Ok, so here it is. My memory is becoming a bit suspect, but with the help of many, I've come up with a summary of what we have been up to these last twelve months. 2021, for all its problems, disasters, and disappointments, is still, we believe here in Carlisle, much better than 2020. On the heels of Trump’s failed coup attempt, the start of the Biden-Harris administration brought us great psychic relief and some hope, as did the role out of the COVID vaccines. In late January, Dickinson tentatively welcomed back some students, and Asun and I did our best to make a unique, “hybrid” semester seem, if not normal, at least palatable and somewhat productive. We survived it. Most of our energy was directed at just getting by and staying free of the virus. Consequently, the winter and spring were kind of a blur. Lots of work and little fun. Nonetheless, in February (or March?), we did have a wonderful weekend visit with Colby and Daniela in Winthrop, and Meng was able to join us, which made it that much more fun. In March I ran the Two Rivers Marathon in Lackawaxen, PA. Unfortunately, it ended prematurely and rather badly: in Mile 24 I became completely dehydrated and my calves balled up, seemingly permanently. I had to be assisted by medical personnel. Quite mortifying. On the other hand, a month later, Andrew ran his first marathon quite successfully, always a big accomplishment! I accompanied him for the second half. In May, I had a great time running the Potomac River Marathon in DC. No serious cramping! We got to visit with Amanda, Grant and family the night before the race, and even got to see Thea!
Most thankfully, late May brought a welcome visit from Alma, Amadeo, Miles and Mateo! Not long after arriving in Carlisle, Amadeo ran an ultramarathon in Endless Mountains State Park. That's no joke! Amadeo had to deal with lots of technical climbing and thousands and thousands of feet of elevation gain. We had a great visit with Jay and Karen Ohlsten on the way back to Carlisle! And then it was on to Little Compton, where we were so happy to be together with our big, wonderful extended family! A truly splendid two weeks! Shortly after returning to Carlisle, Cristina kind of tricked us into a canine adoption. But it couldn't have turned out better. We love Tronco, the kindest, sweetest doggie imaginable! He loves having two places to hang out. In August, Asun & Cristina went off to Spain for Cristina's dissertation research and time with Cristi, Javi, June, tía Isita, and friends. Spiritual renewal for Asun! But the big excitement in August wasDaniela and Colby announcing their engagement! We are so, so happy. We love Colby; he and Daniela are an amazing couple!
In October, Andrew got a big promotion at Maven Clinic, where he has been working for over a year now! He is a Staff Software Engineer and oversees a big team of engineers that make telemedicine possible. Also in October, Amadeo ran an amazing marathon in Chicago! (Ohhh, just missed his Boston Qualifying time by 30 seconds!) And then, ohhhh, ISABEL POPP joined us on October 29th!! Wow! What a date for this family-Amy, Savannah, Isabel!!! She is the most incredible, beautiful, little bundle of joy! We are happy beyond description for Cristina and Andrew. (Family: you can get a link from Andrew for a password protected site where there will be lots of photos on the little wonder.) In November, I ran my fourth marathon of the year and my fastest yet. Harrisburg! (Ohhh, and like Amadeo, I just missed my Boston Qualifying time! By 11 seconds!) Thanksgiving was wonderful. Everyone home for the first time in some years! Most recently, Alma announced she will soon be starting a new job with Wayfair. She and Amadeo have already bought a house in Brookline. An eventful year. Above all, we are so grateful for the love and support we get from all of you!!! Gracias!! For 2022 we hope for more travel, more time with family and friends!
In more or less chronological order, here are some images from the past year:
Happy Birthday, Amadeo!
Happy couple!
Happy Birthday, Colby!
Happy Birthday, Daniela!
Happy Birthday, Mark!
Happy Birthday, Meng!
Book group.
Family!
Harrisburg half marathon. We crushed it!
From Texas to Carlisle!
Endless Mountains
With the Ohlstens in Trumansburg!
Happy Birthday, Alma!
