Five dozen trips

Dear Skeptos...

After today I'm taking a quick break -- this will be my only post this week.  I'll be back on Monday, November 2.  Until then, please keep topic suggestions coming!

cheers,

Gordon

*********************************

Today is my sixtieth birthday.

I'm not a big believer in the significance of milestones, but this one seems to be pretty major.  Partly, it's my incredulity over turning sixty when I don't feel sixty.  Well, in some ways I do; I've got more aches and pains and minor physical issues than I used to.  Fortunately, at this point, nothing at all serious.  I've got some gray, especially in my facial hair, so I keep it trimmed really short to minimize the impact.  I have a few more wrinkles and laugh lines.  I need reading glasses (either that, or my conjecture that everyone is printing in smaller and smaller fonts is correct).  My stamina for running is less than it used to be.

Overall, though, I can't complain.  I've made it here relatively unscathed.

What sixty looks like

Part of that is good luck, and part is good genes.  I come from a family of long-lived people.  My parents both made it to 83, and my dad especially looked a consistent ten years younger than he actually was, pretty much his whole life.  His mom, my beloved Grandma Bertha, lived to 93, and her eccentric Aunt Clara died at 101.  (Great Aunt Clara was almost completely blind during the last ten years of her life, but still walked daily around her home town of Wind Ridge, Pennsylvania with her red-tipped cane.  The story is that she made a point of whapping people she didn't like with her cane as she passed them.  "Accidentally."  Just showing that irascibility runs in my father's family as well as longevity.)

So as far as genetics goes, I got dealt a pretty good hand.

I also attribute some of it, though, to the fact that I still have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old.  Nothing keeps you young like retaining your ability to laugh at fart jokes.

Looking back, it's been a wild ride.  I've come a long way in sixty years, both literally and figuratively.  I've been lucky enough to have the opportunity to travel to exotic places like Ecuador and Trinidad and Malaysia.  I live in upstate New York, which I would put in contention for the most beautiful place in the world.  I have two sons I'm proud of.  Despite off-the-scale shyness and social anxiety I'm happily married to the love of my life.  I'm a published author with fifteen books to my name.  I just retired a couple of years ago after a 32-year career teaching science to teenagers, a vocation that was some combination of challenging, fun, frustrating, and exhilarating -- truly a job where you never know what's going to happen next.  With the support of family and friends, two years ago I finally came out publicly as bisexual, shedding decades of shame and fear and finally stepping into the light and saying, "This is who I am."  I've learned a lot about myself and others, especially the deep, aching truth of what a family friend told me when I was six: "Always be kinder than you think you need to be, because everyone you meet is fighting a terrible battle that you know nothing about."  Through it all, I've come out mostly happy, mostly healthy, and entirely glad to be where I am.

I am an incredibly lucky man.

Still, it's a little mind-boggling that I've made five dozen trips around the Sun.  It's hard to fathom that it's been that long.  When someone says "twenty years ago," I immediately think, "1980?"  No, that's forty years ago.  Twenty years ago is 2000.  Today's twenty-year-olds were infants when 9/11 happened.  So many of the things I think of as high-magnitude historical events -- the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger, the start of the Gulf War, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, the development of the World Wide Web and email, the breakup of Yugoslavia and the siege of Sarajevo, the Oklahoma City bombing, the signing of the Good Friday Agreement that officially ended the Irish "Troubles" -- all happened before today's twenty-year-olds were born.

I can't fool myself.  I haven't been young for quite some time.  It brings back memories of my grandma, then about eighty, dropping into her favorite rocking chair with a groan, then cocking an eyebrow at me and saying, "You know, Gordon, I'm no spring chicken any more."  I'd usually grin and say, "Grandma, when were you a spring chicken?"  To which she'd retort something like, "Last Thursday, you little pipsqueak.  Now fix me a martini."  And we'd both crack up.

Then I'd fix her a martini.

That's the kind of eighty-year-old I want to be.

I guess there's no avoiding aging, although I do think a lot of it boils down to attitude.  You can't escape the physical stuff completely, although you can ameliorate it by staying active; I'm glad I'm still a runner, and I suspect that I'd be in way worse shape than I am if I'd become sedentary.  But I'm damned if I'll let it get me down.  I remember a friend of mine turning sixty, and he went into a serious depression -- it was so much harder than fifty, he said, "because there's no doubt you're past halfway.  Some people make it to a hundred, but almost no one makes it to a hundred and twenty."

Which might be true, but it's not going to stop me from trying.

So anyhow: happy birthday to me.  Despite my friend's hang-dog attitude, here's to the next five dozen trips.  Maybe my attitude is a little like the guy who fell off the roof of a skyscraper, and as he passes the twentieth floor, someone yells out of a window at him to ask how he's doing, and he shrugs and says, "So far, so good."

But it's better than the alternative.  Much better to relax, enjoy the view, and have a martini.

**********************************

Have any scientifically-minded friends who like to cook?  Or maybe, you've wondered why some recipes are so flexible, and others have to be followed to the letter?

Do I have the book for you.

