The 2014 Letter

The short story on us this past year is that we are well and adjusting to life in Baltimore, which compared to Seattle, feels not just like a different city but a different planet. We have grown accustom to a number of places and people here who have made us feel at home. Thanks to the staff at the Bolton Hill Bistro (www.b-bistro.com) who almost know us by name which reminds us of the hospitality of Corino at Mondellos in Seattle. Thanks to Neal and Joey at Neal’s the Hair Salon (nealswebpage.com) who provide the boys with a pair of ready made “Uncles” and provide endless entertainment. Thanks to the Ladies at The Spirits of Mt Vernon (www.spiritsofmtvernon.com) who provide us with smiles and a lovely Seattle-esque place to have drinks and to buy nice wines. Fortunately, the Mariners play the Orioles. So, we can catch them there and if we don’t mind a bit of driving we can see the Seahawks when they play the Redskins in Landover, MD. I even found an amazing Pale Ale made in Mt Vernon, which is the neighborhood next to ours and where the first statue of George Washington (mvpconservancy.org/history/) in the country stands, called The Brewer’s Art (www.thebrewersart.com/#!/page_home). 

 Graham at the Sesame Tavern in Dubrovnik July 2014

As for the family, Graham is in his junior year of high school learning the rigors of study in an International Baccalaureate (www.ibo.org) program with physics bringing new meaning to what it means to understand the world. It’s an intensive program that will see him take an international standardized IB exam during his senior year. If passed this will help with scholarships beyond the state of Maryland where his tuition is covered. He has also continued to work hard in the weight room. Even with some set backs due to lower back problems that prevented him doing some of the heavy lifts he had been doing early in the year, no one on the beach in Croatia, where we were in July for MSBM VIII (www.msbm.org), thought he was in high school. This might have in part been due to the combination of beard and six-pack. Regardless, to the astonishment of his Mother he has consistently moved his body weight (with % body fat being the goal) between 135 to 150 lbs on command by controlling his diet. 

 David's 18th birthday

La Famiglia @ David's High School Graduation

David, the budding graffiti artist, just finished his first semester at Towson University in the art program. About a week ago he said he was contemplating taking a semester off. This led to some simple calculations regarding how much money one needs to pay for cell phone, wifi, food, clothing, insurance and rent. That in turn led to the coefficient of friction on the wheels of reality being exceeded and the train leaving the station. As I recall from the early 80s when life was cheaper and I was finishing my nearly useless degree in chemistry. Useless because the economy was not in good shape and there were few jobs to be found. At the time I decided to go to graduate school because the pay was good or at least better than not being paid. Still it was shocking when I first realized what life cost. Now, David has to go through the same exercise. Hopefully, he can figure out how to make money with a hopefully not so useless art degree. He'll figure it out, but again as I recall I couldn't really make up my mind until I was about 25 and met Donna, which sort of helped with the process.

 Graffiti - pink

In truth the uncertainty that David has is not his fault. Science has shown that the male brain does not mature enough to make important (IFTTT = if this then that) decisions until the mid-20s. Finding this out made me feel better about the malaise I felt in the first half of my 20s. Donna though didn't have time to struggle with any of this and women probably sort it out much more quickly. In her case she worked two jobs, paid her Mom rent and paid her own tuition.

 Graffiti - gray

The boys each spent part of their summer of 2014 back in Seattle with friends, while we - in honor of Donna’s 5 January 50^th birthday - spent New Year’s Eve there.  While there, we managed to pull off a surprise appearance at the annual 29^th Avenue West New Year’s Eve soiree held at la mason de la Lallaison. Was good to see many of our former neighbors and friends. While we won’t make it this year, we probably will visit at some point. We even made it to Alabama this year for my niece’s wedding in April. That was the first full family trip in years and was nice as we stayed in downtown Montgomery (aka Moan-Gumree) where Donna and I met. 

 Aubree, Graham, Donna and David at the Red Barn post-wedding shindig

As expected our house is looking great thanks to Donna’s sense of style. All ready for Christmas here. What follows are four vignettes on our experience with Baltimore’s finest this past year. It is a tough job the police do and we would not want to live in a world without them. After the most recent riots, deaths and police actions, moving forward let's hope for dialogue and respect from all parties.

Happy Holidays from Ballmore! Dave, Donna, David, Graham and Trixie.

Jesse James Gang of Baltimore. In February in Finland there only a few hours of daylight and given the cloudy/snowy time of year one is unlikely to see the sun for weeks which can make for a depressing visit. Waiting for the sauna to warm up I was about to get some depressing news to go along with the mood there when a text from Donna came in. “Call me. Graham got jumped at the bus stop”.  

