What if drugs all had good side effects?

I've got eye pressure that's been tending toward the high side, my eye doctor has observed. It doesn't seem to be glaucoma-ish, no family history and I've had field vision tests and pictures taken of the innards of my eye to check for optic nerve damage and whatnot. No foul signs, thank goodness. But the man wants to be safe so he put me on these eye drops to lower the pressure. And after a checkup the numbers have gone down, so everything looks all good.

But here's the thing that got me to thinking about the query that's the title of this note. When he was talking about the eye drops to me, my first concern was whether I'd still be able to wear contacts. He said yes, 15 minutes after putting the drops in I'd be fine for wearing them. Would I become extraordinarily sensitive to light? Lose my night vision? No. So what are the side effects? There's always gnarly side effects.

Your eyelashes will get thicker, and darker, and longer. Your eye color (the irises, not the whites) might darken. That's it.

That's IT?

It's the same kind of stuff the cosmetics industry has latched hold of, such as with the product Latisse(tm) as advertised with an oddly-strained-looking Brooke Shields (somehow, I never got the attraction of Brooke Shields, and I'd call myself as appreciative of a beautious woman as anyone). Of course, for folks not experiencing any eye pressure quirks, the stuff is applied externally, at the lash line. (insert icky imaginations of people using it as eye drops who have normal eye pressure, who after a few weeks have their eyeballs caving in from a loss of inner pressure...).

That news about the side effects kinda blew a small section of my mind. It's a first, in all the news I've heard about all the different kinds of medicines out there on the market: a product that doesn't come with a long list of potential side effects some of which sound worse than the ailment one wants to treat. You know the lists. Anal seepage. Suicidal ideation. Loss of sexual desire. Erectile disfunction. Heart palpitations. Stomach ulcers. Stomach cancer. Death.

Why can't more medicines be that way? What IF more medicines were that way? Can you imagine the conversation with the doctor? "To lower your cholesterol, I'm putting you on blabbedy-blah, and you may experience a side effect of shedding that 5-to-10 pounds you've been trying to get rid of. Oh, and you hair will become more luxurious. And it'll whiten your teeth, too." Or, "people who've used what I'm prescribing you for IBS report a heightened sense of sexual arousal, and multitudinous orgasms."

Would people clamor to take pharmaceuticals even more? ">I< want to lose these damned 5 pounds that stubbornly stick to my hips and thighs, I need to be on that cholesterol-lowering drug," people might say, who don't have any cholesterol problems. And then they might develop them because of the drug lowers their cholesterol even more (momentary recall of my imaginary person using the eye-pressure-lowering drops to get thicker lashes).

But then again, maybe it wouldn't suck so much to have whatever kinds of illnesses leading a person to be medicated in the first place. Can you imagine the inversion of status these people might achieve?

Christine: Kayla, girl, you're looking like a million bucks! Have you been working out?
Kayla: In a manner of speaking! I hadn't told anyone, but I've got irritable bowel syndrome, and my doctor put me on blabbedy-blah, and my sex life has gone through the roof! My girlfriend and I are fucking like monkeys, every day - it's crazy awesome!
Christine: Dammit. Wish >I< had irritable bowel syndrome.

Maybe it IS possible to have pharmaceuticals be this way, but in order to keep healthy people off them (and increase the incidence of unnecessary illnesses from causing changes to normal function), the scientists devise them up in such a way that the only people who will take them, are those willing to risk enduring unpleasant side effects in order to (hopefully) alleviate the other problems they have. Which is the kind of situation we have now, isn't it? Coincidence?

"What I'm FEELING is..."

I was thinking today that I'd like to write about something annoying - just to mix things up a bit. On a sticky note thingie on my laptop's desktop I found one: the oft-heard utterance that is the title of this note.

Is it an annoyance about people vocalizing their feelings? No, not in the least. People maybe ought to be more aware of their feelings and vocalize them more often. Some people, at least. I'm also not advocating putting substantive conversation entirely in the vernacular of feeling-talk, which I think would annoy me as well.

So now I get closer to the heart of it, which is a >misuse< of feeling-talk.

