Quickie

No, not that. ; )

A quick little post since we're running in to Houma, trying to beat a tropical storm bearing straight down on us from the southeast. Whether I escape Louisiana ahead of the windy deluge is debatable...


Another evening, another spectacular ruddy sunset.

The clouds seem to dance with the sunlight...

...and the sunlight seems to animate the clouds.

Not quite the waterspout. Between water and gray cloud above, in the center-left of the picture, you will see a faint rainbow. The sun was behind us, as the clouds broke up late in the afternoon.

Tampons for Science, or Lifting the Veil

Fine drama this isn't. But it is an account of mischief combining with science to brighten an otherwise ordinary day.

Names have been changed to protect the embarrassed.

* * *

SETTING: On station at some unspecified location on the Gulf of Mexico, aboard the M/V Caroline Hench, a tender turned science vessel., during a hot, blustery summer afternoon.

CHARACTERS:

JOE, survey tech
BIG JIM, surveyor/deck boss.
ETHAN, ocean engineer.
AARON, party chief.
MIKE, oceanographer.
OLIVIA, a geophysicist.

SCENE 1. Fantail of the Caroline Hench. AARON, BIG JIM, ETHAN, JOE, and MIKE are assembled variously around the upright metal frame of an instrument (also known as the fish) about to be dropped via winch and cable into the ocean, for the sake of making observations on petroleum content.

ETHAN. You know, I’d been hoping to put something on the fish that might be able to pick up any oil it goes through on the way down. Paper or something…

MIKE. Yeah, that’s not a bad idea. Though paper might rip.

JOE. How about a sorbent pad?

ETHAN. Might work…are they tough enough?

MIKE (Walks across the deck to a dirty sorbent pad lying beneath a hose valve. Rips the pad slightly.) Well, they rip pretty easily, but I don’t think they’ll fall apart in the water like paper would.

ETHAN. I was kind of thinking of a paper plate. They kind of have a coating that keeps the water off.

MIKE. That’d keep the oil off too.

JOE. How about a facecloth?

ETHAN. Yeah, though we’d need a white one.

MIKE. Hmm… (Leaves)

ETHAN. Well, we might as well use some sorbent. Is there a clean pad anywhere?

JOE. Yeah, over in the box. (Goes to the box and retrieves a soft pad of sorbent.)

BIG JIM. Yeah, that’ work…where’s the duct tape?

JOE retrieves a roll of duct tape, brings that and the sorbent to BIG JIM, who tears off a piece of sorbent, wraps it around part of the instrument frame, and begins taping it in place.

Re-enter MIKE, who waves the plate overhead and carries an off-white facecloth in the other hand as he walks toward ETHAN.

MIKE. Here, is this what you wanted? (Tears the plate in half.)

BIG JIM. No, leave it whole! The edges provide strength.

MIKE. (Staring at the two halves of a plate.) Oh. (Walks over to the garbage bin, places one half inside, and gives the other half to BIG JIM, who begins wrapping it and taping it down.)

MIKE. And I snagged a facecloth too, though it’s a little off-white.

ETHAN. It’ll be off-white by the time we’re done with it anyway.

JOE. I doubt the sorbent or the plate will last, anyhow. They’ll probably just fall off.

MIKE. You know what would work perfectly…?

JOE. I know what you’re thinking.

ETHAN. Yeah, a tampon would be pretty ideal.

MIKE. I mean, it’d stand up to the water, and it’s probably twice as absorbent as the sorbent pad!

ETHAN. So, do you want to go ask?

MIKE. Well…that’s the problem.

JOE. Yeah, wanna get slapped?

MIKE. Slapped with a harassment suit, more like!

AARON. Though a tampon would work perfectly…

ETHAN. Yeah, and who better to do it than the survey chief? (Slaps AARON on the back.)

JOE. Yeah, I say you should go get it!

AARON. Hey, I got you your chair. I’m not getting you your tampon.

ETHAN. (To MIKE.) I’ve got an idea. You could just raid their bedroom.

MIKE. Yeah, they’d never notice, I’d find it immediately, and everything would be OK.

ETHAN. Well, it was just a gag anyway, probably better we not bother.

AARON. And we wouldn’t learn much from it anyway. Better to just leave that one alone.

BIG JIM. Too bad, because those things are probably ten times as absorbent as a sorbent pad. I worked with a guy once…

AARON. Alright, guys, we should start thinking about how we’re going to handle this rising sea state. It’s going to be tougher to deploy and recover. (Enters into technical discussion with BIG JIM and JOE. MIKE zones out.)