All together!
Miles & Big Papi Mark share a milkshake!
At the beach in Little Compton
Mateo meets cousin Emerson.
At New Haven's Food Truck alley just off I95.
Tronco!
Our favorite farmer!
Cristina, Asun, Ana, Pili. In Loyola, where we got married.
Good Times!
He's a paella fan.
Happy Birthday, Asun!
Asun works to keep the farm workers healthy, distributing
hundreds of care packages with health products and
this year administering COVID vaccines.
Making a paella in September for farm workers.
Always ready for a hike!
Paella for 250 at the Dickinson College Farm!
Assisted by Fernando Saralegui!
With Sylvie & Pat.
We like bridges!
After the Harrisburg marathon.
(Don't know what Asun thinks is funny. I was a hurtin'.)
Essential for the holidays!
Happy Birthday, Andrew!
Ready for the Turkey Trot.
Mateo!
Happy boy!
Miles & Mateo!
They love Abuela Asun!
Last day of class. Very possibly my best group ever!
Here's a new concept for national defense. Instead of patrolling the world's seas with monstrous death machines, why not fill our boats with artists. Dancers, musicians and others to delight people wherever they go. We could sew goodwill instead of death and destruction. I was thinking of this ideal this morning watching George Balanchine's "Union Jack". Watch, it's wonderful: "Union Jack".
In this post I’m going to write a little about Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet (CPYB) and why I believe it’s a uniquely valuable cultural and educational institution. The immediate stimulus for this brief reflection is simply, as so often the case, my morning walk with Waldo. While leisurely following our habitual path around the neighborhood one day last week, I was offered a stark reminder of what an awkward time early adolescence can be for many teens. On our way home Waldo and I passed a neighborhood girl who was walking to the local middle school. Shoulders slumped, head down and generally moving with a gait that suggested extreme discomfort, my neighbor seemed to want nothing more than to disappear. I’m no expert, but “body language” is often an eloquent indicator of one’s general state. In an article published in Psychology Today, popular author Joe Navarro, who does claim expertise on this subject, suggests that one of the things parents should teach their children about body language is that “What your body says to me is more accurate than what you say and it speaks to me before you do. So always be aware that often we can tell what you are thinking or feeling before you speak.” (Note the strange mind/body separation Navarro’s statement presupposes; maybe he should take some dance classes...) Yes, we all know that a gesture can communicate more forcefully than words. Precisely one of the great difficulties of adolescence is the frequency with which body language escapes our conscious control. Fortunately, the awkwardness and insecurity of adolescence passes and most of us seem to muddle through it and survive into adulthood. But it’s not easy. (The inspirational and popular video project It Gets Better is no doubt the most poignant contemporary example of this vital message.) And here’s where CPYB came into my thinking: how fortunate, I said to myself, that two of my daughters have had some dance education and been rewarded with a “body awareness” whose core benefits apply most valuably and enduringly outside the dance studio and far from the performance stage. I have no dance education myself, but as a casual observer there is no mystery: from the most basic notion of good posture to the subtleties of gesture and eye contact, ballerinas are in command of their physical presence in a way that communicates confidence, connectedness and ease of being. Let’s not underestimate the value of having these particular qualities.
Anyone who has taken beginning Spanish will recall that the language of Cervantes has two verbs that mean “to be,” ser and estar. Mastering the usage of these verbs takes much practice, but the general concept, in simple terms, is that ser refers to inherent existence and estar refers to presence or condition. So, in Spanish you can know how to estar, but not how to ser, since in the latter there is no knowing, you just are or aren’t. You exist or you don’t, there’s no skill involved. And now to my point: one of the truly great compliments one can be paid in Spanish is to be told that you sabe estar. It’s like being told you know how to act in any given setting, but it’s more than that, for it entails having all the attributes so often observed in dancers: poise, ease of being, self-assuredness, awareness. These qualities are essential if one wants to estara la altura de las circunstancias or, as we might say in English, to rise to the occasion. Dancers, literally and figuratively, know how to rise to the occasion.