I remember the time I heard someone say this most recently that got my ire up. I was listening to NPR in the morning, and there was a discussion about some political matter (the exact nature of which I don't recall) on which there were opposing viewpoints. And in an interview with one of the disputants, he or she started with a "What I'm feeling is..." and then continued to give some assertion of fact, like "the representative is a dickhead."

(stream of consciousness association to the movie "Taladega Nights" when WIll Farrell's character says: "With all due respect, I didn't realize you'd gotten experimental surgery to get your balls removed," and the character he says that to gets annoyed and replies something like "saying 'with all due respect' doesn't mean you can go on to say anything you want to say.")

Ok, so back to a misuse of "what I'm >feeling< is...". To MY mind, that kind of preface leads the way to generally emotional kinds of talk: "I'm feeling hurt by what you said," "I'm feeling joy at the awesome epiphany you experienced." Maybe even semi-cognitive kinds of talk: "I'm feeling confused about what you mean."

In these kinds of situations, the claims are fairly uncontestable. If a person feels joy, or anger, or hurt, or confusion, and truthfully reports on that, there's not much room to say the person is wrong. There >are< things to say - such as to apologize if the case is that you've done something to hurt another's feelings, or seek to be more clear if a listener is confused. Also, it's possible that the event triggering an emotional response was perceived incorrectly, maybe the listener misheard what was said, for instance, and that can be discussed, too.

And I'd still like to leave some small room for critique. I mean, if a person says something like "I'm feeling so happy that you just kicked that stray dog for no reason," I hope someone would point out that there are things that not appropriate to be happy about. I mean, to put it another way, there are at least two different things that it's good to keep distinct: (1) an authentic awareness of one's emotional state, and (2) a mindfulness in connecting up appropriate emotional states with the things that trigger them. I mean, again (x3), if for example a person feels "dissed," or deeply hurt or offended by every negative word, well, he or she's not connecting the dots right. But that starts to get complicated and threatens to veer me off-topic so I'll just leave that there.

So, to recap where I'm at now: "what I'm >feeling< is..." to my ear, signals an upcoming report of the speaker's emotional or quasi-cognitive state. And as truthful reporting of what the speaker subjectively experiences, is, in that respect, largely immune from critique. In short: it just is, what it is.

Ok, fine. So what's the annoyance factor?

The extension of the phrase to places it doesn't belong. Sometimes, in the case of someone who is mildly clever, I imagine that she might detect the seemingly protective function of "what I'm >feeling< is..." and follow that up with an assertion of fact rather than an emotional subjective state - you know, like, "what I'm feeling is that you're a douche." I cannot recount the number of times, as a teacher, I heard this kind of thing from students. It was maddening. Well, they didn't call me a douche (at least, not to my face). It would be more like "what I'm feeling is that you graded me wrongly on this paper and you should give me an 'A'," or "what I'm feeling is that feminists hate all men and their claims ought to be rejected wholesale on that basis."

In these cases, what we have is a claim that calls for argument and defense, where the proclaimer attempts to avoid that difficult work by being prefacing it by "what I'm >feeling<...." That there is an avoidance factor is clear when in discussion you try and coax out the person's reasons, and the response is "that's just what I feel." What a nice bit of rhetoric. How simple! No being held to account needed! Not. And I find that kind of laziness to give reasons for what one >believes< (not: feels) annoying.

Which brings me to a second element of annoyance: a kind of laziness to take careful inventory of the sorts of mental states we have. Every mental state is not a feeling. We've got beliefs, thoughts, questions, fantasies. All sorts of stuff, and who knows, maybe they all come with an emotional component, but that doesn't make them all feelings. And it frustrates me to see conversation turned into one-dimensional emotional discourse. "I'm feeling you're wrong for giving me a 'B-' on this paper; I feel I deserve an 'A'." "I feel you're wrong for feeling you deserve an 'A'." What else is there to do with that? And doesn't that dilute the significance of feeling-talk where it is legitimate? I kinda think it might.