ETHAN. (To MIKE.) So what do you think about this weather building up?

MIKE. I’m thinking about going in and asking anyway.

ETHAN. (Chuckles.) It’s up to you, but I think we’re okay without it.

AARON. If these waves continue to rise, this will be our last cast for the day. We’ll need to check the weather and see if we’ll need to lay in or think about heading to shore.

BIG JIM. Aahhh, we shouldn’t give up yet. These things are barely four feet tall!

AARON. Yes, but if they get much bigger we won’t be able to operate. The sonar arm will likely start vibrating as well.

MIKE. Screw it. No guts no glory. (Leaves)

SCENE 2. Control van of the Caroline Hench, a cargo container outfitted inside as a dry lab, both sides lined with desks and computers. Among 8 other people at work, OLIVIA sits at her computer, entering data. Enter MIKE.

MIKE. (Kneels.) Hey, Olivia.

OLIVIA. Yes?

MIKE. I’ve got a question for you, and if it’s offensive or seems inappropriate, please excuse me. But it’s strictly for science…

(OLIVIA looks at him quizzically. Her neighbor at the desk looks over with mild alarm.)

MIKE. You see, we got the idea of putting something absorbent on the fish, which might be able to pick up any oil that it goes through on its way down. We got a sorbent pad, a facecloth and some paper, but I was hoping…

OLIVIA. (Being patient.) Would you like a tampon?

MIKE. Yes. Or a maxi pad.

OLIVIA. No problem. Would you like both?

MIKE. Sure, if you can spare them, thanks!

(Exeunt.)

SCENE 3. Fantail of the Caroline Hench. AARON, BIG JIM, ETHAN, and JOE stand about the fish, talking. Enter MIKE.

MIKE. We’re in business!

JOE. Ask, and you shall receive.

MIKE. Ask nicely enough, and you shall receive. You can’t just be a dick about it.

BIG JIM takes the tampon and maxi pad, removes the wrapper from the tampon, and begins taping it to the frame.

SCENE 4. Fantail of the Caroline Hench. ETHAN and MIKE walk toward the fish, having been reeled back up on deck following two dives. BIG JIM is already there, inspecting the equipment.

MIKE. Well, the tampon isn’t scientifically valid now. We left the same one on for two consecutive casts.

ETHAN. Yeah, but it’s white. It’s a negative result anyway.

MIKE. Still, worth trying.

BIG JIM. Yeah, well I’m proud of that little tampon! It’s still on there!

(All three nod.)

FINIS

* * *

Instruments of science:

The maxi pad.



The tampon.

* * *

Now, any woman reading this might think, You're so proud of yourself for going to ask a humdrum question about a perfectly ordinary thing like a tampon? That took nerve? I'll tell you about nerve. Pass a swollen football through a passage the size of your throat, and you'll learn about nerve.

To which every male can only have the same response: Yes dear.

Legendary

Not legendary in the sense you may have been thinking. (I may be on my way to being legendary, but I will admit that I'm not there yet. Even being the grossest and most disgusting brother in my college fraternity for a while hasn't earned me that honor.) No, I'm talking about something else, which will be made clear a little bit farther down.

In the meantime, a few odd pics sitting in my folder:

A photo taken on our first day out, as we hovered about 24 km out from the wellhead, in the company of a line of tenders standing by in case they were needed at the site. Not sure why, but the line of waiting ships impressed me quite a bit. That much heavy hardware, just idling by, is one small indicator of the size and importance of this whole well-closing project.

Another line of clouds, another red sunset.

Same, a few minutes later and closer up.

And now we come to the legendary part of this entry.

My mother loved Rockwood, Maine, and Moosehead Lake in general. The pine woods were bigger and thicker, the lake darker and wilder, the neighbors much farther away up there. (And that's where country folks go for vacation, apparently: even farther out into the country.)

She also loved moose. Had little statuettes of them, pictures of them, a few sweatshirts featuring them. It never rose to the level of a fully blown mania--say, like my childhood love of owls which led a cousin to think I was possessed--and a few other artifacts. One was moostletoe, a Christmas decoration made out of laquered moose droppings, strung along a cord like beads, with alternating red and green bows. If she was willing to put dried and hardened moose feces on her Christmas tree, it's pretty safe to say she liked all things moose.

