mamamusings: Rochester

spring has sprung

In April of 2003, six months after I'd started publishing this blog, I posted one of my favorite poems--the one that I think of every April (well, March in Seattle, but April in Rochester) as the weather makes its glorious transformation from the relentless gray of winter to the riotous colors of spring

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

—Robert Frost

I probably could have posted this a few days earlier; the daffodils bloomed on my birthday (Wednesday), and they brighten my mood every time I look at them.

I'm enjoying the weather all the more because I spend so much time every day walking the dog--and letting her romp in the backyard. She can be a handful sometimes, but mostly she's delightful.

rochester mac repair recommendation

I’m in the midst of my usual pre-trip panic—Lane and I leave for Seattle at 6am tomorrow morning, and I feel completely unprepared.

The panic was magnified by the fact that my beloved MacBook Pro went out for repair this week—a new logic board, as part of the ongoing attempt to fix the intermittent and frustrating wifi problems I’ve been encountering for months.

When it got picked up yesterday, it seemed pretty unlikely that I’d get it back in time, and I’ve been frantically trying to prep a PC laptop for the trip. But the wonderful woman who does our department’s Apple-authorized mac repair emailed me this afternoon to say that she’d finished the logic board swap, and was willing to drop the machine off at my house since RIT was already closed for the day.

Wow. I am impressed and delighted. So I want to give her a plug here, for people who might be looking for Rochester area Mac repairs — her name is Christine Cormack, and her company is CoreMac. Send some business her way if you’re in the area—that kind of service is hard to come by, and it sure beats spending hours on the phone with Apple’s service center, or dealing with long waits at the Apple Store genius bar!

Now all I have to do is finish the laundry, buy Lane a pair of pants that fit and don’t have rips or stains, pack, and try to get to sleep early enough so that the 4am wakeup call isn’t completely unmanageable…

better late than never

In April of 2003, six months after this blog began, I posted my favorite spring poem. And each year since then I’ve repeated that ritual, noting the annual arrival of spring’s golden-green early buds and leaves. I was apparently too sick last week to notice that spring had sprung, but I’m posting the poem again even though the brief golden moment seems to have passed.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

—Robert Frost

(see also: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006)

winter's finally here

Just in time for me to teach a night class. :P

Happily, Gerald offered to drop me off at work this morning and come pick me up after class, sparing me the quarter-mile walk through a slushy construction site to get to my car.

in praise of rochester: cost of living edition

There’s a fascinating debate raging in the comments of Douglas Rushkoff’s blog—specifically, on the entry in which he describes being mugged on his doorstep on Christmas Eve, and discusses the fact that he and his wife are seriously considering moving their family out of New York City.

This paragraph in one of his comments late in the thread caught my eye:

I don’t mean to be confrontational, but a three-bedroom apartment is easily 1.5 million here. A small house is 1.8 - and that’s not even in the so-called ‘prime’ 321 area. If we were to send our kid to private instead of public (depending on which non Park Slope area we ended up in) that would be an additional 20,000+ per year. Then we have to save for college, too?

When people on the west coast ask me why I came back to Rochester rather than staying in Seattle after my sabbatical ended, I tell them about my house.

We live in a 1800 square foot four-bedroom Colonial, built in the late 1950s. It’s got a two-car garage, fireplace in the family room, a swimming pool (aboveground) in the spacious backyard, central air, and a full basement in which we’ve got storage, a home gym, and laundry. No structural problems of any kind. Is it fancy? No. Is it solid, comfortable, and big enough for the five of us and our packrat habits? Yes. We know all of our neighbors, there are sidewalks for the kids to ride and walk on, we’re ten minutes (even in snow) by car from my office, and our local public schools are excellent. My kids can ride their bikes to the pond in our subdivision and build forts in the woods with their friends.

We refinanced this year, so we had to get the house appraised. Its current value? $145,000. No, that’s not a typo. There are no missing zeros or misplaced decimal points.

This means we can live very comfortably on my academic salary, and Gerald can be there for the boys. He volunteers at their schools, and is here when they get off the bus every day. That’s a luxury that not many families I know in high-rent areas can afford, and it’s something I’m grateful for daily.

Do I hate that I’m at least two flights away from any conference destination (except NYC)? Sure. Are there times, when I’m scraping snow and ice off my car in the RIT parking lot, that I wish I lived in a milder climate? Of course. But we have a connection to community here that matters—and I’m not in any hurry to trade that for a mortgage that’s an order of magnitude higher than what I’m paying now!

(Oh…and that saving for college thing? The boys get a full free ride at RIT; that’s one of my employee benefits. If they’d prefer to go someplace like USC or Rose-Hulman or Drexel or Bennington—well, those and more are on the list of schools participating in a the tuition exchange program that RIT’s a part of.)

not-so-wintery weather

What a strange day. Nearly 70 degrees at the end of November.

Our front door is wide open, as are the bedroom windows. Across the street, our neighbors are washing and vacuuming their cars. As is their wont, they’ve got a radio blasting music loud enough that we can hear it in the kitchen—and today the radio is playing Christmas songs. It’s almost surreal to hear Blue Christmas blaring through open windows on a balmy afternoon.

what a difference 90 miles makes

We woke this morning to a light dusting of snow on the trees and bushes outside.