On being irrepressibly all-good

"In the world before Monkey, primal chaos reigned. Heaven sought order, but the phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown. The four worlds formed again and yet again, as endless aeons wheeled and passed. Time and the pure essences of Heaven all worked upon a certain rock, old as creation. It became magically fertile. The first egg was named 'Thought'. Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha said, 'With our thoughts, we make the world.' Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch. From it came a stone monkey. The nature of monkey was irrepressible!!"

Such were the words kicking off the recently-attended workshop on philosophy and martial arts: a presentation about martial arts and media/pop culture, with an eye specifically toward a popular TV series in Australia called "Monkey," based on the 16th century Chinese novel "Journey to the West."

What with having monkey on the brain (not = "monkey mind"), and monkey tokens popping up all around (thanks, Dan!), you can imagine my walking into the conference room the first morning to see projected on the wall big as day the logo "Monkey" from that TV series. It was just hilarious. I go halfway across the globe, and still can't get away from the monkey.

If you'd like to see a video of the intro, complete with a bit of the show's theme song "Monkey Magic," see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iUMWy4hqAg&feature=player_embedded

Well, to hear the monkey affiliated with the nature of irrepressibility sounds quite acceptable, as opposed to its other connotations with chaos. Because - thinking rather fancifully - if I'm psychologically channelling monkeyness somehow, and my thoughts are also all about the all-good, then I'm all about being irrepressibly all-good. Right on! And according to the tale, the Monkey became a buddha too, in the end. That's not half-bad, either.

Reflections on Melbourne

Starting off with: why the hell do people clap when a plane lands?

It's not something I've encountered all that often in my flying experience, but it does happen occasionally, and it did when we landed in Sydney after a rather uneventful trans-oceanianic cruise.

I know it was uneventful because I was in the very back row, a.k.a. the whiplash section when it IS good and turbulent. I slept as much like a baby as one can when one is crammed into a teensy space next to a crabby woman who couldn't get a seat next to her husband and was thence committed to sighing, very loudly, at least once every five minutes at the injustice of it all.

Or maybe I misread her - maybe her sighs were heavy breathing induced by sitting so close to me?

Anyway, hardly a wobble for 13 hours and we land in Sydney to a big round of applause. I looked around at the people thinking, "have you lost your minds?" It would have been one thing if the energy would have been one of "woohoo! we're in Sydney! rock!" But it felt more like "praise Jesus we landed safely!" I've experienced kinda crazy landings, like in Hawaii when it's seemed for all the world like we'd scrape a wing on the runway for sure, by the tilt we'd hit just before the wheels made contact. If we landed safely in the midst of a lightning storm and hurricane-force winds, I'd understand it, too. But a routine landing after an uneventful albeit very long flight? Don't get it, and it seems almost like an insult to the pilots' skill level to applaud that. But maybe I'm weird.

Perhaps I digress. So: a quick stop in Sydney to change planes and head thenceforth to Melbourne.

It's a really nice little city! It is winter there now, so that was pretty interesting, switching seasons so abruptly, but it wasn't too odd, San Francisco weather being what it is and treating its fair residents to a blustery chill in the midst of June and July. But some of the trees being bare did token a definite change in seasons, as did the sidewalks of people with scarves and gloves even on days when in the sunshine it felt a full 65 degrees. That was interesting.

Their internet situation is not the same as it is here; it is neither ubiquitous nor cheap. So odds of going any old place and seeing people all zoned into their laptops are low. While for my first day when I was on the hunt for an internet cafe that was a sight that dismayed me in my desire for a web browsing fix, it turned out to be refreshing to be in an urban situation without people being plugged into their gizmos at every turn.

The exchange rate of Aussie dollar per U.S. dollar is quite nearly 1-to-1. But prices for things, in Melbourne at least, are quite high. For instance, my last dinner at a not-very-fancy-restaurant there I had a beer and a bowl of soup = $18.