She and Dad had many friends from college, a few especially close. Two of them, Dick and Sue Cox, lived on the Cape and, despite having spent four years in Maine for college (albeit in Lewiston--hardly a moose mecca) and having visited my parents several times up on the lake, had never seen a moose. Dick went so far as to disavow their existence, claiming them to be a fiction of Mom's (and it wouldn't've been the first fiction she'd put out there, if Dick had been right).

So Mom tried to rise to the occasion and document their presence. But there were two problems with this: if you aren't willing to tromp through the woods to seek them out, but would rather stay in your car, then you're pretty much out of luck unless it's dawn or dusk. Second, Mom would only use her simple little point-and-shoot, much like my little point-and-shoot except that mine is digital, and takes four seconds for one photograph because it tries to get the light and focus right.

One night, on the drive back from Greenville to their cabin, Mom and Dad spotted a moose, standing about 100 feet away from the right side of the road, at the edge of the forest. So Mom had Dad stop the car, and she whipped out her little point-and-shoot, and shot.

When she got the photo developed...you could see some grass, and then the shadowy edge of a forest. Mom claimed there was a moose in the shadow, and she was brave enough to show the photo to Dick and Sue. But really, it was even less conclusive than a UFO pic. She put it in her photo album with the caption, "Can you find the moose". It became something of a legend in my family for bad photography.

And so we come to this: my entry into the Sutherland "What the Eff is That?" photo pantheon. Behold:

Can you see the waterspout?

I saw my first waterspout today! I was upset with myself four days ago when one of my colleagues said she'd spotted one during a squall, I think while I was busy at my computer. So today someone raised the alarm, and I went bounding out of the control van to see.

It was pretty wimpy--actually, there were two, but that was the bigger--and never touched the sea. It poked tentatively down out of the cloud, and then slowly shrank back in.

We're currently on station, doing an instrument cast. The seas have risen noticeably with the passage of a front, possibly related to a new tropical weather formation southeast of us, still a few hundred miles away. The ship's roll is quite noticeable so I took the precaution of two Dramamine pills. About half of the storm track predictions have this thing--called a tropical wave, one grade below a tropical depression (which is one grade below a tropical storm, which is one below a hurricane) running right over us, bringing 25-mph winds and waves 5-7' tall.

Almost every trade has its version of machismo, and offshore work is certainly no different. However, big storms have a way of bringing out the alarmist in mariners:

When will we bug out? Remains to be seen.

Sunset

Nursing a bit of homesick heartache, so I finally thought to watch a sunset. Whenever I see one over the water, I think of one of my favorite poems:

God having a hemhorrage-
Blood coughed across the sky-
That is sunset in the Caribbean.
(Langston Hughes)

This isn't the Caribbean, but we're not all that far away. And though it's not a desert, some other lines came into my head:

Your burning skies, are never ending
across your red brush plains
Out where the dingo still is king
and eternity remains.
(Dougie McLean)

Lots of photos of the very same clouds and sun, taken only minutes apart. But if you care to look closely enough, many differences will start to appear...

Third Cruise

Finally on the water! The nagging issues were resolved, the problems fixed, the gear brought aboard and stowed. So now we're on our third cruise, which is officially known as the second cruise. I suppose that's because my first cruise, the four-day shakedown punctuated by Hurricane Alex, was in fact the zeroth cruise. So while this is known officially as the second cruise, it's my third trip to Louisiana, my third absence from my family, and my third situation on the water, so to speak. So I'll go ahead and refer to it as the third cruise.

And as usual, I have pictures.


Carl working on the towed mass spectrometer. Mass specs are fascinating pieces of equipment--they identify the chemical content of solids, liquids and gases. There are various methods and designs, but the basic operating concept is this: a sample is vaporized, so the molecules are floating in a vacuum. Those molecules are then given slight electrical charges, which makes them susceptible to magnetism. They're then shot past a magnet, which bends their flight according to their mass: the heavier the molecule, the less its flight is bent; the lighter the molecule, the more its flight is bent. A sensor picks up where the molecules hit, calculates the amount of bend in their flight, and determines the identity of the molecule. Pretty amazing.

Generally, tools like that are used in the lab, in the safety and comfort of a dry-land setting. This instrument is towed in the water, as deep as 1500m down, to analzye chemicals still within the ocean. To my knowledge there is only one other like it on the planet. And now we're using it...sort of. Some water got in one of the connections today and shut us down, while the spectrometry team got busy troubleshooting it. (Marine science, if you haven't gotten a clear sense from me yet, involves an awful lot of troubleshooting. To mix a Thomas Edison quote with one from Yogi Berra, Ocean science is 99% perspiration, and the other half is troubleshooting.

