Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

MathFest is this week in Boston. I've done a lot of work getting ready for classes beforehand hoping not to be too frenetic when I return. I have wonderful memories of MathFest and the Joint Mathematics Meetings over the decades and so there is a confidence that the time will be well-spent being challenged in the company of friends. One of my university roommates went to MIT for grad school and so between visiting him in the previous millennium and my brother-in-law and his family in a suburb of Boston, I have confidence that I will enjoy Boston, especially outside of its 11 winter months. As always it is a bit hard to focus on the here and now as the logistics of travel (flight schedules, hotel booking, compensation paperwork for the trip) take residence in my mind. I don't really unclench even after all these years until I am unpacked in my hotel room and feel free to explore. I am not as ambulatory as I was when I started my career, both in terms of stamina and in having two...

There is a pretty good reason we frown on people with financial interests in government policy giving money to the people who decide that policy. Primarily because those decisions may not be made on the merits of the choices but because of self-interest, and secondarily because citizens will doubt the wisdom of those choices even if they (occasionally) turn out to be good even with the bribery. One of the disappointments of adulthood was realizing how much white-collar wrongdoing is legal. Many policy makers are elected and the primary mechanishm in my adult years has been legal, through campaign contributions. John McCain was a mix of good and not-so-good intentions; one of his issues was campaign finance reform. He once stated that nothing could ever improve in government without such reform, and he and Russ Feingold passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in 2002 which made things better. It was often criticized by corrupt politicians for not fixing everything because since it mad...

I like building parsers.  For those of you unfamiliar with the word, a parser is a program that interprets an input string, validating that it is of the correct form and extracting data from it when it is.   When I ran my own website for my students, before my university started using professional content management systems, I regularly wrote small data files to describe the behavior of the website and used parsers to read them. Parsing techniques fascinate me. They all start with the notion of a grammar such as I was taught (in simple form) for the English language back in grade school. The language of acceptable input inevitably has structure and grammar seems to be an easy way to describe that structure. A sentence may be a simple noun verb  for example, and a grammar rule for this one kind of sentence would be of the form sentence -> noun verb . For any meaningful language there are many grammar rules (called productions) using nonterminals (names of structu...

Today is the 250'th anniversary of the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence. I do not know of any other national holiday celebrating the reading of a document prepared by a bunch of lawyers; I believe it is one of the many things that makes the US unique. What other day could we celebrate?  Washington fought a war of attrition against the British. Celebrating the conclusion of the Battle of Yorktown would perhaps lead to a discussion of how many years of battle led to it. The Treaty of Paris? More conclusive but, you know, French.. In any event all of my life there have been many celebrations on the day but very very little discussion of what we celebrate. Fireworks, parades. Not much about the freedom from the parts of British rule that are explicitly listed in the Bill of Rights. Not that much about liberty most years, although my memory of the bicentennial fifty years ago seems to include a good deal of discussion of it throughout the year. But, we have Trump ...

Although I often fall short of my own standards I have led a fairly disciplined life. I've tried to keep my body in some kind of reasonable shape. I've acquired skills, studied several academic disciplines, yada yada yada. My leisure activities almost all involve some kind of self-improvement. People who know me sometimes comment that I plan ahead. I don't think that I do much planning. I try to anticipate outcomes that I can foresee and prepare for them, but one thing I've learned over the decades is how unlikely it is that a long-term plan will unfold the way I think it will. Rather I try to anticipate opportunities on my horizon and if I've had success at all it is a measure of my ability to see opportunities, quite often where others don't. For me that is the point of discipline; preparation, both mental and physical, to seize the opportunities that I've been blessed with. They rarely arrive with the skies parting and a dove flying down to the sound of t...

Some years ago, after reading a quote from the classical guitarist Christopher Parkening about being drawn to Christianity as a convert because of his experience with Bach's music, I found out that our university library had a boxed set (many boxes) of all of Bach's music. It took a couple of years but I went through that boxed set disk by disk. I knew of some of Bach's music beforehand; I am a huge fan of his Cello Suites and have many albums of Parkening playing transcriptions for the guitar. I knew going into it that I would not master that huge volume of music; how could I, even if I didn't already have a full life? But I was patient, and disciplined, and after a little more than two years of listening while working in my office I finished. Discipline is the word that appeals to me here; it was with intent from the beginning a spiritual discipline. I had a little familiarity with some of Bach's liturgical music, enjoying a live performance of his Weinachts Orato...

