Pittsburgh: sunny side up

Breakfast out on the town

Good morning, how many?
Table for four please.

Smoking or non?
[This is still an option in Pittsburgh]
Non.

I’ll take you'ns (Pittsburgh tries hard not to be outdone by y’all) there now. Coffee?
Yes, thanks. Could I have skim milk on the side?

Skim? We don’t have skim. Just regular 2%.
Okay, 2% then. Can you warm it up a little?

Oh gee, I don’t know. I’ll check. You want it warm. Okay, are you ready to order?
I'll have the oatmeal, please.

Just oatmeal?
Yes. Do you have honey?

Honey? I guess so. I’ll check that for you. Be right back.
(comes back with huge jar of honey)

The oatmeal comes with fresh fruit?
Sure: here’s some melon and pineapple chunks for ya.
[is there a worse combination?] Thanks.

Remaining guests to me: if you make one more difficult request, we’re leaving.

What’s so difficult about oatmeal with honey and fresh fruit (that are not pineapple or melon) and a cup of coffee with warm skim milk? I never even considered asking for a latté.

Pittsburgh reconsidered

Are sunsets over a suburban-commercial wasteland worth noting? You decide.

a room with a view? 

Redefining Pittsburgh

Allegheny, Monongahela, Ohio. Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, Max & Erma’s. Eat ‘n Park, King’s, Hoss’ – what do they all have in common? They surround you from all sides, like a fence with too few gates.

Looking out the Hampton Inn window, I’m tempted. Forget the highways, the world looks wintry-nice.

hills and highways 

But once outside, I cannot go anywhere without feeling that I am going to get run down from all directions. There is nowhere to walk. Since when did walking become the riskiest of activities? Not having a place to release some energy makes me too restless to be much good for anyone and so I set out anyway. But I am reminded of yesterday’s sign on the local road: “Watch out for aggressive drivers!” it said. I forge ahead. Surely no one will run me down on purpose. Will they?

I walk thinking how once Pennsylvania had associations for me that were all-Americana: like the picture on the Pennsylvania Dutch cigar box. Like Indian names (Monongahela has to be the coolest word to say out loud). Like cracked bells and Amish buggies. Now it’s more like all-American. Bob Evans for breakfast, Panera for lunch, Chili’s for dinner. The local chains (Eat ‘n Park, King’s, Hoss’) draw the neighborhood crowds (what neighborhood are we in though? A non-neighborhood of hilly suburbs with small brick homes). Increasingly one hears people speaking with the brassy twang of the southern Ohio and West Virginia counties that are not too far away. Pittsburgh, once ethnic, now mixed up, lacking an identity.

I walk and walk, looking for a destination until finally I come across a strip mall and I think I’ve hit rock bottom. The central focus of the little shopping center is a store ("Low Carb Headquarters") where you can buy all Atkins stuff. Gift certificates too. I think back to a blogger’s offense when he was told that Slender Fare might provide some good menu options. Is giving an Atkins gift certificate going to make you popular with anyone?

...and t-shirts too, with pictures of juicy hamburgers... 

I head back to the room with the view of the Turnpike and hills. Sometimes the walk isn’t worth the effort.

Ocean’s contribution to scientific argument

Now that Larry Summers opened the door for the possibility of evaluating innate ability based on scientific knowledge gained from observing the behavior of one’s little daughter (or those in one’s immediate surroundings), I felt empowered to do the same. If his girl was girlish because she called her little trucks a daddy and a baby truck, I think I can offer sensible anecdotal evidence as well that would contribute to the debate.

For instance, this afternoon, I watched the captains of both my flights (to Chicago and then to Pittsburgh), to see if they would take out a bottle to feed the engines formula. It didn’t happen. Moreover, they both landed the planes safely, without so much as a bounce and a shudder, and so I concluded that my two women pilots were the exception to the Summers rule.

I did note that the first pilot sped our little plane to the gate and I wondered if maybe she missed her calling as a speed car racer. Maybe as a next career.

Pittsburgh: always looking back

I have been going to Pittsburgh just about every year since 1976 (a little less frequently in recent years). The city has transformed itself, I know. The downtown area, the neighborhoods surrounding Carnegie Mellon and Pitt, they’ve become urban-presentable, in ways that Milwaukeeans can only dream about (sorry – not enough home-state pride, I know).

But that first visit, now almost 30 years ago, was the one that defined the city for me and I haven’t been able to shake it. I can’t think where else I am so unmoved to make adjustments over time. Pittsburgh is now as it was introduced to me then, by members of the family I’d married into.

Today as I pack my bag to catch a flight to this steely city, I’m thinking about that first encounter with it.

