Christmas letter 2008

Christmas 2008

What comes to mind as I sit to write this year is the mini-skirt worn by Cheri Merrifield (13Feb09: I recall now that this was actually Melissa Roberts who was "going with" Dean Dambach and not Cheri) in 7th grade algebra class. Like the Matador’s cape, it was red, but too short to flap in the wind. As a result, I nearly failed 7th grade algebra. Completely naïve, I had no clue why the mini-skirt was so bothersome, but I could not get it out of my mind. Thanks to Saturday morning math drills with my Dad, I got through the class and eventually – after failing calculus in my first quarter of college – I aced math and even began to enjoy it as I beat it down rather than it me. I also made a C in chemistry that first quarter and an A in history. A not so stellar beginning, but I was inspired by my poor performance and went on to change from history which seemed a waste of money to pay for something you would get all A’s in to chemistry which was a major challenge and worthy of being paid for.

All this and the mini-skirt comes to mind as Goodlett the Older, aka Mint, is flailing around at algebra generating the kind of scores (i.e. 50%) you get when you guess at answers instead of solve them logically. As a result, he and I are going at it every night now with me promising not to let up with the nightly quizzes until he gets it. He is starting to believe that regardless of whether he thinks algebra useful or not, that I will not let up my request. To a brighter topic now for him, his baseball team this year aced the season with a perfect 17-0 record. Sadly though, it was the first time ever, he did not pitch. There were simply too many better kids on the team who had obviously been practicing in the off season. We talked again about the need to accent talent with skills both in baseball to stay on the mound and at the trap set to do well in music. Maybe the algebra skills will make a believer out of him. Still he had a great year at baseball showing his usual head’s up play in the field coming through time and again as outfielder or catcher in critical moments making the correct decision to get runners out. Although they have no official name yet, Noah-David-Noah (aka NDN) have formed a rock band and recorded a couple of songs in the basement of the guitar player’s house where his Dad’s band has a practice studio. … Good for him, that is, as long as he gets the algebra.

Goodlett the Younger, aka Ham, continued his mastery of computer games to the point where it almost makes no sense to buy him a game as he will be done and jaded in under a week, if not a weekend. … $20, $40, $60 per game of his allowance (at $5/week) used up like a junky’s obsessive compulsiveness. His baseball skills improved this year – that is from his perspective – as he was never hit by a pitcher while at bat. However, the pitchers were so bad (lots of dodge ball at the plate. So there was skill invovled) in his league that Graham only swung a half dozen times all season walking to first most at bats. His lack of interest in athletics precedes him to the field, but anyone who plays make believe games that well should play real games. Notably, he and not his brother is the better strategist when war games break out in the neighborhood gang of a dozen boys or so. In another triumph he ran a mile under 8 minutes at school this year. This came after he and his brother collapsed as we exited a laser tag game on holiday. At that moment I realized they were pathetically out of shape relative to their 48 year old Dad who had just run around for 15 minutes and was not winded. A mile run each of the remaining days on vacation at the farm in July in Alabama was my gift. Another notable for Graham, was that he made his acting debut with a cameo appearance in a Death Cab for Cutie video for their song “No sunlight”. He is front in center of the first kid’s whirlieball team that you’ll see here www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeruvWuVV2Y. It should also be recorded for posterity that his brother, a fashion Diva who must have matching shirt and pant combos, could bring himself to wear the required retro gym clothes for the video. Inspired by this, Graham and his buddies later posted a silly video with him dancing that involves terrorists (huh? I don’t get that part Graham) and dart guns; www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG_c5sDbd1c. You’ll be seeing this again at yer wedding – Hammie!

Despite the tough economic times, or maybe because of them, the Homeless shelter auction Donna helps organize made about $35,000 this year or a cool $10k more than last year. Good job Donna! However, most auctions did much worse. We hear from our friend Gerry Pierce that the Dale Chihuly auction to raise money for seniors to do art took in a few hundred thousand short of normal. You can view some of Chihuly’s amazing glass art here www.chihuly.com. {Hey, Dale Chihuly! Why not donate some glass art to the SHARE auction???} This year, the SHARE auction finally got its own website www.shareauction.org to raise awareness of homeless issues in the community. Also this year Donna convinced our church (www.tumseattle.org) council to participate in the annual One Night Count of homeless which constitutes walking the streets of Seattle from midnight to 4 AM on a single night to count folk sleeping in the bushes are or their cars. This is an increasing problem as it was just estimated that staggering 80% of jobs in the state do not provide enough income to support a family. The One Night Count results go into a report to the city that affects funding for homeless shelters. It is always cold and miserable for these events, but this past year my postdoc at the time, Alex Scherl of Geneva Switzerland, brought coffee and chocolate which to Donna’s delight he produced at the end of the walk. In these tough times though the city now has five roving tent cities that have sprung up. Fortunately, and at the bidding/begging of Donna and a few others, the church finally initiated its own homeless shelter in our gymnasium where select folk sleep and have access to the kitchen and showers.

