Harvard traditionally starts its academic year very late, in the last week of September.  Meanwhile, I was itching to get out of the house and off to college, but I had to wait.  Yale was starting the week before, and was only a bus ride away, and so I ended up slumming at Yale’s old campus, their freshman quadrangle, looking for some action, or at least some activity, to keep me occupied.

My family had many connections with Yale.  Through a connection with Undersecretary of state Walt Whitman Rostow (his brother Eugene V. Debs Rostow was the provost of Yale Law School), my dad and mom were offered a one-year position teaching a seminar on East Asia.  My dad was a double law school graduate (in Korea and at Harvard) while my mom had a PhD in sociology from Boston University, which she had earned while raising three young kids.  So we moved from Washington DC (another yet-to-be-written post) to New Haven CT so that my parents could take this job.  Even though the job was only for one year, my parents were eager to establish a connection with a top-notch American university, and in Korea “Yae-il” was only second to “Ha-bo-duh” in status.

And so we rented houses on West Rock Ave. (from the Wm. Veales), Alden Ave., and finally Yale Avenue, which was located only two blocks from the Yale Bowl.  Clearly this was meant to be.  Several years later, when my older brother Howie applied to colleges, he ended up going to Yale, which started the next generation’s association with this tradition-laden school.

So during my senior year at Hopkins, Howie was a freshman at Yale, living in “TD”, Timothy Dwight College, singing in the Yale Glee Club, and spending time with his roommates.  I envied him his newfound freedom as a college student.  I remember that during my senior year I had a meeting with my college admissions advisor, who was also my math teacher.  He asked me what I expected college to be like, and I answered “Heaven!”  He chuckled and said, “Well maybe you shouldn’t start off with your hopes too high.  Although I’m sure that you’ll find it an eye-opening and enjoyable experience.”  The meeting was brief, given that I knew where I wanted to go, we both took as a given that Harvard would accept me, and my work and activities at Hopkins were exemplary.

Back to the old campus.  The old campus was a city block-sized quadrangle with a brownstoned archway (the Phelps gate–okay I cheated and googled it) as its main form of entrance and egress.  (The superintendent’s office was located there, and arriving freshmen (freshpersons? That was the first year that women matriculated at Yale) and their families all checked in there to get directions to their dorm rooms.  I hung out there and struck up conversations with these newcomers (I, being a townie of course, was an old hand), and I quite naturally fell into the role of helping new staudents carry their luggage to their rooms.  In the process I would ask the students and their parents, and in some cases siblings as well, where they were from, what were they planning to major in, what sports they played, and all of the usual conversation-starters.  For their part, they assumed that I was an upperclassman who had been assigned this duty, and I did nothing to disabuse them of this misconception.

I found that this was the perfect way to let off my nervous energy in starting my own freshman year, and I spent the entire week performing this unappointed function.  The officials at the gate didn’t seem to mind or even notice my work as a greeter, and by the end of the week I knew twenty or thirty freshmen by name.  I would run into them in the street, and they would say “Hi Ed! How are you doing?”  Even a few months later, during the Thanksgiving break, I would go downtown and invariably run into a few of my freshman-week friends, who would greet me warmly and say “Hey, Ed! Haven’t seen you around too much!  What have you been up to?”  At this point I usually ‘fessed up and told them that I wasn’t a Yale student, and in fact was a freshman at Harvard.  They registered surprise but were good-natured about it.  After all, I had helped them move in.

The following week, when my parents brought me up to Cambridge to start two weeks of orientation, I found that I had spent my meet-new-people energy at Yale, and was starting my time at Harvard with an empty tank, so to speak.  Or perhaps it was just the fact that I had no obligations or expectations at Yale, while Harvard was going to be my new home, come hell or high water.  Funny, this is the first time that I’ve made that connection.  I had always chalked up my behavior to impatient exuberance.  Another example of how writing things down leads to new insights…

(to be continued)

So far the pieces of my life which I have presented in this blog have no coherent thread, except perhaps in the mind in which they come bubbling up.  In a way they are like puzzle pieces waiting for some connections to be made.  I will break with this “tradition” now by picking up the thread from my presidential scholar story, which took place in June of 1970, the summer before I went to college.

