Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

My Saturday morning was free so I went and voted at the Carrboro Town Hall poll. Having the poll open at 8 AM made it very convenient. The poll was staffed by volunteers from my community, my neighbors. The woman who checked my name and address and printed out my ballot recognized my name and introduced herself as the mother of a friend of my son's from high school. Representatives from the local Democratic and Republican parties were there to supervise the process. Voting consisted of my taking a clearly labeled Scantron sheet and filling in the ovals with a pen. I fed my ballot to a scanner, which confirmed that my ballot had been read and stored my ballot in case of a recount.  I arrived when the poll opened, with five of my neighbors ahead of me. I left seven minutes later. Annually at election time voters in the poorer areas of Durham, a half hour away, stand in line for hours. It is a regular and predictable news story. Sometimes because they come straight from work they are ...

I attended a meeting yesterday of the North Carolina Ombuds. I have often missed in-person meetings but my class schedule permitted me to be off campus for it this time which was nice. I know many of the folk there by face since I've been doing this for over four years. Our meetings are advertised as a chance for us to talk about things that we can't talk about in our home institutions without violating confidentiality or appearing unsure where certainty is expected. As we have both educational and government ombuds at these meetings as well as full-time versus part-time ombuds (such as myself) it was a mix of topics, some relevant, some less so. It is a comfort to be among people willing to do good in messy situations, acknowledging our imperfections and striving to do better. Realistic or not our students often expect us teachers to be fully-formed, even though I am keenly aware when I improve in some area with the passage of time. The conflict resolution in the title refers ...

I am not a scholar of American governance, but from what I have read about the early years of our government the House was viewed as being more authentically representative of the will of the people than the Senate or the two other branches of government. Their powers were proscribed accordingly in the Constitution, with the Speaker of the House being after the Vice President in the line of succession. Some time ago I realized that in my lifetime the House no longer represented the people authentically. A state would be divided in one proportion between registered Democrats and Republicans and their House seats would have a very different proportion. The state legislatures often showed the same imbalance. A simple and thus incomplete answer has to do with the drawing of districts by the party in power every ten years. Technology has advanced to allow the drawing of districts with incredible precision to lead to maximum representation for those doing the drawing. Districts lack compactn...

At various points in my career I have struggled with distractions because of ongoing family issues. I love the members of my family and so when they are in pain it occupies a significant chunk of my mental real estate. The first time I couldn't avoid the issue was the premature birth of our first child, who arrived 6.5 weeks early. I was department chair at the time and I did what I could to teach my classes and enable my department members to do their job for the 23 days he spent in the neonatal intensive care unit when I was only sleeping a few hours each night. It was obvious to all around me what I was going through and my loved ones and friends all worked to lighten my load. Since then I have had other such issues, sometimes obvious (the death of my father) and often less obvious. I am introverted and do not easily go out of my way to share what I am going through or ask for help. I have a close relative right now whose dementia has taken a turn for the worse. I am physically ...

Sometime this past decade I decided that I had more than enough things. When folk ask me what I want for a birthday or Christmas present I've asked for experiences instead.  The experience can be a nice quiet inexpensive meal together; for special gifts I've asked for tickets to concerts. I look around at all the things that I have and somehow "have" doesn't seem to be the right word. 90% of it all seems to be things I have accumulated but no longer or rarely use. These objects all have a pull on me, the memory of their past usefulness. Many times those memories are mundane and not part of who I am. I try to divest when I can. As I do I find myself loathe to part with some things, even if I no longer use them and know that in donation there is a chance that someone else could. There is the real sore spot; some complacent greed I have for the blessings God has given me in stewardship. I work at it, for this is not who I want to be but who I have let myself become t...

Some things are fundamentally different now than during the first half of my life. Much of what I learned about the structure of our federal government seems no longer to be useful. One thing that I knew was that Congress had the power of the purse-strings. While the Executive Branch could spend the revenue, it was Congress who passed the budget, and the President signed it. Checks and balances, fights over priorities, compromises. It was one of the major tasks of the government, to fund itself and consequently fund the services it provides to the country and its citizens, and they took it seriously and acted promptly. I think we can thank Newt Gingrich for changing that. He is a point on a trajectory but I've learned to never underestimate the power of leaders to get large numbers of people to do evil things. He came to power as Speaker of the House by encouraging new legislators to speak of their opponents as traitors, distributing lists of phrases to use when speaking of the Dem...

I occasionally have drug flashbacks. I have never used illegal substances but I knew folk as an undergraduate who did, and sometimes I have memories of them come back unbidden. In particular I do remember a friend (we were both movie fanatics and frequently saw each other at showings on campus) who tried LSD and was not quite the same afterward. I had friends who encouraged me to try things. 99% of the time it was alcohol, and since I had an alcoholic uncle who used to beat my cousins I wasn't enthusiastic about going that route. Occasionally it was marijuana but since I used to be an asthmatic as a child I had no interest at all in inhaling any kind of smoke into my lungs. On rare occasions I would be encouraged to try psychedelics. I was small and uncoordinated growing up and I never prized my appearance or athletic ability but my mind seemed to work well enough to let me achieve things that made me proud. I never wanted to mess with that. The folk that encouraged me all claimed ...

