The public archives of tumbledry go back to my embarrassingly rudimentary scrawling in October, 1999. By that calendar, we’ll turn 10 in October of this year. However, I only registered the domain tumbledry.org on July 22, 2003. At the time, I was smack in the middle of leaving high school times for college life. My intensely narrow understanding of the world around me expanded agonizingly slowly; however, something during that time made me think it would be a good idea to hop on the evolving internet and get a proper website going. Before that, this space was called “Alex’s Website.” I’ve some mortifying splash pages from that era. Perhaps I’ll share those if I get time. Before that, dating to sometime around the beginning of 1999, I put together a site called TI Chip. It was mostly an archive of 1200+ calculator programs. I loved piecing together websites on Angelfire and Tripod, two free hosting sites of the day.
A calculator-carrying geek was I.
Computers were a domain exclusively talked about with my close friends, and I tried hard not to talk to my classmates about my love for programming. This tendency persists to this day, and it gets rather lonely sometimes. I wish I had a peer group (Justin only has so much free time) with whom I could discuss different caching systems for database driven websites, the challenges of non-greedy regular expressions, or the merits of different languages. With my near total immersion in dental school, I know my knowledge about these topics will be hopelessly out of date when I finally have the time to reconnect with any community like this. Oh well, eh? The time just isn’t there.
I will, however, always look back fondly at redesigning and/or recoding this website about 17 times, learning HTML by trial and error over winter break in 1998, getting hacked by a Russian computer gang, and so on. I look forward to many, many more years online. I wonder, nearly 10 years into this endeavor, what life and this space will be like in another 10 years… in 2019.
A great Minnesota poet died recently. His name was Bill Holm. Alas, I did not know of him until after his death, when I heard a wonderful tribute to him on April 19, on Minnesota Public Radio Presents. I had just jumped in the shower and (thanks to the shower radio from Kourtni) heard a beautiful poem by another Minnesota poet, Robert Bly. Mr. Bly was reading (with musical backing) some of his works, to honor the late Bill Holm. One of these pieces was particularly beautiful, so I had to give you the opportunity to listen:
The name of this poem by Robert Bly is “Stealing Sugar from the Castle”. And it goes thusly:
We are poor students who stay after school to study joy.
We are like those birds in the India mountains.
I am a widow whose child is her only joy.
The only thing I hold in my ant-like head
Is the builder’s plan of the castle of sugar.
just to steal one grain of sugar is a joy!
Like a bird, we fly out of darkness into the hall,
Which is lit with singing, then fly out again.
Being shut out of the warm hall is also a joy.
I am a laggard, a loafer, and an idiot. But I love
To read about those who caught one glimpse
Of the Face, and died twenty years later in joy.
I don’t mind your saying I will die soon.
Even in the sound of the word soon, I hear
The word you which begins every sentence of joy.
“You’re a thief!” the judge said. “Let’s see
Your hands!” I showed my callused hands in court.
My sentence was a thousand years of joy.
The music, the words, and the performance are, to me, perfect. I love the way Robert Bly tosses his lines out — his phrases are not precious; they are living, breathing. His inflection is dazzling, yet free of pretense. “My sentence was a thousand years of joy.”
Here are some selected quotes from literally the best professor I have ever had the pleasure of learning from. Dr. Katz could teach p-chem to third graders.
“I’ve seen your schedule — it’s incredible. You guys are really, really busy. Me, I just sit around all day and blow bubbles and come in here occasionally to talk to you.”
“I got an email from a med student, which was actually quite unprofessional because it used the F-word, attacking my use of ‘wah-wah’ for water. They seemed really upset.”
“55,500 mM water; the highest water concentration known to woman.”
“It’s 1:25 on a Friday afternoon — if I’m not entertaining, I’ll lose you.”
Dr. Katz: So, the kidney filters 180L water and 25 thousand mmoles nackle per day. Which is a ginormous amount. Class member #1: I’d like to take issue with you using the word ginormous. I’m going to write a letter. Katz: I see. If it interrupts your learning, then I will not use the g-word again. CM1: Thank you. Katz: So, the question is, what happens in the kidney such that you see such huge amounts of filtration and relatively small amounts of water and nackle secretion? CM2: Can we also scratch ‘nah’ and ‘nackle’ from the vernacular? Katz: Ok, now we’ve gone too far. CM3: Hey, I like ‘nackle.’ CM1: I was kidding, it’s OK to use ginormous. Katz: Thank you.
Katz: So what’s it called when you have red blood cells in the lumen of the nephron? Us: Blood in pee! Katz: Yes, I think that is the clinical term. “Blood in pee.” You come into the doctor for a diagnosis… ‘It appears you have blood in pee.’ So how can this happen? CM: You get punched in the kidney. Katz: Blunt trauma can cause blood in pee. Alternatively, if you swallowed a bee and it stung the capillary wall, causing red blood cells to enter the lumen; that would also work.
Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, was a specialist.
He could effortlessly execute the double pun: Noah’s Ark
was made of gopher-wood, he would say, but Joan of Arc
was maid of Orleans. Some Whately-isms are so complex
that they nearly amount to honest jokes: “Why can a man
never starve in the Great Desert? Because he can eat the
sand which is there. But what brought the sandwiches
there? Why, Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered
and bred.”
We’re learning how to prep teeth for full gold, porcelain fused to metal, and all porcelain crowns. That is, we’re taking 60,000 RPM pneumatic dental drills fitted with diamond-studded burs and… cutting plastic teeth (funny, eh?) fitted in something called a typodont which is mounted in a very nice simulated patient (complete with cheeks, semi-realistic range of motion, etc.). Thing is, it is tricky work. The next time your dentist picks up a mirror and drill in order to place a filling in your back upper molars… be thankful they first practiced on a set of plastic teeth.
Correction: Umm, that’s 400,000 rpm. Still a lot to learn when you’re off by orders of magnitude.
Heard Tyrone Wells on the radio today. I like the song “Remain” because its lyrics describe the way I’ve been feeling:
Sometimes I get so tired
Just trying to find a place
To lay my head
I look up to the sky
I feel the warmest light comfort me
I’ve seen the great heights
Reminding me I’m alive
I don’t wanna die
I don’t wanna waste another day or night
I know there’s something more than what we’re living for
I see it in the stars
I feel it on the shore
I know there’s something, I know there’s something more
I think we’re all afraid
That we might be alone, alone down here
We all want to have some faith
At least that’s true in my case
To just believe
I’ve seen the great heights
Reminding me that I’m alive
I don’t wanna die
I don’t wanna waste another day or night
I know there’s something more than what we’re living for
I see it in the stars
I feel it on the shore
I know there’s something
This world may crumble into the ocean
It could all end tonight
I undermine you, then try to find you
My only source of life
I’m breathing
I am breathing
I am alive
I don’t wanna die
I don’t wanna waste another day or night
I know there’s something more
Than what we’re living for
I see it in the stars
I feel it on the shore
I know that I’m alive
I don’t wanna die
I don’t wanna waste another day or night
I know there’s something more than what we’re living for
I see it in the stars
I feel it on the shore
I know there’s something more
