Stolen night in NYC

I was in Rahway, NJ earlier this week to attend a meeting at the Merck Institute for Science Education, an organization that does summer professional development for K-12 science teachers. On Monday during our meeting, a few people in the group grew a wild hair and suggested that, instead of hanging out at the Hampton Inn on Tuesday night, we steal away into New York - 45 minutes by train - for dinner and a night at the Philharmonic.

Naturally, I said yes.

We took NJ Transit into Penn Station, and caught the 1 subway up to Lincoln Center.


First, we dined at Picholine, a french-country restaurant that had three-course menu.

Tuna Napoleon with wasabi ice cream.
Beef Daube with horseradish foam and tempura celery leaves.

Caramel Apple Brioche.

After an unbelievable dinner, we rushed across Broadway to catch Handel's Messiah performed at the Lincoln Center. The Times' review of the concert is here.


After the concert, four of us stayed in the city and walked along Central Park South to Fifth Avenue to take in the Christmas decorations. The windows at Bergdorf Goodman were by far the best:




We walked down Fifth until we got to Rockefeller Center to take in the tree, the ice skaters, and the Top of the Rock.

Choppin' Wood

I'll let the pictures tell the story, but here's the background.

Last year Erin and I went to 6th and Clarkson and bought our Christmas tree. In a word, that tree "sucked"! Within a week of bringing our $70 purchase home (and this was the cheapest tree on the lot) the damn thing was dead. Needles spilled everywhere and it actually started to rot while in the house.

This year, we've opted to skip out on all that crap and cut our own tree. Way more fun and only cost me a little sleep and $10. Plus, I got to go careening through the forest with a saw looking for "the one".

Ok, so he (the tree) is a little Charlie Brown-ish...scraggly and completely imperfect. But, he's still alive, he's from our own labor, and we helped to thin a forest that is in desperate need of real fire control.

Thanks to Erin, who is behind the lens on all of these shots.

Kellogg Fellows Sum Up What Civic Engagement Means to Them

“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”
- Ernest Hemmingway’s response to the challenge of writing a six word story.

As I’ve delved into the worlds of non-profit work and political aspiration one common thread seems to join them — both are driven by extremely passionate people. I count myself among those focused leaders that firmly beleive in the work they are doing. Unfortunately, I also count myself among those whose passion for an issue leads to a verbosity that only dilutes the real message of my passion. In short, I kill the very issue that I care most about by blabbing on and on about it.
A little over on month ago I encountered a July article in the Havard Business Review online by John Baldoni, “Sum Up Your Leadership in Six Words“. The point that he and others make is that taking the time to reduce what you are fundamentally about is difficult (at best), but the effort can help you to find the focus you need for successful dissemination of your message, of who you are and what mean to do. As Baldoni reports:
Peggy Noonan, once told President John Kennedy that “a great man is one sentence.” Noonan writes that Lincoln’s life could be summed up as “He preserved the Union and freed the slaves.

Great, But Does It Work?

OK, so this is all nice to think about but how does it work in practice? I wanted to find out myself so I put the 15 Kellogg Fellows that are part of the Forum 11 planning team to the test. Their challenge: Give me the 6 words that explain your involvement or passion in civic engagement. Here are their six (or more) words:

“Educate community, collective empowerment, shared impact.”
“Together we can change the world.”
“People owning, people doing, public work.”
“Never for forget the ‘public’ in public policy.”
“Engaging those not heard, now heard.”
“Be a thermostat, not (just) a thermometer.”
“Risk, voice, action, results, justice.”
“Working for a common good.”
“Social problems are also one’s own.”
“Everyone has a voice and a vote.”
“Recovering the lost & disenfranchised, giving them voice.”
“Courage, perseverance, well-meaning, goal driven, free and happy.”
“Participation, active, positive change, connectivity, representative government, progressive agenda.”
“Perseverance, balance, wisdom, quality values, social capital leverage.”

In the end, I find it to be a very powerful exercise. As these quick answers show you, there is still room for word-smithing but core idea is there. I’m also not afraid to report that a number of the cards had sentences scrawled that never made it to the final cut because they weren’t sharp enough or mis-represented the fundamental reason the Fellow was engaged in civic participation.

Based on this exercise, the team eventually developed their own initial guiding statement for Forum 11:

Courageous choices in the quest for a more perfect union through civic engagement.

This is a repost from my post on www.kfla.org/blog

Cold, snow and mittens

We had another big dump of snow last weekend - 10 inches if you ask Dave, 12 inches if you ask me, of really wet, slushy, snowball stuff. Here's a shot of the Pavillion at Cheesman Park as the storm clouds were beginning to clear.