I'm unfazed by a lot of memorials; so many seem to be about remembering the person's name and some very brief reason for remembering them. Some, about famous people, assume you know why to remember the person (I'm looking at you Washington Monument) which seems to miss the point unless the point is a really huge phallic symbol. For me the peak memorial is the Lincoln Memorial, not because of the big seated statue but because of its proximity to inscriptions of the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural address, both classic statements of who we should be as a country. The words have meaning for me and have for most of my life. The inclusion of many more details in the museum underneath the memorial is icing on the cake; the words state a devotion to fundamental decency to all, and are truly inspiring. Others have felt so; Marian Anderson performed there after the Daughters of the American Revolution denied her a venue because of her skin color; MLK's "I Have a...

I am able to foresee the future pretty well about what's going to happen in my vicinity, going out about a half a second.  Further out than that it becomes a matter of subjective estimates of probabilities based on my life experiences. At a certain point in my life I found myself repelled by more and more pundits, for claiming that they knew what was about to happen or could read the minds of people they disagreed with. I just haven't encountered seers or telepaths in my life and assume if they existed they would find a better use for their talents than becoming opinion vendors. I do follow a few pundits; I mostly seek folk who provide context. I think of them more as journalists in that way but their job descriptions often downplay that identity. When folk talk of foreseeing the future they often refer to it in a way that feels disconnected, as if something will happen and nothing we do beforehand is relevant to that happening. Again, that just hasn't been my experience in...

All my life I have been familiar with the concept of a work ethic: a devotion to the successful completion of a set of tasks. My understanding of what that means has evolved based on my experiences but the notion of work ethic makes my life seem to me to be more of a vocation than a set of accidents that happen to me. It wasn't until I was in my thirties that a work colleague, Jim Drummond, introduced me to the notion of a leisure ethic. It clarified for me things I had felt for some time. Leisure, the part of life separate from our work, includes things that strengthen/weaken us, things that heighten/deaden our senses and perspectives, things that lead us to be more/less reflective, the list is endless. What is most important for a leisure ethic is the realization that along many different scales our leisure lifts us up (whatever that means) or helps us to sink (whatever that means). Exercise versus sitting still; seeking new ideas versus reinforcing old assumptions; viewed in the...

Recently a federal judge has pointed out that the Kennnedy Center for the Arts was created as a memorial to JFK, our slain president, and that by law it could not be used to honor any other individual. For most of my lifetime that seemed pretty straight-forward. But our petulant child-who-would-be-king was offended by a building that honored anyone but himself; fired the board governing the Kennedy Center and installed his own minions, who promptly renamed it putting his name in front. Artists performing there joined the chorus of complaints, bookings fell apart, and eventually our child molestor-in-chief ordered the thing closed for two years ("renovations") out of embarassment. John Thune and Mike Johnson, the Republican leaders of the Senate and House, refused to intervene for reasons that honorable people have trouble fathoming but seem to be consequences of their invertebrate nature. So: Joyce Beatty, a House democrat who had been on the fired board, brought suit in fede...

I've attended two commencements in the past eight days; the first was my son's and then yesterday my university had its commencement. University life, of which academics are a part, is a different phase then what preceded it (with some overlap in classes and other activities in secondary schooling but usually with family oversight) and what follows it. Afterward preparation takes a back seat to activity, and socializing required much more effort. When we make life transitions it important to note them and not pretend that they don't happen. It happens with relationships (some of which are long-term), it happens with changes of jobs, it happens with moving. We always hope that the transitions are for the better but there is never any certainty. So we celebrate the transition. Hopefully the celebration eases the transition, brings to the fore all the uncertainties and says that they matter less than the love and support present in your life from your various communities, fami...

Masters in Public Policy to be specific. 

