Ory grew up in Nairobi, probably not too far from me. She's one of the New Africans for whom I'll keep my ears perked. By "New African" I mean a person who lives a life between Africa and the first world, educated here but with a heart and family that's left over... we aren't typical immigrants you see and in Ory's case, she went back to make a difference. You can see her talk at TED here, make sure you get past the Harvard name dropping to the meat of her message.

I remember long ago, sitting across from M in a Whittier cafe when he showed me his schedule for the new year. Down to the quarter hour it revealed everything: work, eating time, study, exercise, sleep, and chess.

Today I made a plan and I'm feeling as fanciful.  Plans never seem to survive the friction of day to day living.  It's time to get some sleep so I can fail better tomorrow.

The irony of turning 30 was that so much was new: I'd gotten married the preceding March, I was a month into my new job, and was still learning the ins and outs of our apartment near the downtown portion of Sioux Falls. Three years later and much seems old hat: marriage life has founds its steady rhythm, Sioux Falls poses less of a mystery and work, despite another change in company, is much the same as its always been.  In that sense the day is more of a formality except for the fact that this will be my last birthday without children. 

I've read two books about old men in the last year or so and ended both despising the would be protagonists. Jonathan Raban's Foreign Land and Philip Roth's Everyman were books I would have wanted to like; books that might tell me a little about my future should I live a long life. Instead, ironically, they both wound up as good Christian books to me*: morality tales on how choices have consequences and human relationships are what persist in value when death looms close enough to eliminate all of life's normal pretensions. The two old men suffered from a narcissism I recognize in our high school selves - such self obsession that all conversation turns inward and we stop to really "see" the people around us because we're so busy making everything an aspect of that big old number one: ourselves. This thought really crystallized over the weekend when an old friend from my school days in Nairobi stopped by on a cross country trip with his family. Not only did we recollect different things, I felt a sense of us really seeing each other despite all that time we'd spent doing the equivalent of "shooting hoops" through those teen years. Jed the father, I hardly recognized you -

Well, here's to being 33, and here's to the hope that I keep seeing even when I'm old. Here's to human relationships, the preservation of marriage and the hope of longer life.

*I'm sure both authors would be quite unhappy with this opinion.

I love new forms of dance that crossbreed from one culture to another. Here are two breakdancing spinoffs from Japan and France respectively.

Teaching a class this week and of course feeling very old...

A few months ago I saw Randy Pausch's Last Lecture - the backstory being his diagnosis with a terminal illness and departure from Carnegie Mellon.  He passed away yesterday and this morning I watched it again perhaps as an attempt to hold onto what he was planning to leave those alive with after his death. It was as moving today as it was when I first saw it, especially with his ending "head fake"; that the lecture was for his children.

What an inspired life; even though I can't physically be surrounded by people like Randy, listening to him makes me feel the cushion of listening to another dreamer whose dreams were done.

Added: A New York Times summary has some good links related to Dr. Pausch

Today I learned of the death of a person I knew in school. Married, like me. 33, like me. Wife expecting, like me.

Who knows how short life will be? The time that we have around here is just a gift.

REMEMBER me when I am gone away,  
Gone far away into the silent land;  
When you can no more hold me by the hand,  
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.  
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:  
Only remember me; you understand  
It will be late to counsel then or pray.  
Yet if you should forget me for a while  
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave  
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,  
Better by far you should forget and smile  
Than that you should remember and be sad.
- Christina Rossetti, "Remember"

In short, the way students are treated in college trains them for the social position they will occupy once they get out. At schools like Cleveland State, they’re being trained for positions somewhere in the middle of the class system, in the depths of one bureaucracy or another. They’re being conditioned for lives with few second chances, no extensions, little support, narrow opportunity—lives of subordination, supervision, and control, lives of deadlines, not guidelines. At places like Yale, of course, it’s the reverse. The elite like to think of themselves as belonging to a meritocracy, but that’s true only up to a point. Getting through the gate is very difficult, but once you’re in, there’s almost nothing you can do to get kicked out. Not the most abject academic failure, not the most heinous act of plagiarism, not even threatening a fellow student with bodily harm—I’ve heard of all three—will get you expelled. The feeling is that, by gosh, it just wouldn’t be fair—in other words, the self-protectiveness of the old-boy network, even if it now includes girls. Elite schools nurture excellence, but they also nurture what a former Yale graduate student I know calls “entitled mediocrity.” A is the mark of excellence; A- is the mark of entitled mediocrity. It’s another one of those metaphors, not so much a grade as a promise. It means, don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. You may not be all that good, but you’re good enough.

William Deresiewicz on the "disadvantages" of an elite education. If it's the endgame that we look at I'd prefer "entitled mediocrity" to "the depths of one bureaucracy or another." But so too would Mr. Deresiewicz I suspect which is why his piece rings with irony. He knew people like me would read it and that we would feel like the Prep's Lee Fiora in an encounter with Cross.

Wow.

What time is it? Hm, 1pm?

My friend M was asking me over the weekend about records - whether I listened to them in the past.  I was never wild about the experience but had a cheap turntable because some music just wasn't available on CD format in my heyday of buying music.  Perhaps the biggest factor for me was that I had to listen to music on a track by track basis with the singles I most often found only on vinyl.  Today, however, I've drawn a connection between that and my YouTube listening - one track at a time.

In rotation? Some talented Japanese people -

Yukumi Nagano

Towa Tei