A tangent which still bugs me: between my first and second cruises, when I'd first heard that we were going to have the use of this incredible gizmo, I began reading up on spectrometers, so I'd have some kind of clue as to what we were working with. Borrowed some books, hunted up some PDFs online, the ordinary routine. But, as it turns out, there's a world expert on mass spectrometry, as applied to oil spills, at the oceanography school where I got my master's. So hey, why not go ask him some basic questions about what we might expect to see? Sure, I'm a neophyte or less at chemical analysis of the ocean, but certainly the general reading I've done, and a thoughtful talk with an expert, could lead me to some more meaningful questions that I'd be able to ask him. Why not, you know? So I e-mailed him and showed up at his office.

My reception was polite, but hardly accepting. And he was very quick to deny any relevant knowledge: "I work in the lab, not in the field. I really wouldn't know anything about what you're doing." Right. Nothing about various types of spectrometers, sensitivity issues, equilibration time issues, what types of chemicals we might expect at depth...nah. By analogy, it's like going to a world expert on the letter A, and asking for help. Only he tells you, "Well, I specialize in upper-case A. You're interested in lower-case a, which is totally different, so I can't help you."

I'm not in love with commercial or corporate culture, by any means. But there are things about academic culture which positively disgust me, and intellectual cowardice is one of the biggest. It's as if by taking one of these specialists six inches out of his playpen, he's suddenly in foreign, unknown territory. My baby girl has more spirit of adventure than many professors.

Alright, that tangent is over. Moving on to the next pic...

The rosette, with twelve remotely-operated bottles which we can open electronically and obtain samples at the depths we choose. Below that, beneath the towel, is a complex little instrument which measures salinity, temperature, and pressure (i.e. depth), as well as the content of dissolved oxygen and chemical content based on emitted light. The light sensor is known as a fluorometer. It emits a spectrum of light, which causes certain types of chemicals to give off light spectra themselves. The fluorometer measures the intensity and frequencies of returning light, which gives us an indication of the chemicals in the water (not as precise as the spectrometer but not as difficult to use, either). Another neat little instrument.

The mechanical sidearm to which the singlebeam sonar is mounted. Problem is, when we put the arm down and moved along at our survey speed of 5 kts, the arm began vibrating against the ship's hull at about 4 beats/second, moving in and out about 2-3 inches at waterline. This wasn't good for anything, least of all our observations or the sonar unit, so we slowed down. Then it appeared that the bolts on the lower flange had been bent by the vibrations, and we couldn't draw the arm back up...so we're waiting on a sawzall and some very tough blades to cut the bolts and replace them.

Meet the new winch, same as the old winch. (Well, it's newer, and smaller, and the cable won't carry as heavy of a load. But I thought the line was neat, and besides, it's still a winch.)

The tarp. One of the ongoing problems on this boat is air conditioning. With daytime temperatures over 100 deg, and as many people running around on the boat as there are, the AC units are hard put to it to keep us comfortable. So some of the more inventive science crew rigged up this tarp over the control van to provide shade. It reminds me of Istanbul, where the side streets have sheets stretched out from the buildings on one side to the buildings on the other side, covering the entire street in shade and beautifully knocking down the intensity of the sunlight.

Not one of the kill bore drillers--we're not near the site yet. It's simply another drilling rig, possibly one of the ones shut down by Obama's ban. I've seen three different definitions of "deep Gulf"--500 ft, 500 m , and 1000 m--so this one might qualify, or not. The smoke leads me to believe it's working, but I'm not sure. A petroleum engineer I'm not.

Big tough Jim. This is not the first job I've worked on with him. He's as solid and steady as they come, an old survey hand who knows every practical aspect of the job. He's the deck boss, and he's a good choice. When he's not surveying on the high seas he lives in the mountains of Thailand with his young wife. On the muggiest and most sweltering 100+ degree day, he'll say brightly, "It's just like home!"

Ever wonder how we get trash off a boat? We put the garbage bags into much bigger bags made out of some kind of plastic burlap, with web handles. A crane dangles its hook overhead, we loop the bag handles over the hook, and the crane takes the garbage away. And that's how we get rid of trash on a boat.

