done, I don't get sick days, and no, I'm not made of castiron [sic]:

"What has happened?" the Scarecrow asked a sad-looking man with a bushy beard, who wore an apron and was wheeling a baby-carriage along the sidewalk.

"Why, we've had a revolution, your Majesty -- as you ought to know very well," replied the man; "and since you went away the women have been running things to suit themselves. I'm glad you have decided to come back and restore order, for doing housework and minding the children is wearing out the strength of every man in the Emerald City."

"Hm!" said the Scarecrow, thoughtfully. "If it is such hard work as you say, how did the women manage it so easily?"

"I really do not know" replied the man, with a deep sigh. "Perhaps the women are made of castiron."

- L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz

Deep sigh indeed.  (Not that taking care of GM is without its rewards:  I had a decent nap and a more than decent lunch today, neither of which most offices afford.)  But that's only the short answer.

Since returning to the US I've had at best two days per week to do "other" work.  Previous to GM's birth and for some time thereafter I used these precious hours mostly to think about what it was I might like to do for work.  My goal was, and remains, to settle upon something that holds my attention but which does not drag me out of town on a regular, or at least not a frequent, basis.  Along the way I developed what feels like a sincere and sustained interest in "self tracking," as previously blogged.

Since then I've toyed with a variety of approaches to the self tracking question, none of which shows much promise of becoming a profitable endeavor anytime soon.  And since my interest in these matters, however strong, does not equal my dislike of being involved in commercially focused startups (my last one having ended, in my opinion, unhappily, though not unprofitably, earlier this year--yes, I confess I was effectively employed for part of this year, despite what I said above), I've had to put some thought into what else I might like to do along the way.

I was advised, soon after leaving my former consulting career, not to throw the baby out with the bankwater, and there were things I liked about working with those big dumb FIs, and about the sorts of problems those clients offered (even if they didn't care about the solutions).  This, combined with the paucity of actual jobs (as opposed to consulting gigs) available within a reasonable (by my definition) commute of my home, has turned my attention back in that direction, and I believe I have found a niche that retains most of the interest without (hope hope hope) quite so much of the BS of my previous career, namely "big data" consulting.

Big data.  Sounds kind of cool, doesn't it?  It isn't, very, but it could be one day.  In the proverbial and, I recognize, for me hackneyed nutshell, big data refers to the enormous warehouses full of data that many organizations are and have been collecting for years now.  It refers, too, to the potential insights it is believed those warehoused piles could reveal, if only the data could be massaged correctly, if only we knew how and what to ask.  We don't, but perhaps big data consultants do?  Of course we do.

So I've signed a consulting agreement with a shop that specializes in this sort of work and am pleased to report that I have my first project, an actual paying gig, assisting a software company that, happily enough, is located in Central Europe.  No commuting, good rates, interesting work, and a content area I am intent on exploring anyway (since, after all, self tracking boils down to making big data out of small).  I suppose I shouldn't rush to retitle myself, not until I've seen if this sticks, but it's a good start.  Good, but small:  not full time work this, which leaves some days still for the heavy lifting that raising GM entails.

P.S.  Thanks to Reader #2 for making me promise to include pictures with my posts.