In Buffalo, 90 miles down the road, my father woke to two feet of snow, large tree branches downed in his driveway, and no power. When I spoke to him at 8:30 this morning he was trying to figure out what he was going to do. He told me the next-door neighbor (my childhood friend Laura) was trying to find a hotel room for her family but had had no luck.

Stranded Traffic on NYS Thruway Between Rochester and Buffalo
Photo from NYSThruway.gov

You know that Orbitz commercial that’s been playing recently, the one where a flight gets cancelled and two couples compete to see who can find a hotel room faster? I felt like a contestant on that. I told him to go to Laura’s house and wait for me to call them. Then I grabbed my computer and started searching. Orbitz told me that there were rooms at several airport hotels, but the hotels weren’t answering their phones. So I called the 800 number for the Hampton Inn, and the very helpful reservation agent found that they actually had rooms available in a hotel that’s only 1.2 miles from my father’s house. I snapped up two rooms, got a confirmation number, and called them back with the good news.

Now, of course, Laura and her husband have to find a way to get the five of them (they’ve got two kids, around the same ages as mine) to the hotel. And I have to wait and worry about whether they’ll get there safely, whether the hotel actually does have power, and whether he confirmation number actually gets them their rooms. But the Hampton reservations agent assured me that if the hotel didn’t have power they’d receive immediate notification and reservations would be blocked, and the proximity of the hotel (and the fact that Laura and Vince have a 4wd truck) give me some hope for their making it there safely. And given how hard it will be for people with hotel reservations to get to the hotels at all, it seems likely that there will be rooms for them.

And just so you know…this is not typical for this part of the country, despite our reputation for long, snowy winters. According to the National Weather Service, “Through 5am for Friday, October 13, Buffalo recorded 10.9 inches of snow, setting a new mark
for the snowiest day in October since records began back in 1870. The culprit for this record snow is the earliest lake effect snow storm on record to hit the city of Buffalo.”

—

Update: The power was out in the hotel. So much for their corporate process. My dad’s back in his house, and is using his gas oven to heat the kitchen and his gas stove to heat water. (Yes, he knows not to leave the oven on for long periods of time, or overnight.) The temperature is well above freezing, so hopefully the snow will melt fast enough for them to get repairs done before Tuesday. Or, at the very least, for us to be able to get to him before Tuesday and bring him back to Rochester. I’ve got a Subaru B9 Tribeca, so if they reopen the thruway tomorrow I could probably make it to his house. Think good thoughts for him, okay?

scott mccloud's talk at rit

Funny, Scott’s hair is grayer than it looked in Understanding Comics. :)

He does a great job of illustrating his talk with fabulous graphics. Static images…sort of. He moves through them very quickly, creating a sort of animation that’s driven by his clicking of the remote mouse.

He’s focusing on the material from his new book, Making Comics, and talking about the various choices that you have make when you’re creating comics of any kind.

1. Choice of moment: What parts of the story do you show? how fast is the pace of the narrative based on number of frames in the sequence? nice examples shown here.

2. Choice of frame: How close in do you zoom? How much of the picture do you show? What do you reveal, what do you withhold? Shows “vaudeville-like” comics of the early 1900s, with “fixed frame” approaches, much like theatre. Vestiges of that can be seen in early Peanuts. Even things like the direction the characters are facing tend to invoke theatre…in the US, characters tend to “face front,” they’re “slaves to the closeup”.

3. Choice of image: 99% of books on comics are about how draw, about the creation of the imagery itself. Huge range of choices here. Photorealistic to stripped down, boxed or not, colored contours, etc.

4. Choice of word/subject (I got lost here for a minute, not sure if my numbering/wording is accurate. Must buy the book.) Integration of words and pictures is important. Words can be like images. Figures can be calligraphic. Words and pictures can providing contrasting messages.

5. Choice of media: Newspaper? Book? Comic book? Web site?

There are things that are consistent in comics, across form and genre. The intrinsic rhythm of call-and-response, for example. The author gives you an image, then asks you to imagine the interstices, the action between the panels.

He said in the early ’90s, when CD-ROMs were the dominant form of multimedia, that we needed a “durable mutation” of comics.

Those early “multimedia” comics were essentially a recreation of the form of the print comic, and layering sound and motion over it—very McLuhan-esque in its appropriation of a previous media’s method of presentation.

This created a discontinuity where mode changed from space==time to time==time.

(I love that he’s using so many examples of things we talked about last week in my Intro to Multimedia class, from McLuhan to Mosaic.)

Next generation took advantage of hypertext to “choose your own adventure.” Created a new disjuncture…comics are more structured in their linear presentation of material, the author is the “ultimate authority.” On the web, in hypertextual narrative, the user “authors” the experience.

Another example…in a game, a user doesn’t say “let me tell you about this narrative I experienced,” they say “let me tell you about what I did”. They’re the author of their own experience.

But we like our narrative to be seemless. We want to know who’s in control…me (the reader) or you (the comic author)? The web created a tension there.

The idea of the comic author as creator of a “temporal map” is part of what he calls the “DNA” of comics. The basic ideas predate the print medium (he shows great examples), and he believes they postdate print, as well. Early versions, however, used adjacency for continuation (scrolls, tapestries, etc). In print, we lost adjacency.

So he wondered…can we “put comics back together” in a post-print medium? Only if you think of the screen as a window rather than a page. An unbroken canvas that could scroll past the window. Series of fabulous “what-if” illustrations that I can’t begin to transcribe.

(This is an amazing talk. I feel bad trying to capture any of it in this plain text format.)