The week has gone by swiftly. I don't believe there were many ad hoc things on my calendar, but it does feel a bit like a blur. This is part of my job and my lifestyle, at least during the academic year. I put a lot of thought and effort into my classes and so my time at work is pretty nonstop. I believe that I am better about being present with my family (mostly my wife now that we are empty-nesters) than I have been in past years, which means that overall I have less time for introspection, for contemplation. I have the summers to balance the rhythm out, and to a certain extent when I don't teach during our January term also a long mid-year break as well. There are more strenuous jobs and I have no complaints. I am someone who is an introvert and does value having time to hear my thoughts. I've made my bargains with the world around me that those moments of reflection are sporadic. Time stands still in them, almost perversely given the speed of the rest of my life. I miss...

I am of an age now where many of my peers have lost one or both parents. Some of them have lost them gradually, to the ravages of cancer, of Alzheimer's, etc.  I have been in that position with respect to one of my parents for a little while with respect to dementia, and the illness has progressed in recent weeks. My siblings who live closest are doing all the work; I try to provide support from a distance with weekly conference calls with them as well as frequent calls to my parent. There will be a big change shortly in the level of care in the facility seeing to my parent's needs as the dementia continues to progress. Phone calls are filled with long silences; letters and emails have long gone unread and I am a nine hour drive away, so I visit when I can. Having this piecemeal loss of a parent has made me reflect a good deal on what makes me me, and what would remain if I suffered memory or cognitive loss. It's probably common for folk in academia to identify their self, ...

I've spent a good amount of my adult life trying to grow out of biases I learned when young. Some are really obvious---being completely open to people of color, to all on the gender spectrum, to folk of all ages. Completely open to me means not limiting my expectations or willingness to interact with someone beforehand. I do have some biases that I want to keep. Maybe I need a different word for biases? Something that sounds more intentional? I don't have much respect for folk who put more than twice as much effort into complaining as they do into making things better. That lack of respect biases how I view them, whether I avoid interacting with them or choose to offer opportunities to other people. I've worked in groups long enough to know how much a whiner can degrade team performance, and I will live a more productive life by not being part of such teams. I will give a second hearing, a third hearing, additional chances over and over again to folk who are working hard. I...

The first (partial) week of classes concludes today. This term I am teaching three classes with a small total number of students (a blessing for grading) but a lot of contact hours; two of the sections are Multivariable Calculus which has so much coherent content that it meets four times a week.  My first grading will begin on Tuesday of next week and my first couple of weeks of lesson plans are already mapped out and yet I haven't had much disposable time this week. Students keep talking to me. This feels weird and not just because of the summer months when it was quiet in my office building. In the Spring I was not successful in encouraging students to come by for assistance; attendance was also poor. The idea of physically being somewhere for academic reasons has become more difficult for the COVID generation, one of the ways the stress of the pandemic played out. (I have not done a research study but this seems to be the consensus of the faculty I have talked to, so I am willin...

Jack Smith's indictments of Trump have focused on Trump alone, mostly. Fanni Willis's indictment included dozens of Trump toadies, including my namesake who was willing to help overturn the election if he would be made Attorney General. My name has been in the news off and on of a while now since the attempted insurrection but now I get to see it daily.  I've had namesakes my entire life and so I don't feel particular ownership of my name. I have a colleague at work sharing my name and emails; the vast majority seem to be wanted by bill collectors, just judging from my experience. I don't think of my children as perpetuating a heritage tied to my family name. They will establish their own heritage and in rearing them I helped in the beginning but that's not really determinate.  If I had to change my name (Witness Protection Program, whatever) I would not stop being me and would not miss it much.

For the longest time I've articulated one phobia that I've had (claustrophobia) although I have other stressors on that spectrum. I avoid window seats on planes because the aisle is the most comfortable location for me for just that reason. I am able to spend almost all of my life without it being triggered (I am not an astronaut, etc.). This past summer I went back to my current yoga instructor and took private lessons to help me to assimilate my knee replacement and how it has affected my strength and flexibility. (I did this once before, right after my knee surgery.) Many of the postures were part of an arc of aging and putting weight on; I am starting from a pretty good place in my twenties and still profit from that investment of time. Unfortunately some of the balance postures triggered something akin to a panic attack:  heart pounding uncontrollably, sweat dripping off my face, etc.  I am contemplative by nature and self-absorbed to the nth degree, so during the closing...

MathFest is an annual mathematics conference, usually held in the first (partial) week of August by the Mathematical Association of America. I just returned from this year's MathFest in Tampa.  For about a decade I attended both it and the Joint Mathematics Meetings in January (which I had begun attending once I was a full-time faculty member) until the MAA pulled out of the JMM over budgeting disputes which were legitimate but too thorny to go into here. Having had the overlap I do have a sense of the difference between the two events, although MathFest has explicitly taken on some of the programming for the MAA (such as award ceremonies) from the JMM.  MathFest always seemed a bit more informal. During the overlap it seemed to always be held in smaller cities than the JMM (such has Madison, WI, Hartford, CT, and Portland, OR) but since the split we have been going to more major cities. Much of the joy for me and from others I have talked with about MathFest is the networking...

Some shallow reflections on my most recent trip to Washington DC. The public heritage (memorials, museums, mall) are nicely set up for a tourist. The hours were accessible and the trains served us very well. I do not like memorials that are all about look-at-me, such as the Washington and Jefferson Memorials. I love the Lincoln Memorial because in addition to the (huge) statue the memorial was about his views on slavery in a land that prizes freedom. At 61 years of age, getting around is nontrivial, particularly in the summer sun. We used Lyft much more than I would have in my younger and poorer days. It is wonderful being surrounded by folk speaking an array of languages. Our heritage draws people from other places and we should cherish not just the marble but the principles that it memorializes for that is in large part what draws others to us. DuPont Circle has really nice restaurants. I have been mostly to that area on MAA (Mathematical Association of America) business, for confere...

