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THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. -Thomas Paine, The Crisis
Yesterday, we visited the grave of an American patriot.
Colonel Thomas Hunt was born in the Colony of Massachusetts. He was a Sergeant in Captain Croft's Company of Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington and Concord in April 1775. On Jan. 1, 1776 he became a member of the 25th Continental Infantry and transferred to Jackson 19s Continental Regiment as a Captain on Feb. 1, 1777. Wounded at the Battle of Stoneypoint on July 16, 1779, he transferred to the 9th Massachusetts Regiment on Jan. 1, 1781, and was wounded again at the Battle of Yorktown on Oct. 14, 1781. After the Revolution he remained in the Army, transferring to the 3rd Massachusetts Regiment on Jan. 1, 1783 and returning to Jackson’s Continental Regiment as a Captain on Feb. 1, 1777. After the Revolution he remained in the Army, transferring to the 3rd Massachusetts Regiment on Jan. 1, 1783 and returning to Jackson 19s Continental Regiment in November 1783. He became a Captain in the 3rd U.S. Infantry on March 4, 1791 and was promoted to the rank of Major on Feb. 18, 1793. He was reassigned to the 1st U.S. Infantry on Nov. 1, 1796, promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on April 1, 1802 and Colonel on April 11, 1803. Colonel Hunt died Aug. 18, 1808 and was buried at Fort Bellefontaine. He was removed to Jefferson Barracks in April of 1904.
Colonel Hunt was there at the beginning of the American Revolution during the "shot heard 'round the world". His final resting place overlooks the Mississippi River:
It's humbling to look at that simple white headstone and see Rev War. Colonel Hunt was no "sunshine patriot" nor "summer soldier". We celebrate our independence, our liberty today because of patriots like Colonel Thomas Hunt.
As you drive through Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery you see white headstones for as far as the eye can see.
And you are reminded that liberty is not free.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. -Thomas Jefferson
And we sail away
Off to Jericho Bay
Where the blue of the sea meets the sky
And the songs that she sings me
It brings me such peace
When the seas rise up angry and high
She's a friend of mine
The minstrel
-Dan Fogelberg, The Minstrel
Today was a GREAT day for sailing. A cold front came through late last night and left behind ample winds for a good sail. Cap'n Tim and I headed over to Carlyle Lake in Illinois and took the Brigadoon out for 4 hours of pure fun. Lake sailing is not easy according to Tim and today's gusty winds gave many challenges, but nothing we couldn't handle. The Cap'n says I'm a natural. I think he just might be right. It's one of those things that you can't really think too much about, you just have to feel it and go with it. You let the boat, the wind, the water tell you what to do.
There was one point where it got very windy and we decided to turn around and head back for the day. Tim handled the sail and told me to turn the boat hard. Well, Tim said we weren't gonna make it but I thought we would. Nope. I didn't have enough speed and the waves pushed me back. Tried again, nope. Not enough speed. Tim took the sail AND the tiller and got enough speed to get us turned around. It's amazing how you do exactly what the wind will let you do.
I'm back, sunburned in spite of the sunscreen, but feeling relaxed and content.
- I'm at:the bedroom
- Feeling:
happy - Hearing:The Minstrel - Dan Fogelberg
Here is the blurb about this issue:
This virtual issue of Protein Science is intended to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the myoglobin structure determination. It is made up of articles selected exclusively from the first six years of the journal’s publication (1992-1997). As such, the coverage is not all-inclusive. Nevertheless, it does provide a remarkable historical overview not only of the myoglobin structure determination, per se, but other pioneers who have shaped the field of protein science as we now understand it. Against all odds, Perutz and Kendrew established the field of protein crystallography. The structure of myoglobin, now 50 years ago, vindicated their efforts. More important, however, was the revolution in structural biology that they made possible. This volume celebrates their achievement.
Now, I'm certain that my postdoc adviser is the "pioneer" and not me, but it is cool to be included in such an issue.
If you scroll down, my paper (pdf) is the 4th from the bottom:
Sequence determinants of the capping box, a stabilizing motif at the N-termini of α-helices
Jeffrey W. Seale, Rajgopal Srinivasan, George D. Rose
What a lovely Saturday morning surprise!