All this cold weather - which I call birthday weather - has me wanting to knit like crazy, and a couple weekends ago I was able to throw together a hat and some mittens, finally for myself. This was my own interpretation of the Knitty pattern 'Fetching' with fingers, using Malabrigo yarn.

And for those of you familiar with my Bassetti obsession, this is my new Granfoulard Majorelle tablecloth - the idea came from Angela, the fabric was ordered from ebay.de, delivered to Tina and Ufuk and delivered to our home on their visit this summer, and then sewn into a tablecloth by my mother's loving hands. It warms my heart and reminds me of friends and family each time I use it.

Sky before the storm.

I can never wear this shirt again.

I taught a class for Continuing Education this summer, and since the course was on Climate Change and represented a kind of new direction for teacher professional development courses at CU, I was asked to be one of the Continuing Education 'poster children' in the spring catalog. I said sure, and they sent a photographer to my class and snapped some pictures.

They had a media person call and interview me to "craft a quote" for me to then say that I said. This process was actually a surprise to me, because I had always assumed that when magazines like InStyle call stars like Natalie Portman, Natalie actually says something like "This new L'Occitane skin cream really rejuvenates my pores" when, in fact, she probably said nothing of the sort.

Anywho, I helped them to write a quote for me and they did a little story on my class, along with a picture, and it came out in the spring Catalog this week.

I thought, this is cool, and went on with my life. Imagine my surprise in my class last night when a couple of my students held up a copy of the catalog opened to these pages and said, "Hey, are you wearing the same shirt tonight?" I looked down and, sure enough, I had by some strange coincidence chosen to wear the same shirt the day the catalog came out as I was wearing back in July when this picture was taken.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, despite my efforts to change things up and at least not wear the exact same outfit twice for a given class during a semester, I made the mistake of wearing the same shirt twice at all. It's a little reminiscent of when I was in high school, and actually gave a lot of thought to how often I would re-wear any given outfit (I think I had a two-week rule, which in retrospect still seems a bit too often). But as an adult, I guess I had pretty much forgotten that students are paying attention to what I'm wearing (and never mind that in the picture I was wearing pants and last night I was wearing a skirt).

It also reminds me of my Botany professor as an undergraduate, who seriously wore the EXACT same shirt every week to class. I thought this was gross and strange until his TA gave me some insight - he preferred to wear T-shirts around the lab (since he worked in the greenhouse), and kept a shirt hanging on the back of his office door just to wear to class.

Perhaps I should keep a spare on the back of my door just to avoid this situation again - or at least take the turquoise shirt out of my rotation until the Summer catalog replaces the Spring.

Why do I do my job?

The truth is, I love it. The truth is, I would do this for free, only there is someone out there who has somehow been tricked into thinking that this kind of work is actually the kind of thing that someone would pay money for, and suddenly the work I would be doing for free is what I am doing with my life.

I worked the administrative office jobs, I scooped ice cream while dressed up as a cheerleader, I stood behind a counter while bookstore customers explained to me the exact color of blue that was the spine of the book they were looking for but to which they could recall neither the title nor the author. These were jobs I could leave at work, and go home in the evening and spend my time as I wished. But for me, they were empty and meaningless, and the expectation that I would be at a certain place at a certain time EVERY DAY for WEEK after WEEK after WEEK, standing up instead of sitting because I looked more engaged that way, was absolutely interminable. When I was teaching high school, I would actually lock myself in the bathroom sometimes just so people would leave me alone and give me five minutes just to think.

And now, amazingly, I get paid to do just that. To think. To sit in a chair, alone for more time than I am with others, and to write and to think. And when I am with others, I get to talk to them about their work, and hopefully make some small difference in their lives.

And they seriously pay me money to do that?

When I wake...

...this is what I see.

No complaints.

The mountains

Sorry folks, I promised to update the blog more regularly and then took a hiatus over the last week because I was out of town on a three-day retreat with the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation. This is a small but wonderful nonprofit organization that has funded my research since 2007 - I was one of the first five junior faculty members to receive a research fellowship that has not only allowed me to be financially supported as I've settled into CU, but has given me some wonderful new friends and colleagues that will last my career.

The founder of KSTF, as it's better known, is Harry Knowles, a wonderful gentleman who invented the handheld bar code scanner, a ubiquitous piece of retail hardware that I myself had the opportunity to use when I worked one holiday season at Barnes & Noble Booksellers. With the profits from this invention, Harry Knowles founded KSTF for the purpose of increasing the quantity of high quality mathematics and science high school teachers in the US. Their primary mission is to fund beginning teachers for five years to support them into entering the profession, but they also give out these great research fellowships as well.

