THE PAGE TURNS

July 4, 2017January 20, 2018

Bridge to Nature: Glaciers, Slime Molds, and Slugs

After two weeks of posting sentimental, smoke-from-the-ears thought-provoking stuff, I thought it was time to throw off the maudlin. Let’s talk about slugs and slime molds.

Quick! What do glaciers, slime molds, and slugs have in common? Quite a lot. In fact, this could be a great parlor game.

The most obvious common bond is that they’re all slow. And yet, they don’t stop moving. Unrelenting, you might say. They’re also a way of Mother Nature making us feel humble. Think you’re all that? Virginia Woolf once said the rock you kick will outlast Shakespeare. Glaciers, slime molds, and slugs will all outlast Shakespeare.

Another common bond is that you can find them all in Alaska, which is where we were touring last week. Alaska is a unique place with large areas of wilderness yet to be discovered as you venture through forests and ocean inlets. It also, therefore, contains many things whose way of existence seems completely alien. You can’t help thinking, how does evolution favor THAT? But the more you learn, the more you realize nature has many ways of propagating itself that we can only guess at. Continue reading “Bridge to Nature: Glaciers, Slime Molds, and Slugs”

June 21, 2017

The Man Who is My Son

2017-06-20 21.39.15

When my son was a baby, we used to joke that he folds up for compact storage. Even when he was six or ten, and would sit on the couch hugging his knees, we would say: See, he still folds up. Now at 6’2” and at 21 years old, I can hardly remember him – I play back the film reel loop of his life over and over but I can no longer imagine him – small.

I also called him my Favorite Son, and at around five, he finally realized, Hey! I’m your only son.

So, what? I would say. You’re still my favorite son.

The child becomes the adult
We were in San Diego over the weekend for Commencement, an interesting word for it. On the face of it, the university graduation ceremony is a celebration of ending, of four years of grueling intellectual, sometimes physical work. But it is a beginning of a phase of adulthood. As my Favorite Son has taken this effort so much in his own way, we are here to celebrate with him and to see what he has become.

I have already seen the adult pop out. Last time when he was home for Christmas, he rinsed his dishes AND put them in the dishwasher without any prompting. He bought Christmas presents for each of us and explained the thinking process behind them.

Continue reading “The Man Who is My Son”

June 7, 2017January 20, 2018

Inquiring for Work at the Polish Factory

There is an apocryphal story about my grandfather. He was a man of few words and died when I was young, so most of the stories have an urban legend ring to them. I don’t know which ones, if any, are true.

My father told me that Grandpa Chmaj was a young man, new to America, just off the boat so to speak. He was looking for work and saw the big sign POLISH FACTORY so he went in and asked for a job. Because he was Polish. And they made…shoe polish.

20170607 chmajyoung The year that my grandparents emigrated is a little fuzzy in my mind. When I worked on the requisite eighth grade Family Tree project forty-some years ago, I seem to recall learning that both grandparents came between 1900 and 1910. There was a wave of Polish immigrants between 1905 and 1910 after the Revolution. Several more waves came at the beginning of the 20^th century, as Prussia, Germany, and Russia argued about which of them owned Poland. If the date of my grandparents’ emigration is prior to 1911, they escaped far more strife in their country of origin than whatever hardships occurred here.