So I'm glad I had arranged to stay on the cheap in a dorm on the campus of the University of Melbourne. The university is HUGE! I was over the moon at all the gothic architecture. I also loved the old-school feel of all the different colleges - it's different from how it's arranged here. Here, you've got the college of liberal arts, of sciences, etc. They might have an academic arrangement similarly there, too, but the colleges I speak of now are things like Queen's College (where I stayed), St. Mary's College, St. Hilda's College, etc. And these are something like different, gated, residential facilities - think something like the different houses in Hogwarts. It might be, though I don't know, that to be a student assigned to a particular college carries information such as that you're a liberal arts type or a science type. But it looked so interesting to see all these different colleges, all with their own assortments of dorms and dining halls and castle-y looking main buildings, and then, separately, the university itself.

I learned that the kind of coffee drink I like the most (no-foam latte) has a special name in Australia (a flat white). When I asked the difference between a flat white, and a regular latte, the answer was "a latte is a flat white, with foam," and the difference between a flat white and a cappuccino is "a cappuccino is a flat white, with foam." As I learned it, back in my barrista days, "latte" means "milk," period. Tenley, you must have trained me weird.

Did a LOT of walking. That being the case, the whole phenomenon of getting used to driving on the opposite site of the road, in the opposite side of the car, from what is standard here affected me only indirectly. It gave me pause to be extra careful when crossing a street because I never felt exactly sure in which direction traffic would be coming from and didn't want to become a traffic fatality because I only checked to the left before crossing when the traffic was coming from the right, or vice versa.

What was funny, is that their leftward (and our (U.S.) rightward) tendencies express themselves in places I didn't realize. For instance, in places where there'd be moving walkways, at first I'd catch myself just in time before trying to walk forward on the walkway on the right which was turning in the direction toward me. In other words, to move forward, you take the walkway on the left.

More frequently, the Australian leftward tendencies were apparent from the near-collisions I'd have with other pedestrians on the sidewalks. I'd see someone approaching, and in accordance with habit, I'd veer over to the right side of the sidewalk. The approaching Australian, probably working the same kind kind of impact-avoidance habit, would likewise veer, but to his or her LEFT. Which put the person right back into my pathway, at which sight I would nudge further to my right. Which would trigger the approaching person to nudge further to his or her left. I'm not kidding! This happened couple times before I finally noticed the pattern - winding up with both of us being squished up alongside a building and heading straight for each other. And then there was that time in the jam-packed full of people Queen Victoria's Market where in heading to the right got me caught into a flow of people moving in the direction opposite to that which I wanted.

After becoming conscious of it, I'd deliberately move leftward in the face of another oncoming pedestrian, and didn't have another problem with it. The experience led to an interesting conversation I had with a fellow, who happened to be from Melbourne, when I was in the security line at LAX on my return trip. I mentioned something about this "pass to the left" thing and he had an "aha!" moment, when he said that explained the difficulties he had experienced walking about here in the U.S., in nearly colliding with other pedestrians as well. A pleasant bit of unexpected strangeness.

Took pictures of things that caught my attention (see my "Melbourne" album if you're interested). But also learned that in a trip that involves me working, the time prior to my official presentation of labor is largely consumed by (over-)preparing for my official presentation of labor. Which is to say, I don't think I got to enjoy Melbourne as much as I could have; would that I have had time afterward to really relax and take in more sights.

But the workshop went very well and I met some excellent people. And I definitely want to go back to Australia again, but maybe in a warmer month, and hopefully one with some clearer nights. Didn't get to see the Southern Cross for the first time; nights were consistently overcast. And though I could hear that the birdsongs were different from what I'm used to here, I should very much like to see more of the wildlife than I got to in a city.

So: things for the future. Return to Australia, in the warm weather, and get more into the country. And the beaches. Oh, and don't get sick, or stay long enough that if I do, I have time to get over it and enjoy the country in full health!

You don't want meat with that?

When I last left off ruminating on Friday, I was on the brink of recalling the challenges of being vegetarian in West Virginia. If any possible reader has seen the show "Food Revolution," that was shot in Huntington, WV which, with all the vertical miles one would have to travel to move between it and Green Bank, is about 4 hours west of my old location. I watched the whole "Food Revolution" series - both because I'm in favor of Jamie Oliver's stance toward overturning our cultural laziness about eating crap instead of food, and because it was shot not all that far from where I used to live, and boy, did watching it bring back memories! I thought the representation of people was not off from what I experienced - good folks, but working with incomplete information and tools, and yet sensitive about being thought of as ignorant hicks.