I always thought it was like no other American city (I am making no value judgment here). It’s so hilly! And so many rivers, hemming it in, tightly, from all sides.

But it is because I learned about it from people who had lived for several generations in the once-tight ethnic communities, that I see it from the expanse of time. Pittsburgh postcards in my head show steel mills, Kennywood (the amusement park where I was told you took *your girl* on a Saturday evening), the Incline for a panoramic view, and the river boat rides for polka dancing. I know where you once went to get Italian cookies and Jewish breads, where the Croatian clubs were and what took place within. Sure, I visited the Warhol Museum and the Pitt International rooms. But the city is really, for me, the city of postwar times, when young adults were making up their future within its blocks.

Maybe each generation, ours included, has a fascination with the lives of people who entered adulthood just before we were born. Maybe that’s why I’m stuck on examining so minutely the years immediately after the war (just prior to my birth), on both sides of the ocean.

Have you ever flown into the sunset in the same instant that your family flies into the sunrise?

One could, I suppose, draw great symbolism from this, but I haven't quite figured out what it is. As I was booking my return flight to Madison for Monday and a return flight for other family members living on the east coast on that same date, I came up with the most unusual reservation: same airline (United), same point of departure (Pittsburgh), same time (5:45), opposite destinations (Chicago and New York).

Do the two planes share a runway and pass each other at take off? Should I wave?

Some weeks are a breeze; some are not.

That this week has tested the “difficult” to “impossible” continuum is an understatement. That I am unscathed toward its end is attributable entirely to those of you who have ridden with me, chatted with me (on email or otherwise) late and early, and allowed me to keep chipper and sane as I navigated endless hurdles that cropped up. Thank you thank you.

Light posting ahead (Saturday through Monday) as I travel to attend to business elsewhere. I will have my computer with me, but be patient: Ocean will be surfacing here and there, as time and circumstances permit.

An unusual beginning to an Ocean day: a poem by Robert Frost

(bold emphases are my own)

An Old Man’s Winter Night

All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him—at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off;—and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man—one man—can’t fill a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It’s thus he does it of a winter night.

Poles serve as examples of complete incomprehensibility

I am at the gym. I have the usual props: cell phone, book, earphones. Some combination of the above keeps me from focusing on the boring repetitions. Then I hear it: clear, lucid, beautifully articulate, accent-free Polish. It’s coming from the TV screen. Have I finally cracked my noodle and plunged into the deep dark tunnel of insanity, for real?

Why no. It is a commercial for EdwardJones financial consultants. The beautifully articulate Polish speaking gentleman serves as an illustration of someone you DON’T want for a financial wizard: he is the incomprehensible one, the Person To Avoid. Apparently EdwardJones doesn’t have any of THOSE. EdwardJones, you and I are never doing business. Ever.

Where politics should never obfuscate, tarnish or in any way take away from a commemorative event

Sorry, Ocean readers, but a somber note is in order.

Today marks the 60th Anniversary of the liberation of Oswiecim (Auschwitz). Vice President Cheney is attending a commemorative ceremony in Poland. As are a number of world leaders. And, please let’s not forget the survivors. And a handful of men who once participated in the liberation of the death camp.

This was the wrong time to make a speech about a commitment to fighting tyranny around the world – a very thinly veiled allusion to a certain inaugural speech of a few days back.

Typical

5:30 Wednesday: seminar ends.
8:00 Wednesday: make my way home, scramble eggs.
8:30 Wednesday : make a whole batch of calls that needed to be made.
(email and post comments on blogs throughout)
10:00 Wednesday: turn on The Daily Show.
10:15 Wednesday: feel guilty, turn off the Daily Show.
10:30 Wednesday: take out lecture notes for next day’s class, start playing with them.
Midnight: decide I need to rewrite some of the conflict of laws and full faith and credit issues – after a brief nap.
2:30 Thursday: brief nap was too long. Oh well. Plow ahead.
5:30 Thursday: sufficiently happy with lecture that I take time to write blog post.
6:30 Thursday: break for granola and laté .
7:00 Thursday: tweak lecture more (I could do this forever).
8:00 Thursday: I tweaked too long. I rush to shower, get ready and fly out the door.
8:25 Thursday: pick up Ann.
8:30 Thursday: pick up Tonya. (Both are ready and waiting – thank you!)
8:35 Thursday: realization floods me: I did not “send” the lecture to my office computer!
8:45 Thursday: drop off Tonya and Ann.
8:46 Thursday: begin breaking speed limits to get home.
9:05 Thursday: press “Send” on my computer and wonder if I am really a sane person.
9:20 Thursday: drive into Grainger garage.
9:27 Thursday: Turn on office computer, print out 9 single-spaced pages of lecture notes, pick up important phone call.
9:30 Thursday: Begin teaching.
11:00 Thursday: collapse.

