Hello, Wisconsin!

I was back in Wisconsin this weekend and early this week to visit family and friends. I was not there for any special occasion, but my family and I have reached a consensus that Thanksgiving and Christmas are too close together. Visiting for both would make more sense if they were farther apart in the year.

This is my parents' back yard. We planed several of the trees our selves beginning when I was in grade school.
This is my parents' cat Fluffers; she is a domestic longhair with a calico coat. She was also a little camera shy.

Travel Plans This Weekend

• June 23, 11:45 am: Fly from CMH to ATW via DTW.
• June 23, evening: Visit with my paternal grandfather and parents in Appleton, WI.
• June 23, evening: Ride back to Independence, WI with my parents
• June 23-26: Visit with friends and family in Independence.
• June 26, 12:38 pm: Fly from EAU to CMH via MSP.

My First Journal Article!

Two postdoctoral researches and I have been working on this analysis since Dec. 2005. We have submitted this article for publication and are currently responding to questions, comments, and criticism from the journal reviewers.

This will be my first peer-reviewed publication, which is an important milestone in my scientific career.

Stargazing at the 2006 Retreat

I realized that I omitted one important highlight from my entry about the 2006 Stanford IV Grad Fall Retreat, primarily because I did not have any photographs of it. The highlight was a tour of the constellations of the night sky that I gave to the other participants in the retreat. I have given such tours on many retreats, weather permitting.

One of the disadvantages of living in a city is the negative effect artificial lights have on our ability to see the stars, especially faint ones. We have gained the ability to work, play, and travel 24 hours a day, but we have paid with the sky. I cannot remember the last time I saw the night sky unaffected by some kind of artificial light. I am not sure if I ever have.

Most retreat locations are in rural areas, so they offer significantly less light pollution than major cities, which I why I give these tours on retreats. On this particular night, we had some artificial light pollution from some of the cabins, but nothing as bad as street lights. The weather was not completely cooperative because a thin haze obscured some stars, but the sky was still far better than the one seen from my apartment.

It has been so long that I cannot remember exactly which constellations we saw, but I do remember quite a few wise cracks from my audience as we were on our backs on a basketball court looking up at the stars. At first, I was a little upset by this because I thought it meant they did not appreciate my tour, but I realized that they were simply having fun. They enjoyed the tour and managed to add a few laughs. Also, I may have encouraged the comedy because, as one of my friends said, "You are really good at playing the straight man." That is true.

I also lead a group stargazing in at the most recent CGSA retreat at a Boy Scout Camp in the suburbs of Toledo. Despite the light pollution from the city, we managed to see three planets (stunningly bright Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn) and several constellations including Leo, half of Scorpio, both Dippers, and Draco. A few or the bright stars we saw included Vega, Polaris, and Antares. At one point, I had several people on the tour arranged into a crude model of the solar system to show where the visible planets were in relation to Earth.

An unexpected bonus was a meteor that streaked almost directly overhead across more than half the visible sky. For a brief moment as it was incinerated by friction with the atmosphere, it appeared brighter than Venus. I will probably write more about this retreat in a later entry.

Zombies!

On May 26, 2007, I was privileged to be a witness of a rare and disturbing apparition of the supernatural known as a Zombie Walk.

Above, we see the hoard of zombies gathering, although at this stage, the few zombies had arrived compared with the number of spectators who had already gathered.

This is the leader of the hoard. I apologize for some of these photographs being blurry our out of focus. Photographic perfection is rather difficult to achieve when one is trying to protect one's brain from a pack of hungry undead zombies!

This is, without doubt, the strangest context in which I have seen Romans 6:23.

Below, we see the hoard marching out of Franklin Park to terrorize the city of Columbus.



More photographs from their rampage can be found here, including a confrontation with two Imperial Storm Troopers. Note, I take no responsibility for the content of sites beyond my blog; they may contain offensive or inappropriate material in addition to picture of zombies.

Moving from California to Ohio Part 5: Arrival in Ohio

I arrived at my new home in Columbus, OH on Jan. 1, 2007, after riding from St. Louis with my new housemate Chris. We stopped at a Wendy's somewhere in Indiana. Since Wendy's is not very common in California, it was the first time I had eaten there in a long while.

Once at my new home, I met my other new housemate Se-Kyung and Chris' Dalmatian Jenny. The four of us share the top floor of a house. My room, as it was before I moved in, is shown below, with Jenny for scale.
The couch is now in the living room, but the chairs are still in my room. The portal on the left remained open for a few months. How it was finally turned into a proper closet will be told in an upcoming entry.

Our landlord Robert manages this house as part of Community Revitalization Associates, LLC. It is one of many efforts he is making to bring spiritual and economic revitalization to the neighborhood of Weinland Park. He lives across the street from us.

Since Ohio State does not pay for graduate student moving expenses, the cheapest way to get my possessions from California back to Ohio was shipping them via UPS and the USPS. I shipped my bicycle, books, clothes that would not fit in my suitcases, and sound system; that says something about my priorities. I either sold, gave away, or threw away all of the furniture, dishes, etc. that I had accumulated in California.

Robert agreed to accept the shipment at his house so he could store them safely until I returned. However, I apparently failed to communicate the magnitude of this shipment.

Since I packed and shipped the boxes in several stages, I never saw them all in one place until I arrived to claim them. I wish I would have taken pictures. They formed a wall about 5 feet (1.5 m) high by 10 feet (3 m) wide. Robert lent me an appliance dolly to haul them across the street to my room. Since the USPS has a discounted media mail rate for books, several of the boxes we filled with nothing but books, which made them rather heavy; a few of them were just slightly below the 70 lb. (31.8 kg) limit.

When I unpacked, I found almost everything was intact, except for a few VHS tapes. I was able to repair them by transplanting the tape from the broken plastic cases into new ones I purchased in Columbus.

Murder in Weinland Park

I have been hesitant to write about this crime because I did not want to provoke fear or criticism from you. However, I deliberately chose to live here in Weinland Park, knowing the neighborhood's reputation. I want to live the with the integrity and courage to be honest and forthright about my choices.

Kenneth Crawford was murdered by gunshot on April 25, 2007. Initial reports did not confirm his name, but it was revealed shortly after his death. The Dispatch also carried a story. In my apartment we heard several very loud gun shots; they were louder than any I had heard there before. We could see the large assembly of police cars around the crime scene from my bedroom window.

The murderer is still at large.

Before anyone worries about my safety because my apartment is so close to a violent murder scene, I shall remind you that a few blocks from my former apartment on the corner of North 4th Street and 16th Ave, an arsonist killed five students at 64 East 17th Ave. That was in a neighborhood considered much "safer" than Weinland Park. I passed the charred shell of that house whenever I walked to campus during my first few months in Columbus. As far as I know, the murderer is still at large.

"Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil."

- Ecclesiastes 8:11