What with moving the family, the company (www.deurion.com) and the laboratory (https://persephone.rxlab.umaryland.edu) 3000 miles from Seattle to Baltimore, it was a bit of a busy year. Stress gradually turned to complacency on about day three of the six-day drive by which time we were all in a routine. Chris Cornell emerged as my most often listened to artist and his “I am the Highway” the song of the trip. I started working on a cover of this tune played down a minor third to accommodate my vocal range, but for the moment am still not happy with it. This distraction from work life is part of my general attempt try to resurrect music in my life. Stay tuned. Perhaps there’ll be something worth sharing by next year or not as all this music activity reminds me of why I became chemist not a musician.
Fortunately, summer
here was not as hot as promised and our patio (see photos link below) complete
with koi pond became an outdoor sanctuary where I worked as often as possible. It was hot enough though that I rediscovered cold beer in frosted mugs favoring the local National Bohemian aka Natty Boh (http://nationalbohemian.com). In October, while on one of my quarterly visit to Finland, the Academia of
Finland and TEKES who sponsor my research their made a film of me as well as all
other Finland Distinguished Professors. The so-called FiDiPro program (http://www.fidipro.fi/) seeks to bring academic talent into Finland
to focus on various research projects. Along with a description of the research
this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfOOMNJivvY ) features short segments of my instrumental
arrangements of Autumn Leaves, I’ll be home for Christmas and I am the Highway.
Also there is a short segment of me front squatting 135 lbs. This may not sound
like much to some, but the front squat requires a bit more finesse that I’m
still working on.
One of our biggest
anxieties about moving here revolved around our desire to live in the city and
the poor reputation of Baltimore’s public schools. To our delight the school
system put both boys into Baltimore City College High School (http://www.baltimorecitycollege.us/) which, founded in 1839, happens to be the
third oldest school in continuous use in the country. Of course it started out
as a college for boys, but now is a premier city high school where entry
depends on merit. Fortunately, from an academic perspective the boys were in a
normal (i.e. academically unchallenging) public school in Seattle that left
them with top level grades. So, when Baltimore saw those high marks they
immediately put them both into City, as it is known locally. This has really
worked out well for the boys and the constant negative remarks from my
colleagues here about Baltimore schools as we discussed out loud our desire to
live in the city proved Churchill’s phrase “…there is nothing to fear but fear
itself….” right again.
Of course the
generational memories of a blighted Baltimore ridden with crime will take a few
more generations for the locals to overcome. Many are trying to change the city
to make it more livable and for the moment they are doing pretty well I’d say.
In the end an urban environment can’t be reborn if people consistently choose
to live in sparsely populated suburbs coming into the city only to work. That
means folk have to make an effort to live close to work. For now there are
signs around the country that the white flight of the 60s and 70s that created
urban blight in our city centers is being reversed by young (and old in our
case) professionals who prefer not to live in their cars getting to and fro
work.
The other big
concern – where to live – was answered during a whirlwind week long visit to Baltimore
at the beginning of May this year. In Seattle our Magnolia house – five miles
from downtown and my lab – sold in a week in a hot market without an open house
and for more than the asking price, but in Baltimore the market was still
simmering from the economic collapse that happened toward the end of the Bush
presidency. The home search took some effort because Baltimore’s socioeconomic
neighborhood distribution is best described as a patch work quilt with good
next to bad throughout. Because of this most professionals choose to live in
the county suburbs and drive 30-45 minutes one way to work. As we experienced
firsthand with our first real estate agent, this lifestyle is pervasive among
working professionals. A year before when our family came out to visit Baltimore
we asked the real estate agent to show us “row homes” in the city because I
wanted to walk to work and Donna wanted to be close to the homeless communities
she anticipated helping. The classic row home designs found in the Bolton Hill
are a good example of city living here (http://www.boltonhill.org/neighborhood/n_scrapbook-tour.htm).
In hindsight, taking
into account the attitude towards living downtown that many professional have
here, we should have expected that the real estate agent would ignore our
request to look in the city close to work. After touring the country club
living of the county Donna, who used to do real estate, noted that had we been
Chinese and the real estate agent taken us to the Asian communities or Black
and likewise, then this would be the case for a lawsuit. It is of course illegal
to steer clients according to perceived ethnic preference. This steering was
our first experience with thinly veiled racism that runs through society here
and elsewhere in the country. During the nearly 20 years in Seattle, we had
forgotten about these issues, but Baltimore has never had the chance to forget.
Regardless, we found a real estate agent who enjoyed living in the city and we purchased
the property at 1431 Bolton Street that puts me just 1.5 miles or thirty
minutes by foot to work.
David at first refused
to join the City College marching band figuring there was no reason to do it
for only a year or perhaps that it would rightfully cut too much of his precious xbox time. However, knowing
that with only one year of high school here that this was his only chance to
make local connections, we insisted. No surprise, he has loved it. The band is
about 99% black which means in this case the marching band does not just play,
but dances while playing. Here is an example of the band (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1KtZPBkp_I) doing their “tunnel” entry dance through
the drum line with David second from the left on snare facing away from the
camera.