My wife and I will take a trip next week to DC to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary (which will occur in October when I am busy with my classes). I went to DC with my marching band once in high school to play for the president at some event that I have long-since forgotten. Not surprisingly the president was called away to deal the Shah of Iran coming to the US for exile but we played anyway. I do remember visiting the Air and Space museum but the rest of the trip is lost in a hazy memory. I've been to DC a handful of times since then professionally. Five times I've gone for conferences, once for a training workshop for new mathematics department chairs, and once as webmaster for the Mathematical Association of America's Southeastern Section for a focus group on the MAA's website. I've enjoyed visiting the Asian Art collection of the Smithsonian and returned there each time. One time I was at a conference at the same time my son was at a university student conf...

I've been taking yoga classes off and on since I was in graduate school. I have a really good teacher now in Durham; my wife and I faithfully went to classes in her studio until our kids arrived and our lives became less controlled. Now we are empty-nesters but are careful re COVID (I'm high-risk and my wife works in a hospital geriatric ward) so the prospect of working out together in a crowded studio even with masks isn't appealing. I also have a prosthetic knee which is a hindrance for many yoga activities. A few months after my surgery back in the summer of 2021 I took private lessons from our teacher specifically addressing flexibility and strength issues for that knee. My school year feels very full with my hour commute each way and I stopped with the beginning of the academic year. Last summer it did not seem like an issue but this summer I have started again with the private lessons. Yoga attracted me in and of itself because of the discipline and mental and physica...

The SCOTUS decision today banning race-based admissions at Harvard and UNC will enforce class boundaries for years to come as affirmative action at other institutions cease. My university (Elon) does not admit individual students, it admits a class. It would diminish the learning experience if they all majored in math, were from Delaware, were Catholic, ... It is in the best interests of educating all students to admit a diverse class. Race-based preferences are part of that. What SCOTUS did not address were legacy admissions, which serve as affirmative action for the status quo, i.e. mostly white applicants. The hypocrisy is staggering.

A large part of our family visit to the Northeast this past week has been spent with loved ones who need care. This has been hard on them; they have been role models of caring for others and the shift from offering to needing assistance is hard on the ego. I have begun that transition and I already see in myself that struggle. Two things are limiting me currently. Firstly, my sleep disorder renders me very groggy at the end of the day. Unless I work hard (ingest caffeinated beverages, splash my face with cold water, etc.) I am not much help then. Secondly my prosthetic knee has been a godsend but it is not the knee I was born with; stairs will be a difficulty for me the rest of my life. It was shocking to me how little help I was moving my daughter into her second floor apartment. During the day I try offer my help freely and I'm still not too bad for carrying things on level terrain, such as grocery shopping and unloading, etc. But if God grants me a long life more and more will n...

By virtue of living 400-500 miles away from family my wife and I (and later our children) have been driving back and forth on Interstate 95 for decades. We have a process when it comes to packing the car, knowing which rest stops work well, where to expect bumper-to-bumper traffic. Separately I have been driving to regional conferences in the Southeast during my career, often a half day of driving. I am pretty comfortable on the highway with podcasts or, if I fear falling asleep, music that I enjoy singing along with. Travel is tiring but most good things are. I enjoy the sense of movement, seeing new types of scenery, etc. Sometimes things go wrong but we've been blessed that they've never gone too wrong.

We will be taking a road trip next week so we celebrated Father's Day a week early yesterday. My father has been gone since 2007. I miss him daily and try to emulate the many good qualities he showed me. One in particular has been on my mind as long as I've been old enough to perceive it. Because we led very different lives, because I had opportunities he lacked, we had very different life experiences. He did not understand much of academia or what I did for a living, but he was happy that what I did made me happy. I am a curious person and so when I don't understand something there is always a tension that I should with effort understand it better. My children's lives now are in many ways to me as mine was to my father; I don't understand many of their day-to-day events and opportunities, pressures and causes as well as I would like.  The one thing that I consciously strive for with them is to take joy in their joy and be open to the understanding of their joy if a...

I have always been a fan of memoir, although I am a bit fussy as to what I enjoy. My current favorites are Michael Palin's three volumes and those of Alec Guinness. Humility, actual true humility---accepting with open eyes one's strengths and weaknesses---is a-if-not-the major factor of what I look for. Truly great and interesting people have depth to them, have learned from their mistakes, have accepted and fought against all the best of things. Memoirs by politicians are the opposite---the need to be right in retrospect at all times feels so desperate and petty to me. I find articulation to be a form of meditation and therapy, clarifying for me who I am in terms of what I care about. With trusted friends good non-casual conversations bring that out in me, but as an introvert I often turn to journaling. Well-written memoirs serve as a template for me. I have been journaling since I went away to university. I finished high school a year early and felt only secure about my acade...