It seems strange to me but I had more patience when I was young. I've heard that it goes the other way and I expected that.  In my youth it gave me an advantage in many discussions---many people who fervently felt things that seemed wrong to me often withered if I let them talk long enough.  But the world has shifted and now we are immersed in media and loud opinions that don't wither but just seem to go on and on and on. One of the differences between being an audience member and a participant in a discussion is the ability of the latter to ask follow-up questions. Loud opinions often fail the most basic standards of fact-checking such as the W's (who, what, where, when, why, how) and gently asking these words at the right moment often stops someone with hateful momentum if they can still hear them. But in the media none of the interrogators seem to ask these questions, permitting folk to talk around issues without ever actually discussing them. So much of discerning a mor...

I am a white male in my sixties as of this writing. I have never had trouble voting, although I have met older folk who were threatened for wanting to vote. Inevitably those souls were in bodies with darker skins. Throughout my lifetime political leaders have tried (with varying degrees of success) to maintain power for themselves and their cohorts by cheating. It has rarely been subtle. Parties extolling law and order strip felons of that citizenship right casually because no one cares that it is unconstitutional, jailed citizens not having much sympathy. Districts are drawn every ten years explicitly to support the ruling party who controls those maps. In my childhood a lot of this came to a head: incredibly brave people risked their lives and livelihoods to say that they were citizens and not second-class ones. As nothing gets better for any group without access to voting, their focus was on getting the vote as a color-blind right of citizenship. There was a time when shame of who w...

In my twenties I tooks some martial arts classes: Judo, Aikido, T'ai Chi Chuan.  My Aikido instructor made a point of telling us students not to offer our opponents handles to make it easier to throw us. I haven't been in a dojo for decades but that piece of advice has stayed with me. I have spent my career involved in the genteel world of campus politics. Outside this bubble conflicts continue over disputed regions, resources, presidents who hate many of our country's citizens based on their gender or skin color.  Very early on I realized that caring about what others think about me gave them handles with which to manipulate me. I'm human and so that constantly comes to mind as I interact with others, in conflicts great and small. I have my pride, more than an abundance of it. The times when I have been able to persevere in pursuit of a goal in the face of resistance and/or active opposition, it has always been when I stop caring about what others think of me. And so I...

I've always felt strongly that for most people their sources of incomes were gods (not their only ones) in their lives, and that how people spend their income is as clear and honest a statement of their values as you can get without being omniscient enough to read someone's heart. The Trump administration is burning money on the war that it launched against Iran; Trump wants to build a monumental arch to himself; he is negotiating with his own IRS to get ten billion dollars in some kind of damages for some leak of his tax records (God forbid we should know anything about the gods he worships, and what countries they may be located in), while funding for federal safety nets is slashed. No one voted for Trump thinking he would be compassionate; the only shock for his voters is thinking that he wouldn't turn on them. So: the leadership of the federal government is in the hands of folk whose values represent the cruelest greed known to humankind. We should change it.

I'm still struggling with how to put into words how I feel about my country committing war crimes and our leader threatening another country with genocide. My old friend (and much better writer) Michael Covington did a good job of it. https://www.covingtoninnovations.com/michael/blog/2604/index.html#x260408

Um, not to be too extreme here, but if anyone thinks that is not totally evil they are a monster. Do not, do not, do not give power to sadists; it does not end well.

I have a wait at the airport for the first leg of my flight home.  It's been a strenuous but satisfying three days at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Section of the Mathematical Assocation of America here in Alabama, at the University of North Alabama in Florence. I had a narrow range of choices for flights arriving on Thursday so I arrived long before my hotel room was ready. I had a chance to drive around the campus a bit in the sunlight which made wandering around by foot later much easier. Thursday night I was a guest of the Executive Committee (the officers of the Section) at their usual dinner meeting the night before the conference begins. There were various reports and discussions. I clarified the bylaws revision process, mostly for the newer folk, that I am leading and asked for a bit of input for presenting the revision at Friday's Business Meeting. I climbed into my hotel bed about 23 hours after I had gotten up out of my bed at home but I spent time with frie...

