Nerdy Quality Time with My 14-Year-Old Son

The start of the school year has had a very positive influence on at least one of my sons who, taking geometry this year, has had some of his math-oriented gears put into motion.

During dinner this evening, he was telling me his ideas (algorithms) for generating prime numbers. He would describe his scheme and then, feeling (and acting) like he had just sent a tremendous pearl in our direction, wait for his mother and me to shoot holes in it. We did this rather easily at first (finding counter examples to assail his hypotheses), but he analyzed, adapted, and started generating more and more complex schemes. Finally, they got too complex for us to do the math in our heads.

So, after dinner, he and I started programming a test bench in Java to explore and test his prime-number-generating schemes. We started with a very simple scheme, but then graduated through 5 or 6 increasingly more complex schemes, seeing which of the first 100 instances of each scheme were primes. Some of the results were surprising. He got really fired-up about this, wanting to have us try “one more thing”. We finally had to get stern with him and send him to bed as it was well past his bed time. Who knows -- we may have the basis of a science fair project, and one in mathematics and/or computer science would stand out from the others.

Stepping back, I regard this as some really nice “quality time” spent with this son. It’s not quite the same as playing catch in the backyard, working on a pinewood derby car, or any of the million or so other (more traditional) ways for a father and son to spend time together. In fact, this one was down-right nerdy (with all that math). But it was a really nice connection. I beam with pride, recognizing that he has inherited some of my inclination towards the sciences.

Now, if we can just get him to do his homework....

Lamentations of a First-time College Dad

I always thought I would be much older when this happened. It hasn’t even happened yet, and it won’t for a few more days, but already I’m feeling the loss created by sending my first child out the door as she goes to college.

For 18 years and 4 months, we have loved and nurtured our first child and only daughter. I have all kinds of cute, heart-warming, and adorable pictures of our little girl. Some of my favorites (the ones that I most strongly associate with her) show her hair in pig tails. I’m not including those here because this isn’t a wake (well, and the fact that she’d be mighty displeased with me if I did that to her). She’s only going to be 20 miles down the road, but her day-to-day presence will be greatly missed.

I’m happy for her that she is realizing her dreams of attending BYU. I’m happy (and even a little jealous) that she has this great adventure ahead of her. I’m happy with the progress she’s made as she’s grown up from a delightful little girl to a beautiful young lady. As I reflect on my own transition from home to college, there was an awful lot I still had to learn. As we stand on the brink of her transition, I have to wonder if we taught her everything we should have -- if we gave her enough of an head-start on life skills -- so that this transition will go smoothly. If she has demonstrated anything at all in the past few years, it is that she takes on new challenges with gusto, that she adapts, works hard, and uses her noggin. All her life thus far, we’ve been right there with her as she has experienced the trials and the joys of life. Now she’ll keep having those experiences (probably in greater temporal concentration) and we won’t be there to sympathize, empathize, console, cheer, and thrill with her. I think she’ll be fine. I think. No, I know she’ll be fine. It’s us (the rest of us) that are going to have the harder time adjusting.

Does anyone have advice for the first-time college dad -- especially one who is prone to wax sentimental and wishes he could control more of his daughter’s life?

New Perspective on Estonia

Once in a while, I have an experience which causes me to break out of normal (often superficial, at least near-neighborhood) patterns of thinking, and ponder a larger scope that I am not fully capable of reconciling. I had such an experience a couple of weeks ago, and have found myself thinking about it many times since. I’ve been reminded that I’m part of a bigger whole, and that I share some responsibility for the well-being of that bigger whole.

Many months ago, I published a blog entry on “A Tale of Two Tallinns” in which I shared some thoughts on a country divided along a cultural-social border between the native Estonians and the remnants of the occupying (now ex-patriot) Russians. At that time, I was troubled to see forgiveness being applied only in such small circles as a local church congregation. I wished that they could get along despite their diversities. My perspective was limited to the Russian side of the story and my few (superficial) observations of the native Estonians. My perspective was nowhere near complete.