I frankly don’t remember much of that summer, except for one (ironically) unmemorable experience occasioned by a phone call from a woman who had a radio show in Hamden CT.  She had heard that I had been selected as a presidential scholar, and she wanted to interview me on the air.  I remember going there (I probably hitchhiked) wearing a tan army shirt and carrying a backpack (did I actually own a backpack then?  I hadn’t yet bought my handmade leather shoulder bag.  That was later…), climbing a shallow knoll up to the station, which was in a small building at the foot of a tall radio tower.  The woman was an appearance-conscious person who carried herself with a show business air.

The show was disappointing.  I had resolved to tell truthfully about the experience and my misgivings about it, but whenever I was about to say something significant, she would cut to a commercial.  This happened many times, and when we came back from the break she would “summarize” my previous statements in an entirely inaccurate way,  making me seem to be a very conventional student.  I left the interview feeling that I had not expressed a single one of the real thoughts and opinions which I had resolved to share.

So much for that incident.  Besides that, I went to visit Kate (this time with a car) at her house, and we took a short hike to an isolated and beautiful lake.  She showed me her special spot to sit and look out at the water, and told me that she had written a poem about this special lake.

I felt drawn to her, but had been crushed the year before when I learned that she had started going out with a senior, a tall boy with long blonde hair and an aristocratic (certainly not Jewish) sounding name.  So I let her take the lead, and the visit stayed platonic.  We talked about the strange experience in Washington, and she spent some time consoling me for my shame in accepting the award.  She had accepted the award too, but had been resigned to the fact early on that resistance would be futile (to quote the Borg from Star Trek).

The rest of the summer I worked again in the chemistry lab at Yale where I had worked the previous summer, and made a splash as the pimply-faced prodigy who was doing graduate level work as a 15 year-old.  (The grad student I worked with actually included my name as a co-author on the paper he published, although my contribution had been that of a highly-trained monkey more than a collaborator.)  I found myself being annoyed by my advisor, who I found to be self-centered and odd, and I ended up accidentally breaking the same delicate, expensive piece of equipment (it was a mercury-based Toppler pump which was designed to create a near-perfect vacuum) not once, but multiple times.

I remember when I was doing an experiment (a Grignard reaction) which was highly exothermic (heat-generating).  I was under the hood wearing protective goggles and gloves, quite nervous about the prospect of messing something up.  When everything was set, I started started the reaction, but just before doing so I decided to put the ice bath, which I had prepared to slow the process in case of an emergency, under the reaction vessel (a round Pyrex flask).  The reaction started up, and as it bubbled up it started to get out of control.  I immediately reached for the ice bath, but found it already underneath the flask, the ice already melted by the heat.  I panicked.  At this point the boss yelled “it’s gonna blow!” and ran out of the room.  Sure enough, the reaction exploded out of the top of the flask and shot into the ceiling of the hood.

I was saved by Jack, one of the grad students, who, cigarette in hand, came over and turned off the magnetic stirring bar, which was promoting the reaction.  “Maybe we should slow this down” he said in his understated Midwestern way.  The reaction immediately came under control.

After this embarassing experience (which no one but me blamed me for) I found myself keeping a low profile in the lab.  I had proven myself the previous summer, and was going to be starting college in a couple of weeks, and my emotional energy started to direct itself there.

(continued in “I make a load of friends at…Yale!)

In his book “Sirens of Titan”, Kurt Vonnegut tells of a race of alien people who can see in the fourth dimension, that being Time.  Therefore, when they see a person, they do not see just them in the present, but as every being that they have ever been.  So what they see resembles a snake, at one end a crawling baby and at the other end an old person walking with a cane.

Perhaps this is what I’m doing digging up old family photographs and putting them into safekeeping.  I am reminding myself of who we and our kids looked and were in the past, and somehow integrating those reminiscences with our present selves.  I would imagine that, when they look in the mirror, our kids see themselves as they are in the present, with little thought of the past and the future.  (I sent them a link to some of the photos I’ve saved, but the response did not seem to be thunderous.)  But when we see them, we see the serpentine creatures that the sirens of Titan see, every version of our children from the beginning to the present.