I've been part of the Southeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America since 1988, so I'm coming up on 40 years soon. After seeing a number of talks by other people I decided that I could do that and so I've given talks at most of the 38 years that I've attended. The Southeastern Section consists of Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. In olden days we included Florida but they broke off long before I joined. In 1994 I was recruited and served a three-year term as NC State Director, responsible for keeping tabs on the math departments in the state and organizing dinner talks throughout the state. I was ambitious and bumped up the dinner talks from once a year to twice a year, allowing us to cover more of a big state. It was then I discovered my superpower of asking people to do hard things that they wanted to do already but just needed a nudge.  I thought I was out but they pulled me back in; I served as Section Webmaster 2003-2010, ...

I meet a retired friend monthly for breakfast. He asked me this morning how I was doing and I said the first thing that came to my mind: it's been a strenuous month. A long-term friend passed away at the beginning of March, someone who had been part of my created family, godmother to my daughter. On Saturday we had the memorial for her; I did a reading which was a comfort as it gave me something to focus on but the experience wiped me for the weekend. I also sang in a concert Sunday, further draining me but also giving me some strength as performing always seems to do. More and more funerals, more and more conversations about loved ones with dementia. As my breakfast companion noted, we used to go to more baptisms than funerals but the balance shifted somewhere along the way. In my youth when I had the knees I was born with I ran long-distance for myself, never as part of a school team but steadily from my teenage years through my twenties. I was never fast but I did keep going. Th...

Nancy has been a part of my family's life for many decades now; we were honored to have her serve as our daughter's Godmother. As with all of her family I was privileged to meet, Nancy was bright and found joy in many different things; it is not surprising to me that she served as a librarian (media coordinator) given the breadth of her knowledge and interest and that she served children in the public schools, given that she had so much love to give that it went out beyond her family to the children of Alamance County. On a whim during mass once during the sharing of peace I flashed a Vulcan salute at her and she returned it without hesitation. Our lives are diminished with her passing but her memory is a blessing and I am grateful for it.

I have flown to conferences for thirty-some years. I have had to deal with a lot of flight cancellations. Sometimes they are my return flights and I am effectively stranded waiting for the next available flight.  This has happened to me again, in Houston, this weekend. We had some nasty weather here last night and as always it's not just the local weather that interferes with flight schedules since the planes are in constant use before I get to board them. With the government shutdown there are still issues with having too few air traffic controllers and from what I've read online that may apply here. I was raised to take pride in my country but we've had several decades of penny-pinching politicians that want to make sure that ordinary people don't have quality infrastructure, and the voters keep putting them into office so that's who we are as a country. Early on rebooking a canceled flight required a lot of phone calls, often dropped just when you thought you wer...

It hasn't actually started yet, that's a little later today. So what is this post about? 1) Traveling grows more difficult with age, primarily in terms of stamina. I do have two artificial knees so there's that as well. 2) I still love seeing new cities. I've been to Houston once before in 1979 for a couple of days on a university band tour so it's nice to be back without a clarinet. 3) I love seeing my tribe en masse. I've made mathematics my career for many many decades and my folk have their own culture and way of looking at life. I anticipate seeing old friends and discussing things without the usual how-do-I-translate-my-enthusiasm-for-an-outsider preoccupation. 4) I live a very structured, disciplined life, by choice. I am greedy in what I hope to accomplish in the time afforded me and never presume that I've got time to burn, knowing more and more folk who do not make it to my age. Work conferences are about the only time when I'm off the clock fo...

From when I was a small child I thought the founders of the US made a good decision in separating the power to declare war (Congress) from the power to execute war (the President as Commander-In-Chief). Who in their right mind would want one person, possibly unstable, to be able to commit a powerful nation to bloodshed? In my lifetime Congress has ceded this power to presidents. They let LBJ commit us to war in Vietnam. They gave George W. Bush carte blanche to do anything he wanted in the "fight against terrorism", a remarkably nebulous phrase to guide our acts of violence toward something constructive. Now, under Republican leadership, Congress just doesn't care any more. Trump and Israel have started bombing Iran. Bombing is cheap (our soldiers don't risk anything on the ground) in terms of public outcry and despite self-serving uses of the word "surgical" by the military regularly kill non-combatants. It is the knee-jerk belligerence we have come to expe...