Turns out that the right term is a “successful mutation” rather than a “durable mutation.” A successful mutation recreates itself.

We still haven’t figured out how to effectively present long-form comics (graphic novels) in an online format. Most online comics are short-form, newspaper comic-strip style. Long-form wants us to get lost in the story, to not be pulled/jarred out of that reverie by the form.

Amazing, rapid-fire discussion of the various “schools” and “forms” of comics. (Colleagues sitting next to me are laughing…”try to write that up,” they say to me. Not bloody likely.) This is un-freaking-believably dense with imagery and content and thought. Just like his books.

Shows a series of interesting multimedia comic implementations.

“Pup” (serializer.net)
A horizontal navigation rather than discontinous right/left, up/down. (Interesting to me how the difficulty in navigating horizontally really affects one’s ability to get “lost” in the narrative.)

“Delta Thrives”
Uses “immersion” and gradual reveals with imagery. Introduces motion, which has that discontinuity, that change of mode of that yanks us out of the narrative. But this one it works better, in part because it’s not a narrative animation, it’s a loop indicating motion rather than story continuation. There’s visual activity but steady state in the narrative.

“Bright Morning Blue”
Interesting use of white space to indicate passage of time. In print we change size and shape of panels (their “amplitude”), but we don’t change the space between them (their “frequency”). Because we understand that as we move through space we move through time, the extra “beat” in the pace of his narrative clearly indicates passage of time.

“The Right Number”
McClouds’ new “micropayment” web comic where comics are embedded frame within frame (almost a z-axis) rather than next to each other.

“E-merl.com”
“crazy comics”. Totally jarring. And yet, a volunteer from the audience figures out the navigation in seconds. That’s his point—this is completely different and yet still familiar.

Why is this important?

Comics will always be a minority art, people will read them primarily for escape. (We don’t have a choice as to which world we’re born into, he says, so it’s our birthright to create worlds in which to escape.) It’s important that we have a diversity of art forms. If all we have is the moving image, that’s our window back into the world we live in. If we have only one window to view life through, our world is flat. If we have multiple windows, we can triangulate our world and see it in a richer way.

In comics, he says, we rise above the treadmill of time. (oooo…I love that line!) We’re no longer blinded by the passage of time, we have an altitude that allows us to look down on the world of both space and time. The texture of time can be seen.

He finishes his talk, but turns the podium over to his 13-year-old daughter Sky, who has a 7-minute powerpoint presentation on their 50-state tour. (Thankfully, there’s no sign of a bullet point anywhere. She’s clearly learned from her father.) She talks about how and why the trip came about, and mentions that they have a LiveJournal community that they’re maintaining for the trip.

They’re also doing audio and video podcasts, with the 11-year-old (whose name is Winter) interviewing people along the way (“Winterviews,” get it?), and the 13-year-old doing the voiceover and editing of the video. She shows a 30-second clip from the show, which is really nicely done.

(For the Q&A, he gives his 11-year-old the wireless microphone so she can run it to questioners. Very entertaining.)

Nice line: “I believe in a market of willing buyers and willing sellers.” iTunes co-exists with BitTorrent, for example.

community theatre in rochester?

Last year, my 12-year-old took an improvisational acting class that he loved. I’d love for him to stay involved in acting now that we’re back in Rochester, and my stepdaughter has also been asking about community theatre options in the area. I did a little Google searching without any compelling results, and then it occurred to me that this would be a good time to tap the hive brain of my readers.

So…anybody know of good acting classes for kids here in Rochester? And/or community theatre programs that would welcome actors of all ages?

(If you don’t want to register for a TypeKey account to comment, clicking on the “Work Page” link in the top left corner of this site will take you to a page that gives you my email address.)

Thanks!

timely post from presentation zen on scott mccloud's work

I wrote yesterday about Scott McCloud’s upcoming visit to RIT. Today I opened up my aggregator and found a post from one of my favorite design-focused blogs, Presentation Zen, on how McCloud’s book Understanding Comics informs design of all kinds. There are good reasons why McCloud’s book is a favorite not just of aspiring graphic novelists, but also of lovers of graphic design and narrative of all kinds.

Read the post.

Then come to the talk. I’ll be there (along with as many of my students I can convince to attend).

scott mccloud @ rit next monday!

w00t! Scott McCloud, author of fabulous books on comics (which are relevant to far more than comic books), is speaking here at RIT next Monday (September 18th), from 3-5pm in Ingle Auditorium.

And it’s free!

in praise of rochester: air travel edition

I’ve decided to start an irregularly occurring series of posts on why I genuinely love living in Rochester. People who live in big cities never seem to entirely believe me when I tell them I enjoy this city, so it seems worth documenting why (beyond the fact that my mother, father, grandmother, and sister all live less than hour from my house).

Today’s reason? The ease of travelng out of the city. I have a 6:50am flight this morning, for which I left my house at 5:22am. I was walking in the door of the airport at 5:37, was checked in (with a bag checked through) by 5:50, and was through security by 6:05. That left me time to get a great latte from a local coffee roaster that has an airport branch, pick up a couple of magazines, settle down near an easily accessible power outlet, and grab some of the free wifi that the local telco provides here in the airport. Try that on a Friday morning in a major metro area!

i'm missing barcamp rochester...but you shouldn't!