I try to be friendly and so my reflex around most holidays is to wish casual acquaintances a happy holiday. (I'm a bit more selective with religious holidays as appropriate.)  Some holidays don't work with happy; Memorial Day is one of them. We celebrate the sacrifice of members of our military who gave their life in uniform on Memorial Day, which certainly isn't something to be happy about. We do seek to acknowledge and encourage virtue. As much as I find war abhorrent I try to limit my criticism to those making decisions and not those who carry them out in an honorable fashion. But I am dearly reminded at times like this how isolated I am from the costs of combat. I do not know anyone currently enlisted in the military, only ROTC students and members of previous generations.  9/11 was the exception as was 12/7/1941 where many folk enrolled after our country was attacked. The rule with the all-volunteer military seems to be having soldiers fight for us who are worse off th...

https://www.covingtoninnovations.com/michael/blog/2305/index.html#x230520  

I am currently reading All the King's Men  by Robert Penn Warren. I've seen praise for this work for most of my adult life and finally got around to getting it out of the library. The writing is incredibly textured and so it is slow going. I have seen the 1949 movie version with Broderick Crawford several times (and enjoyed it) but in 1949 movie adaptations were not known for their fidelity to their source material so I'm keeping my mind open re the plot. Another reason that it is slow going is that I am stopped short every time I see what is euphemistically referred to as the N-word. It is painful to see in print. The dialogue is set in the deep South in the early 20th century so it is truthful but that makes it more painful, not less. I grew up in a Philadelphia suburb that struggled with integration. When the first family of color moved into my neighborhood someone greeted them by spray-painting "Niggers go home" on a stone wall facing their house. I was humili...

One of my mentors is going through some hard times; he has become a caregiver for the immediate future and other family members of his are suffering in other ways. Aside from the immediate stress I think there is a deeper stress; he has spent most of his life supporting other folk and now with age and dwindling stamina and strength he needs support to be a good caregiver from others in ways he is not used to. In my own life it has been incredibly difficult for me to ask for help; I am much more comfortable by inclination and good fortune with helping others. And yet: I have had surgeries that required the care and support of others for weeks.  It has been very difficult for me. Pride is a two-sided coin. It is a strength in terms of holding myself to a high standard that has helped me to succeed in many ways but it is a weakness when as we all must do at some points I need to ask for assistance. My mentor was there for me in two very traumatic life-changing events and I am trying t...

In 2016, before the election, a recording of Donald Trump bragging about being able to grab women by their crotch ("pussy") because he was a celebrity was leaked. I was naive enough to think that it would sink his bid and clearly I was wrong. It came up in the first debate between him and Clinton, where he discounted it as "just locker room talk". That has stuck in my craw over the years. What kind of man brags about sexually assaulting women? In my experience people brag about things that they think will make them look better. Does Trump revere men who assault women? That tape has now been a key part of E. Jean Carroll's civil lawsuit against Trump. The fact that it is a civil and not criminal suit is sad, but Carroll did not report her rape at the time (1996) because she didn't think she would be believed and already at that time Trump had an army of lawyers with a reputation for viciousness. In any event the NY state legislature passed a one-time waiver f...

More than a day actually. My daughter moved into her first apartment this weekend along with roommates from her student days. My wife and I are back to being empty-nesters. In my own life the move into my first-year university dorm was the real break with my family; every other stay with my family was a temporary surrendering of autonomy. I face her departure that way, that moving her into her first university dorm was the real change in our roles. Like many of her peers she stayed with us after graduation while she built up her bank account as is prudent. I love my children but I am blessed with also liking them. That is not a given but they are interesting people who are good company, caring about important things and yet playful at the same time. So far they are still happy to chat with us regularly and I have hope that our bonds will continue to be strong. I'll do my part.

I have always enjoyed the rhythm of the academic year. The variety of the pace is in and of itself exciting to me. I've just finished some tasks that required lengthy preparation. There are many things yet on my to-do list and yet I feel freer to choose among them with less of a sense of urgency. This is one of the many lulls in the academic year, between the second and third exam in the Spring term. I have fewer students scheduling meetings with me, and the ones who do actually show up.  For me March always involves a conference (this year two) and the first part of April is busy with exams and projects. This year I also had a concert at the end of March and a Title IX hearing this week where I served as faculty advisor for the complainant. Ad hoc but there always seems to be something ad hoc in the first half of April every year. There are fewer meetings toward the end of the month; people being people most monthly meetings are scheduled in the first or second week. I am trying n...

I am scheduled to participate in a Zoom conference today of indeterminate length that has kept me from scheduling anything else at work.  It is important for others that I give my full attention to the proceedings. Zoom has facilitated my having more meetings than I would otherwise have done because of COVID certainly but also because of travel cost, etc. The pandemic got us used to virtual meetings (mostly on Zoom for me) and our thought of what a meeting is has evolved. It is worth noting how much information is cut off by not having meetings in a given room where posture and body language provide many clues as to what is going on that is unspoken. I have trouble identifying at the time who is not speaking (and hypothesizing why).  I am not very facile with the chat feature and find it hard to have side-conversations going on; I've been this way in live meetings and have never been able to process having a note handed to me. On the plus side I believe that I do speak much mo...

When I was young I was pretty good at improvisation; fortunately when I stopped being good at it I had some small failures and enough time to change course. Through most of my adult life I have been a planner. Sometimes folk who plan are presented as being comically inflexible as a cliche, but that is actually a sign of poor planning when you don't give yourself margins for dealing with the unexpected (which happens fairly predictably). I plan my courses well, with goals that I share with others combined with goals that make more sense to me individually. I adapt to the students in the class as best I can and adjust what the course does as best I can to meet their needs. I am teaching a course this term for the first time that is upper level and refers to theory underlying something that is used in an awful lot of technology. I had one plan for how to demonstrate that flavor of technology after covering the theory as I planned the course. Mid-semester I attended the International C...

As our political discourse has degraded in my lifetime I have struggled with the overwhelming of signal (facts that are not open to dispute) by noise (loud opinion unmoored by any verification). I am accountable in my profession at all times to offer signal, and I would be justly denigrated if I did otherwise. I feel the need to carry that over, imperfect though I am, to my personal life. This often requires that I (and others) withhold comment on issues before facts are known, and I painfully feel the rush of propaganda to fill the vacuum of legitimate commentary. Yesterday Donald Trump was indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney. Until the charges were unsealed there was nothing factual to discuss beyond the truth that Trump was being indicted that day.  Somehow the media by and large seemed to spend innumerable collective hours on that vacuum of information, offering well-dressed and well-paid seers prognosticating about the future and those thought-draining video recordings...