Tonight is another State of the Union speech by President Trump.  I haven't listened to an SOTU for decades; I never really learn anything from the performance of all involved, with the one party standing up to applaud every sound bite.  Policies that are offered are often forgotten within a week. Aside from the speech it is appropriate for we citizens to consider the state of our union. Our president has publicly and repeatedly separated us into righteous states who support him and enemy states that need to be tamed. FEMA no longer considers every state worthy of support in times of need along these lines. What about our citizens? The economy is in the toilet after Trump's playing with tariffs like children's toys, pretending that they are not taxes and pisssing off our trade partners. Trump and his minions keep telling us both that 1) everything is great and 2) it's all Biden's fault. There are apparently people that believe these two opposing positions at the sam...

One of the skills that Trump and his minions have is for distraction.  A while back there was the push to find evidence that he had used a racial slur starting with "N" used to hurt and harass people during his time on The Apprentice as if that were the only test if he was racist, despite his words and deeds specifically attacking people of color on a regular basis. Ignore this forest, see if you can spot a tree over there. It is that way with his pedophilia. Women have come forward accusing him of raping them (which is not new; over two dozen women have civil suits pending against him for sexual assault that he keeps managing not to have to deal with, the statute of limitations for criminal penalties for some unholy reason having expired) when they were underage, i.e., children. Raping children.  We keep going through the Epstein files (as we should) as if that, that will be the proof. Maybe it will. But maybe we could interview his accusers on the record and press charges b...

I voted in the primary this morning. There were a couple of choices to be made but in most of the races I knew who I wanted based on prior knowledge of the candidates. I had to show a photo ID to vote because of an election law. I have a photo ID because I am plugged into the mainstream; I have a driver's license. Many of the older residents of my state who might wish to vote do not. There are alternative ID's that are accepted and in different states there are filters in place; hunting licenses are good in Texas but not college ID's. To my knowledge no one from any government office is providing transport for the elderly to get them or offering to pay for the ID, which is a filter on folk who aren't very visible to the mainstream. One thing history has taught us is that when we increase the number of citizens who can vote politicians act differently. When only propertied white men could vote, government did not work very well for sharecroppers. When only men could vote...

My university closed its offices today and yesterday because of icy roads, so the title for this post is a misnomer. You really shouldn't trust what I write--- In my youth I would have probably driven in to work anyway, partly because I was a good driver used to driving in PA winters, and partly because if my car broke down I was a pretty good hiker and was always driving near something to walk to. Now I am older with artificial knees and know that I would probably need some assistance if my car broke down.  In this case wisdom and frailty seem to be opposite sides of the same coin. I taught my classes over Zoom and have met with several students that way, so the cost of the shutdown is less, both for me and for the university; if anything I think the accessibility of Zoom has made my university more cautious and more willing to close its campus. So: how the F are the Minnesotans able to protest ICE in full force with worse temperatures? I mean, wow. They decided they didn't wa...

 Sent to Senators Tillis and Budd of NC this morning: My uncle was a police detective in Philadelphia before he retired. He showed his face and his badge to all he talked to on the job; he gave his name and business card to the public he served. This is what law enforcement officials have done in this country as policy until now; what if anything has changed?   The violent thugs serving in ICE are not law enforcement. They do not protect and serve; they attack and refuse to identify themselves. They are a paramilitary force responsible only to President Trump and his minions, who reflexively desecrate the memory of their victims. All dishonor themselves daily, all lack integrity. Immigration is a serious issue. Using brutal thugs to deal with it is like using a chainsaw to remove an appendix. The appendix may need to come out but using a chainsaw is a silly solution that kills people. It is painful to think of all the children incarcerated by ICE. It is unthinkable to all...

