Dear Everyone,
It’s been two busy weekends.
Of course the highlight were the activities at University of Chicago
yesterday where Nicola was amongst 1000+ undergraduates, and assorted graduate
students earning a variety of diplomas and recognition. Cindy and I arrived on campus around 8:15,
and were able to snag quite favorable seats in the shade near a jumbotron, on
the pathway where all of the graduate students came in wearing colorful robes
and hoods. They were preceded by bag
pipers (why?) and a variety of upper crust university officials in their
regalia. Most notable was a woman
wearing a robin’s egg blue robe with blue head gear that resembled a 1920’s
lampshade with fringe rather that the more standard biretta or
mortarboard. Cindy, I, and other
assorted onlookers verbally wondered where she claimed her degree. We pretended to listen to various speeches
about the importance of education, or creativity, or something while reading
kindles, or playing games on the iPad mini.
All of the different schools and programs were individually recognized,
and welcomed to the fellowship of scholars (doctoral candidates), or the ranks
of educated people (undergraduates). I don’t
remember where the master students were welcomed to. President Zimmer exhorted everyone to be
good, and increase the world’s knowledge.
Of course, no one remarked on the fact that knowledge does not equal
understanding!
After the morning’s activities, Cindy and I grabbed some
lunches for us, and Barbara and Roger.
Cindy and I ate, and then I went over to the hospital to pick up
B&R, who arrived just as I got there.
I chose this as a meeting spot because the street was sure to be open,
and it was not far from the main quadrangle.
We joined Cindy back at the quad.
Alas, we had given up our original seats to forage for lunch, and the
replacements were not nearly as good.
They started out in the shade, but as the sun moved westerly, they
became light exposed, and the cool cloudy weather was temporarily replaced with
heat. I had an umbrella I used as a
parasol, but nevertheless I got some sunburn.
We heard three student speeches, one about how life at U of C was like a
long running TV drama; I don’t recall the other two well, and then the interminable
call out of undergraduate degrees. [I
would like to mention a speech I heard from a 2015 Brown university
commencement that was making the rounds on Facebook I thought was well done (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0ihSVCkv-8
, starts around the 5 minute mark)]
Behind us was a family with an engaging 7
year old who knew the squares table up to 20. She got pretty bored after a while, so we let her color are U Chicago graduation activity book (word search examples: provost, gargoyle, diploma, etc). Her Mom was an OB Gyn in Palm Beach, and we exchanged some war
stories. Eventually the heat was too
much for me, and I moved to sit on some shaded steps with a large family group
from Africa, maybe Nigeria.
Finally all the paper was handed out; we met Nicola at the
steps of the admin building, and had some lemonade and champagne in the lovely,
shaded, classics quadrangle. Then on to
dine at La Petite Folie http://www.lapetitefolie.com/, an old favorite of the Obama’s. Quite yummy.
A long stretch of driving to Hinsdale, and a round trip to Highland
Park. I got back home just in time to
see the Blackhawks beat the Tampa Bay Lightning in game 5 of the hockey finals.
Anyway, last weekend I was in Omaha. It’s all about context - - Omaha is smaller
than the ‘cute’ Milwaukee, but there is nothing else but farms and ranches
nearby. I was out for an aikido
seminar. My club leader Bob Garza, and
two other aikido players, Joan Dehnert (the dojo office manager), and Sharon
Halfman (from an affiliated dojo in Indiana) went mainly to see one of highest
ranked Japanese instructors, Yasuo Kobayshi http://www.kobayashi-dojo.com/english/biography/,
who came to help celebrate the Omaha dojo’s 25th anniversary,. Bob knows Kobayshi a little bit, and he, Joan,
and Sharon all trained at Kobayshi’s dojo in Japan last year when Kobayshi was
celebrating some big anniversary. I went
because I was curious, but also because the dojo in Omaha had a relationship
with Aikido of Hawaii, and Robert Kubo http://www.ahiaikido.com/index.html (who
awarded me my 3rd dan in Baltimore) was going to be there. Unfortunately, Sensei Kubo was ill, and
couldn’t make it out from Hawaii. However, there
were a bunch of people from Baltimore who showed up, and to my surprise, there
was some amount of mutual recognition.
The seminar was a bit slow paced, but nevertheless pretty
interesting. People don’t do techniques
the same way everywhere, and it is informative to see other methods of achieving
the same result. It makes you realize
that you know a lot of ways of doing a technique incorrectly!
Before we left, we wondered about a bit at Omaha’s old
market, where there was a street closed for an art fair. I think downtown Omaha would probably fit
into about 1/3 of Lincoln Park. We did see
some nice things; I liked this artist: http://christinasmith.net/
I have had some good books lately. I am reading David Mitchell’s the Bone Clocks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bone_Clocks. I like everything he writes. I read an interesting dystopian near future novel,
Spark, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/arts/spark-the-latest-dystopian-novel-from-john-twelve-hawks.html?_r=0
about an assassin suffering from Cotard delusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion; these patients believe they are dead.
The plot was okay, most interesting were the different philosophical
takes by the characters on topics like free will, artificial intelligence and totalitarian
political states.
Cindy is out today taking Jasper to Brown for a two week
course on materials science. She is
dropping him off and flying back home tonight.
I hope Jasper will update me on what the course work is like!
Love
H
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