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A few little remembrances of my parents:

My dad used to say “Guys, GARGLE!”  Every morning the sound of my dad gargling would emanate from our shared bathroom.  On the whole we did not take the minute to follow his lead, and remarkably my dad never seemed to catch a cold!  With a family of six children, one might expect him to catch viruses from us.  My mom, on the other hand, had regularly two or three colds per year, each of which laid her out for up to a week.  This we attributed to the hyper-dynamic life style that she usually led, staying up very late at night and operating during the day at a frenetic pace.

The second thing that my dad did to promote his health was daily stretching exercises and calisthenics to start each morning.  He would go out to our little square second floor hallway, and the sound “oop! oop! oop!” could be heard as, in his skivvies, he did side-to-side stretches, sit-ups, and other such exercises.  As he grew older he developed a portly shape which made this exercise seem even cuter as time went on.

Kids see a shorter segment of their parents’ serpentine selves than their parents see of their kids.  Which may explain the fascination that kids have with childhood photos of their parents.

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Jeremy seems to be establishing himself at the end of the season as the Lakers’ legitimate point guard.  Byron Scott has announced that he is starting Jeremy for the last ten games of the season at the point.  In the meantime, he is experimenting with lineup combinations (filled in by assistant Paul Pressey as he mourns the death of his mother).   The Laker announcers are now firmly in Jeremy’s corner.  The other day he scored 29 points and had 5 assists in a stellar game against Philadelphia.  The word “Linsanity” did not come up, perhaps for the better as pointed out by Carol.  This was a more mature performance, informed by the lessons of the last few years, against opponents who are very aware of his capabilities.  Fewer turnovers, more restraint, but still the many flashes of brilliance which make him so much fun to watch.  (I personally love the long bounce pass assists.) Good for you, Jeremy!

As always, thanks for reading, friends.

In the process of building two new computers, I mistakenly thought that I had to install a floppy disk drive into one of them.  While doing so, I tried to think of files that I might be able to access using the drive.  Then I remembered a biggie: a box of about thirty 3.5 inch floppy disks containing family photos from 1997 to 1999, starting from a time that David and Jonny were 8 and 6 years old, respectively.  Hidden treasure, about to be unearthed!

They started with pictures taken on Cape Cod at Putter’s Paradise, our favorite mini-golf venue, where the kids had blue lips from the popsicles they had just eaten.  On to baseball pictures of David in full Waltham uniform (the “Tigers”–I forget which company sponsored them), at the plate swinging at high pitches (which he usually hit), crouching in the infield.  I wonder where that uniform went.  I’m sure it’s in a stack of Mom-laundered and -neatly folded kids’ clothes among the numberless stacks in our house…

Old friends and classmates and their moms, invited over for birthday parties, including a special one of Jonny’s where a magician (his name was Steve) entertained us in our living room.  Or “play dates”, a way to get the kids together with friends who lived in other towns.  (When I was a kid there was no need for such occasions–we had each other (there were six of us), and Kenny down on the corner.)  Usually the three of us “big” boys and Kenny split into teams to play stickball in the back yard using a broomstick and an old tennis ball.  I hated to lose.  Whenever Howie and Ha won a game, I would throw myself on the ground, kicking and screaming, yelling “it isn’t fair, you cheated!”

One day while I was in the midst of one such tantrum, the window flew open in an adjoining apartment building, and a woman cried out “Would you be quiet, you Communists!!!”  Chastened, we ran into the house and asked my mother “What’s a Communist?”  “Shhh!” she said.  “Where did you hear that word?”  Remember, it was around 1960, only shortly after the Joe McCarthy era.  The next day after school, a woman came up to us on the steps and said “I’m sorry I yelled at you yesterday.  It’s just that your crying was driving me nuts!”

Where was I?  Oh yes, the pictures.  I remember when the kids were not yet school age, when we felt particularly isolated from friends.  “Maybe when the kids start school they will make new friends, and we can make friends with their parents!”  This plan came to fruition over the following years; we befriended several families, sharing school events, weekends, and even vacations together.  We made many friends at our kids’ sporting events, especially Ultimate Frisbee.  The tournaments lasted two days over beautiful sunny weekends (by and large), and cheering from the sidelines led naturally to parental bonding (with each other).