Unless we're outside of any nation's exclusive economic zone, in which case we could dump almost anything except plastic overboard with impunity.

The back deck, a scene of activity as we prepare to launch the spectrometer.

Jim, Carl and Ryan talking things over.

Fellow oceanographer Dennis keeps an eye on proceedings.

The official boat photographers. Though really, only Craig (on the right) is the official photographer. Ann Marie just sweetly finagled her way closer to the action by claiming to be the backup. For legal reasons--since all basic aspects of a photograph must be documented (location, time date, etc.)--we've designated one (and only one) photographer. So the poor lawyers have some clue of what we're talking about when we write about mass spectrometers, and rosettes, and our other tools of the marine science trade.

Eric and Carl on station at the winch, as we get ready to deploy the mass spec.

Jim, the deck boss, sole man on the rear deck.

Managing the instrument as the winch and A-frame lift it (note the angle of the A-frame as it carries the instrument away from the deck and over the water).

Walking the instrument back. That can be a hazardous job in even moderate waves. If an instrument weighing even 50 pounds starts swinging with much velocity, it can hurt you pretty badly--especially if it hammers you up against the A-frame.

Winching the mass spec down. Note Jim's right hand, pointing down: drawing circles with your index finger pointing down means "lower". Drawing circles with your index finger pointing up means "raise". Making a pinching motion with your thumb & forefinger pointing down means "lower very slowly". Doing the same, but with fingers pointing up, means "raise very slowly". Clenched fist generally means stop. And a string of expletives means the instrument slammed into the rear of the ship and probably needs fixing.

Dog Days

Hot, in Louisiana, Rhode Island and Maine. Harder still to put up with when I'm frustrated, bored and lonely on the job, and Kate is frustrated, bored and lonely while raising Eva.

Not that my job is all boring, but being trapped in port with another series of minor mechanical problems is really frustrating. We're on a tender, a marine pickup truck which runs supplies to and from oil platforms. Tenders aren't science vessels, which means this mobilization--mobe for short--has taken an uncommonly long time, with a more thorough build-out including a side-arm for the sonar unit and the A-frame on the stern, not to mention welding the cargo box to the deck, which has become our control van. Many things can go wrong, and several have, and so we're still in port when we should have left nearly one full week ago.

I'm resigned to it now, partly because I have plenty of computer work to do, partly because I have a Starbucks I can escape to when I feel the need, and partly because I can walk again. I've had some bizarre muscle tightness in my hamstrings for the last two weeks which got especially bad once I returned to Louisiana, and left me almost unable to walk. If you've ever had severe muscle tightness, the kind that pulls on and affects all the muscles around it, you know what I mean. My glutes (yes, my rear end) and my calves felt almost as nasty as my hammies, and it left me almost unable to sleep, on top of hobbling around ship like an old man with arthritis. After a particularly bad night last night, I feel closer to normal today than I've felt in a few weeks.

Don't know why, but I'm not arguing. I hope the cramps don't come back.

Kate, meanwhile, has been more than holding up her end of the bargain in Maine, occasionally in Rhode Island. Not only tolerating my constant absence this summer, raising Eva alone like she did last fall, but managing our household affairs while I e-mail and phone the things I'd like her to do. We're moving soon, into an apartment not too far away from the condo in North Kingstown. It's a great little place (so I'm told), near the beach, secluded, with a basement. The only drawback is that they don't allow pets, so Jasper will stay in Maine. (Mom-in-law and Dave are happy to keep him around--if not thrilled about tending the litter box and feeding him every day--but I know he'll miss me. I'll miss him too--he's my little feline bud.)

Anyhow, this is a bit of a headlong move because Kate and I are trying to avert or at least gracefully endure foreclosure. My spotty employment of the last two years has finally brought a degree of ruin upon us. It's possible that we'll short-sell, though not given. This summer, I made the decision that I was willing to accept foreclosure--if we couldn't sell--but not bankruptcy. Since the bankruptcy laws were rewritten in 2005, it's a really terrible arrangement and I'd rather not go through that creditor-friendly wringer if I can possibly avoid it. I may yet fail, but I've not yet surrendered.

So Kate's endured several urgent errands that I've pressed upon her from my hot and sleepy vantage in the bayou. All while searching for, and finding, our new living space on her own, and managing an increasingly mobile and expressive little fidget monster who doesn't always enjoy being hauled along for the ride.