In Chicago, going meat-free is no big deal (believe it or not; I know it's the land of (ugh) Chicago-style deep-dish pizza, but of course that's not all there is to food out there). In Green Bank, it was more of a challenge. But I think it turned out to be an excellent exercise that taught me a habit that persists to this day of examining and asking about what I consume. I mean, going vegetarian always means to be ingredient-conscious. But living in a land where meat scores higher than fruits and vegetables, and asking for a veggie sandwich gets a quizzical look and two slices of bread with iceberg lettuce and tomato, it was also an interesting experience in vividly willing, every single day, to BE a certain sort of way. It wasn't like running on autopilot, as can happen.

And, I maybe I'm totally imagining it, but I also like to think of the experience as a little exercise in consciousness-raising. I mean, in asking for something vegetarian-style around Green Bank would usually elicit a response of complete bewilderment. I imagine the staff talking behind the scenes: "She doesn't want meat? What else can we put in its place?" And their having absolutely nothing in their imagination to work with: hence the two slices of bread with iceberg lettuce and tomato. What I'd do with that, is have a conversation with the waiter, and ask what other kinds of stuff they had going on back in the kitchen that maybe they wouldn't conceive putting on a sandwich, and ask them to whip that up. I'd like to think I enabled, or at least opened up the possibility of, their thinking more broadly about what "serveable food" can be.

Or maybe not. Maybe they just brushed me off as some out-of-town whack job.

I also remember the ladies in the NRAO cafeteria, who, bless them, did their best to occasionally accommodate what I think appeared to them as a weirdo diet. So I'd be going through the line, and one of the ladies would say, "Hey, Michelle, we made a vegetarian soup just so you could eat it - there ain't no meat in it!" But of course I'd have to ask what they used for the broth, and they'd look at me as though to say "duh!" and report: "chicken broth." And it really pained me to turn it down, because I was (1) hungry, (2) touched by the gesture, and (3) didn't want to come across as a food snob. But as nicely as I'm capable, I'd explain that the question I always had to answer before I ate what they served, was whether an animal had to die to make the food possible. So, I mean, we worked with it; I think they thought I was nice enough that they didn't take me wrongly.

"Did the animal have to die?" was the lowest-common-denominator way of putting it. And that was the right way to go about it in that situation; I hope I never forget one of my favorite memories of standing in line at the cafeteria behind a stream of folks on hamburger day. I heard, over and over, the question "what kinda cheese you want on your burger?" Curious, when I came to my turn at the counter and I grabbed my salad or whatever, I just had to ask, "what kinds of cheese do you have here?" Again the look that said, "duh!" and the response: "we got whait cheese, an' yallow cheese."

At at more elaborated level, to my mind at least it wasn't just the dying part at issue but also the factory-farm misery and suffering factor that matters as well - such that I even considered, ever so briefly, going vegan because eggs and cheese and milk coming from animals that maybe wish they WERE dead.

But I never went there. And when the warmer days returned to Green Bank, the Texan in me started yearning to barbecue, and upon the acquisition of a wee little Weber grill I quickly went the way of big, fat steaks because to settle for grilled eggplant or zucchini or whatever, well, it just wasn't right. Not tastey enough. Thence ended my year-long experiment with vegetarianism. But I think I still maintain a general preference for vegetables over meat. And in my approach toward consuming protein, I do strive to be as sustainably-minded and anti-factory-farming as I can.

Good memories of Green Bank, W.Va.

In keeping with the flow of reviewing good thoughts at the start of the week, since I've had West Virginia on my mind (and was singing and playing with Lisa last night a song about West Virginia), I thought I'd post a few things that were really nice about living in isolation for a year:

The night sky. When there was anything other than a full moon, to walk out at night and look up was ever awe-inspiring; light pollution was practically zero, due to the isolation factor.

The juxtaposition of nature and technology. There were all kinds of radio telescopes throughout the site, and riding a bike around you'd see deer hanging around them, munching on the grass and looking completely at ease.