I somehow expected these friendships to last forever.  They didn’t.  Although we are still fond of all of these old friends, as all of our kids grew  up and went to college, the commonality which we shared gradually dissolved.  (In the same way the friendships I have made at various workplaces have also faded when I left those places.)

I realize that this narrative has wandered.  I have been multi-tasking, feeding floppies full of photos into the other computer while I write.  Now that I have finished the three years’ worth, it’s time to look through them in earnest.

Thanks for reading.

How many neurons are there in the brain?

Dr. Nauta had a wonderful, dry sense of humor.  One day he came out with this thought:

How many nerve cells are there in the brain?  Well it is generally accepted that there are approximately ten-to-the-tenth (10 billion) neurons in the brain.  This is of course a very large number.

Well Dick Sidman and his group at Children’s Hospital decided to verify this number, and they started by counting under the microscope the smallest neurons in the brain, the granule cells of the cerebellum.  After a long, tedious process, they came up with a number: ten-to-the-eleventh (100 billion) granule cells.

Which leads us to the unusual quandary that there are ten-to-the-tenth neurons in the brain, fully ten-to-the-eleventh of which are cerebellar granule cells!  (He smiles and puffs on his pipe.)

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Where can you find the inferior olive?

Nauta quote from a source I do not remember:

“The inferior olive (a nucleus in the medulla) is something that one might find in an inferior martini!”

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Nauta was a shameless teacher, and a closet ham.  He would use any means at his disposal to help us to learn, whether it was stories, jokes, drawings, cartoons, anything that would help to glue facts and information into our minds.

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Looking for the lost keys…

This is one of my favorites:

An old-fashioned cop is walking his beat at night when he comes across a well-dressed man on his hands and knees in the gutter under a streetlight.  He goes up to him and asks him what he’s doing. “I’m looking for my keys!” the man says.  “Oh, let me help you!”  The cop gets down on his hands and knees and begins looking too.  After about a half hour there has been no progress, and the cop asks the man “Exactly where did you drop them?”  The man points to a dark alley about a half a block away and says “Over there. I dropped them when I was coming out of the alleyway.” “Well then why are we looking over here??” asked the cop. “The light’s better.”

This may seem like a silly joke (okay, it is), but it is also a very accurate commentary on the way much scientific research is done.  Answers are sought (and when found trumpeted to the world) to easy questions, for which the methodology is well established.  Hard questions which have no established methodology are pursued much less often, or even simply ignored.  (The Sidman story is a good example of someone bucking this trend.) I call it the “carpetbagger effect”.