The funding has been nice, but to be honest, the fellowship has been better - we get together three times a year to chat and vent about our lives and our work. Usually we have been meeting in New Jersey twice a year, but I suggested on a total whim last summer that we relocate the fall meeting to Snow Mountain Ranch in Colorado, renting a cabin and all being trapped together for three days. And surprisingly, that's what we just did.

All nine of us (seven research fellows plus our Program Director, Ralph Putnam and his wife) arrived at the cabin on Wednesday with a very ambitious plan to cook for ourselves while engaging in serious conversations about our work for the next three days. Hilda Borko joined us on Thursday for the last day and a half. Unlike attending a retreat at a hotel where people peel off in smaller groups, hide in their hotel rooms working or watching TV, or leave the group altogether to visit family or friends, at the cabin we were always hanging out formally or informally. It was terrific.

Here's a picture of how we cooked dinner the last night we were there - circled around the kitchen, laughing, drinking wine and beer, eating cheese and crackers, and relaxing in a way we are seldom afforded at this point in our careers:

Okay, so we don't look as happy as we were, but trust me - we laughed until we cried. OK, I laughed until I cried (that story another time).

On the way home, Alicia, Indigo and I stopped at Mount Evans to hike a little ways down the Chicago Lakes Trail, and encountered a frozen Echo Lake and about a foot of snow and ice over the whole trail.

Then Sunday, Alicia met with Derek in Boulder for a few hours of work while Dave and I took Fergie to Chataqua Park for another quick hike, this time sans snow.

I guess I'm coming to the very slow realization that this is a really good place for us at this point in our lives (yes, yes, I know the rest of you had that figured out already. Like I said, slow). That first year we moved back we had what we in education call a 'deficit model' - that is, not appreciating Denver for what it is, but only seeing what it wasn't in comparison with Berlin and San Francisco. Naturally, that's a losing battle for Denver - but in the last six months or so, we've come to really appreciate Denver for itself, and have become very happy here.

And one of the best parts is being able to hop in the car and drive into the wilderness to breathe the fresh, cold, mountain air in less than an hour whenever we can.

Eating Out.

After our early-season dump last week, it was refreshing to have the sun come out, warm things up, and melt all the snow this weekend. Since Dave and I have been in and out of town for the month of October, it was nice to have a weekend with us both here to spend with family and friends. It's also nice, now that Dave has a job, to get out and partake of our home city a bit more than we could afford to do at this time last year.

Friday night we went with Jürgen and Lucinda to Root Down, a new restaurant in the Highlands. We had a 9:00 reservation and still had to wait for a table in the jam-packed bar, which was converted from an old garage. Dave and I both had the risotto at the recommendation of the server, which was so-so, but the curried carrot soup was terrific.

Saturday we went for a stroll in Larimer Square and, inspired by the sunshine and patio seating, had brunch at Osteria Marco. We've been wanting to check this place out since we moved back to Denver, and it did not disappoint. We started with the homemade burrata and, while my arugula pizza wasn't bad, Dave's pork panini was an absolute home-run. I even got a little sun on my face after basically hibernating for half of last week.

Sunday we met Dave's parents on South Gaylord for brunch in honor of Judy's birthday at Devil's Food, which I think is the best brunch I've had in Denver. Dave had the baked pear french toast and I had an omelet with gruyere, carmelized onions, and bacon. We had to wait a while for a table - it was worth it - and in the interim I discovered this great pattern on the bookshelf in the waiting area, so now have a project to get knitted up before Christmas:

Now, back to the grind for this week, but still not back to 'normal' - I'll be heading up to Snow Mountain Ranch Wednesday-Saturday for a retreat with the Knowles Research Fellows - but clearly, there will be snow!

Grrrrrr.

Call me greedy, I don't care. But the fact that CU decided to reopen today under 'normal operating conditions' seems to reflect denial of the current weather conditions here. In fact, 'normal operating conditions' is not the first phrase that pops into my head when I look outside and see 22 inches of snow and flakes falling horizontally. In about an hour I am going to have to leave for Boulder to teach my night class, and I have a feeling that even if I decide to hold it there will not be many students there; however, since I cancelled class myself the first week of the semester (to attend a conference) I am not allowed to cancel a second class because the contact hours for the course start to be called into question. Thus, I am at the mercy of the administration and not too happy about it.