The beauty of the technology. Radio telescopes, from the outside at least, are very quiet. So to find a place to sit and watch, you'd see the dishes glide gracefully as they'd transit from source to source, or adjust slightly as they moved from on-source to off-source. A sight such as that was the first thing that really got me hooked onto radio astronomy, back before my year-long pilgrimage to Green Bank took place.

Listening to the music of the technology down in the engineering lab, with all the vacuum pumps and cryostat coolers and people tinkering around on things.

The good-hearted people. I remember one evening, for instance, when the lab's cleaning crew whom I had befriended offered to make me a dinner of stir-fried vegetables. The did something like heated up a bunch of oil and threw in some raw vegetables and fried the hell out of them. It was really nasty, but they meant well, and I ate it.

The awareness that I am comfortable just being. There are obviously not a lot of distractions in Green Bank, and if you're not at ease with yourself, being there for months on end could drive you crazy.

Discovering bluegrass in its home turf.

Does happiness need a reason?

This started as a response to a thought-provoking comment (the title to this note, without a question mark). As I explored my attitude about the idea of happiness needing no reason further, and my line count got longer, I decided "what the hell" and am making a bloggedy-note about it.

I'm reluctant to go, as a >general< rule, with the idea of embracing happiness as such without further thought. For starters, my caution comes from having read too much philosophy, wherein there is a particular brand that posits happiness as the raisons d'être in the choices we make. I agree with a common critique of that view, pointing out that it's just as, or maybe even more, important to be happy about the right kinds of things. I won't go into the minutia, but just say I take to heart the thought of being aware of the things that buoy or sink my moods, and strive to be balanced about it all. In the case at hand (feeling full of something like champagne bubbles sometimes after yoga), whatever it is in yoga that buoys me, I have no idea. It's not simply the practice itself, because the sensation in question doesn't happen like clockwork. When it does happen, I'm immensely grateful and don't think for a second it's coming from a bad place. But at the same time, I don't know where it's coming from, either, so it has me a little perplexed.

I've done all kinds of exercise, so when a very intelligent friend of mine said, "it sounds like endorphins" I could see where she was coming from, but not agree. It's a very peculiar sort of joyous effervescence I feel (when I get it), quite unlike anything else. Well, maybe that's an over statement; I get something close to it in a good music jam with my bluegrassey friends, and I feel so full of the happiness of the moment I can't stand still, and thank goodness for guitar straps so that I can bounce and play and sing all at the same time. But in that case, I'm content to just enjoy the joy of the moment.

I suspect that there might be something more to the story of this sensation in yoga literature; I'd like to see a story about what that's all about, in the terms of the practice itself, even if it sounds all woo-woo. (because either there is some kind of story, or I'm completely weird. but I don't think I'm completely weird. just a little weird.) I >think<, and this is a total hunch, that the sensation is indicative of making some sort of progress or headway in the practice. I think that's a really good thing, and whatever that right thing I did was, I'd like to pursue that - and not, in truth, just for the sake of getting that vibratey-bubbley feeling. To be honest, I think I'd rather like to learn to put a damper on when it occurs so that I'm not internally bouncing around for hours. Too much of a good thing, and all that.

But what did I do right? So far as my primitive understanding of yoga goes, all I've got to work with are the asanas and getting into good alignment and good breath. Well, I think I've also got some intuitions, but they seem quite vague. Did I simply do a better version of triangle? Is there something more? Did I do a better job of opening up? What "opened", and what did I open up to? Did I plug into some extra something somewhere? What "plug," what "thing"? Was it a particular sort of mindfulness or meditativeness I managed to achieve? Was it the chanting? All the above? In short, I don't even think I have an adequate vocabulary to voice things.

So there's the long story about why the sensation of happiness itself wasn't sufficient as a stopping place for me, and motivated me off to a bookstore the other day. I wasn't distressed or unhappy, about being happy. But did want some kind of better feel or understanding about what it's all about. And now, midway through one book I acquired, I am glad to see that there are frequent mentions of a joy that come associated with the practice, so I'm relieved to think I'm definitely not crazy. :-)

Good memories of Green Bank

"One of the principal limiting factors in radio astronomy observations today is man-made radio "noise."

