jaipur

So Friday of last week, I was walking with the hubby from my office to the nearest reasonable coffee shop, and the path took us through a big hall/meeting space on the ground floor of my building. This area was packed with young women, but there were no signs as to what was going on or why they were there, other than that it was clearly deliberate; there were rows of chairs set up and most of them were being sat on, as their occupants chatted as though waiting for an activity or speaker to start.

Ok, so that was odd. But as we walked back and forth through them, I realized they were all a) young, b) slender, c) white to olive-complexioned, and d) they all had long, straight hair. Seriously! They weren't all blonde; hair color had all the normal varieties, though no one was pink or blue or any unnatural shade. But everyone's hair reached at least to their shoulders or farther, and it was all blunt cunt; no one had any interesting asymmetries going, no one had even a short bob. No one had curly hair. Wavy, yes, and some was thick and others were fine. But no one had curls. No one was fat (or even very curvy), no one was pierced or tattooed, no one was even overly short, though there were a few very tall ones.

Sorority recruitment, it turned out. That was my bet when I realized how physiologically homogeneous they were, and I confirmed it later when I saw someone manning an official (though still unlabeled) table, and could ask them. Yes, stereotypes are occasionally true. ;)

It is very disturbing to see that lack of variety in such a large group of people. It was just on the edge of noticeable--they weren't all cookie cutter, stepford wives versions of each other. But dang, they had a really constrained set of variations, which just made it weird and uncomfortable until I figured out that's what I was seeing. I knew I was not a fan of sororities, and that just confirmed it. :P

We finally started (and finished) watching Season 3 of Sherlock; we missed it when it came out earlier this year on PBS and had to wait for it to come out on Netflix, and then find time to watch it. :)

The first two seasons they stuck closely to the original books, and I was very impressed by how well they did the translation to modern day London. The third season they went completely off book and my goodness they were good. The second episode, at John and Mary's wedding, was hysterical! It was fun to really know not what was going to happen next, and I liked what they did with Mary. Cumberbatch was good as always. ;)

What I sent to my family about DragonCon--this weekend is the big Sci Fi/Fantasy convention in Atlanta, DragonCon. Some of my students go to it and so do a bunch of the faculty apparently! But the parade is public and free, so I went to watch it Saturday morning. I actually gave up about halfway through, because the heat and the crowds were just overwhelming--unless you get there at 8:30 for a 10 am parade, you don't get to see very clearly! I will remember that for next year. The crowds had to be seen to be believed.

It opened with a lone bagpiper, followed by the DragonCon banner. There were dragons, of course, and Dr. Who groups of various sorts (there were a lot of women in blue and white fluffy ball dresses, as some sort of Tardis), Xena and the Power Rangers, Lego Xmen, dinosaurs, vampires (followed by a real blood drive mobile which made me laugh) and zombies and the entirety of the Periodic Table! :) And I didn't see the whole thing (there were half a dozen Ghostbuster cars, plus the De Lorean from Back to the Future and Speed Racer's #5). And lots and lots of groups I didn't recognize. The guys behind me were naming groups as they went by, which helped--the dwarves from the Hobbit marched by in their barrels going down the rivier :) --but there were groups from various online games and such that I'd never heard of, and probably movies and TV shows as well. Not a lot of floats, though. Mostly just marching spectacle.

Much fun!

So Mom's been back in the hospital since Friday. She started running a fever and they admitted her that afternoon to start doing tests, and it's been up and down since then. At first they thought she might be able to come home on Saturday, but no such luck--some of her symptoms got worse, they had to do Xrays of her abdomen, etc.

The current consensus is a) she's doing better, feeling well enough to read the paper this morning and b) there's nothing obviously wrong, so it's apparently chemotherapy toxicity, which can come on suddenly even a week after the treatment, according to the doc. So they have to dial it back a bit, either in dosing levels or frequency. But Dad expects her to be in the hospital another few days.

Dad's been a love about emailing us kids every few hours with an update. I've emailed back generally cheery and upbeat responses, though I finally texted my sister yesterday to explain that I was totally freaking out about it, and we had a good phone call. She was in the same state as me, not sure what to do or when; the plan originally had been she was supposed to be over at their place today, making soup for mom for the week (since Mom has all these digestive issues anyway even before this, gluten free and fat free and no potatoes and just a whole bizarre list of stuff she couldn't eat), and as of yesterday it was not at all clear what was going to happen, whether she should be buying groceries or not. SIGH.

But Dad's not feeling expansive--in my last email to him I asked directly what hospital they were in (he hadn't said!) and whether we could do anything like call their church or anything, and his email in response was surprisingly brusque, for him. He's usually quite polite and friendly, so I figure he's taking it understandably hard. He said he's emailing friends from church separately, so that's good.