I followed a link from a commenter here to his blog, and discovered that Rochester’s going to have its very own BarCamp this month! Unfortunately, we’ll still be in Seattle…but if you’re in the area, you should definitely go.

choosing to give

A lot of people have asked me recently if I’m planning on going back to RIT at the end of my sabbatical—or if, having tasted the sweet nectar of well-funded industry research, I might be tempted to stay in Seattle. I decided a few weeks ago that I was going to return to Rochester, but I had some lingering doubts and fears in my mind about whether I was making the right choice.

This weekend I flew back to Rochester for a few days, primarily to attend RIT’s commencement ceremonies. For the first day or two, I did have some second thoughts about my decision. Departmental politics were running rampant, colleagues were stressed with last-minute grading, and the overcast skies were more oppressive than I remembered.

Last night, though, I heard two wonderful addresses at the university-wide convocation ceremony. The first was by Dean Kamen, which I really hope will be posted in its entirety on the RIT web site (as they’ve done with past speakers). Elouise covered some high points, but you had to be there to appreciate the warmth, wit, and charm of Kamen’s delivery. It was lovely. (And yes, he did in fact ride a Segway up to and back from the platform, wearing his academic robes.) The second was by Erhardt Graeff, a student whom I first had in freshman seminar, and whose progress I’ve watched closely over the past four years. Erhardt’s a wonderful young man—intellectually curious, adventurous, articulate, creative, and genuinely goodhearted. He was selected as our college’s delegate for the university-wide ceremony, and then chosen as the one delegate to give the student address for all of RIT—and he did a spectacular job. Both of the speakers (without knowing the other’s theme) chose to speak about graduation as a passage not from learning to doing, but rather as one from taking to giving…something that hit a resonant note for me.

This morning I woke up at 6:15am so that I could be at RIT by 7:15, and in my robes ready to line up for our college’s commencement ceremonies at 7:30. Even after nearly ten years of doing this, I still love marching into the field house with pomp and circumstance playing, watching the parents and grandparents and spouses and partners and children craning their necks for a view of the processional, snapping photographs and clapping. And my favorite part of the school year is when our undergraduate students walk across the stage as their name is called. As they come down the steps, there are always a group of faculty waiting to shake their hands, and I’m always part of that group. I love watching the faces of these young men and women, many of whom I taught during their first quarter of freshman year, as they grapple with the realization that they’re really, truly, graduating. More than one of them gets a hug from me rather than a handshake.

After the ceremony, our department hosts a brunch for the students and their families. It’s hard to explain how much it means to me when a student pulls his or her parents over to meet me, telling them “This is Professor Lawley! Remember me telling you about her?” When I met Erhardt’s mother today, however, I got something new…she told me she reads my blog. (Hi, Mrs. Graeff!)

I nearly cried a couple of times today. One of those times was meeting the family of Katie Giebel, a delightful young woman who took my introductory web/multimedia class the fall of her first year at RIT. She came close to leaving IT, but stayed after I (and others) convinced her that it was only a short term rough spot she’d run into. When she was invited into the RIT honors program, she told me she was worried she couldn’t handle that and her ROTC responsibilities, and wanted to decline. I helped convince her to give it a shot, and she didn’t just survive—she thrived. Katie graduated with honors today, and the Navy is sending her to Monterey to pursue a master’s degree. (I’m wiping away a little tear right now, just typing all that.)

This year at MSR I’ve gotten an enormous amount from the amazing people around me, and I’m beyond grateful for that. But I don’t have the opportunity to change lives that being a professor provides to me, to give what I can of myself to my students. I left the reception today 100% sure that coming back to RIT was the right choice. And as I pulled into the driveway of my mother’s house, the sun finally came out…as if to welcome me home.

home/not home

It feels very strange to be back in Rochester, but not in our house—particularly when I drive past “our house” to drop the kids off and see our tenants’ cars in the driveway, and unfamiliar faces through the windows. It’s quite unsettling.

Other than that, being back in Rochester has been great. This morning I took the kids to the RIT campus to hear Larry Lessig give a talk on free culture. The talk was spectacular. I think Lane understood and appreciated most of it, but Alex found it less engaging. (They both quite enjoyed this video that was included in the presentation—as did I!) Still, I’m glad they both went—even if only a little of it got through, it was worth it. (I also had the pleasure of joining Larry and some RIT colleagues for dinner last night, which was lovely.)

[If you’ve never had the privilege of seeing Professor Lessig speak on free culture, I was able to find a link to this similar talk that he gave in Helsinki last year. I encourage you to watch it.]

Tonight the boys are sleeping at friends’ houses, soaking up all the time with their buddies that they possibly can. So I get to relax at my mother’s house, where it’s blissfully quiet. Got some work done, got some gaming done, and now I’m off to bed.

reflections on home

The boys and I got back from Rochester late (very late) last night. Part of me feels like I’m home today; another part feels as though I just left home behind. It’s an odd feeling—to be not-quite-at-home in either city.

This ended up being a stressful visit—trying to squeeze months’ worth of visits and dinners and meetings and conversations into a handful of too-short days. My apologies to all the people I didn’t have time to really spend time with on this visit—especially Steve (who helped save the day in my mom’s class!) and Eric (who’s going to be stuck packing up a box of things I left in my office, without even having gotten to see me while I was there).