We just had another school shooting in Nashville. Someone with anger in their heart legally purchased weapons with what I think of as a military capacity for killing many people in a short amount of time. The shooter did not make their own assault rifle, etc. but rather purchased it. My naive layperson understanding is that many legislatures have passed laws excluding any legal responsibility by a gun seller, distributor, or manufacturer for the actions taken by a gun purchaser.  When selling weapons with military capabilities beyond any reasonable definition of self-defense this clearly puts society at risk. A starting point in dealing with this completely evitable ongoing tragedy in our country and none other would be to publicize such laws and demand their repeal or some explanation as to how they serve the public good. It really, really hurts us all on so many levels that we have traveled this path since the repeal of the Assault Weapons Ban, imperfect as it was. The before and...

I was thinking the other day of a scene from the film Battle of Algiers, about the revolution to drive the French out of Algeria; after a cafe has been bombed a group of French civilians find a young Arab boy, a street vendor standing nearby, and start punching and kicking him. It is the ambiguity of the film that children participated in the revolt against the French, but we have not seen this child do anything but be there. The group of ostensibly civilized Europeans see an Arab boy and try to kick him to death. (A French policeman pulls his unconscious body away from the mob.) What drives a mob to try to kill a small boy for no other reason than being Arab in the vicinity of a terrorist act?  It is clear from the racial slurs that they yell during the assault that they would not have tried to kill a French boy. The older I get the more I see fear as the source of the evil in my small part of the world and apparently the world at large. Fear of the other in particular seems to ju...

I'm attending two conferences this month. The one I went to last week was a regional association that I've been part of for 35 years. I don't know everyone but it definitely feels like an extended family to me and I greatly look forward to the meetings. The first one after COVID was truly joyous, not just for me but for many other senior members and so the joy was shared and magnified. I am currently attending a conference on using technology in teaching mathematics. I attend every four or five years to keep up with the latest, but it doesn't move so quickly that I need to attend every year. Usually other department members attend and we grab a meal together but it is far less tribal. This time no one else from my department is here and I may go the entire conference without seeing someone I know well enough to say hi. It's a good conference and it serves its purpose but the feel is very different. It's good for me to articulate what I value from last week's...

I could just post links to my friend Michael Covington's blog daily but I restrain myself. This post was particularly good: https://www.covingtoninnovations.com/michael/blog/2303/index.html#x230311

The word patience carries different kinds of emotional baggage depending on the context.  A few months ago I heard a homily from a Catholic priest asking for patience with the Catholic church in its struggle with LGBTQIA+ issues. I didn't take it well---it resonated with my understanding of the history of the civil rights movement, wherein people who were not used to treating people of color as fully human would constantly ask more patience of the folk being discriminated against. Change doesn't happen overnight but perhaps faster than decades and centuries would be more appropriate. Since then I've tried to analyze my feelings about the experience, because they were stronger and more lasting than I expected them to be. I'm still working on it but a few things that I feel represent who I am: 1) I am very privileged in my life and need to show patience to others more than they need to show it to me about 99.99% of the time.  2) Patience is sacrifice; when the powerful as...

For better or worse I was raised to feel shame at the drop of a hat; if I ever fell short of my parents' standards I was so encouraged, and I continue to do so as an adult. The things that cause me shame are different as my life has changed. My standards, my self-expectations, are mediated by my growths and declines in various areas. I'm not sure if I would want to be different. If I were different, I wouldn't be me on a fundamental level. One of the constants in my life is that I am obsessively punctual. I do not like to have my time wasted, so if I commit to being somewhere for someone then I project that they will feel the same. Consequently I am perceived by others by and large as being responsible (which has a different emotional baggage than shame). I bring this up because I am teaching a first-year course that is required as part of our core curriculum where a number of students are not showing up.  I missed a couple of classes in university for illness and we do liv...

Every now and then I see a title for a talk or a publication about reconciling faith and science. I never really understood the need. I do live a sheltered life, immersing myself in STEM culture. STEM culture never rules something out without a demonstrable reason. The idea of science ruling out faith or spirituality is simply bad science, often proffered by folk who don't do science. The reconciliation is often offered from the humanities as if this were a gift to us cold science types who don't know any better. Different STEM folk can speak for themselves; for me science has always been about trying to understand God's creation without prejudice but with rigor. 

One of the tasks that I have been pursuing for a number of months relates to a committee that I chair. My primary professional association, the Mathematical Association of America, has set up a committee to address student concerns that are not directly related to conferences. As students are the next generation of mathematicians we have a strong incentive to make them first-class citizens within our community. My committee identified informally some students to serve as a focus group and interviewed them in the Fall. They had a number of different concerns but one common thread was a feeling of disconnection from the MAA. This felt a bit ironic as the MAA has committed in the past year a number of resources to establishing a community framework for its members, MAA Connect. Members identify communities that they wish to participate in or are on committees for, and there is a framework for posting comments, digests of posts, libraries for sharing documents, etc. There is room for impro...

