Mykala recorded this one for me a while ago. It’s a comment I made while we were navigating (as we often do): “Goog 411 + GPS = Poor man’s iPhone.”
Anyhow, I think we’re really getting good at navigating… which is to say, we’re getting good at working together. On a whim, we took a day trip to Red Wing this past Sunday, and it was a blast. We took a hike, scouted out some things to do if we visit for a weekend (historical train and boat tour and etc.), admired a wonderful “Bed & Breakfast & Bread” placed called Round Barn Farm, and generally had a blast. The weather was threatening to rain, but was otherwise perfect in temperature. Here’s a picture from the top of Barn Bluff:
Happiness research indicates that looking forward to small trips regularly has a more profound effect on your happiness than looking forward to one big trip infrequently. My limited, unscientific experience with this seems to agree. In keeping with this idea, we attended the Prospect Park Ice Cream Social last Friday, June 4. In our neighborhood, there’s an old 1950s water tower atop the highest point in Minneapolis. It’s no longer a water tower, but it is in a very nice park in the neighborhood. For the Ice Cream social, it was open for people to climb the tower and see the sights. The view is amazing. Here’s Mykala:
And here I am:
Because the ice cream social event was written up in the Star Tribune, there were TONS of people there — we waited for 30 minutes until getting to climb the tower. The line had ballooned to an hour-plus by the time we left. The wait was worth it.
The great thing about the internet (and in this case, twitter) is that it gives folks with grievances a voice. Sometimes a very potent voice:
I’ve read a bunch of articles and blogs about this whole
situation by publicists and marketing folk wondering what
BP should do to save their brand from @BPGlobalPR. First
of all, who cares? Second of all, what kind of business
are you in? I’m trashing a company that is literally
trashing the ocean, and these idiots are trying to figure
out how to protect that company? One pickledick actually
suggested that BP approach me and try to incorporate me
into their actual PR outreach. That has got to be the
dumbest, most head-up-the-ass solution anyone could
possibly offer.
I wrote this meditation on attitude nearly seven years ago. Reading past the grammatical errors, attempts at grandiose style, and overwrought imagery, I think there’s some nascent wisdom.
Maybe.
Regardless, right now I’m listening to the Norah Jones song I referenced in there. It’s like stepping back in time to my Cretin Hall dorm room. Seems like another lifetime. Seven years ago.
In some families, you grow up with the expectation that
it’s OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize
you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.
In
Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words
unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess
Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A
key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this
with enough subtlety, you won’t even have to make the
request directly; you’ll get an offer. Even then, the
offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more
skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.
That I’ve made it 25 years without hearing about the Hegelian dialectic is… I’m lame.
Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a three-fold
manner, was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus as
comprising three dialectical stages of development: a
thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which
contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension
between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis.
This sounds like a great structure for writing. I guess I never took writing courses in college, but the fact that this never came up… I wonder what else I am missing?
Afternoon appointments at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry are scheduled from 1:15 to 4:00 in the afternoon. Here’s something you quickly learn: unless you have a really good reason for taking that long for one patient, you’d better finish up well before four in the afternoon. Expediency makes both the patients and the supervising dentists (under whose licenses we work on patients) much happier. So, in the three o’clock hour, only those dental students experiencing extenuating circumstances (impossible prophy, crown prep marathon, treatment planning issues) remain on the clinic floor, patiently working away. Some days, that’s me; other days, it isn’t. Today, I fixed the problems in my progress note, got it signed by the supervising dentist, and then turned in my dirty instruments and clinic gown to dispensing. Before everyone left at 4, I slipped downstairs to seventh floor to sign up for a radiological interpretation session.
One of the perverse realities of courses which are both strictly didactic in nature and poorly guided by their course directors is the distinct absence of useful knowledge. For example, I am well-educated in the a small slice of terminology of rare radiographic presentations PLUS I was given a grounding in the physics of ionizing radiation. None of this is helpful in clinic, where I now spend half my days. As a result, dental students schedule themselves for “radiographic interpretation” sessions where we attempt to locate carious lesions, defective restorations, and oddities requiring clinical investigation.
Our radiology suite at the school has an interp room which isn’t glamorous like the ones you see on television. Essentially a hallway lined by fluorescent viewboxes, it still has a certain coziness, imparted to it by its necessarily dim lighting. Since I escaped clinic relatively unscathed I was feeling relaxed—and so, I stepped into this radiology den, looking for a sign-up sheet. I found it, but I overheard something very interesting. Having sat through hundreds of hours of lecture from myriad personalities, I can recognize an experienced teacher taking full advantage of the Socratic method. In this setting, full of little nagging questions from another day actually trying to practice dentistry, I think I was primed to learn.