I had some amazing home-cooked food while I was there—Weez’s eggs benedict and home fries, Tona’s delicious enchiladas, Jenny’s always-wonderful potato kugel, and my Mom’s signature homemade crepes for breakfast. As rushed as I was, I felt loved and welcomed by friends and family, and it was a good reminder of why we’ve grown so fond of Rochester. It’s the people, stupid! (It was also nice to spend some time in my RIT office, with its enormous window. One of the few things I don’t like about my working environment at Microsoft is how little natural light I seem to encounter on most days.) Rochester is definitely where I’m most connected to friends, family, and community, and it was wonderful to see the people I care about while I was there. But being back in Seattle really makes me happy, too—the mountains are a big part of that, but so is the fact that I’m taking a lot of an enjoyment in the work that I’m doing and the people I’m working with.

Many thanks to the people who sent get-well wishes for my grandmother. I’m delighted to report that she seems to be doing much better—they’ve stopped the internal bleeding, and rehydrated her, and it appears that her kidney function is returning. When I spoke to her on the phone before we left (Alex had a cold, so visiting seemed unwise) she sounded cheerful and alert—a big change from how she’d been when I saw her a few days ago. I’m hopeful that she’ll be back in the nursing home within a few days, and from there back to the assisted living facility where she feels so much more at home.

eastward ho!

Tomorrow morning the kids and I will head east to Rochester, where we’ll be spending a week in our old stomping grounds. It will be odd to be home but not home—someone else is living in our house, so we’ll be staying with my mom while we’re there.

The boys are pretty excited about seeing their friends. Me too.

I’ll still be accessible via the usual email, IM, and phone contacts. Wifi in my mom’s house, wifi on campus, wifi in most of the coffeeshops I frequent there…

While there I’m hoping to reinvigorate my lab at RIT—in my absence, its been dormant, and I have some ideas for things the folks I left behind could be working on. I’m also hoping to foster more interaction between the RIT social computing club and the lab, as well as perhaps getting our public workshop plans back on track.

I’ve also printed out a substantial stack of research papers that I’m hoping to get through on the airplane—in hopes that the kids will be able to amuse themselves reasonably well with books and gameboys while I read (I hope, I hope, I hope….).

I’m planning to be around the RIT campus on Thursday and Friday, exact times to be determined (I have to work around the array of doctor’s appointments that the boys and I have while home…nothing serious, but we’ve waited to deal with myriad small problems until we were back with our regular health care providers). If you want to get together, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can work out.

hit by lightning - literally!

We got a call this morning from the family that’s leasing our house in Rochester while we’re on sabbatical—apparently the chimney of the house was struck by lightning this morning! There are bricks littering the lawn, and the ones that fell down the chimney caused soot to spew out into the family room, setting off smoke alarms and generally causing chaos.

The good news? Our insurance company is Amica. One phone call was all it took. The Amica rep immediately confirmed we were covered, said someone would be out within hours to take a look at the damage and start arranging for any short-term preventive work necessary to keep things from collapsing further, as well as to figure out what kinds of repairs and cleanup would be necessary. We’ve got a $500 deductible, but after that all the reconstruction and cleanup will be covered in full. Such a relief.

it's the people, stupid

A lot of people have been asking me if I think I’ll come back from Seattle after my sabbatical is over. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find the prospect of working on interesting projects, for more money than I currently make, in a beautiful city, attractive.

But as we make our preparations to leave, I keep running into the one thing that will make us likely to return to Rochester next summer…the people in our lives.

We’ve been here for nearly nine years, and we’ve built a life. We have wonderful friends, supportive family, great health care providers. Relationships and connections like the ones we have here don’t happen overnight—they take time and nurturing. And while I have no doubt we could eventually build up a life in Seattle that was rich and rewarding, I don’t want to walk away from the life we already have built here.

Today we had a few close friends over for an informal cookout (well, as informal as my southern-born-and-bred husband can manage), and I was reminded of how much a part of my life they’d become, and how much I didn’t want to lose that part—even if I could splice in “replacements” somewhere else.

So, what does my “why I’ll be back” list look like?

• My mother, stepfather, sister, and father…all close enough to have dinner together any night of the week.
• My dear friends, many of whom are also my colleagues
• My wonderful doctors, who know me and my health and my family, and whom I trust completely
• My neighbors, who we’re finally seeing again now that the grass is green and the temperatures have warmed
• Our newly spruced-up house. On an afternoon like this one, with sunshine casting long shadows on the lawn, a light breeze rustling the leaves outside all the windows, and the sounds of kids, birds, and dogs outside, it’s hard to imagine wanting to be anywhere else
• Summer vacation—one of the best perks of academia
• The low cost of living, which makes my relative-to-Microsoft small academic salary go a long, long way
• My new lab at RIT

That’s a lot of powerful reasons to come back home.

life used to be so hard...

…now everything is easy ‘cause of you

Lane is at the neighborhood pond with his friends, building a fort and eating a picnic lunch.

Alex is at a friend’s house ‘til dinner.

Gerald’s running errands.

So here I am, sitting on my couch, enjoying the fresh air coming through the windows and the sounds of birds, kids, and lawnmowers in the neighborhood around me. I have a spring cold—unpleasant, but not debilitating—which gives me license to lounge, rather than cleaning up and packing boxes. And this rare oasis of stillness and solitude gives me time to reflect and be grateful.

We’re happy. Our life here is good. There is nothing that we need that we want for—from food and shelter to friends and family.