I stopped feeling funny when Trump was first elected in November, 2016. While I knew that some folk really wanted him to destroy our nation's freedom, it felt as if he had conned (with so much help from Fox News and other Republican sources) many of our voters.  I still tell jokes and make folk laugh but there has been a difference inside. My wife has noticed it. In a week our classes will start for the Spring semester at my university and I will be more occupied. Right now images of ICE agents seizing a five-year old child to use as bait to seize his parents, of ICE agents holding cans of pepper spray close to observers' faces and firing point blank into their eyes to terrorize them into not filming the agents, of the ICE agent pointing his gun at Renee Good's head and killing her with no justification---only anger, well, they are running non-stop through my head. I know, I know, I know as a white male that police brutality is a fact of life for much of our country, that I...

Nothing has tested our values as a nation in the US as when we decide who can be a citizen. Aside from Native Americans all of us came from elsewhere. Often the decision as to who to bestow privileges upon has been explicitly racist, with the previous generation of immigrants wanting to exclude the next one. It is unpleasant and so we often delegate such decisions to our government and try not to think about it. A humane approach would be to identify who could benefit most from admission and become productive citizens, but bigotry has often triumphed. Social justice has been important to our children, making my wife and I quite proud. My son led pro-immigrant rallies in university and very early on pointed out to me the brutality of ICE during the first Trump administration. This time around ICE has been the defacto armed thugs suppressing freedoms of citizens and non-citizens alike. Masked and without badge or judicial warrant they have been terrorizing city after city, killing and in...

Five years ago I watched in horror as the mob that Trump called to a rally obeyed him and attacked the Capitol, killing police officers, desecrating the building, while Trump withheld forces from dislodging them as they sought to kill Pelosi and Pence. Last November I watched in horror as voters reelected Trump knowing that he had attempted a coup on January 6, 2021.

2025 has had its joys and its horrors. My country has taken the lead in worsening the climate, has increased childhood measles, has ended the rule of law to the point where armed goons grab people off the street if they don't look white enough. Cuts in USAID funding have doomed thousands to die of starvation for no particular reason. Billionaires like Musk decimate the folk in our federal government who actually help people and then just walk away. And yet we resist. I was born in the early 60's, raised fundamentalist, taught about martyrs facing violence and death to stand for what was right. My folks pointed me to Christian martyrs in history while I followed the Freedom Riders  and  other civil rights activists who were doing this in real time. I heard Bernard Lafayette of the SNCC, a surviving Freedom Rider, speak once about how the only folk who made things better were in it for the long haul, and that every loss was an opportunity. I try to have that kind of hope, the ki...

I have been teaching for 37 years now, and I go through many of the same things at the end of the Fall semester each year. There is relief at the completion of a significant task (teaching each of my classes) but there is a good deal of physical and mental weariness and aches. I could sleep for several days straight if not for my sleep disorder. By and large my mind is not very sharp and as an introvert I try to be pleasant with loved ones but am not outgoing at all. With age the feeling of being drained deepens in more and more ways. Of course this is when we have, almost every year, taken a road trip to visit birth families in the Northeast, a full day of driving each way, often involving winter weather far worse than what we are accustomed to in NC. I love my birth family members as well but as with my created family I am weary and not very outgoing. The conversation is rarely about me and my day-to-day life but rather about younger family members and family friends that I do not kn...

It is strange to me remembering how many cars I have owned as I don't think of myself as being as old as I am.  I've moved on to my next one after losing my previous one to a deer collision and renting a car (paid for by my insurance). Because I have an hour commute I typically stow a good amount of gear that I may need during the day in my trunk. Because I often do road trips I stow things that I may need inside my car. While waiting to replace my car I felt the lack of those two storages; not so much that I needed them but more so that I am more materialistic than I like to think and draw security from these things. I do not enjoy shopping and technology has made it possible for me to scout what I want on the internet pretty freely before making a purchase at my own pace without having to interact with other human beings. I am an introvert and while I enjoy the company of others it does drain me. Once my insurance claim had cleared I shopped on Saturday for a commuter car, so...