The day we were saved by my dad.
This story may seem unbelievable, but it is absolutely true.
When my brother Harold and I were eight and nine years old, we went on a train trip with my dad on the then New York-New Haven Hartford railroad. When we got on, the train was so crowded that we could not all sit together. So Dad sat with strangers on a group of four facing seats, and a few rows away Ha and I sat together. As we settled into the trip, we enjoyed our relative freedom by playing card games, War I think, and horsing around. My dad had a limited view of us, and spent the time reading his beloved New York Times.
After about an hour passengers began to disembark, and the crowd began to thin. Dad’s three companions left. At that point, he called for us to come join him.
I still remember how cozy we felt in our original seats. We had warmed the seats up, and it felt homey. Being summoned by my dad seemed like an unwelcome intrusion. However, my dad was insistent and so we tore ourselves away from our nest and moved to the cold new seats.
Ten minutes after we had moved we saw a small group of laughing teenaged kids outside the window. At that moment, a large rock smashed through the window and landed smack on the seats that we had abandoned. There were shards of glass all over the place. Luckily no one had taken the seats, and the rock did no bodily harm to anyone.
Harold and I looked at Dad, then at each other. If we ever doubted the idea that Dad was always right, this occurrence cured us of that notion.
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The night I let my Dad down.
One evening our elementary school, Edgewood School, held a “father-son night” for the fourth grade families. Living only four houses from the school, it was a short walk. I dressed casually, while Dad dressed in his typical attire: a suit, tie, and charcoal grey overcoat, complete with a dark hat. As usual, Dad walked ahead of me, being too impatient to wait for me.
When we arrived there was a large crowd in the lobby of the school. There was a large tent and an array of camping equipment around it, including a portable barbecue grill. Two men were there answering questions and demonstrating the use of these devices.
Refreshment were being served in the lobby: red Hawaiian-type punch and sugar cookies. Kids from my class were hanging around, literally, on the railing of the three steps which headed toward the classrooms. I went to join them, but felt like an outsider. My dad was talking to another dad, and I saw his son dressed in a blazer and red tie going back and forth between them and the refreshment table. He looked uncool, and I was glad that I hadn’t dressed up. I ended up losing sight of Dad.
The camping exhibit was completely irrelevant to us. Our family was not the camping type, and we had no desire to learn. It was enough of a struggle to get through our day-to-day life at home. After about an hour and a half we went home, my dad again walking ahead.
When we got home my dad, without a word, went upstairs. I heard his bedroom door slam. After a few minutes my mom came downstairs in a rage.
“Your father is upstairs feeling very angry and hurt. He says that you completely ignored him and stayed with your friends the entire time. To make things worse, he was talking with a man whose son was very filial, bringing drinks and cookies to both of them. He wished that you had been so thoughtful.
I felt like two cents. I felt ashamed. I had let Dad down, and I had disappointed and shamed him. I carried the weight of this guilt for years.
Two years later our family went to a reception for “graduating” students who were finishing sixth grade. I dressed up in a jacket and tie, and while we were there I made it a point to be attentive to my dad, bringing him drinks and refreshments.
Afterward, at home, I asked my dad if I had done better this time. “Very well, setadul (second son) !” and he patted me on the head. But somehow I still felt that I had not undone the damage of the father-and-son night.
Many years later I related this story to my wife Carol, who is a trained psychiatric social worker. I told her about my guilt surrounding the first episode. “But Ed, what you did was typical behavior for a nine-year old–it’s a normal stage in a child’s development to want to be with his peers rather than his parents!” I was shocked to hear this, and then I felt a long-felt weight being lifted off my shoulders. It was normal behavior, not the result of my thoughtlessness or lack of loyalty. Normal.
This is not the first of my posts to talk about ancient guilt. It most probably will not be the last.
Thanks for reading.

We have continued to watch the Waltons.  We now own the first three seasons, of which we have seen the entire first season and about half of the second.  The show has become a part of our daily rhythm, and we feel enriched by watching it.

John Boy is the central character of the show, and Richard Thomas plays his role impeccably. (Does this mean “without peccadillos”?)  Despite his strengths, which include wisdom beyond his eighteen years, the ability to communicate with his elders, compassion, and intelligence, John Boy is not perfect.  His flaws, including a quick temper and a sometimes urgent narcissism, especially where girls are involved, actually strengthen him as a character, and prevents the show from sinking into John Boy worship.  He is a boy on the cusp of manhood.  (One girl asks him, exasperated, “Why can’t you be John Man?”)  He is a person at the beginning of his life as a man, and the world is opening up to him as a man and as a writer.

“Miss” Michael Learned as mother Olivia is my next favorite character.  Besides being beautiful, she is wise and compassionate, yet grounded in the reality of raising a family of eleven (two parents, seven children, and two grandparents).  She is always busy with cooking, food preparation, sewing, and other household chores.  At the time of the filming of this show Learned was thirty, but convincingly played the part of a forty year old.  Interestingly, Thomas was twenty-one playing down to eighteen.  In reality the two were only nine years apart in age!

In a remarkable episode entitled “The Air Mail Man”, Olivia for the first time voices doubt about her place in the world and the importance of her life.  It is her birthday (which one is not disclosed, but it may well be forty), and her grounding in her marriage and her children are called into question by the reality of aging.  She also has a fascination with flying, and her doubts are finally swept away by the love of her family and a serendipitous chance to fly in an airplane for the first time.  A wonderful story, well told and well acted.

Ralph Waite as the independent-minded, hard working father John, is a realistic and textured character.  His face and expressions remind me often of Russell Crowe, and he identifies so strongly with the character of John that it is easy to forget that he is an actor.  This is actually true of all of the members of the cast, including guest stars.  Even the younger children are spot-on in their performances.  The authenticity of the cast is remarkable.