- I'm at:the basement
- Feeling:
giddy - Hearing:quiet
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. - Jefferson
Today, the tree of liberty was refreshed with the blood of patriots. The following video show the graphic death of a young woman shot to death by the paramilitary Basiji whom the regime has chosen to do their dirty work.
Tomorrow, may the tree of Iranian liberty be refreshed with the blood of tyrants.
- I'm at:the basement
- Feeling:
outraged - Hearing:John Adams HBO series
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-Dylan Thomas
- Feeling:
excited - Hearing:Sox on WRKO
I did start reposting them to DailyKos a few weeks ago. They get just about as much interest over there as they do here...
I have become completely enthralled with the #iranelection tag on twitter. It is so amazing watch the Iranian revolution unfold before your eyes. You can believe what you see on the news, or you can see it yourself. If these assholes in Tehran believed what they said about the election being legitimate, they wouldn't be beating people in the streets, cutting off all communication, etc. There were almost 500,000 people marching peacefully today in Iran - wearing green, with their hands making peace signs in the air. Incredible. The avatar is made from a pic of one of the marchers from earlier in the week and colored green in support of the Iranian revolution.
Sox are doing awesome and I love having WRKO on the computer every night.
We had fruit, cheese, nuts and granola for dinner tonight. Sounds healthy to me. Amazingly enough, the kids didn't gripe about being hungry again 30 minutes after dinner was over.
Summer is officially here. It was sooooo hot today and will be worse tomorrow. I freakin hate summer. I can't wait for fall, and dreaming of Maine.
There was an interesting story about John Edwards in the Washington Post today. I hope he can continue to impact poverty despite his flaws. He did have an authentic voice on those issues and it deserves to be heard.
I recently read The Two Cultures by C.P. Snow. It was a lecture given at Harvard in 1959 by author C.P. Snow and discussed the divide between the arts and the sciences. Very interesting take, but I don't know if I agree about his absolute belief in the truth of science. If any of you have read it, I'd be interested in your take on it.
Oh, and I must say that iMac rules. If everyone had the experience of plugging in one cable, turning on the computer and instantly having it work, PCs would be obsolete. I am sold.
That's about it here. What's up in your corner of the universe?
- I'm at:the dining room table
- Feeling:
relaxed - Hearing:Sox on WRKO
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. - Jefferson
With the reports of student protesters killed, Thomas Jefferson's quote has become truth for Iran. The majority of Iran's population is under the age of 30. These young people are rising up against the repressive theocracy that came to power 30 years ago in the last Iranian revolution.
Freedom Square in Tehran filled with >100,000 protesters.
The women of Iran want to be free!
and is there a more inspiring image than this:
H/T Al Rodgers for the pics
The Iranian regime may not fall tomorrow or the next day, but it is clear now that the young people of Iran will be free sooner rather than later.
Godspeed to the Green Revolution!
- I'm at:the office
- Feeling: inspired
- Hearing:Supernatural Supeserious - REM
Supporters of the reformist candidate Mousavi have taken to the streets. His pre-election movement rallied women and the young generation in numbers rarely seen in Iran. His movement in Iran as been compared to Obama's movement in this county. Even his wife has been called Iran's Michelle Obama. The Iranian reform movement has been called the Green Revolution since Mousavi's followers wear green.
Perhaps the most interesting development in this whole thing is that the revolution can best be followed on the website Twitter. It seems to be the best way to get information out of Iran right now given the government's crackdown on the protests.
Godspeed to the Iranian Green Revolution!
- I'm at:basement
- Feeling: hopeful
- Hearing:After Hours/Stormy Monday (Live) - Muddy Waters
From the website:
The World Day Against Child Labour will be celebrated on 12 June 2009. The World Day this year marks the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the landmark ILO Convention No. 182, which addresses the need for action to tackle the worst forms of child labour. Whilst celebrating progress made during the past ten years, the World Day will highlight the continuing challenges, with a focus on exploitation of girls in child labour.
Around the world, an estimated 100 million girls are involved in child labour. Many of these girls undertake similar types of work as boys, but often also endure additional hardships and face extra risks. Moreover, girls are all too often exposed to some of the worst forms of child labour, often in hidden work situations.