We have a lot of deer in our area, both near our house and for the first part of my commute.  I first totaled a car hitting one in either 1999 or 2000, and have been very cautious since then about trying to find routes that had fewer of them.  I had a go-to route that seemed to minimize the number of them running across my path. 14 months ago I totaled my car striking the side of a car that had been abandoned on an inner lane on the interstate.  I've had car accidents, none my fault to the best of my knowledge, but I've had them. 17 days ago I struck one on this route that seemed safer. (It ran off so I don't know if it survived; I had time to stomp my brake and hit it at a slower speed.) My car still functioned (I could drive it; no warning lights on the dashboard; both front light bulbs still worked) but one headlight was shattered and the grill and hood took some damage. I filed the claim through my insurance company, had an appointment with a body shop, planned on get...

Something good happened this week; I was informed of it yesterday when a colleague forwarded an email to me announcing it.  The announcement had to do with our university administration committing resources to something that needed doing; the fact that it had not been done had threatened the safety and work environment of dozens of my colleagues. I was clueless about it until in my job as ombudsperson I heard about it from multiple individuals. 95% of my job as ombudsperson (roughly) is focused on the individuals who come to me, brainstorming about their options and weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each. I've been around my university for over 36 years so I've picked up some knowledge of our system and as a mathematician I have a lot of training and experience in problem-solving. I'm not bad at counseling stressed individuals; professional development at ombuds meetings has helped me a lot with that. 5% of my job as ombudsperson (roughly) is managing upward. The...

I've been fond of Monty Python since I was a teenager.  Looking back now at their television and film performances you can see the tropes that they now express regret about (stereotyping women, people of color) and that is off-putting. At the same time their sense of humor was incredibly subversive and many of the concepts are still stunning to folk who experience them from scratch. I feel that way about much of the alternative humor I enjoyed in the 70's: Firesign Theatre, Bob and Ray, and so on. Mixed bag but much of life is that way. I have read many of the writings of the members of Monty Python; they were all Oxbridge graduates and very literate. One point that several of them have made repeatedly has changed how I think of teaching. When they were first cresting in fame and popularity, Monty Python came to America and did many live shows. Occasionally they would do two performances, a matinee and an evening performance, with exactly the same material. One show would bomb,...

I have never served in the military, although family members have, as well as the paramilitary (police). I have been in academia most of my adult life. Because I have an interest in systems and how to make them work better I was drawn early in my career to committee work, and along the way I would have disagreements with folk. As long as I felt comfortable that we shared the same goals and values I have not been bothered much by disagreements over means, and I have frequently learned from them when I listened to someone who was more right than myself. Although I have done a fair amount of public speaking, primarily at faculty meetings as chair of Academic Council one year and chair of our University Curriculum Committee for a decade or so, I have rarely sought to resolve disagreements publicly. My experience, in person and in what I have picked up from listening to others, is that folk are much more defensive in front of a crowd (I know that I have been) and more likely to dig in on th...

Our daughter loves the TV show Leverage, and I've enjoyed it when I've seen it; we were just talking about it over breakfast. It's a redemption tale (about a talented group of lawbreakers who decide to stop powerful people from hurting powerless people), and I've always been fond of those---LA Confidential is probably my favorite. In any event, one of the principles of Leverage is that redemption is ongoing. One of the characters discusses that as a key part of Judaism; as an ignorant Christian I can't speak to that but it resonates with me.  Many folk think of redemption in terms of an apology, which is an instant in time and often does not involve much sacrifice or in any way make right the injury caused by the sin. Easy things don't really count for much in the big scheme. Redemption attempts to make right the injured party or parties' damage but it also attempts to make right the sinner. That in particular is why it is ongoing, because people don't c...

I grew up with a lot of symbols around me; most people do. I had a Statue of Liberty pencil sharpener; I had a miniature Liberty Bell.  Most of the symbols weren't physical objects that I owned but were large things that belonged to the nation. The Lincoln Memorial was always my favorite, in contrast to the Washington monument. The Lincoln Memorial gave priority to Lincoln's words about freedom, particularly freedom for all. The Washington monument is a big phallic symbol. Washington deserved better in my opinion but it's hard to be build a memorial to someone who kept despair at bay for many years of fighting losing battles against the British until his war of attrition paid off and they gave up. How do you build a memorial to someone who refused to be crowned king and then walked away from the presidency in order to ensure that liberty would outlast him? The White House is a symbol; its nickname is the People's House. It is a weird mix of really important offices and ...