I’m blessed.

birthday baseball

Just booked my older son’s birthday party for next weekend, and I’m already looking forward to it. We’re doing it at a Rochester Red Wings baseball game, and the party package is both fun and affordable.

Hot dogs, soda, ice cream cake, balloons, logo baseballs, and bleacher seats for everyone. Woohoo! What better way to spend an evening in May?

missing my golden opportunity

In 2003 and 2004 I marked the first “real” (to me) day of spring by posting the Robert Frost poem that the early green-gold leaves on the trees always brings to mind.

This year I’m missing the moment—when I arrived in Seattle spring was already well underway, and I received email today from my mother saying that the moment was at hand back in Rochester. Not surprising, really—in both 2003 and 2004 the green-gold moment was on April 21st.

So here’s my annual tribute to this moment in time.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

—Robert Frost

through a tourist's eyes

Last week, Gerald and I went to see a wonderful concert by the Blind Boys of Alabama. The concert was at a venue we hadn’t been to before, a place called German House, which is in a city neighborhood called Corn Hill South Wedge (thanks, Alan). Neither of us had been in Corn Hill South Wedge before, and it was somewhat disorienting to get out of the car in a completely unfamiliar landscape—as if we’d travelled to another city. It got me thinking about how many parts of Rochester I just don’t know as well as I’d like, and how many interesting and beautiful things I’ve missed because I don’t take the time to really explore the place I live.

Today on my way back from a downtown meeting I skipped the interstate and took local roads back to campus, driving along the Genesee river, past the Mt. Hope Cemetery where Susan B. Anthony and Frederic Douglass are buried, and through some beautiful riverside parks. Then I called Gerald and said “I know what I want to do for my birthday on Saturday!”

I want to be a tourist, right here in town. I want to start the day with breakfast at the public market. I want to walk around downtown and take pictures of the beautiful architecture. I want to walk through Mt. Hope Cemetery. I want to go to Eastman House and admire the photographs, and the Susan B. Anthony House to remember that I live in a city that’s always been home to great women. Maybe visit the zoo and the adjoining Frederic Law Olmsted park.

So that’s my birthday plan. Friday night dinner and drinks with friends; Saturday wandering the city with my family and my camera. Then Sunday morning I’m outta here, headed for back-to-back meetings in Seattle.

serendipitous blog-based discoveries

w00t!

There’s now a craigslist for Rochester!

I’ve been spending a good bit of time on the Seattle craigslist this week, looking at housing and furniture ads, and thinking how nice it would have been to have had one for Rochester…how did I miss that there was one already?

I found it through a roundabout way. This morning in the coffee room I introduced myself to a woman I didn’t know (there aren’t many of us around here, so it seems wise to talk with the ones who are!), and found out she’s a grad assistant working with the HCI/eyetracking group here. She mentioned that she read my blog (why does it always surprise me, still, when people I don’t know say that?), and I asked if she had one of her own. She does—and a good one, too that I’ve added to my aggregator.

One of her posts was related to del.icio.us, so I looked at her links there, where I found the craigslist link. I also saw how she was using colors in del.icio.us urls, which I found fascinating.

And now I have to stop exploring and get back to writing and analyzing. Much less fun.

cloudy weather

Via this meteorological data site, which shows annual averages for cloudiness:

• Seattle: 71 clear days, 93 partly cloudy days, 201 cloudy days
• Rochester: 61 clear days, 105 partly cloudy days, 199 cloudy days

Hard to believe it will be better in Seattle, but it sure looks that way.

video game store lament

I took my older son to a local game store (HO/RC) yesterday that specializes in used game systems and games, and lets you trade in old systems. He had a GameCube that he no longer wanted, and three games that we don’t play—Super Mario Sunshine for GameCube, and Gran Turismo 3 and GTA Vice City for PS2.

They had a PS2 with a missing drive cover (perfectly functional) for $100, but only gave us $25 credit for the GC and games. When I challenged it, the owner was extraordinarily rude to me, suggesting that I drive around and find out all the places that would rip me off more, and then come back so he could rip me off for less. We had a few more exchanges like that, all of which involved him being extremely rude and dismissive towards me (after all, I’m just the stupid rich mom, right?).

What I should have done at that point was march out the door with our stuff in hand, bought a new slimline PS2 at Sam’s (with 2 games included) for $150, and sold the rest on eBay. But I was tired, and stressed about my slew of upcoming trips, and he so wanted to get it right there and then (I’d been promising this for a while). So I went against my good instincts and did the transaction. It left me with a very sour taste in my mouth, though, and you can bet I won’t be back in that store again—nor will I encourage anyone else to go there.

When I searched for HO/RC just now, I discovered that they’re also a prolific eBay vendor—but with a reasonable number of negative and neutral reviews, which doesn’t surprise me at all. I’d be careful doing business with them, if I were you. That attitude towards customers is a very bad sign.