Might I add that all the school districts are closed, all the metro area cities are on accident alert, and - to quote the National Weather Service:

RESIDENTS SHOULD EXPECT WINTER STORM CONDITIONS TODAY. 

ROADS WILL REMAIN SLUSHY AND SNOWPACKED WITH ROAD CLOSURES A POSSIBILITY.

 IF YOU MUST TRAVEL TODAY...TAKE ALONG A WINTER SURVIVAL KIT INCLUDING 

WARM CLOTHES...FOOD AND WATER AND A SHOVEL. 

Uh, yeah. Business as usual, normal operating conditions. No problem.

Here's the view out my window right now:

Snow day!

One of the great secrets of adulthood, I think, is the fact that adults secretly take as much pleasure in parts of life as children. For some reason, the serious adults don't show their pleasure as much, which is why I will never be a serious adult. That said, I am happy to announce that today is a...

SNOW DAY!!!!!!!!!

I actually think I enjoy these much more now than I did as a kid, probably because I have so much more responsibility now (seriously, how hard was going to school in retrospect?). Dave got a call about 7:30 that his colleagues were not going into the office, and I decided not to drive into CU just a few hours before they announced they were closing campus. There's about 10 inches in Denver so far, with more expected overnight and into tomorrow. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that tomorrow will be a snow day as well, which will mean my class is cancelled!

We took Fergie to Cheesman Park about 11:00 for a run in the snow - this is the closest I could get to taking a picture of her. She ran headfirst into the snow and tumbled around, sending up a rooster tail of powder behind her like a canine snowplow.

In short, she loves it (and her special striped sweater - she gained 6 pounds since last year, a 20% increase in her body mass, so she will need a new waterproof coat for this winter. Yes, I know it's ridiculous, but I don't care).

On the way back it took about three tries for Dave to get the Subaru up the little hill and back into the garage, so I don't think we'll be going anywhere for a while.

Pie

Every two weeks at the Math and Science Seminar we do a potluck lunch - usually this starts out with a big bang where everyone tries to impress, then mid-semester when everyone gets busy we start to have freeloaders (myself included) and the pickings grow slimmer. A few semesters ago all we had were the 10 Taco Bell tacos I'd picked up on my way in, and last time we had a few containers of Whole Foods salad and a bag of Halloween candy. Unfortunately, these snacks did not multiply like the fishes and loaves between the 20+ people at the seminar.

So this week, I decided to make an effort and bring something nice. Made with an assortment of apples I picked at the Ya Ya Orchard a few weeks ago with Dave, Rick, and dad.

The New Normal

Several people have asked me in the last months what's going on with the blog, why haven't we been updating the blog? To a certain extent it's probably because Dave and I both joined Facebook this spring, but the truth is that the short little status updates you post there are a totally different way of writing, and a less coherent way of documenting our life experiences. And I do have a lot I want to document - a few more trips this summer, Fergie's amazing transformation into the best dog into the world, the twists and turns of Dave's new job (and, let's admit it - new life mission). But first, I want to write about something for which I've got no pictures, and didn't have to go anywhere to experience. I realized that the new perspective on work and life that I've developed in the last few months - that I'm calling 'the new normal' - should finally allow me to open up some space to start blogging again. Let me explain why.

So what's the new normal? Let's start with the first normal, the original normal, that I experienced as a student and to some extent as a teacher. There's a lot of work to do, but at some point - after your final exam, after turning in final grades for the spring semester - it's done. Your work is finished, and now you can go watch movies or sit on the beach and have absolutely no regrets in your mind that there is work to do, because there won't be for a while. You are truly free.

Enter graduate school - the first semester or so was still the first normal, but then I started to develop my own research interests, my own projects, my own thesis...which then started generating more projects, more interests, more papers...and on and on. This became the second normal, which was awful mostly because I was still anticipating that feeling that I got with the first normal - only it never came. So what I had was this completely unfulfilled sense of anticipation for the great relief when all the projects were done, the papers were turned in, and I could finally relax. But the problem is that it will never stop - even in retirement, it will never stop. I thought I had it sort of under control by the end of graduate school, but my post-doc and first years as an Assistant Professors multiplied the demands on my time in ways I could never have anticipated.

In the process of living life in the second normal, I was always in this hyped-up state of stressing over this deadline, that review, this lesson plan, that conference call, the other presentation, no not that presentation, but this one, the revision, the proofs, the applications, the signatures, the advising sessions, the meetings, the meetings, the meetings, the articles to read that never get read, that chapter I should be working on but can't work on until after the conference deadline, and oh I haven't written that conference proposal yet anyway, but can't until I finish grading these papers, and on and on and on.