Last weekend, since Kate succeeded in securing our new apartment, she had an extra day to make it out to the Cape and spend some time with the Sutherland side of the family, at the reunion going on there. Sister Julie and her husband Halsey have thrown a few of these now, and the whole family enjoys gathering on the beach. Halsey's now an old pro at throwing big beach bashes, and the location is great enough to overcome anyone's hesitance at having to put up with the rest of their family.

It was an odd feeling of displacement I had, talking to my sisters, aunts and cousins via webcam, while Kate was there in person. Like Kate and especially Eva were claiming them all for their own--Eva especially. She still has that infant charisma, being responsive but helpless enough to be a perfect magnet for everyone's attention. In two years, she'll be running around and screaming and it'll be easier for people to tune her out.

But now, it's not possible. She's a crawling, squidgy, vocal center of the universe and I felt very much on the margin when I talked to them from my chair in Starbucks. Eva as usual tried to eat the screen, or perhaps crawl through it (I can't tell which, and she's not saying), but she does seem to recognize me on the computer.

Kate had a good time there, drove back home to Maine, and promptly got really, really sick. She still is, as I type.

So it's been an eventful summer! An unexpected job, with lots of twists. The family flight from the unaffordable, though lovely, condo to a more affordable, and almost as lovely, apartment (actually, in some ways, probably even lovelier--but I'll miss my big windows and hardwood floor). The nerve-wracking choices and deadlines involved in trying to narrowly avoid bankruptcy. The pain, loneliness and frustration of being apart. The sense of triumph and accomplishment for me, at times, of work and, for Kate, of raising a child who's so far been universally praised and adored by friends and family.

Plus just making it through an adventurous year, being mostly happy, and honestly so. I can read Thoreau--stylistically not very charming, but one of America's, and the world's, great thinkers, in my opinion--and not cringe in shame. To paraphrase from a few of his books (and he wrote a lot more than just Walden! Though Walden was the most consistently introspective): "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." I consider my best years still in front of me, having wasted enough time in constructive ways that I'm all the more convinced that the emotional ground my hopes have grown in, is deep and rich. Like he says of the swamp--those years of idleness will help many things to grow. "The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer...speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him." The age of cable television and the internet has exploded the number of orators, to use his term--loudmouths like Breitbart, Coulter, Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Palin, Bachmann and the rest who might believe what they say or might not, but in any case seek the largest audience and most profit and influence they can. It's not my aim to be widely known, or very rich. I'd like for Kate and me to have a comfortable, clean home, and for our kids (yes, we want at least one more after Eva--and of course I want a son) to have good educations and an honest shot at lives as good as ours. My life goals outside of family are coming steadily into view, and the mark I leave on the world does not need to include my name. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." I don't mean to repeat Thoreau's experiment. His adventure was going to the woods and living a simple, introspective life, observing both himself and the natural world around him. His vision was incomparably fine. Thoreau's adventure was to Walden and the woods around it; mine will be elsewhere, but the effort I make and my sincerity in doing so will be worthy of Thoreau's account in Walden--and this includes my life with my family.

I've come to deeply admire Thoreau's thinking this year, starting when I was in the hospital for colitis this spring. I began reading Walden then, and was thrilled with the joy and dry humor I found in his writing, beyond the earthiness and severity which most people assign to him. (By contrast I find Emerson a crank. He might agree with Thoreau in almost every particular, but where HD details the smallest, most repetitive or bleakest aspects of his experience, Emerson paints only pastel. I hate pastel. He's like the pink, orange and yellow negative to Thoreau's deep green, brown and blue.) Thoreau has a simultaneous and inseparable admiration of and disdain for every aspect of life which is the equal of any poet. He was well-versed enough in Hindu mythology, and wrote compellingly enough about the value of simplicity and the falseness of all doctrine, that Mahatma Gandhi counted him as a teacher. Henry's ongoing joy at perpetually discovering the things around him floods out of every word. "Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer's requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings."

Kate endured many nights of my plowing though Thoreau, while I was hopped up on steroids and sleeping anywhere from one to three hours a night. But she's lived her adventure, and will continue to this fall when she begins counseling and teaching. She's a born teacher, and has reserves of patience I will never hope to equal. I consider my impatience a strength and will use it in other ways.

So it's been a tough year, and it's made us tough along with it. But not Eva, not yet. She has many years of her own, away from us as she learns to live on her own terms, to gain toughness. I see no need to scar and toughen up my little baby quite yet.