One of the joys of lasting for a while in my career is that I often get asked (formally or informally) to suggest names of folk for potentially filling positions. Nobody ever goes entirely on my say-so but I like to think that I contribute names of qualified folk to the process that might otherwise not be said. I think of this as I sit this morning putting together notes for a meeting of a Nominating Committee that I sit on for later this week. We will provide names for a slate presented to a professional organization for an election. It is the nature of this organization (for good or for bad, it cuts both ways) that there are never any nominations from the floor; they defer to our judgment and our prior confirmation that the nominees are willing to be nominated. The bylaws list the positions, responsibilities, and terms of the these officers. Each year we take the positions that are renewable, confirm whether the current officeholders wish to continue, and as appropriate shorten the l...

One of the things I have prided myself on is not quitting things. Part of it is ego (this shall not best me) and part of it is the knowledge from experience that there is more pay-off from a sustained commitment than from dipping my toes into something. One of the things that I have had to acknowledge with age is that I have less stamina now. I would not trade the small wisdom I have acquired with age to get it back but I have less physical stamina, less mental stamina, and most importantly less emotional stamina with each passing year. Part of that small wisdom is to face these changes head on and make the best decisions I can about how to proceed. For a number of years I have been a member of a support group that is confidential, and I will be vague about its details. I mostly received the support I needed at the beginning, and have stayed to try to return that support to newer folk. My participation had to do with wanting to support loved ones facing challenges that are real to them...

This term I will have a number of things (classes, office hours, meetings) back-to-back on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and very little scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays.  I am not used to this kind of rhythm although I have had it before and will adjust to it. I am not used to having blocks of time and have adapted most of my work routine to pieces that can be done whenever it fits into my schedule. Occasionally I'll work on something more substantial and explicitly put other things on hold but that is more the exception.

I have what is apparently a very common name. In grade school I would occasionally be given grades on my report card and disciplinary warnings for someone else which is how I first learned that I was not unique. Throughout my adult life similar things happened with mail, bank statements, etc. I had a sheriff's deputy stop by my home once looking for another one of me and I've had several bill collectors annoy me until I threatened legal action for their lack of due diligence as to who I wasn't. These past few months I've made the headlines because of the January 6 Committee, whose report I am slowly reading. A relatively low-level Department of Justice official with my name actively embraced Trump's attempted coup; at one point a Trump announcement referred to him/me as the new Attorney General.   Quoting from the New York Times (January 24, 2021), confirmed by evidence gathered by the January 6 Committee: " It was New Year’s Eve, but the Justice Department’s t...

  https://www.covingtoninnovations.com/michael/blog/2301/index.html#x230122

As a professor I view my main job responsibility as teaching to the best of my ability; I always have. As a teacher I am asked to be a guide, a coach, an assessor, and many other things. I am not asked to be an investigator nor am I qualified to be one. Students regularly ask for make-up exams. Sometimes they are open about wanting more time to prepare for an exam, not thinking about their colleagues in class who would also benefit from the extra time but instead took the exam as scheduled. Sometimes they are out sick; especially in Winter Term illnesses abound. Trying to offer a level playing field to students about their grades is one of those things I'm pretty serious about. I don't set a high standard about verifying an illness but I do like to see some form of documentation. Every now and then a student does not provide any documentation of seeking medical assistance and becomes more insistent as the semester ends that I give them a make-up exam. This is the brinkmanship m...

I have trouble teaching and not being the one leading the discussion. I'm not proud of this defect; I have many colleagues who are good at supervising group work. I am not. This Winter Term I am regularly sitting as a resource while students work together on projects. It drives me up the wall. I'm not sure what this says about me, the need to be in charge. I am often in situations where I enjoy listening to someone as competent as (if not more) than I. 

I have an older family member suffering from dementia. She has in the past experienced hallucinations and did so again this last week. It is very disconcerting conversing with someone who refers to nonfactual events. On the other hand before my sleep apnea was diagnosed back in 2003 I had gone for a long time without enough REM sleep. I experienced what I can best describe as waking dreams, wherein I would know that I was talking to someone and at the same time I was somewhere else doing something else. So I have some first-hand experience with this. Of course we are experiencing this in our public discourse in this era; folk refer with certainty to political events that have not actually happened. Again, it is disconcerting to converse with someone whose foundation is on shaky ground. It is simplistic but I still use the six W's as my anchor:  who, where, when are the basics of facts. What, how, and why often require a bit more interpretation but are still pretty good ties to real...

It's been 33 years and counting and I still get a bit nervous before a new term begins as it did on Tuesday. Much less now of course. I have my checklists, mental and written, to make sure that if anything goes wrong it is not because of lack of preparation on my part. I can encourage, nurture, and cajole, but I can't control my students efforts or achievements, so I have to just accept what comes my way. Of my two Fall classes one surpassed my hopes, the other let me down. (Absenteeism without communication, leading to abysmal final exam scores.) Pretty much all of my professional work is the same way. I prepare and I do prepare hard these days, not relying on my memory and improvisations as I had as a young man. As I am not a hermit I work with others and along with my encouragement and cajoling I can not control the behavior and performance of others.

Today is the last day of 2022. Since I've spent most of my life on the academic calendar this means less to me than it may to other folk.  As an introvert I'm not really into partying as a rule, and much of the culture focuses on making this date into a party. As a lay person (and not a trained historian) I understand that historically there has long been an incentive to celebrate the turning point, a realization that the days have reached there shortest point in the Northern hemisphere and are starting to get longer again. With the institution of calendars that both took into account the cycle of going around the Sun and the orbit of the Moon around the Earth, there was always a mismatch, and these days at this particular time of year seemed to be off the books. I wonder how the Southern hemisphere views the holiday, historically. I'm not a farmer and the seasons of the crops have little direct influence on my life. We have a break in classes this time of year and I guess ...