Credit must be given to the writers and directors.  The show was able to attract an exceptional group of both, and the results are exceptional.  Each forty-eight minute episode plays like a movie, with the intricacies and plot twists which you would expect from a feature-length film.  There is no “fluff” in the story-telling.  As soon as one thread has been explored, the story cuts to the next.  Each episode is multithreaded, usually with parallelism between threads.  For example, the episode “The Triangle” followed a jealous relationship between John Boy, his teacher, and the town’s reverend, while a similar situation is taking place with younger brother Ben.  The correspondences are not harped upon, but the stories told directly and with a charming openness.  Most of the episodes bring tears to our eyes, giving a lovely feeling of catharsis which often washes away the tensions of the workday.

All five of the adult actors in the show were recognized with Emmy awards, including Learned, and grandma Ellen Corby, who both won three times.  In its first season the show was awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, as well as a Peabody award.  These awards were well-deserved.

Unfortunately, they don’t make shows like this anymore.  Fortunately, we can still watch them in much the same form as we did originally in the seventies.  These shows are durable, and will be watched for a long time.

At least by us.

Thanks for reading.

Rewrite redux

Ever notice that some movies improve with re-viewing?  Well “The Rewrite” was one of those movies for me.  My expectations for the movie were high, especially because of Jonny’s musical contribution.  I looked forward to the pairing of Hugh Grant and Marisa Tomei, and I hoped that the film would be as good as Marc Lawrence’s “Music and Lyrics”.

After my re-viewing, “Music” is still my favorite Lawrence movie, but “Rewrite” holds its own in most categories.  There is a plot problem: at the beginning Grant’s character unwittingly sleeps with one of his students, which leads to him being threatened with expulsion from his teaching job.  As a result, he is unable to act on his mutual attraction with Tomei (another one of his students), and there is a somewhat unfulfilled feeling at the ending, where it is implied that a relationship will ultimately happen.

Interestingly, Grant’s character has a similar early encounter with Drew Barrymore in “Music”, but this event turns out to be almost irrelevant to the relationship that follows, which is much more textured and satisfying.  However, our expectations for happy endings causes us to feel a lack when the intimacy does not come at the end.

Anyway, I enjoyed “The Rewrite” much better when I stopped comparing it to “Music” and let the charms of the movie carry me along.  As I wrote in my first review, it is well-constructed and -directed, the writing is witty and hilarious at times, and the music is easy-going and fits the story well.  The acting is exemplary.

So, as I wrote before, see it! It’s fun.

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Linsanity redux

It is probably not fair to compare Jeremy Lin’s post-Linsanity performances to his groundbreaking month in 2012.  Linsanity was the result of several factors which may never come together again, namely a coach who believed in and cultivated point guards (Mike D’Antoni), a desperately failing team in a big market (well I guess this is still true), and the injury to the team’s start (Carmelo Anthony).  Add to this mix an unknown and talented player whose time had somehow come, and Linsanity was born.  The other NBA teams knew nothing about Jeremy, and it took several weeks to adjust to him.  Perhaps there was some element of racism: they may not have believed that an Asian player could do the things that Jeremy did.  In addition, despite becoming a star, Jeremy was and is the ultimate team player.  Teammates like Steve Novak became the leading three-point scorer in the league, largely due to timely assists from Jeremy.  The entire team was lifted by Jeremy’s success, and this success was amplified in East Asia one hundred-fold.

Jeremy has struggled to cement his standing with both the Houston Rockets, on which he played for two years, and the Los Angeles Lakers this year.  As staunch fans, Carol and I have been frustrated that his coaches, especially Kevin McHale, did not recognize his strengths and allow him to play to them.  For example, whenever he had a big scoring night, his playing time would be reduced in the following games!

The reason I review this is that Jeremy had a game the other night  (Feb. 22) against the Boston Celtics worthy of the name Linsanity (one announcer did say it): 25 points on 10-for-15 shooting, including one three, and six assists.  These figures include an overtime in which he made two assists to Boozer  and two baskets of his own, the second one giving his team a five-point lead with 34.1 seconds to play.  This was the last field of the game, and iced the win.