It seems that when discussing the benefits of training in classical ballet, fans of this art are inclined, quite reasonably, to point to the great discipline it instills in its students and practitioners. Indeed, I have observed repeatedly the remarkable discipline that typically accompanies ballet dancers. And I’m not referring here to my daughters, although I believe they, too, have these qualities: I see it again and again with my Dickinson students. Almost without exception, those students of mine who have dedicated some extended time to ballet are well organized, have no difficulty completing assignments, and stay focused in class. These anecdotal observations are confirmed by much research. The key is focus, an ability to pay attention. Excessive speed and excessive choice are central characteristics of contemporary life, and so it stands to reason that an ability to stay focused affords one huge advantages. Educators talk often about the importance of changing how and what we teach to prepare our students for success in a fast-changing world. We may want to reconsider the value of simply filling our classrooms with lots of technology. Let’s keep this in mind: a recent study whose results were published in the journal Pediatrics found that “the greater a child's attention problems at age 6, the more likely that child will perform poorly on tests of math and reading in the last few years of high school.” Finding a direct correlation like that in a rigorous study is significant and we should take notice: young children must be able to focus, and in today’s world it seems to be an ever growing challenge. So, my advice to parents of young children in the Carlisle area: send your kids to CPYB starting at a very young age. It doesn’t matter if they show no interest in dance, just have them do it for a couple or few years, then let them decide if they want to continue or not. After two or three years the biggest prize, the ability to focus, is already safely hardwired in their still developing brains.
It takes many, many thousands of hours of formal training to prepare for a career as a professional ballet dancer. It is a tremendously difficult, highly demanding path. And it’s hyper competitive, especially for the girls: for every young dancer fortunate enough to be invited to join a major company there are hundreds, even thousands, who share the same aspiration and don’t make it. Dancers at CPYB have a distinct advantage: no other ballet school in the country (actually, in the world) located in a community comparable in size to Carlisle has a record even remotely approaching CPYB’s in terms of preparing future professional dancers. Stephen Manes, in his recently published book The Land of Ballet, refers to CPYB as a “ballerina factory.” Although the metaphor has some dehumanizing connotations, Manes meant it as a great compliment to CPYB and a tribute to the inspired teaching of founding Artistic Director Marcia Dale Weary. Hundreds of CPYB students have gone on to professional careers in ballet, and many have had or are now in the midst of brilliant careers at major companies.
Any community our size would be proud to be home to a great school like Dickinson College. In this regard Carlisle is quite fortunate. Everyone knows that in addition to Dickinson, Carlisle is also home to the Dickinson School of Law and the U.S. Army War College. That’s a lot of higher education for a community our size. Yet, it’s truly unfortunate that there is not much greater awareness regarding CPYB’s exceptional place in the world of ballet. With all due respect to Dickinson College, where I’ve been happily employed for over 20 years, CPYB is not to ballet what Dickinson is to higher education; CPYB is the Harvard or Princeton of ballet education. So, carlislians, let’s take pride in our ballet school and performing company: they know about it in San Francisco, Boston, and New York; they know about it Madrid, in Tokyo... let’s know about it here at home.
The best way to learn about CPYB is to go see one of their performances. And it is as a performing company that CPYB shines as a stellar cultural institution, putting on several times a year amazing productions of professional quality right here in our area. I’ve been attending CPYB performances for many years now and, frankly, at the beginning I could not have imagined that they could keep getting more and more impressive. But they do. Their shows at the Whitaker Center and Hershey Theatre really do compare favorably to what is done by professional companies. Giselle is coming up, April 21 and 22. Don’t miss it.
I just came across a spectacular photo created at the Paranal Obser- vatory in Chile. This is the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365, photo- graphed in infrared light. NGC 1365 is a member of the Fornax cluster of galaxies, which is a mere 60 million light-years from Earth. 60 million light-years! The immensity of that distance is cause for great marvel. It also makes me feel, perhaps, a little helpless: we'll never get there! It turns out the Milky Way may be a barred spirall also. NGC 1365 is 200,000 light years in diameter! That makes it much bigger than our milky way. The complete story is here.