One of the inspirations for my blogging is my friend Michael Covington's far-superior blog. His most recent entry as I write this is  https://www.covingtoninnovations.com/michael/blog/2212/index.html#x221222 It articulated something that I've often thought of; that feeling I have that someone is rushing me to keep me from thinking something through clearly.  I am often rushed without malice because of the impatience of others but here I am thinking of when someone is trying to sell me something, and in particular, trying to convince me to support a political idea that goes against my values. It is fairly commonplace for me to read an opinion that contains ten whoppers in the lead paragraph. It is easy to spot when reading; Michael notes how often rhetoric is spoken rather than written in hope that folk won't think about what they are hearing. I was working in a hotel lobby last week with Fox Business News blaring on a nearby television set. It was stressful hearing a high d...

I brought some reading along for our holiday travels. I keep a different sleep/wake cycle from much of my family (apparently morning-person-genes are recessive) so I often have time to read.  I brought along a collection of noir novels from the fifties that I have read before and a small text on the mathematical properties of ordering in-and-of-itself, as applied across multiple topics in mathematics. I am rereading both because I get the same kind of pleasure from them as when I read them the first time. I don't have as much disposable time as I used to but I have watched in my youth a large number of films more than ten times. A well-made film has more to discover with each viewing. I have read Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming, at least his volumes to date (please, DK, finish the series before you die, please) over ten times. It is a work so dense that each time I gain new understanding and yet acknowledge that I have barely begun to master it. Why? Because it i...

I often tell people that I love math, but math is big and I don't love all of it, certainly not in the same way. This past calendar year I taught two very different introductory courses in Abstract Algebra and Analysis. Both are foundational---they were categories on my oral comprehensive exams in graduate school---but as different as night and day in terms of the style in which the topics act. The first one focused on articulating structures that would be useful in different contexts; the latter identifying what the notion of closeness means in different contexts. Many topics in math have very different styles. I've taught a special topics course twice on Combinatorics which has such a very different way of approaching problems (articulate collections relevant to the context and count the size of the collections in different ways).  Multivariable Calculus for all of its techniques have some basic principles (run a curve through it, use the Chain Rule) that makes it easy to kee...

For at least a third of my life I have struggled with lack of sleep. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea in 2003. My wife thinks that my snoring (i.e asphyxiating and waking up) preceded that by many months.  I have been faithful with the main treatment, using a CPAP device to pump air into my lungs at night. And yet: even with the CPAP my sleep is troubled. I have back pain issues (a pinched nerve) that are exacerbated by lying down so there is a natural governor in terms of how long I sleep:  at some point the pain makes itself known. Early on I did not have coping strategies in place. For most of my life I had been able to rely upon my wits and memory to perform well without much preparation. That failed me more and more as my sleeplessness progressed. I suffered from severe depression then for my life as I had known it was coming to an end.  At some point I acknowledged the feelings and started identifying coping strategies to help me find joy in this new stage of life. ...

I wasn't very athletic in my youth, or any other part of my life actually. In any event I never collected baseball cards. This was long before there were other kinds of cards to collect, so not being into baseball cards meant I wasn't into trading cards. I had friends who were into it and that was cool. Our former president teased Wednesday that he was going to make a major announcement yesterday (Thursday). He had already announced his candidacy for the presidency, and it seemed not unreasonable to think that it might be related to that candidacy. To my knowledge he has no campaign manager or staff yet, which makes that announcement a bit weird. It turns out that the announcement was that he was selling pretty cheesy looking NFT's with his head photoshopped on tops of a child's idea of masculine figures (superhero, astronaut, etc.). They look bad and sell for $99 each. Since they are NFT's you don't actually get the image to hold in your hands, although he refe...

If the universe flipped left and right overnight, how would you know? Orientation is a matter of consistency; it is not as if one element of a mirror-image pairing of environments is ever canonical so much as everything within that element is consistent. What options do I take as canonical because they are in my environment and consistent?  How many of my moral precepts are contextual and which are absolute?

I have always enjoyed the rhythm of the academic year. Some parts of the work are repetitive, and so having the variations of monthly exams, the mania of the students and faculty trying to get work done before breaks, the meetings at the end of term where folk are trying to remember their names: I love it all. At the end of each semester though we go from highway speed to parking and it's rough on the transmission. The adrenal glands die. I and many others are tired but unable to sleep, still trying to process the rush of events. Bodies ache from academic work which is not the same as manual labor and yet we all just ache. In December, we along with many others celebrate the holiday by travels to be with family when I at least am at a nadir in terms of mental and physical energy. It is the calendar, it happens every year, I try to prepare ahead for it and then give myself a break when I make minor errors.

When I was in graduate school I noticed something about the undergraduates that I taught that caught me off-guard. The Mathematics building was across the street from the University Health Services building which had a walk-in clinic for students, etc. Before I arrived it had been know as DUH. (I'm not sure what the acronym was for, there are several possible choices.) When I asked the students what the building was, they all said DUH. When I asked them where the University Health Services building was, nobody knew. This was despite the sign being quite prominent in the front of the building. Students would see it every day on their way to class and not read it. I filed this behavior away as one of the many things I don't understand and didn't think about it much until lately. We are yet again having the wedge issue of civil rights for non-hetero couples being up for debate, turning one group of citizens against another group of citizens for political gain, as if one group ...