"Interference can be blocked off by barriers. Thus, if there is a large hill between a radio transmitter and a radio telescope, the transmitter is much less likely to be troublesome to radio astronomy observations. For this reason a valley surrounded by mountains is a good choice for a radio telescope site.

"All of these factors entered into the choice of a site for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Green Bank is in Deer Creek Valley, at an elevation of 2600 feet, with mountains rising all around to about 4200 feet. The valley is relatively sparsely populated, there are no large population centers nearby, and the mountains effectively shield the valley from the nearer cities. As a result, the level of manmade noise in the valley is very low. ..."

(From a booklet prepared by Associated Universities, Inc., to mark the occasion of ground-breaking ceremonies at Green Bank, WV, Oct. 17, 1957)

In a moment when I was taking a break the other day, I scanned the beginning of a book that an astronomer friend sent to me that's on my list of things to read. The book is about the history of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, WV.

Green Bank is was where I spent my last year of grad school (at Northwestern). A large part of my dissertation project had to do with radio astronomy, about which I had read a great deal and taken some courses. But I had the itching thought in my head that I was only getting part of the story. My last year I applied for, and thankfully received, a fellowship, called a dissertation-year fellowship: folks who received it were expected to take the opportunity to not have to teach or work, go hole themselves up for a year and complete their thesis.

After the sense of amazement wore off, I remember the next thought I had was: I DON'T HAVE TO SPEND THE COMING WINTER IN CHICAGO! I could go write my dissertation in freakin' Jamaica if I wanted to. Have money, can travel - woot!! Don't get me wrong. I love, love, LOVE Chicago; it's like my second home and anyone who knows me, also knows not to get me started because I will go on ad nauseam about how cool the windy city is. All the same, after 4 or 5 winters in a row, I was ready for a break.

I put the idea of Jamaica out of my head and started thinking more strategically. I asked the radio astronomer who was on my committee if he might know any astronomy observatory folks who would be willing to take on a philosopher of science type who wanted to reside at their facility and learn more in a hands-on way about the science. Oh, yeh, and write her dissertation.

And there was a taker: the observatory at Green Bank! I took out pretty much every last dollar I had for cash advances on my credit card to buy a beater car, got a sub-letter for my apartment, loaded up my vehicle and away I went.

That was one of the most amazing experiences in my life. I learned so much! How to use Unix. How to reduce data with several different sorts of software. I worked my own observing program at the Haystack Observatory's 37-meter telescope up in Massachusetts - that was insanely awesome. I mean, I didn't just plug in my observing program from afar: I actually operated the damned thing for a weekend all by myself, inside the radiodome at a console with the telescope right behind me. I'm telling you, setting coordinates to slew that 100-foot dish around, and then turning to watch this gigantic piece of machinery respond, arc, and swivel (sometimes with the idea: omg, what if I made an error and told it to point at the ground?) was absolutely thrilling.
Illustration of MIT's Haystack 37-meter radio telescope.


But back to Green Bank, I got met lots of wonderful people, including G. I took a stab at learning how to snowboard up at Snowshoe (which, as I hear is the norm, consisted mostly of me doing face-plants). As the description from that book above correctly puts it, Green Bank is truly isolated. So to do any kind of decent grocery shopping, you had to go over at least 2 mountains to get to the nearest town. So grocery shopping days were always like little mini-adventures: icing up the cooler, filling up a big thermos of coffee and having a day trip. And if you wanted anything "really" fancy - like fresh fish or a manicure - then that meant going over a few more mountains and over into Virginia.

It was also a year that followed my sort of random decision to try being vegetarian (but the kind that eats fish, whatever the terminology is for that, that I never paid much attention to). I wasn't driven to it by any health or ethical concerns (although in moments of weakness I did draw from ethical thinking to keep myself on the wagon). I just wanted to try it and see what it was like, to see if I could do it and be okay with it.

What is it like to be vegetarian in West Virginia? More on that thrilling tale, later!