As good a time as any to make another attempt at blogging. I don't know what Phil's handlers declared this morning and I really don't care. But seeing one's shadow from time to time is important. A shadow is a good friend. Poor Waldo, he's so close to the ground he rarely projects a shadow. But here's a basset who does manage to project a nice shadow: watch the video.
Terrorism is a much abused term in our day, often invoked shame- lessly by political leaders to manipulate a passive public. Big Media goes along meekly. (After all, what exactly is "The War on Terror" if not a magnificent, Hollywood inspired title to cower a population into accepting one of the most outrageous war mongering, war profiteering scams ever?) However, the term does have appropriate uses and, unfortunately, "Basque Terrorism" has been one of them. For over thirty years the imposition of fear and, yes, terror, on one part of the population by another has been a fundamental strategy of ETA. Imagine, for example, you are a Basque living in a small town in the province of Guipuzcoa. You are a socialist and decide to run for town council. You will live in fear because automatically ETA will declare you fair game. Because in ETA's worldview any person expressing an ideology that does not jive with theirs is a legitimate candidate for assassination. ETA is very good at assassination. Experienced. They've murdered over 800 people in their long, bloody campaign. And, yes, they have inspired much, much fear. Enough fear to silence some, make others go into exile. That's terrorism. But not everyone gave in. Many, many Basques resisted. Some especially brave individuals, such as novelist Raúl Guerra Garrido, refused to be silenced and withstood years of violence, intimidation and death threats. In the late 1970s and early 80s, during Spain's transition to democracy, ETA was a potent killing machine and successfully goaded the state into responding with violence of their own. It was a dark time, but democratic values prevailed and slowly, slowly, ETA's ultimate defeat became more and more evident.
On Thursday ETA announced the definitive end of violence, a recognition of defeat that has seemed inevitable for some time. Their leadership has been arrested and jailed repeatedly, their ability to bring in the money through extortion seriously eroded. It's good news, even though the statement is a pitiful example of their habitual double speak. So now it's the beginning of what will likely be a protracted and messy process to definitively do away with the organization.
Yesterday Khadafy was captured and then assas- sinated in Sirte. That extra- judicial execution is un- fortunate, but not very surprising. People are violent and vengeful. Khadafy himself was a ruthless dictator who killed with impunity. I just read that Hugo Chávez has declared that Khadafy is a martyr. Is that the Bolivarian Revolution? A martyr! As Chávez lamented the loss of his close friend hundreds of thousands of Libyans celebrated the fall of the Khadafy regime. (But we should be fair: Tony Blair also referred to Khadafy as a good friend.)
I guess being a fan, that is, a fanatic, is in some ways much like having a religious faith. It's a common notion, even a cliché because often when invoked the analogy serves nothing more than to emphasize zealous devotion. But the comparison can be more interesting: fans implicate themselves emotionally (like small children? older children showing arrested development?) with a group in whose activities they have no part. (Well, in fact, I guess by showing enthusiastic support at a sports venue, sometimes fans can, in fact, impact the outcome, but if we're talking about baseball that is rarely the case.) Fans care deeply about people they don't know personally. (Yes, there are exceptions). If the team screws up the fan may feel screwed. These are not all-powerful gods, so it's a very curious faith indeed. The willful submission to irrational behavior is fascinating, strange, sometimes depressing. (Fans, do you think the players care about you?) But also quite endearing. After all, we are familiar with the studies that suggest faith is good for your health. I chose the easier path: faith in baseball itself. And this seems to get me closer to that all-powerful god idea. The game never fails to provide transcendence. I'm always waiting for that never-ending game, but meanwhile, the games we do have occasionally provide such unlikely and dramatic narratives they make me ask to which of James' varieties of religious experience they pertain.