I have been fond of Noir as a genre for as long as I can remember.  I enjoyed watching The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep on television with my father when I was very young, so I guess it started with Humphrey Bogart and his appeal. I was always a reader so of course I turned to the novels that the movies were based on and read everything I could by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. I branched out into other movies and authors. I think Double Indemnity has been one of my favorite movies for many decades now although I'm more fond of some of James Cain's other novels. People more articulate than I have tried to describe Noir as a genre, and as much as I've been immersed in it for decades it is actually hard for me to do so. Part of the appeal is the intricacy of the plotting; no good Noir is a straight line. Part of it lies in the moral transitions in both directions---giving in to temptation and seeking atonement---and what they reveal about character. Part of it is ...

I don't have many hobbies; I usually spend all my time not committed to family on work, because I love my job. One thing I have done since I first moved off-campus as a graduate student is cook for myself. I am a fussy eater with strong distastes. The other side of being fussy is that I have strong likes, and it is through cooking that I have found many flavors that I did not know that I liked. I began with an old Good Housekeeping cookbook given to me by my mother. I pretty soon realized that the salt, butter, cream, and sugar amounts were kind of off-the chart. It was a wonderful procedural guide but I found pretty quickly that I had to revise the recipes for myself, and began to keep a recipe file on 3 x 5 cards. Throughout graduate school I made a point of asking for specific cookbooks (that I had browsed in bookstores) for birthday and Christmas presents and pretty quickly built up a library. Some were general, some were more specialized on Chinese and vegetarian cuisines. I...

It is not clear to me that public discourse was less ugly in past years. I am white and affluent and those are powerful filters. I may be more aware of the vitriol that is present now because of technology, and hope that there is a constructive use to that knowledge as a free citizen in a democracy. I am more aware than ever of politicians (elected officials, candidates, pundits) advocating that we treat each other worse. One of the gifts of the spirit that I feel I have in the face of that advocacy is inertia. As my default position I'm not going to agree to treat other people worse. Others need to convince me why I should and they need to work hard. By disposition I am pushed away from agreement with advocates who are loud in either volume or intensity of language, for to reward that kind of behavior is to invite cacophony. I am pushed away from agreement with advocates who talk very fast, stringing together extreme and improbable claims in an attempt to keep me from examining an...

For an introvert I seem to have sought out a number of opportunities to stand up in front of people and talk. This is one of the fundamental tensions in my life.  Because of my introversion I rarely speak in front of folk unless I am leading them, either formally or informally. Given a role to play I can sidestep my insecurities and do the job. So I've had more than a few leadership roles. One of the things that I have tried to do (not always succeeding) is to exercise authority through my actions and not my job title. If I am willing to put the time into consulting with folk about issues, building their input into my plans, and then asking them to implement those plans, most of the time folk are willing to buy into those plans.  It takes time, and so I am mindful that none of my interactions with others is intended to be the last, that every relationship is intended to be ongoing. This magnifies my trustworthiness and people tend to respond to that. I can't will people into a...

Most of what I know about non-mathematical technology comes from my students. A student showed me the first thumb drive I ever saw. Another student took pictures of a markerboard full of notes and now I do that when saving data from students on the board. Websites that I regularly use to increase my productivity are ones I learned from my students. It is right and just that teaching should flow back and forth between us, with our different life experiences. It is satisfying to have it go both ways. My children and the culture they grew up in have taught me a lot about gender and sexuality. I don't accept everything uncritically nor do I block what I am unused to. We talk about things and I learn. It is right and just that teaching should flow back and forth between us, with our different life experiences. It is satisfying to have it go both ways.

I'll be singing in an ensemble holiday concert in a little over a week. I've been in concerts since the third grade, not every year but most of the half century since then. The stress/anxiety/insecurity has faded a good deal over that time. I tend to focus on doing the best I can, minimizing errors, and most importantly recovering from errors.  I think about that a lot when I coach students on giving presentations, particularly ones of moderate or great length. Mistakes happen. How you handle them is what's important; despair can strike suddenly and you can fear that you can't recover. As with most things preparation can help. Practice sets a rhythm, and one of the things you can do with practice is recovering the beat, the rhythm of successful exposition when something goes awry. Coming to a full-stop is a temptation with no benefit whatsoever. Every now and then I and others have to face hostile audiences. I am grateful that for me that has been very rare. Facing folk...

One of the things that I have learned over the years is that in the face of tragedy most details of news reports are incorrect in the immediate aftermath; nonetheless it seems clear that a number of trans folk were shot and killed in Colorado Springs this weekend and that it was a hate crime. In my sheltered life I have always heard that trans folk face the most physically dangerous prejudice, that they are the most likely of folk to be the victims of hate crimes. Hate and fear of trans folk abound, encouraged by hatemongers in elected office and in the media. They will of course disavow any responsibility for this latest violence, because they are irresponsible to the core, like folk who drive blindfolded without "intending" to kill anyone. Trans folk were created in the image of God, and remain in the image of God. This is part of my core belief. May all the people of God support those grieving this latest tragedy (the present), support efforts to find and punish those resp...

I used to blog a bit on Facebook and Twitter. They're not really blog applications but I used them that way, practicing writing about things both silly and serious.  I withdrew from Facebook after the umpteenth time it was reported that they had lied about promoting controversial and false posts to drive more hits and to be paid by foreign sources to do so. On a personal level my mother suffers from dementia and she started believing more in her Facebook feed than reality; I just couldn't be a part of that system anymore. I had used Twitter more to practice my jokes to be honest. The comedian Steven Wright has been a big influence on me over the years; his gift has been to craft terse jokes such as "I wouldn't want everything; where would you put it?" and I wanted to use the word limit on Twitter to hone my ability to turn a phrase. When Trump won the Republican nomination for president in 2016 by encouraging people to hate people of color, etc. I lost a lot of my...