Given that most
whites in the city send their kids to private school and that Baltimore is
about 65% black, public schools are predominantly black. City College High
school, being one of only three high quality public schools in the city, sees
stiff enrollment competition making it 95% black. So far so good for David who
has more than a few young ladies of the majority ethnic group enamored with his
enamel novelties. It’s really no surprise that he has assimilated because for reasons
unknown to us his Seattle mates all referred to him by an alias equivalent to a
racial slur here. Perhaps the alias came from the incessant rap music he
listens to or the graffiti art he draws. Or, maybe it was just the way he dressed with
baggy shorts that look as though you went poo in your pants combined with the flat brimmed caps that gained him his Seattle alias.
At City the kids have to wear a school uniform which you can see in the photos
link below makes for some conformity amongst kids who cant all afford to buy
the latest fashions.
College applications
have been rolling out like waiting on Christmas and it would appear that
Christmas will arrive before he is accepted anywhere or even applies. C’est la
vie. He does have several choices in the city that are appealing to him because
they have video game curricula. As he never intended to go away too far to
school preferring community college for his first two years, it will work out
in the end. This means though that he’ll probably be living at home attending either the
University of Baltimore (http://www.ubalt.edu/index.cfm) or Towson University (http://www.towson.edu). The former is only ten minutes walk from
the house, but the latter will require him to finally get his driver’s license!
These are small schools that are on a list of ten Universities where my
employer the University of Maryland Baltimore (http://faculty.rx.umaryland.edu/dgoodlett/) offers faculty dependents tuition remission.
Graham just missed
having straight A’s on his first reporting period by about a half point. C’mon
Man!!! Along with David he has stepped up to the academic plate and done really
well. At the start of the year hoping to get an easier ride he went into his AP
literature teacher and told her that he felt he was not qualified to be in her
college credit class. To this she replied “Graham – you scored the second
highest of all the students on the quiz the first day of school”. We don’t know
exactly what he said, but I’m sure his face was a mix of confusion and intrigue.
This is the class that kept him out of the straight A category, but never mind.
He is working quite hard and learning a lot about composition and the logic of
reviewing other’s work.
Graham has continued
his weight lifting training and can now squat about 185 lbs at least once and
dead lift as much as well. These are not too far from my one rep max lifts. So
for someone who is a couple inches shorter than me and 10 lbs lighter, that is
pretty good. For now he has taken a step back on going heavy and is focused on
a high rep German lifting program that has one do ten sets consisting of ten
reps each. Exhausting is the only description for this. Before school started this
Fall Graham began working in my lab with the lab informatics person to help out
with our websites. For the moment his interests lie in the science of aging.
While there are ageing experiments he can do with bacteria, which our lab works
with, there is no time to actually come in to the lab. Perhaps he can fit this
in next summer.
Donna does not know
it but she is the envy of many of my female colleagues. All the female lecturers
I teach with in Dubrovnik (www.msbm.org) sighed when I told them she was
redecorating an entire house. The 1890’s row home we bought was covered ceiling
to floor in period style wallpaper that has since been nearly entirely stripped by her perpetuating a lifelong “dislike” of wallpaper. In its place are bright
modern colors and bold prints hanging on the walls that make us feel at home
(see photos link below). This work which she loves, most of the time, and all
the other more onerous activities of moving a family has meant that not much
has happened for her on the social action front here, but then the house is
4000 sq ft including the basement and over 100 years old. So it should be no surprise that maintenance is ongoing, but ceilings that occasionally fall down can be demoralizing when you thought you had "finished". Given that our Seattle house was only 1800 sq ft, it may be awhile before she finishes
decorating here. She did though finish redoing our outdoor sanctuary - the patio - before winter
arrived.
It was there while relaxing after finishing up our dinner one night with the kids that we heard a
rapid “pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop” racket that Graham and I assumed
wrongly was a skateboarder not the sidewalk. After Donna checked the police twitter account we
learned someone had been shot in the leg a block from our house, but don’t be
too alarmed. For one thing these are huge city blocks with alleyways between
the long narrow row homes and as I said all good neighborhoods here are next to
bad ones or vice versa. Not to be too flippant about this, but the seven fired rounds
only hit someone once in the leg. Fortunately, these are not trained
professionals out there shooting each other. Despite some of the toughest gun
laws in the country, Baltimore has a drug problem and this has to be cleaned up
before the violent drug based crime will decrease. In short, this is Baltimore where
there are twice as many sunny days and twice as many murders as Seattle.
In closing we hope you are all as well can be and that you have a wonderful 2014. You’ll find some photos of us from 2013 here in this
google album –
https://plus.google.com/photos/105356506624905769204/albums/5961159555174593825?authkey=CNz1m6LayL_3swE
From the Baltimore
Goodletts Dave, Donna, David, Graham and Trixie