Jeremy is a modest person who does not pursue his own self-aggrandisement.  As a result, he has had problems competing with large-egoed teammates, such as James Harden and Kobe Bryant.  True to his Asian upbringing, he is apt to defer to these teammates, passing them the ball early and not taking shots himself.  One of his best games with the Rockets, in which he scored over 30 points with nine three-pointers, happened with Harden benched by an ankle injury.  It is no coincidence that this excellent game occurred in the absence of Bryant, who is out for the season with a shoulder injury.  With the Knicks, Anthony and Stoudemire were both injured.  There were no stars, and Jeremy stepped into the void.

I hope that Jeremy can continue to grow and excel.  He said in an interview that he is a better player now than he was during Linsanity.  I believe that this is true.  He has learned to deal with tougher defense (including bigs with elbows to his face), unappreciate coaches, and stiff competition, if not resentment of his international fame.

I certainly find parallels to my own life struggles, and find encouragement when he can perform up to his ability, and be appreciated for it.

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I find that when I combine two subjects into a post, there is usually some thread linking them, and them to my own experience.  This case is no different, and the thread is this: like the jail’s bars formed by the icicles outside my window (FB reference), persons can become prisoners of their own early success, like Marc Lawrence with “Miss Congeniality” and “Music and Lyrics”, Jeremy Lin with Linsanity, and I with my Hopkins and Presidential Scholar experiences.  I have noted that there are very few actors and celebrities who achieve fame without suffering from it in some way (Lindsay Lohan being an extreme example). And I find myself gratified that my own children have won respect and fulfillment without the need for fame.

In my own career I have achieved a good measure of respect and fulfillment, but still feel unappreciated at times in ways that I find hurtful.  As I write this, I realize that this statement is true for most people.  And so I need not feel alone.

Thanks for reading.

This movie was just released this weekend, but sparsely because of some industry funny business. It has gotten a good reception on IMDb (6.1 from over 100 respondents) and a metascore of 50, both good for a romantic comedy.
The film stars Hugh Grant, Marissa Tomei, and J.K. Simmons. Grant plays an Oscar-winning screenwriter who has accepted a visiting lecturer position at a small college. Tomei plays a middle-aged mom (still cute of course) who is one of his pupils. Of course, a romance develops between them.
The movie was written and directed by Marc Lawrence. (Disclosure: Marc’s son Clyde and my son Jonny play in a band together. Clyde, who is a senior at Brown, wrote the music for the movie, and Jonny played guitar (uncredited alas) on some of the tracks.) Marc is responsible as writer and/or director for several of our favorite romantic comedies, including Music and Lyrics, Miss Congeniality, Two weeks’ notice, and Miss Congeniality 2. As is evident, he and Hugh Grant have worked together on many fruitful projects.
In the Boston area the film is showing at the AMC in Danvers. It is also available on AppleTV (Dr. Laura gave it a 10/10), and On Demand on Verizon. We are planning to watch it tonight with Jonny and Katie when they get back from Western MA. I’ll let you know if it lives up to its humorous trailers…

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The movie lived up to its ratings and more. The writing was witty, the acting was excellent, the music was well done, and the film was well-crafted. If you’re a fan of romantic comedies, this one is worth seeing.

…and Clyde Lawrence, thanks for letting us know about Jonny’s end credit! (as well as the rest of the band) We all cheered when they came up!

This is a Valentine’s Day post which I wrote for my wife Carol. She approves of this message…

THE BEGINNING

In the summer of 1973 I had finished my junior year in college, and was just about to start medical school. In addition, I was going to be taking over my sister Carolyn’s duties as landlord’s agent for my dad’s house on Humboldt St. in Cambridge. I was visiting Ca and Woong Kil one day, and she said to me, “Eddie, why don’t you go over and meet the tenants next door, you’re going to be agent soon.” This was uncharacteristically directive of her, both of them being the epitome of “laid back” (or in Ca’s case “quiet fire”), and I was so surprised that I went immediately next door, literally the next door, that being on the other side of our large duplex Victorian house. I went up to the door and rang the bell.