Aaaaand the first day of classes is tomorrow. Of course. :P

Hm, so Mork is gone. :( I heard last night a news blurb that Robin Williams had been found dead, and I figured 63 was a smidgen young--but the hubby pointed out that man had done so many drugs in the 70s and 80s it was a wonder he made it this far. But it turns out it was possibly suicide? He'd been battling depression? That's not good. I knew he's gotten help back in the 90s or something--it was when he stopped being funny, to be honest. I always had wondered why his stuff from the 80s was hysterical but later stuff wasn't, until I found out he'd been to a shrink. (Same goes for John Cleese--it seems to be a rule that a) standup comedy comes from psychological pain and b) fixing the pain while good for the person is bad for the comedy.) I'm sorry he had it, and that the pain got to be too much. :( He gave me many laughs when I was a teenager, though I wasn't a fan of his movies in general.

Best wishes to his family, of course. That must be unbelievably difficult for them.

I had plans this summer. I was going to diet and exercise and get back in shape, as well as getting a bunch of papers in and revamping my class for the fall.

We got a bunch of papers in (and rejected, and revised and resubmitted), but there are still some hanging over my head. I did get some grants in, either as co-PI or subaward PI. But the rest of it? Not so much. :P

So Mom is in good spirits and not noticeably yellow any more, though she is very, very tired and always cold. She sees the chemo doctor later this week to get the treatment plan (how much chemo and radiation and when, and how long it will take to see if the tumor is receding to the point where they can cut it out), and then we go from there. As she said, from here on it's just a slog.

But she had told one of her doctors that she was ready to split up her jewelry among her two daughters and daughter-in-law, and he said, "Now who told you do that? There's no need to rush into that." or words to that effect. Which for some reason I found more reassuring than almost anything else that was said in the last week.

My brother, sister-in-law and nephews came over at tea time yesterday and stayed through dinner (order-in Chinese!! Yay!). But mom's friend Maryann called around 5:30 and offered to come pray for Mom and Mom said absolutely, so we had a lovely prayer meeting for about 15 minutes at 6 pm. Standing around Mom (she got to sit, obviously!) with our hands on her shoulders and eventually tears just running down everyone's cheeks (except the nevvies but they are young and it's not their mom).

There are some things you want so much, you can't say them out loud, hence my tears. But this is important to mom and dad, and reassuring to the childhood patterns in me, so hey. It was good. Mom and Dad are very pleased that all her doctors are Catholic and offered to pray for her almost to a man, at various points.

Dinner was just everyone chatting, the nevvies insisted on one round of Mad Libs before leaving (which worked surprisingly well). Then the sis and I bought a bottle of wine at the convenience store across the street and sat in our hotel room putting most of it away and chatting about books, TV shows, relationships, etc.

Had breakfast with mom and dad this morning--dad had hoped they could both drive me to the airport this morning but mom was not up for it, so he drove me and we got a chance to chat a bit. Apparently my coming up this weekend meant a lot to both of them, for all I felt kind of like I strong-armed them into it, offering numerous times until I got a yes response. ;) So that was the right thing to do.

Nothing to do know for mom except wait. I offered to fly up next weekend like I'd offered to fly up this weekend, and the response was the same--the thought of visitors was a bit much. (though her email today says no, come on up, so we will get that arranged!)

In other news, work has been productive. Cawr's second paper is under review; Vepa's first paper ever is under review (and she was so excited to push the "submit" button! :); Naco's one paper is out with co-authors and should be submitted this week, and his second paper is with me right now for one final pass before sending it to co-authors and then for submission. The team locally is going great guns, and as a group they are really coming to grips with at least three different software packages that they need to do these resting state fMRI analyses. We aren't top of the line, but we are doing what the mass of labs are doing, so we should be in good shape. I'm expecting some papers out of that this fall! (Which is exciting for both me and the students. :)

Plus, I've made a connection with an energetic young psychiatrist at the hospital at the end of the block, who runs the treatment resistant psychosis clinic and is VERY interested in getting research going. We had a long discussion this past Monday with the imaging center acting director on how to scan clinical patients there, etc. We have some ideas! We just need to get it going.

The hubby's been doing great on the text mining project, keeping all the master's and PhD students charging along so we know actually have a functioning infrastructure, where we can query PubMed, then pull the relevant files from some journals and shove 'em straight into a database properly divvied up by section (Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusions) for later processing. Woot!! Plus the CS Prof we are working with says the hubby should be on these students' committees, which is a good thing for him to have on his CV.

And at work the Chair who hired me has moved up the ranks to something else at the college level, and the Associate Chair is now the new Chair. I am hoping he is not Too Nice for the Job, but he's been working with the old Chair for years and knows all the ins and outs, she thought the world of hi, so I have confidence in him. He and I are meeting for lunch this coming Tuesday to discuss where I'm at and my space needs, etc. (on his initiative! Which is very nice).

Hmm. A quick tour through Priceline and Delta shows that leaving for DC on Friday evening and coming back Sunday is going to be over $1000 for two adults. I need to dig some more!

