Traditions; Straight Skis

The days following Christmas have been busy and full of hubbub. First, there was the annual bowling party for L. We got a day off on Sunday, during which I cooked breakfast for my siblings and their significant others, went grocery-shopping for the umpteenth time (I must admit, it's mostly because I like going to the grocery stores here), baked bread, and made Cheddar-and-Cayenne Crackers. The crackers, well. They are like Cheese-its, but with substance and soul. Also, I know what's in them. I'm not sure I know what's in Cheese-its.

The bread and the crackers have been added to the stockpile to go to the Grand Canyon. That is, aside from the crackers that my family and I ate yesterday.

Yesterday was another family tradition: the Annual Ski Outing So As to Justify Purchasing Those Skis So Many Years Ago. Or something like that. My family cross-country skis (aka Nordic skiing, aka straight-skiing). We piled into two cars after a relatively minimal amount of fussing (my parents usually need 1-2 extra hours post-departure time to actually get everything together for an expedition) and headed up into the mountains.

I was so glad to see those mountains. It has been a while. We drove up past the usual downhill skiing resort, to a small sno-park lot, parked the cars, donned our ski boots, and set out to ski. The snow was just lovely - a couple of fresh inches of snow atop a base layer. Good for gliding along, and easy to negotiate while going down hills. We spent the morning traveling in a circle, then paused for some lunch, and then spent the afternoon traveling up a mountain. I only had time to go about 5 km up the mountain trail, but it was peaceful and pleasant to whoosh back down at a gentle pace.

Then we came home and had some delicious blue cheese and walnut ravioli prepared by sytharin and J. After dinner, I helped my dad wash a tremendously huge mountain of dishes. Considering that my parents own a dishwasher, the mountain of dishes was mighty impressive. This trip has really made me fat.

This afternoon/evening, I will fly back to Tempe and gear up to go to the Grand Canyon in the morning.

Ready, Set, Work

As grey clouds descend, I am departing from Seattle and heading back to Phoenix. My luggage contains an odd assortment of items, mostly food for our New Year's Grand Canyon Expedition. I will be hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, spending four nights there. I think I did a reasonably good job of tying up loose ends before leaving, considering that I managed to get a bicycle shipped to myself and did some tidying up to boot. I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the way in which family descended during and right after Christmas. That's probably just me being a McGrumpyPants, but I feel like things went from relative quietude and concentration to a stampeding cacophony and frenzy. So maybe it's good that I'm leaving that behind.

I didn't get as much work accomplished as I'd hoped, but I still feel like I made reasonable progress on things, and am ready to get back in gear when we return from the Canyon.

Most of the stories I've been reading from Working have highlighted people either doing jobs they aren't completely satisfied with, or jobs that seem to have kind of shifty morals attached to them. There was a film critic for the New Yorker who commented on people loving their jobs (she loved hers), so maybe that will change as the book progresses. Ever since reading Your Money or Your Life, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the aspect of work that we wouldn't do if it weren't for the fact that we're making a living by doing it. I am, of course, in a rather extreme field in terms of its justification as work. On the one hand, I could point out that I'm not making a fantastic living as a graduate student, but on the other hand, I am provided with enough funds to get by. And on the third hand, can I justify my work in the same way the Ford assembly-line worker justifies his? I'm so close to the pragmatic branches of biology (if the study of medicine can be viewed in that fashion), and yet I'm kind of repulsed by many aspects of pragmatic biology.

Can I really buy in to such a flawed system? It's funny and sad to think that part of my job has been to train future nurses and dentists, when I can't really afford dental care for myself. I think we need biologists who understand basic biology so we have some perspective on applied biology. And the US government seems to agree, given that they allot a small fraction of money to basic biological research (a drop in the bucket relative to the National Institutes of Health spending, which is yet again a drop in the bucket relative to so-called defense spending).

With my brother's visit, I'm also confronted with differences between how he pursues his biological studies and how I pursue mine. He has been getting a lot of media attention for his research, probably because he studies organisms that have wide popular appeal. Our research group also garners a fair amount of attention, but that aspect of biology doesn't really interest me because it tends to represent flash-in-the-pan science. We need scientists who are willing to study the ugly, understudied organisms, termites and cockroaches and horrible, disgusting pathogens. We should not ask those scientists to have the same relationship with their study organisms as the biologists who study penguins or ponies or dolphins.

Ehh, that's as far as I've gotten so far on this train of thought. Back to reading.