Recently I learned of a documentary film, “The Singing Revolution”, which chronicles the events leading to the regained independence of Estonia. I simply had to see it, and I’m so glad I did. This Estonian side of the story was powerful and moving. If you get a chance to see this film, do it, but be warned — this is not a popcorn movie. I still feel like I don’t understand all there is to understand of the conflict between the Estonians and the Russians, but this second perspective has enabled me to gain some more depth perception.

The wounds run deep among the Estonians. Humans treated other humans without humanity. Families were separated, lives were destroyed, the Estonian cultural identify was suppressed, and suffering with a long half-life came in the wake of the atrocities.

The photograph above depicts part of the great wall of Estonia, enclosing the historic Old Town of Tallinn. This wall is a mighty fortress, built to protect a people from the painful intrusions of neighboring but unneighborly forces. Today that wall has been deliberately breached by the Estonians in multiple places, and the Old Town has become a tourist attraction. But the austere exterior remains, symbolic of the defensive wall around the hearts of many Estonians. Such walls go up slowly, and come down slowly.

After having seen the documentary, my attitude has changed: I used to be critical of both the Estonians and the Russian ex-pats for not trying harder to integrate; now I’m seeing that it’s not that easy. Forgiveness can be a difficult virtue. In fact, it may take multiple generations for forgiveness to be fully realized.

My feelings are mixed and more complex now. What I am witnessing from my geographically, politically, and culturally isolated perch is still a very incomplete slice of the whole story; I’m realizing that more and more. I feel shame at having been so under-informed about the recent struggles in Estonia — they happened during the first few years of my marriage, while I was starting a family, while I was attending college and gaining an obviously too narrow education. I watched the news at night; why didn’t I hear about this then? Perhaps I did hear but did not listen, or perhaps I (and many of us) never heard.

It’s a part of my nature to want to mend the wounds and fix the problems. At the pollyanna end of the spectrum, it would be beautiful if everyone got along and achieved self-actualization on the Maslow tree of needs; at a more practical point in the spectrum, there could be great relief in shedding ourselves of the burdens of distrust, anger, and hatred. In Estonia, the problems are varied and numerous and, despite best intentions, overwhelming for any one person (particularly one who is so separated from the region). I hesitate to step into the vortex of seeking justice, because some of the wrongs cannot be undone through acts of retribution or penance — at least not in this life — and such “justice” would leave us with a profoundly empty feeling. While I don’t want to close the door on healing the wounds, it is possible that the best (or only) thing we can do at this point is attempt to understand and learn from the mistakes so that we don’t repeat them. If this were to be all we could accomplish, it would still be of immense value — even though we would have no way of measuring the loss prevented.

So, if you’ve made it through to this point in the blog entry, then perhaps you’ve gained a new or greater awareness into a set of problems in Estonia. And you may perceive that the problem I’ve put under a magnifying glass looks a lot like other problems that have been (or are now being) played-out in numerous places around our globe — perhaps even in your own backyard. How do we move forward? How do we fix the problems and heal the wounds? How do we really learn the needed lessons so that we don’t repeat such ugly history?

I think these questions are a good way for me to end this opening serve in what I hope becomes a volley of discussion. You may not care about Estonia. Fine — I didn’t until I went there. Maybe the recent military incursion into the nation of Georgia becomes a more actionable rallying cry. Or maybe you see parallels that hit closer to home. The exploration of these questions may help in dealing with other, more local and personal Estonias.

Tales of Duke's, Part 1: Oooh! Yuck! Gross! ... Cool!

It is good for a child to have the experience of working at a "fast food" restaurant; in some respects, every job thereafter will be easier in one way or another.  My daughter did a stint at the local Wendy's (making hamburgers) and my oldest son recently started working at Iceberg Drive In (he grills hamburgers and makes milk shakes).  I'm thrilled that they can count such work in their histories, and I hope all of my children will eventually have such experiences.