Sometimes I think that what I ought to do is open up the ultimate gaming spot geared towards parents as well as their kids. There’s not much out there that targets tweens, really. The hands-on museums are for the younger set. The game stores and arcades are more for the teenagers (and the parents hate being there). So why not create a place that tweens will love, and that their parents won’t mind taking them? Model it on places like Chuck-E-Cheese, with food and drink available, and places to sit. Put in a coffee bar and free wifi so that parents are willing to hang out while their kids wander around and/or play. Set it up like CEC, so that kids can’t leave without the adult who brought them—that lets the parents relax, possibly in a separate glass-walled area so their kids can be seen but not heard. Hire teenagers to work there, and have them wandering around, available to talk to/encourage the tweens who are the real target. Sell card games and video games and computer games, and provide space for kids to play—for a price. (Maybe a monthly fee…)

I’m not much of an entrepreneur, but I bet something like this would do really well. There’s a huge market out there that’s pretty much untapped for this age group and their parents. Give us gamer moms somewhere to go that doesn’t leave them feeling the way I did when I walked out of HO/RC. Please.

sabbatical plans

My sabbatical application for next year has been approved! I’m still working out the details, but it looks quite likely that I’ll be spending next year (with my family) in the Seattle area.

This mean that I’ll need copious advice from my Seattle-based friends and colleagues on finding a place to live, getting settled in, homeschooling our boys, and people we must look up when we arrive (probably in July).

It also means that RIT will be looking to replace me for a year with a visiting professor, which is the real point of this post. We really need someone who has both interest and expertise in web development and social computing. It’s a great opportunity for someone in industry who wants to spend a year in academia, or an academic at another school who needs a sabbatical opportunity of their own.

I realize that Rochester isn’t everybody’s ideal destination, but it really is a great city to live in. And I can’t say enough good things about the work environment—I have great colleagues, a wonderful office, excellent support staff, and incredible facilities (both technical and recreational). The cost of living here is very low (and if you act soon, you could even rent our close-to-campus house, complete with furnishings…), recreational and cultural opportunities abound, and the public schools are excellent.

If you’re interested, send me email, and I can give you more details.

rpo benefit concert for tsunami relief

My stepfather, who plays for the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO), helped to organize a benefit concert by the orchestra for tsunami victims. If you’re in the Rochester area, please consider attending and donating. (Our family will certainly be there!)

Here’s the press release, with details:

The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra is partnering with United Way of Greater Rochester for a concert to benefit United Way’s South Asia Response Fund. On Sunday, January 30th at 4:00 pm, Jeff Tyzik, Principal Pops Conductor, will lead the orchestra in an amazing performance dedicated to helping those across the globe affected by the Tsunami. The concert will be held at the Bethel Christian Fellowship, located at 321 East Avenue.

The performance for all ages will highlight reflective pieces from Copland, Beethoven, Barber, and others. The RPO will also be joined by a children’s choir from The Harley School, led by Jay Stetzer. Although the concert will not be ticketed, there is a suggested minimum donation of $10.00 per person, or $20.00 per family. All checks must be made to: United Way South Asia Response Fund, which was created to support long-term recovery efforts in affected areas.

“We are thankful the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra musicians and staff recognize the long-term impact of this disaster, and are willing to volunteer their time to help out,” said Joe Calabrese, United Way of Greater Rochester President and CEO. “During a time like this, it is vital for our community to continue to pull together for relief efforts.”

“We were moved to participate in the relief effort in the best way that we know, which is by joining together in our music-making,” said Joanna Bassett, flutist and chair of the RPO Orchestra Committee. “The music we’ve chosen will allow all of us to pause and reflect over the magnitude of the losses, and to be uplifted by the collective strength of the human spirit. We are pleased to be partnering with the United Way, which has both an important local and international presence. We applaud their focus on long-term community rebuilding efforts in South Asia, and are pleased to donate our time to such a worthy effort. We are also grateful for the use of Bethel’s sanctuary, and for the assistance of our RPO staff and volunteers.”

The concert program includes Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and “Simple Gifts” from Appalachian Spring, Barber’s Adagio, the finale from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and selections from Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. The choir from The Harley School will perform “A Gift of Love” and “The Magic Penny.”

For more information about the RPO Tsunami Relief concert, please visit http://www.rpo.org/ or call the Box Office at 454-2100. To learn more about United Way’s South Asia Relief Fund, and long-term recovery, please log on to www.unitedway.org/tsunamiresponse.

to sleep, perchance to dream

For quite a few years now, I’ve been an early-to-bed, early-to-rise person. That was very much a result of being a parent—sleeping in is a luxury that parents of small children seldom get to indulge in.

Over the past few weeks, however, I’ve found myself fighting off sleepiness and trying to stay up late. I’m not completely sure why that is. Part of it, I think, is that after the kids go to sleep it’s blissfully quiet in the house, and I enjoy savoring that time. It’s easier to read, to write, to think, to relax, when you’re not being barraged with requests for parental attention.

But there’s something else going on, too, that I can’t quite put my finger on. A restlessness. A resistance. To what? I don’t know. But it’s there.

So here I am, watching my fire slowly burn down, feeling it warm my feet while I type. Soon I’ll be too tired to string words together, or even to focus on the screen. Then I’ll turn off the lights and head up to bed, where I’ll be asleep within minutes.

Tomorrow we actually will get to sleep in. No cello competitions or swimming lessons, no school buses or committee meetings, no place we have to go and no one we have to see. We’ll wake to drifts of snow piled across the driveway and the yard, to sausage and eggs cooking in the kitchen (if Gerald gets up first), to a weather-enforced day of rest.

Here’s what we have to look forward to…

So now it’s (finally) off to bed with me. Time to close the glass doors on the fireplace, turn off the lights in the kitchen, and climb the stairs to the flannel sheets and warm spouse that await me in bed.

settling down for a long winter's night

We’ve had about six inches of snow on the ground all week; the temperature hasn’t risen enough to melt it, so it just sits there, or blows around.