In Science and Cooking: Physics Meets Food, from Homemade to Haute Cuisine, by Michael Brenner, Pia Sörensen, and David Weitz, you find out why recipes work the way they do -- and not only how altering them (such as using oil versus margarine versus butter in cookies) will affect the outcome, but what's going on that makes it happen that way.

Along the way, you get to read interviews with today's top chefs, and to find out some of their favorite recipes for you to try out in your own kitchen.  Full-color (and mouth-watering) illustrations are an added filigree, but the text by itself makes this book a must-have for anyone who enjoys cooking -- and wants to learn more about why it works the way it does.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

End of an era

Today is my last day as a classroom teacher.

We still have finals week yet to go, but for all intents and purposes, this is it.  The last day of class.  This year, when I say goodbye to my students, it's really goodbye.

I'm of two minds about retirement, which I suppose is only natural.

First, I've taught biology (and various other subjects) for 32 years, and I am seriously ready to do something different.  While I love my subject -- I still get ridiculously excited when I get to teach genetics and evolutionary biology -- there are parts of it that I will not miss.  Over three decades, and I still haven't figured out how to make The Parts of the Cell interesting.  And while I personally love biochemistry, it doesn't seem to be a Fan Favorite.

And that's putting it mildly.

I also am rather notorious in my school for my antipathy toward Staff Development.  I detest bureaucracy, and the increasing motion in New York -- and, I suspect, elsewhere in the United States -- toward micromanagement and a standardized-tests-über-alles approach to education absolutely infuriates me.  So I won't miss curriculum mapping and high-stakes exams and administrative b-b stackers who don't have the slightest clue what makes teaching vital and relevant and interesting.

But.  I still love the students.  The relationships I've formed over the years have meant a great deal to me, and the trust and interest and friendship the students have shown me are something I value more than I can put into words.  Also, that "Aha!" moment you see in kids' eyes when something finally makes sense, when suddenly some piece of the universe becomes clear to them -- there's nothing like that in the world.

The room where I spent a significant chunk of the last 27 years

I also have been privileged to work with a truly incomparable staff.  Our school district is very, very lucky, from the leadership on down to the rank-and-filers like myself.  In particular, the science department in our school is made up of incredibly talented, caring, and smart individuals, who have exactly the right attitudes toward education and have been, one and all, a delight to work with.  I'll truly miss the camaraderie.

The science department's yearbook photo this year.  We were supposed to include in the photo something that was important to us, and "make it memorable."  We nailed the latter part, at least.

There are also more specific, personal memories that I'll cherish forever.

• The moment in my Critical Thinking class a few years ago, when I was talking about how (or if) we can establish knowledge in the absence of hard evidence.  I said, "I want you right now, with what you have right here, to prove to me that pandas exist!"  And a student silently reached into her backpack... and pulled out a stuffed panda.  After we stopped laughing, I said, "You win this round."  At the end of the semester, she gave me the panda, which still sits on my desk.
• Superintendent's Conference Days.  This may come as a surprise, given my general hatred of staff development as described above -- but I always know that on conference days, the physics teacher and I get fried chicken from the village grocery store for lunch, and that chicken is damn tasty.
• My first day of teaching in Trumansburg High School, when I was teaching in three different classrooms, and second period accidentally went to the wrong one.  I started calling roll, and (of course) no one answered.  After three tries of getting someone, anyone, to answer "Here," one of the students said, in a small voice, "I think the kids you're looking for are next door."  Thereby establishing myself as slightly daffy, a reputation that still haunts me for some reason.
• The student who asked me, in complete seriousness, if Friday the 13th ever fell on a Sunday.
• The incredibly talented artist who, as part of a senior project focused on human faces, did an amazing portrait of me, which I still cherish.
• Finding out that despite my having moved here 27 years ago knowing no one, I've met two students who are distant cousins of mine.
• All the times students have asked me questions that made me step back and say, "Whoa.  I've never thought about that" -- resulting in my learning something along with them.

So all in all, it's been a good run, and retirement was a really hard decision to make.  But it's the right one at the right time.  I've got a lot of things I want to do -- writing, mostly, although I'm sure that a large part of my retirement will be occupied with "let dogs in, let dogs out, let dogs in, let dogs out" -- and I'm content with turning over the reins to a new teacher.  (Really new, in my case.  I know the person who was hired to replace me, and she's a first-year teacher, right out of the starting gate -- and is incredibly talented, dedicated, enthusiastic, and smart.  I have to admit to feeling better about leaving given that I know the students are in good hands.)

So this is it.  In a few hours, the last bell will ring on my teaching career, and that'll be that.  I'm gonna try not to cry, but we'll see how long that determination holds.

***********************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a little on the dark side; Jared Diamond's riveting book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.  Starting with societies that sowed the seeds of their own destruction -- such as the Easter Islanders, whose denuding of the landscape led to island-wide ecological collapse -- he focuses the lens on the United States and western Europe, whose rampant resource use, apparent disregard for curbing pollution, and choice of short-term expediency over long-term wisdom seem to be pushing us in the direction of disaster.

It's not a cheerful book, but it's a very necessary one, and is even more pertinent now than when it was written in 2005.  Diamond highlights the problems we face, and warns of that threshold we're approaching toward catastrophe -- a threshold that is so subtle that we may well not notice it until it's too late to reverse course.

[If you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]