This year my work took me to Hangzhou and Suzhou in southern China where I toured 1000 year old gardens (whc.unesco.org/en/list/813) thanks to my former Institute for Systems Biology (www.systemsbiology.org) colleague Biaoyang Lin now at Zhejiang University, to Finland where I was in the world’s largest smoke sauna (www.herrankukkaro.fi) thanks to my buddy Garry Corthals at the Turku Centre for Biotechnology (www.utu.fi/en/research/researchs_turku/cooperation_and_openess_are_the_advantages_of_a_small_place.html) , and to Scotland where I played paintball for the first time thanks to my long time colleague and friend Pat Langridge-Smith of University of Edinburgh (homepages.ed.ac.uk/prrls02/prrls.html). I was surprised at how addictive paintball was especially the strategy needed to attack and capture your opponents’ fort. It really was a blast and yes it hurts when you get hit! Some photos from paintball and the manor house where Pat’s group held a retreat may be found here picasaweb.google.com/goodlett.laboratory/ArdgourManourHouse#. Thankfully, our Seattle lab group (goodlett.proteomics.washington.edu/group_members/) has leveled off to an almost manageable size with some notable additions of two hardworking, bright Taiwanese computer scientists – Shannon and Sonia – who write software programs to interpret our data. Software has become an integral part of biology and in fact probably half the group does some sort of software coding to pull information out of our mass spectrometry data. Without these people we would be trudging along in the dark. Also this year, and thanks to all the hardworking folk in the group, I received tenure. It is a bit of a vanishing concept that you have a job for life in academics or anywhere, but as long as I enjoy the job I’ll keep the tenure. That is the key thing in life – to have a good reason to get out of bed in the morning. Currently, for me this is work during the day and the thought all day long of torturing Mint with algebra at night!

Having cast my absentee ballot, I was in Scotland for Obama’s election where the Europeans were at least as excited, if not more so, as Americans. Seemingly setting the stage, Lewis Hamilton, who like Obama is 50% white or black depending on your preference, had just won the world Formula 1 driver’s championship that Sunday. The difference was that while I was happy for Lewis, I did not cry, when he won the driving championship, but like many I was overcome with emotion when Obama won election. This single inspiring act took me way back to 4th grade in Montgomery, Alabama when Bruce and Lionel were bused in from the country side to a formerly all white school. They must have been terrified and I wonder what has become of them as we lost track during junior high days. I know that most of Montgomery’s schools are now nearly all black as the integration tide reversed itself with white flight to the suburbs. More impressive to Europeans and Americans than Obama’s cool calm demeanor and logical decision making, juxtaposed against Bush’s crude ways, is that overnight people of color around the world have hope that their voices may be heard. To paraphrase MLK Jr, we are one day closer to judging people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. This has to be a good thing for humanity. Regrettably, the US is probably way ahead of the world when it comes to people of color taking the political reins of major country, but there is hope now that we might lay aside superficial characterizations of ethnicity and get on with making the world a better place for everyone.

This year I chose to attempt to be a bit more “green” by not printing out this annual Christmas letter to mail. So, you will only find it here on this blog along with all prior letters going back to 2001. To conclude on a light note in these dark, wintry economic times some of you will have heard that our Governor allowed Atheists to display a placard stating their disbelief in God alongside the Christian traditional holiday display at our state capital. That seemed a bit ridiculous to me at first, but then I recalled the Pagan beginnings of the Christmas tree and their Winter solstice celebrations. Maybe if more atheists and believers engaged in the kind of genetic recombination that gave us amiable leaders like Obama, Hamilton and (Tiger) Woods, then society would be more inclusive than exclusive. In the end, I think our Governor cast this controversy in the right light by allowing a Festivus pole to be erected there as well the aforementioned serious displays. For those who don’t know, Festivus is a Seinfeld-show contrived holiday where the family erects a bare metal pole that they then stand round casting out their grievances with each other from the past year (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festivus). Families do this anyway. So why not make it joyous with a bit of a celebratory character around a Festivus pole?

Seriously, regardless of your persuasion or grievance(s), we wish you all Happy Holidays from the Seattle Goodletts: Dave, Donna, Mint and Ham. We can be reached at david.goodlett@gmail.com, donnamgoodlett@msn.com, minter.goodlett@gmail.com & graham.goodlett@gmail.com and viewed picasaweb.google.com/david.goodlett.