My bias here can be traced to my "fast food" work experience.  I worked at "Duke's Charbroiller" and gained a wealth of great experiences and stories.  There are many to tell, but I'll start with just this one....

Theo was a new employee, about 30 years old.  He had just come from Greece, spoke passable English, and was to be a chief cook and have managerial responsibility over us teenage boys who worked there.  Theo was quite short (if memory serves right, just a little over 5 feet tall), so he had several inches of stature to make up for in the eyes of us young bucks.  He did it, though.  To start with, he had incredible muscle tone in his arms.  I remember him flexing his biceps — they were round and hard like apples.  With this muscle tone was great strength — he could out-wrestle any of us, including Big Jim.  He also had a very daring personality, which played well with us easily impressioned youth.  He would dare us to make things (food items, from ingredients in the restaurant) that he could not eat.  Naturally, such a dare provoked a great outpouring of creativity.  We all joined in the fun.  Among the things I made were (1) a hamburger with soft-serve ice cream between the patty and the bun, (2) a barbecue-sauce milk shake, and (3) a hot yellow-mustard sundae.  All of these were easily consumed.  In retrospect, I don't remember anything that we made that proved to be the least bit challenging for him.  It made us wonder what kinds of things he had eaten before we knew him — what kinds of things were so much worse that nothing we could make would cause him to flinch.  We never got a complete answer to that lingering question, but we did get a clue on one very special day.

Theo decided to take us boys down to the pier to do some fishing.  We piled into his large, tricked-out and raised shiny black truck, and the adventure began.  I believe Theo's goal was to catch more, bigger fish (and sooner) than any of the rest of us could do.  I had been salt-water fishing with my Dad since I was five, so this was very familiar territory for me.  And, consequently, I caught the first fish.  From the first "Zzzzz" of my reel as the 15" fighter took my lure and tried to get away, all attention was centered on me, and I rather enjoyed that.  Theo's plans were in jeopardy.  He had to react quickly, and so he did.  As soon as I had the fish reeled in, he grabbed the angrily flailing prize with his strong hands, brought the fish up to his face, and ... BIT the fish right on the top of its head.  There was a brief crunching sound that we all heard.  The fish instantly went limp.  I still remember scales on his lips and some unidentified fish liquid (brain juice?) dribbling down his chin as he emphatically said, "You have to kill it — right away!".  We boys were stunned by what we had just witnessed — to the point of having our already weak and immature vocabularies reduced to long-drawn renditions of "Oooh!"  "Yuck!"  "Gross!" and, after a short pause of palpable silence, "Cool!".  And with that last word, Theo's victory was confirmed.  He had won the respect of these young boys, and working with him at the restaurant was forever changed.  We no longer saw him as short, or poor at speaking English.  No, Theo was a force of nature.  We knew that he was capable of doing things that none of us had ever before considered, and that put just enough fear into us that we never questioned his authority.

Oh the things that impress teenage boys!

A Restart

Just before the start of 2007, I embarked on a quest to do two weekly blogs: Photo of the Week, and Tip of the Week.  The first was more philosophical in nature, using photography to help put life into focus; the second was an attempt to impart some of my photography knowledge and experience to others.  Both blogs were very rewarding — I got lots of feedback and connected and reconnected with many family and friends, and I had a regularly scheduled event which forced me to pick up my camera and shoot something.  After a year's worth of weekly entries, I had to re-evaluate my priorities and came to the realization that what I had done was taking more time than I could justify.  So, for the last nearly 9 months, I have done zero blogging, and I have missed it.  Recently, my two oldest children have established blogs of their own, and this has inspired me to find an happy medium between 2/week and zero.

So, with that history, I debut Relancer — to restart.  This will be more ad-hoc, less structured, and less consistently updated than what I did during 2007.  AND, it won't be just about photography.  By setting the expectations up-front, I hope to create a forum more forgiving of the lack of consistency in my schedule, and more open to a broader range of topics.