Deep breath.

But that's just it - somehow I realized in the last couple of months - I'm not sure how - that this second normal is actually the way life is always going to be. If I were to switch jobs - switch universities, switch to a research position - this work would stay with me. That's because it's my work, and actually, the total hysteria is - paradoxically - a sign that it's all going well. REALLY well.

Whoa. And huh? Doesn't being FINISHED mean you're doing well? I have learned that it doesn't. Good work begets more good work. Good work begets publicity. Publicity begets more contacts. More contacts beget more opportunities. Well-selected opportunities beget more good work, and the cycle continues.

So the new normal is, in some ways, parallel to the final stage of grief - it's acceptance that this is way things are going to be, and there's absolutely no advantage to stressing out over everything because it's never going to go away - and if it does, then that's a whole other problem that's not worth talking about. The new normal is the ability to ignore the impending deadlines and the work that needs to be done in favor of going to the park with my husband and my dog, having lunch with a friend, watching a baseball game with my dad, or reading the an entire New Yorker in a sitting. Because there's no point in waiting for it all to stop.

I announced my resolution to a graduate student in mid-August: "I've decided that I'm not going to get stressed anymore." She laughed in my face, and then, seeing my expression, got herself under control and said, "Oh, you're serious?"

Well, yes, I am. Welcome to the new normal.

Updates

Our apologies.

Life has gone on and we've been terrible at keeping up with it on the blog. Ashlyn kindly pointed this out to us via email today. So we promise to update you on everything that's been going on with us, most notably, DAVE GOT A JOB!!!! He's working full-time at the Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance, a local nonprofit that serves as a sort of alumni foundation for the Kellogg Fellows. More on that organization here. I'll let Dave give you more details soon.

As for me, I've been writing furiously all summer and have made a few small trips in between. My book was officially released in early July, I submitted a special issue of a journal I've been co-editing for the last year, finished a few conference papers and proposals, and am now working full-steam on an NSF proposal. It's been nice to work at home several days a week in our spare room now that the scaffolding is down, chugging iced tea and working on the balcony when I get tired of being inside.

Later this summer/early fall we're both headed to Europe - I'm presenting three papers at the European Association for Research in Learning and Instruction, and Dave will join me.

Stay with us...we'll keep the details coming now, we promise!

Rising Prof Gets Jamaican Love

OK, so the post about how much we loved the trip to Kingston and Mamme Bay are coming....and the details WILL make you drool...but this one is about how Erin made some major news while in Jamaica.

First, her workshop for the local Kingston schools made news in the national paper, The Jamaica Gleaner, on May 12th.

Hillel Academy Drives Teacher Workshops.

Then, she was featured in the Jamaica Observer, based out of Montego Bay (Mo-Bay to the locals), on May 13th.

Hillel Attacks Weaknesses in Maths, Science: Teachers from top schools invited to workshop on student assessment.

Erin taking in the news and teaching a session.

At the actual workshop (one of her best presentations, by the way) the papers sent new reporters and photographers to catch the action.


Ya, ya, ya and as if this wasn't enough (oh, and that her book is due to come out soon), she was then interviewed by former Jamaican First Lady, Beverley Anderson Manley, on May 21st. (Download the podcast of her interview.) Girl truly represents!!

San Diego

Dearest Blog readers,

Our sincere apologies for not updating the blog more recently...I've been slogging through the last weeks of school while Dave has been slogging through the last weeks of the legislative session, and there's not been much time for anything outside of survival mode for either of us.

The end, however, is in sight; my last class was the 29th and Dave's last day at the House is May 6th (although that unfortunately means that Dave is also again looking for work).

Now that we can at least come up for brief gasps of air, I can finally post some of the pictures we took in San Diego last month. I was in town for a conference, and Dave flew in at the end of the week to join me.




We drove up to Carlsbad where Ashlyn's parents, Mark and Viv, have a lovely beach house right across Highway 1 from a public beach.

It was just the medicine we needed.

Dave went out surfing a few times, and even gave beginner lessons to baby Saya, who is of course a natural.

Marsha, Ashlyn and I sunned on the beach and argued over the relative merits of In Style versus Lucky - of course, InStyle won.


I unfortunately sunned a bit too much and sunburned the backs of my legs much worse than ever before, probably because my legs have seen no sun in three years since each of those summers was spent in Berlin. Need to be more careful next time.