On this World Day we call for:
* Policy responses to address the causes of child labour, paying particular attention to the situation of girls.
* Urgent action to tackle the worst forms of child labour.
* Greater attention to the education and skills training needs of adolescent girls - a key action point in tackling child labour and providing a pathway for girls to gain Decent Work as adults.
There is an Arts and Education Program that may be of some interest to some of you.
- I'm at:the office
- Feeling: cheerful
- Hearing:Biko - Bloc Party
My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.
from Ted's eulogy
Five quotes from Bobby:
"All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don't. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity."
"It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task."
"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."
"Our answer is the world's hope; it is to rely on youth. The cruelties and the obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress. This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease."
"For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter."
G-d bless Bobby Kennedy.
- I'm at:the office
- Feeling:
pensive - Hearing:Forefathers - Dan Fogelberg
- I'm at:the dining room table
- Feeling:
nostalgic
I can think of two other things that have the same feed-the-soul effect - sailing and spending time on the coast of Maine.
What up with all this soul business, you ask? Well, today I ran across this article on Huffington Post. It is a list of 10 ways to nurture soulful living - or how to feed your soul. Almost all of them resonate with me and I thought I should share. Read the article for all of the details, but here's the list:
- Tell The Truth
- Spend Time In Nature
- Experience Your Experience
- Live On The Edge
- Learn To Dance In The Rain
- Uncontrollable Belly Laughter
- Meditation
- Keep A Journal
- Love Fully
- Bring A Sense Of The Sacred
I particularly like this explanation of the 2nd point:
Live close to the earth and you'll know its soul. When you know the soul of nature, you'll know your own. Spend time in the natural world and allow yourself to connect with all living things and you will find your place in the order of life. You will see yourself as a part of nature, no more and no less than the stars and the trees. The soul rests in the natural world.
It's all very spiritual - understanding your place in the universe. I consider myself to be a spiritual person - not religious. I think that's why my soul is most nourished by unraveling the molecular mysteries of nature, setting off in a boat at the mercy of the winds, or soaking in the beauty and majesty that is the coast of Maine.
At the end of the article, the author includes this quote:
"To live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." --Howard Zinn
I really like this. Too often we neglect feeding our souls. If we do that, it becomes overwhelming to defy all of that bad the surrounds us.
So, how do you feed your soul?
- I'm at:the basement
- Feeling: peaceful
- Hearing:Countdown with KO
Yesterday I had another chat with someone from our government affairs group. This person was also quite receptive to my interest and even encouraged me to get into local politics. This summer when I visit our site in Cambridge, I'm going to stay an extra day or two and either visit the state house with her or make a driving tour of Mass. and visit some of the legislators in their districts. I won't mind visiting the western parts of Massachusetts.
I love seeing Republicans in disarray.
Apparently someone in the Maine government wants to tax my sailboat:
hide-121.maine.gov (Maine Bureau Of Taxation) [Label IP Address]
Maine, Augusta, United States, 0 returning visit
Date Time WebPage
12th May 2009 11:50:43 No referring link
74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:lahRIf0Ri2sJ:docstymie.livejournal.com/tag/maine+%2 2entropy%22+sailboat+maine&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Shuttle Atlantis' wing has dings. Godspeed, Atlantis.
Red Sox legend Dom Dimaggio died last week. Today was his funeral. Dimaggio's grandson wrote a letter on the day his grandfather died. In part it said,
In the letter, DiMaggio's grandson Alex said he wished he could spend another morning with DiMaggio overlooking the harbor in their breakfast nook, watching him dunk his toast in his coffee. He wished he could ask him again "What's up Gramps? What's the score?"
You know, I'm sure that every little boy who no longer has a grandfather wishes the same thing everyday - even if that little boy is 43.
What's up in your corner of the universe?
- I'm at:the basement
- Hearing:American Idol final 3
My G-d, we're better than this.
Action in adequate measure can wait no longer. There are children in the United States of America with bloated bellies and sores of disease on their bodies. They have cuts and bruises that will not heal correctly in a timely fashion, and chronically runny noses. There are children in the United States of America who eat so little that they fall asleep in school and do not learn. We must act, and we must act now.
