Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

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...