Today the snow started up again, along with subzero temperatures, and winds gusting up to 30mph. We’re supposed to get 3-6” this afternoon, and another 6-10” overnight. Brrrrrr.

We got all of our morning errands done (we think Lane did well in his cello solo competition this morning, but won’t know ‘til tonight at the earliest), and we’re all home now, safe and sound and warm and cozy, watching the snow fly sideways past the windows. I doubt we’ll be going anywhere for at least 24 hours, maybe longer.

Time to start a fire in the fireplace, crack open a novel from the library, and pipe some music from iTunes to the Airport Express…

rochester hotspots

The list of people providing free wifi in Rochester is growing, and it’s getting harder and harder to decide where to go when I have to grade!

My latest discovery is Paradigm Cafe, which is only a few miles from my house (it’s at the corner of Lehigh Station and East Henrietta Roads, for those locals who want to find it quickly; there used to be a used bookstore and coffeehouse at the same spot called Blue Sunday, but it closed last year).

They serve excellent coffee—Finger Lakes Coffee Roasters brand, which is excellent. The music is good, the atmosphere is nice (only one couch, though…they need more soft-and-comfy seating, I think), and the prices are low. All in all, I’m impressed…and will probably be back on a regular basis.

lab for social computing at rit

Over on Many-to-Many I’ve made an announcement about a new Lab for Social Computing here at RIT.

i need a haircut

I really do. So I’m looking for Rochester-area stylist recommendations.

I’ve been getting my hair cut by the same person since I moved to Rochester, and while I like him (and his cuts) a lot, he’s pretty expensive ($60/cut).

It feels like time for a change, so that I can get out of my current hair rut, but also reduce the cost (so that I can get it cut more often and not let it get all unruly like it is now).

Any recommendations? It would be nice if they’re good with thin, fine hair like mine…there’s not a lot to work with, really, which requires a certain kind of skill.

Help!

more free wifi @ panera

I showed up this afternoon at Panera Bread to do some more grading, sat down at my favorite table near the fireplace, and fired up my laptop. Much to my surprise, there were two access points—the regular “Panera” SSID, and a brand new “SurfThing” SSID to accompany it.

Out of curiousity I selected the second, and was able to get online instantly—no login necessary (Panera requires a login, which is free but annoying, every two hours). Even better, there’s no SonicWall filtering, which means I can even occasionally check blogs like Dooce and PlasticBag.com, both of which are blocked by SonicWall.

I’m somewhat baffled by the appearance of the SurfThing access point, since there are no other locations in this plaza that would be likely to offer access, and surfthing.com seems to indicate that they’re a midwestern (minn/wisc) provider. (Their shockwave-based site won’t work in Firefox, it seems…I had to load it in Safari.) But I’m certainly not complaining!

holiday traditions

When I was a child, our family celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas—and with both, it was the cultural rather than the religious aspects that we focused on. Now that I’m the grownup, I’ve instituted the same tradition in our home, and each year we have a christmas tree and a menorah, latkes and sugar cookies, holiday lights and holographic hanukkah glasses to view them.

We don’t do it for the presents—each year we’ve given fewer and fewer. We do it for the sense of tradition, the warmth it brings to the house during a cold season, and the many enjoyable trappings that accompany both holidays.

I’m particularly fond of holiday music, and every December I dig out my extensive collection (it used to involved finding the CDs and/or albums…now it’s just reloading the archived mp3s), and start playing it at home and in the office. I’ve got a pretty eclectic selection of tunes, and I’m particularly fond of the Starbucks holiday mixes. My absolute favorite is a 1998 mix called “Hi-Fidelity Holiday,” which starts with a fabulous, barely-recognizable version of Jingle Bells by Esquivel. I’ve now hooked Weez on it, as well. Feliz Navidad, baby!)

Last night when I got home from a lovely dinner at Weez’s house, Gerald was watching a PBS special featuring a holiday concert by the Blind Boys of Alabama. They were doing a rendition of Little Drummer Boy with one of their guests, Michael Franti. I can’t remember the last time I was so moved by song, and I immediately purchased it on iTunes, and may also buy their fabulous rendition of Go Tell It On the Mountain featuring Tom Waits, and O Come All Ye Faithful with Me’Shell Ndegéocello. If you get a chance to see the special, I highly recommend it. Far better with the visuals.

This afternoon, we’ll head out to Stokoe Farms, which is where we’ve been getting our trees since we moved to Rochester in 1997. There’s a ritual associated with that, too, of course. We have to wander through the rows and rows of trees (usually the Fraser firs, but this year I’m thinking about maybe a Concolor) until one speaks to me. (You can roll your eyes at that…the kids certainly do!) Then Gerald cuts it down, the workers haul it back to the main barn and run it through the needle shaker and baling machines. While Gerald ties it onto the van, the boys and I enjoy the free hot chocolate and cookies, and they climb around in the straw-bale fort. Then it’s back home to set up and decorate the tree, enjoy some hot chocolate and a fire at home, and maybe do a little early baking. (My favorite holiday recipe, from Gourmet Magazine, is for these absolutely amazing double chocolate walnut biscotti. They make wonderful gifts—if you can keep yourself from eating them before they’re wrapped and given away!)

There’s a lot to be said for holiday traditions, and even more to be said for focusing on holiday activities you do together as a family rather than the frantic gift acquisition and exchange process.

Happy holidays!