-Robert Kennedy
- I'm at:the basement
- Hearing:baseball
My external work blog won't be posted for a couple of weeks.
I got the coolest thing in the mail from a high school classmate. A neighbor of hers died and she was helping the son clean out the house. The ran across a Dan Fogelberg Fan newsletter from 1988. It had a story about my favorite Dan song, The Reach and the tour dates for summer 1988 which included the show that thatgirlygirl and I saw together shortly after we started dating.
Manny Ramirez is a freaking idiot.
I made genes for 4 new proteins this week. Lab work rules.
- I'm at:the bedroom
- Hearing:news
-Doc.
- I'm at:the office
- Hearing:Anyway I Love You - Dan Fogelberg
At the end of last week, I was back in the Hub City for my annual duties on the Chair's Council for my former department at Texas Tech. This was the third year for the Council to meet and I must say that I've come to enjoy the meeting very much. It's nice to be able to give advice to the department and see the improvements after just a couple of years. They've improved greatly in the last 3 years. I like that I can give back to the place that gave me a chance all those years ago. Perhaps the biggest surprise to me is the friendships that I've built with a few of the folks on the council. Only one member was a contemporary of mine. He and I took the same flight out of Lubbock last Sunday and I enjoyed talking at length to him. However, there are a couple of other members that I've enjoyed getting to know over the last 3 years and I look forward to catching up with them each year. The biggest thing we decided this year was to start meeting twice a year. So, I'll be back in September for another round of advising.
The Tampa Bay Rays are really starting to piss me off. I really hate them. It should be illegal for Florida to have MLB teams.
I haven't had much lab time in the last 10 days, but what little time I did have rocked. When I get to work in the lab, I have a cool, cool job.
Last evening, I was a guest at the Academy of Sciences St. Louis' Outstanding Scientists Banquet. I was invited because I was responsible for the recognition of one of the Peter Raven Lifetime Achievement awardees. Dr. Frieden's lab was next to mine when I was a postdoc at WashU. I didn't know him very well when I was at WashU, but after I left and went to the University of Texas Health Science Center, Dr. Frieden's lab started working in the same area as my new lab. We started chatting via email and when I came back to St. Louis in my current job he invited me to come to his group meetings a few times. We also went to some of the same scientific meetings and have developed a friendship over the years. So, last fall when the call for nominations came out, Carl was an obvious choice. I sent an email to his chairman making the suggestion and another friend in the department put together the nomination packet. We found out a few weeks ago that he was chosen. It was great to be there to see him receive this well-deserved recognition. And the bonus was that I got to visit with a few faculty members that I quite enjoyed while I was in the department.
The other cool thing about the awards dinner was the locale. The Starlight Roof at The Chase Park Plaza was the scene. This room is on the top floor of the exquisite hotel and is almost all windows. There is a rooftop patio from which you can see views of Forest Park to the west (the Art Museum stands out on Art Hill) and downtown St. Louis to the east (The Arch is in view, of course). Wicked cool.
Today, I had the opportunity to meet two of the leaders of our Government Affairs group. Our federal rep had to get back to DC, but she promised to chat with me soon. I did get about 30 minutes with the head of State and Local Affairs and we discussed the Government Affairs career path for someone with my background. Right now they have no openings, which is OK with me. However, she did tell me that I could shadow some of her reps when they visit state capitals to meet with lawmakers. I anticipate a quick trip to Jefferson City in the near future. But, the most exciting possibility is A TRIP TO MAINE!!!! Yes, I might get to shadow our GA person for the northeast in Maine for a couple of days. How freakin' cool would that be??? You don't know how giddy I am about that possibility. So, it seems that I may have gotten my foot in the door for a new career in politics...
A new Supreme Court Justice. Uber-exciting!!!
We were thinking of going sailing for the first time this season, but alas the weather is not going to cooperate this weekend. Major bummer. I recall this happened to me almost all last summer.
OK, that's what's up in my little corner of the universe, how about you?
- I'm at:the basement
- Feeling: bouncy
- Hearing:Countdown with Keith