Various thoughts about eating good food

Another night of work, another night of trying to concentrate while my mind wanders. This time it keeps heading back to the topic of food: good food v. bad food (working through cases makes one think in terms of one thing versus another).

At McDonald's

One of the headlines from yesterday’s press was about the law suit filed against McDonald’s, alleging that through misleading advertising, it lured children to its golden arches and caused them to become fat. I do think that McDonald’s (unfairly) gets the sympathy vote because of these news stories, which indeed make the plaintiffs appear nothing short of ridiculous. I remember when the press paraded the hot-coffee case some years back as an example of our uncontrollable desire to push responsibility onto another. The facts of that case (which were actually extremely sympathetic to the plaintiff) as well as the procedural details were pushed aside. I wonder if this will be a rerun. I myself know nothing about the pleadings or allegations (beyond the scant info relayed in the news) and still I’m ready to say that the suit sounds ridiculous. In fact, I felt sorry for the McDonald's employees who were shown as background for the news clip on the law suit. Hang in there! I wanted to tell them. You’re not making kids fat! Keep flipping those patties! This from a person who absolutely hates McDonald’s. Imagine the sentiments of those who actually buy food there. I wouldn’t be surprised if McDonald’s is actually behind the suits, thinking that spending a few million on settlements is worth the free publicity and sympathy that it generates for the big M. The kiddies are probably sons and daughters of big-time investors in the fast food mega-chain. (One spins fantastic tales of this nature late at night).

Organic brown free range

Still another food thought – this one came to me just moments ago. Is it worth spending more for good quality food products? The answer is that, in the long run, you save. For example, I have been buying organic brown eggs. They are so good that each night this week I have happily cracked them into the frying pan without even considering other food options. Had they been just mediocre, I would have cooked something else, pricier perhaps. I came home very late last night and nothing, nothing could have pleased me more than that simple preparation of scrambled eggs. Add a salad, some Margaret’s Artisan rosemary flatbread*, a glass of white wine – it’s a feast.

Dessert across the ocean brought to you by Ocean

Finally, I got an email buoying my spirits this morning. The crepes and strawberries were tried all the way in Japan with great success and joy. Ocean has provided a service to another. Yesssss!

* If you haven’t sampled it I highly recommend that you rush to Whole Foods and give it a try. Packages are sold next to the meat section. I’m reading the description now: passionately made using the finest all natural ingredients and 100% olive oil from a personal recipe…

Where Ocean yet again provides an invaluable service to the community by encouraging readers to take part in scientific experiments

I’ve heard many a complaint about the difficulties of pushing forward with research projects. One recent blogger sadly admits that even after having her data and interviews before her, the task of moving ahead and writing anything sensible about such findings sometimes seems daunting.

But today I’ve come to appreciate that for many scientists, the difficulties really begin with the collection of data. For instance, over at Mind Hacks (via boingboing), I read about the problems faced by those engaged in developing a neuroscience of sex. Imagine this challenge: how do you study the brain of a male right smack at the “peak” of his sexual climax (to better understand its activity as it relates to an orgasm)? Is it reasonable to expect that a man can perform while irradiated, undergoing a scan, in a room full of neuroscientists, and in an exact 50 second window of time? The article reports that 8 out of 11 men were able to oblige, all thanks to the women who were at their… side (they had multiple practice sessions beforehand).

As Ocean is very much pro-science, I want to note here that the researchers are looking for more potential subjects. True, this particular project seems to be based in Holland, but I’m sure you could call our own research-focused UW Dept. of Neurology and tell them you’d like to volunteer your sexual services for purposes of scientific research. I’m sure you’d get an appointment right away. (The Q is whether they’d release you after you showed up.)

How do you teach a two-hour seminar when your eye is twitching like mad?

It started before I tuned in to the presidential press conference this morning, I swear! Yes, stress does do that to a person’s eye, yes, I’m not the first to have a fluttering eyelid. Still, every time I look at my notes on international adoption it kicks up and goes into high-speed. Do professors call in sick for reasons of a sudden twitch of the eye? I wont. But if it doesn’t go away, I may have to wear a black badge. Looking like a pirate is preferable than looking like I am constantly, surreptitiously winking at the person before me.

The moon and bloggers were not aligned last night

It may have been the moon, it may have been the demands of the workplace, but all last night I was buoyed by emails from blogger friends who, like me, could not, would not sleep. Check out my Inbox. Four bloggers, helping each other through the night.