I began to listen in on a little quorum: six of my peers were learning from a nice fellow named Dr. Gavino. I’d never met him before, but his artistic yet purposeful pen strokes on a piece of scratch paper snatched from the corners of the dim room were telltale signs of the enthusiastic communication of ideas. I stepped into the circle as he continued talking about his rules of thumb for reading radiographs: “… so what is this? Right, that’s the margin of the attached gingiva, and it blocks food from descending along the root surface. So you can’t get caries here, unless the gingiva recede.” Real teaching!
Now, it was apparent that Dr. Gavino knew what he was saying inside and out—the difference was that he didn’t insist on dispensing dense, arcane phrases of impossible length from some ivory tower of academia. On the contrary, he was addressing us with terminology that was precise but not unnecessarily complex, asking us questions that reinforced what he was describing. Now this is why I came to the dental school! Without even thinking, drawn like a moth to a flame, I listened and answered his questions (he called us all by name) for the next 45 minutes. He sprinkled in little anecdotes and context, for which I am always a sucker. For example: in Europe, E1 and E2 lesions (penetrating only the enamel) are never operated on; the tooth is not surgically disturbed until a lesion penetrates into dentin. Or: instead of aggressively removing all decay above the nerve, developing countries where radiographs aren’t available simply cut down until the tissue is leathery (not glassy, like we pursue), and then stop, cap the pulp, and let the nerve recede on its own. Part of the operation goes like this: “We’ll cut until you say it hurts… then we’ll stop and cap it off.” They save teeth this way! And here we are, exposing roots in the name of eliminating every last trace of leathery decay. Which is better? He left it for us to decide.
The time was filled with exclamations of “aha!” and “oh, right!” and “but what about this?” It was wonderful. As I was a little bit of a late-comer, I didn’t realize why everyone laughed during one part of the lecture. Having us look closely at a bitewing of some posterior teeth, Dr. Gavino asked us what we saw. “Caries? Yes or no.” I hemmed and hawed: “Well, yes… I think so?” I wasn’t present for his introduction, where he implored my classmates to be decisive. If you’re going to be wrong, at least be wrong with authority!
But the most valuable piece of advice went beyond interpreting radiographs. It went like this: images are composed of pixels (or in film radiographs, like the ones we have: film grains), which you can’t resolve into an image close-up. If your nose is on top of the image, you just see little discrete specks. If you want to see what you need to see, back up! If you’re too close, you’ll miss what you’re looking for.
At the end of his lecture, one of my classmates asked Dr. Gavino why he insisted on calling us by name. “When you spin around on highway 35 and come to a stop inches from the median, you don’t forget how that happened. You don’t drive recklessly again! I have students from years ago who come up to me and say they remembered these little lectures. I called you by name to get your adrenaline going: adrenaline helps you remember—and I want you to remember these things, they’re important.”
New word, learned from an endo and perio resident, separately. “Whizzie”, meaning “wisdom tooth”. Apparently these residents love their slang. I don’t think I like the word. Maybe it will grow on me? As I heard it today:
“It’s definitely not a maxillary tooth — look at the root structure. Now, I can understand your confusion—I mean it is a whizzie—but this is mandibular molar.”
Just got done reading Steve Martin’s autobiography Born Standing Up. Given his immense success (45,000+ attendance at his concerts at the height of his career), his look back was remarkably down-to-earth. His descriptions of his early career, is humorously self-effacing—just like his stand-up. You don’t get the sense that he is writing to brag about what happened — it’s a lucid, funny, reasonable description of exactly what it takes to become a really really popular entertainer. There’s a picture toward the end of the book (at the height of his stand-up success), showing him from behind, walking toward a massive audience and wearing his King Tut headpiece. It’s perfect because (1) it’s a fantastic photograph capturing a moment in time and (2) the text surrounding the photograph describes how Martin felt, essentially, trapped in a wildly successful act whose contractual agreements he felt compelled to fulfill. His phrase “professional ennui” was perfect.
After being along for the comic ride with empty houses, non-English-speaking audiences, and the struggle for originality, it is so gratifying to read along as Martin became a overnight success… 10+ years in the making.
Here’s a quote I found inspirational:
At age eighteen, I had absolutely no gifts. I could not
sing or dance, and the only acting I did was really just
shouting. Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute
for talent.
Another inspiration:
Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in
charging oneself up with delusions between moments of
valid inspiration.
On panic attacks:
When I think of the moments of elation I have experienced
over some of my successes, I am astounded at the number of
times they have been accompanied by elation’s hellish
opposite.
Consistency:
I learned a lesson: It was easy to be great. Every
entertainer has a night when everything is clicking.
These nights are accidental and statistical: Like lucky
cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time.
What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night
after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances.
My favorite bit is probably the “nose on microphone”, which Martin used to test his new comic strategy: no punchlines. Google it if you’re interested.