So over the weekend I worked a bit and took a lot of time off, playing a new game at games.com. :)

But then yesterday evening after work I was next door at the neighbor's because she was getting a quote on new windows, and we need new windows too so she let me join in. (We'll see how THAT goes!) In the middle of it my brother called but I missed it.

So the hubby and I went out to dinner, and in the middle I remembered my brother had called so I stopped to check it, and while I was working through that the hubby checked his email and there was a message from my mom.

The email said she'd been in for a CT on Friday for some odd problems and got the results back, and there was a mass on her pancreas. Where there had not ought to be one, and the doc said it looked like cancer. More tests needed to be sure of course. (My brother's call was assuming I had seen the email--but my mom had sent it to my old yahoo email so I didn't get it.)

The hubby offered to cancel dinner and go home, but I figured no, nothing I could do anyway, I'd hold it together; but when we were done he suggested I should go, so he paid up and drove home while I called my mom from the car. ("Got your email, mom--what the hell?") She'd had a cold over the 4th of July weekend the last time I talked to her, but that was fine; but at the tail end of the cold in the middle of last week she started getting chills and fever feelings without running a fever, and got into the doc on Friday who noticed she was turning yellow! So he got a CT scan for her right away, and she proceeded to get yellower over the weekend while waiting for the results.

And there we are, with the dreaded and deadly diagnosis "pancreatic cancer" hanging over our heads. She's in to see the gastro enterologist tomorrow, with the expectation of a biopsy shortly. But her bile duct is blocked! She's lost 10 lbs already--she can eat but her body can't do anything with it. I'm a little concerned she isn't in the hospital already; can you let people walk around for days with no bile?

I called her again today at the end of the business day and she sounded good, not faint or exhausted. But she's definitely facing squarely the idea that This Is It, and that is understandably difficult for the rest of us.

I think I have found the Best Book I Read This Year, even though it is only July. I finally finished The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, by Roberts & Klibanoff, and it is rare that I am that moved by a work of non-fiction.

It's a tough book to read on a number of levels. First, it's written by journalists, and it has that point of view--it has a cast of thousands, with people popping in for a few paragraphs to do something important and then disappearing. There are a few names that continue throughout the entire book--Myrdal, Ashmore, McGill, Kilpatrick, to name a few both good guys and bad guys--but it took me a while to settle into the style of the writing. It is NOT a novelization. It's a detailed history of the growth of the civil rights movement, starting with WWII and continuing to pretty much the death of MLK Jr, from the point of view of how the press played a role in both suppressing and facilitating the changes that came through, over 2-3 decades.

As a result, it's fascinating. It starts with Myrdal's 1944 book, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, which is eye-opening to begin with, and the impact of that book is woven through the rest of the history--everyone who is a player has read it, along with other key pieces that come later. But when you start with that book in 1944, followed by Brown vs the Board of Education in 1954, and then by 1964 things haven't really changed *that* much--I had a lot of sympathy for the groups starting to splinter off from MLK's approach and argue for violence in return. I mean, holy crap. 20 years is a freakin' long time to put up with only the hope for change, small steps, the South basically trying to ignore the Supreme Court rulings when they do come, growing awareness of the violence, etc.

It's dispassionate writing in most places, which I found even more impactful. As it builds to Brown vs the Board of Education (1954), then Emmett Till in 1955, with the detailed descriptions of how that all went, then the fight to get Autherine Lucy into the University of Alabama that took THREE years, and she's finally accepted and allowed to register, goes to campus in the fall of 1955--and lasts no more than 3 days until the racist mob riots force the university to suspend her, claiming they can't provide a safe environment.

I actually had to put the book down and cry for a while at that point. Since I didn't know the story about the University of Alabama, I really hoped that it would work out for Autherine, and was devastated when the bullies and bigots won. How could that happen? I object strenuously to people behaving that way, and the rage and guilt and despair over the failure of human nature was just too much at that point.

But the next 10 years was more examples of that--cultural-level extreme bullying, in essence, at Little Rock and Montgomery, the riots at the University of Mississippi over the first black student, people getting killed or permanently maimed as they tried to register to vote, register for classes, get lunch at a deli, march, you name it. People who thought they had and should keep the upper hand got outrageously, inhumanely violent in keeping the other guy down.

It's really unbelievable, as it is laid out here, dovetailed with the growth of TV news, the role of text, the understanding of the value of the camera both still and moving, the different roles of the black and white press over time, the different approaches from within the "border states" vs the Deep South, the places that integrated their universities without a whimper vs the places where the governor or police commissioner refused, the political theories about "interposition" and how those played out, the attempts from certain southern editors to argue "You're one too!" highlighting racism in the "integrated" north, the growth and fading of the NAACP, the SNCC, how those groups played together or didn't. Etc.

There is so much you can take from this book, not just about race relations and history but the development of the news media in this country, as well as a deeper understanding of how humans will behave toward each other when the balance of power is in question. It's definitely worth a long, slow read.