(dc -> dc) stability

i'm entering a new phase of life. i'm not sure, but i think people know me as someone who moves around a lot, goes to lots of exotic places, does lots of interesting things, meets interesting people. someone who pushes envelopes and makes disproportionate sacrifices and overextends. i'm sure they know me as lots of other things too, but i'm just talking about this particular aspect right now.

well, i think i'm becoming more stable in my almost-middle age. i'm learning the value of getting enough sleep and not overpromising. i'm learning the joys of having time to read and relax and reflect and create without deadlines, and those joys are so great that i'm not so willing to sacrifice them anymore. i'm enjoying the world of abundance that is finally coming into existence for me after years of investment, and although i'm still investing, i'm doing it differently in a more sustainable and less overextended way.

the last 7 years or so has been a deliberate and intentional march towards simplification requiring a fierce adherence to priorities and a dogged commitment to completing things. with the last of these 4 CD projects complete, only two incomplete projects from the previous era remain, and they're both in the work arena: to publish my Ph.D. work in the form of a peer-reviewed scientific publication, and to publish the comprehensive final reports of all the analogs research i've done in the form of a NASA memo. the great thing about these two final projects is that they are in the context of work that i am getting paid to do, so i can work on them at work during work hours until they are complete. this kind of puts them in a different class of projects than all the other things i've just finished, which were all extracurricular and had to be done in my "spare" time, of which there was of course never any.

one of the songs on kat's record, reckoning, is a quote from Baha'u'llah, "O SON OF BEING! Bring thyself to account each day ere thou art summoned to a reckoning; for death, unheralded, shall come upon thee and thou shalt be called to give account for thy deeds." i worked on this song for hours and hours and hours, so i had a lot of time to reflect on it. i realized that i have been resigned to not being able to bring myself to account, on account of the fact that my life was far to complicated and overextended to be able to account for everything. i was so moved by all of it that i made a bonus track on the record, called death unheralded that kind of reflects my internal processes while working on the song. both of these songs were created using a real musicbox that my mom gave me for my birthday one year - recorded and manually chopped, pitchshifted and reversed and all sort of other things. if i could have found the sound chelsea and i made for her song carnival, i would have used that for the death drum, but my files, ironically, were too unorganized to find it in time, so i had to use a regular kick drum. it's fun to see my thoughts and life and character reflected in the music i work on.

this new phase feels new because, for the first time, i am almost in a position to start bringing myself to account each day. what's left to organize (my photos, my contacts, my computer files, my emails) is actually organizable and no longer feels infinitely untacklable. my projects and activities are doable. i'm in a position now where i can actually fulfill on my commitments to people and integrity is not an impossibility. i'm going to write a will. i'm going to get things in order such that if i died tomorrow, my loved ones wouldn't have an enormous mess on their hands.

in short, integrity is possible and creativity is unfettered. this is new. i really like it.

(petersburg, VA) finished

today is the day that it can be said we finished kat's and andy's records. we picked them up from silver sonya (where they slaved all night to get the masters done) and fedexed them off to the duplication plant. these are the 3rd and 4th records in the group of CD's we've finished in the last several weeks. it has been intense. i wish i had a better way with words. i have learned a lot of lessons. i have a lot of mixed emotions right now. i think i'm just going to go to sleep.

congratulations kat and andy and jeff and jarome. but mostly congratulations, kat.

i have been in a deep hole, digging myself out of all of these long-overdue projects and commitments. i feel like i'm just emerging and i'm suddenly free to do whatever i want with my free time, and i have free time. this is a brand new thing for me.

i'll tell you the rest of the story later. i know i'm always promising that. perhaps i won't tell you the rest later. maybe if you wanna hear it, you can ask. call me up and ask me to do something. i might actually be free now.

(dc) watermelon

this guy is cool.



if you mouth "watermelon" in a choir it will sort of look like you haven't forgotten the words. i've heard you can also say "watermelon" over and over in a crowd as an extra and it will look/sound like you're talking normally. but i'm no watermelon expert.

(greenbelt) thoughts on a happy NASA moment

a colleague of mine snapped this photo - i saw him there with the camera and thought he might have captured the moment when mather walked into the room packed with several hundred NASA goddard family members. i happened to be standing in the crowd right in front of mather when he came in and raised up his badge with joy and pride. that's me with the flaming red hair and flaming white bra. (oops. i didn't know that sweater is transparent.)

anyway, sometimes you get to experience moments of the good kind of pride - the kind that results from peoples' honest efforts and groundbreaking achievements. this nobel prize was a huge thing for us at NASA. and more specifically, those of us in mather's directorate at Goddard. not only is it the first time a NASA scientist has ever received a nobel prize, but it comes at a really rocky time for science (and scientists) at NASA. on the walk back to my building i had this conversation with a random colleague whom i don't know:

him: "were you just at the thing?" [the "thing" being mather's celebration - there were champagne and balloons and cheese and everything]

me: "yup."

[silence]

me: "happy day."

him: "yeah."

me: "it's encouraging."

him: "yes."

[pensive silence]

him: "huge morale boost. we really needed it."

you see, it's hard to describe, but there's sometimes a sense that being a NASA scientist puts one at a disadvantage in the scientific world (the "real" world of academia, research institutions, and industry). scientists often put in a lifetime of difficult work trying to juggle true research with the unique kind of work associated with missions and projects. being a project or program scientist often involves a disproportionate amount of non-scientific effort. to get useful scientific results can require millions or billions of dollars, lots of luck, teams of thousands of people (mather's COBE team numbered more than 1500), tremendous bureaucratic and engineering obstacles, and sometimes decades of nervous waiting. the stars and planets literally have to align. so for mather to receive this prize says to us that such efforts are sometimes worth it. it also gives us hope that what we're doing *is* actually worthwhile, or at least it can be. as mather said in the press conference the day before yesterday, "we always knew what we were doing is important. now *everyone* knows it's important." (probably a slight paraphrase, but you might be able to find the actual quotation if you care to.)

it seems to me that there is great value in these high-visibility prizes. the COBE telescope's results were the first indisputable evidence in support of the Big Bang theory, which many people probably still think is still in dispute. at the very least, it disproved all the competing scientific theories. if not for this nobel prize, the knowledge of that result would have been much more likely to remain confined to the scientific community. notwithstanding the room full of astrophysicists that gave mather the standing ovation at the scientific conference where he presented the results, the world at large would have remained much more in the dark. i have listened to him twice now summarize the three big findings of COBE and why they're important. scientists don't often get such opportunities to broadcast their findings so succinctly to a world of non-scientists who are lending an interested ear. three cheers for the swedes and the idea of the nobel prize.

(greenbelt) Goddard culture and the Nobel prize

today NASA goddard scientist john mather (together with berkeley scientist george smoot) won the nobel prize in physics for his cosmic background radiation discoveries and his work on cobe. i thought maybe he is in my building, but he's across the street. there has been lots of celebrating around here today.

woohoo!

(dc) the new keyless world

the thing i like most about my new car, notwithstanding the great gas mileage and the air bags and antilock breaks and power steering etc., is that i never have to take my key out of my pocket. i do have to remember it - it's one step short of being an implant...i guess that will be my next car. but still....the keyless entry and ignition is awesome. i don't know why they didn't do it years earlier.