Cell phones are easy to pawn. So they are an object of thieves every where. These days most kids don’t wear watches. So, when six kids loitering outside the YMCA asked Graham what time it was, he didn’t look on his wrist. He pulled out his iPhone which led to immediate excitement in the “we wonder what time it is” gang.

Making it to the bus stop at the end of the block Graham found a couple of other kids with Baltimore City College Uniforms on whom he didn’t know but who confirmed his suspicion “yeah, those kids want your phone” … Fortunately, the bus arrived at that moment and they piled on.

However, before the bus could leave the curb, the “Jesse James of Baltimore” gang jacked a panel open on the back of the bus disabling the hybrid. The bus driver, not knowing what was going on, called for a backup bus. In the meantime Graham calls Donna, “can you come get me? I think I’m gonna get robbed when I get off the bus.” Before she arrived though the second bus arrived and they were all forced off the first bus.

As Graham and the two other City College kids tried to enter the second bus the “would be phone jacking” gang attacked them. There was no “gimme yer phone or you’re gonna get whacked”. They just started beating on the three of them. This caused the second bus driver to close the doors to the bus because of course he doesn’t want any of those kids on his bus. As the six on three melee ensued at the side of the bus with bars and fists flying, Graham escaped into the street. Once there a stranger in a pickup truck who watched the whole melee transpire shouted “hey kid – get in!”. Realizing he couldn't out run the kids, he jumped in and this very kind man delivered Graham to the house. Unfortunately, Graham was too stunned to ask his name. So we couldn’t thank him, but we were able to thank the two City College kids who took a beating with Graham.

In one action, Graham, the only white person in this story caught a glimpse into the good and bad of Baltimore. Kids he did not even know from his school stood with him and a complete stranger drove him home. The kids who wanted his phone fumbled the robbery because assuming they would beat it off him never even asked for it. At least one was caught by the police, but not surprisingly Graham failed to recognize any of them in a police lineup. So, Graham, a white kid from a very white city – Seattle - learned that people can be good and bad no matter their skin color.

 Graham relaxing on Lokrum July 2014

The Graffiti Body. I’m not sure if the police are aware of it, but the graffiti street code states that if a building is abandoned then it’s OK to tag it. This certainly happened in Seattle with abandoned buildings in good neighborhoods being tagged in broad daylight. Here life is a bit rougher than there and we worried that the police might not care about the code. Still after months of looking for an appropriate abandoned building to tag, David found one not too far from the house. He had been several times when one day he decided to exit via a new route through the woods that looked closer to the light rail he needed to ride home. Shockingly, there in the low grass and just a few feet off the trail was a decomposing human body.

Once home he mentioned to his Mom what he had found and they decided he should call the 311 non-emergency number. I mean it's a decomposing body. So it is not exactly an emergency. Right? Well the 311 Operator only heard “dead body” and transferred him to the 911 Operator who asked if he could meet the police at the site. So away they go with six police cars, a fire truck, an EMT truck, and the fire Marshall passing them on the way. After repeating his story to half a dozen people each in turn, which must be police protocol to make sure they story does not waiver, he was allowed to leave. That was a few months ago and still no news about what happened to this person. The detectives were granted an early Christmas wish when he agreed not to report this to the news agencies. Not sure we will ever know what happened there.

 David at the final Baltimore City College Concert

U Cain’t Fix Stoopid. While in Seattle the police will write you a ticket for jaywalking, in Baltimore if you aren’t jaywalking then you stand out like Graham at the bus stop near the YMCA. Here when a local decides they want to cross the road, they don’t walk to the corner and wait for the light to change. Instead, they just head across the road.

It works like this. If it's a two-lane road then you wait for the lane closest to you to clear and then move to the middle. Never mind that traffic is zipping by now in both directions (behind and in front of you) just wait in the middle of the street until the next lane clears. If it's a four-lane road, same protocol. Wait for one lane at a time to clear and move ahead. In neither case does “clear” really mean clear in a normal sense. Rather, it just means that once you are in the road anyone who hits you is now responsible for hitting you regardless of the fact that you are too stupid to use the light at the corner. This behavior is so much a part of culture here that a local once asked me as I pushed the button to trigger the light to change for pedestrians to cross “whuh duzz dhat doo”? As I started to explain, he moved on into the road dodging oncoming traffic. Ugh!

This cross the street whenever it suits your mindset coupled at times with a Baltimore shuffle that can break into a stiff legged hobbled run can give the impression you are in an episode of the walking dead. It also means that drivers are so accustom to having pedestrians in the road and not the cross walks that the rules of the cross walk are not obeyed or even considered by drivers. So, when I complained to the campus police about drivers speeding out of West Baltimore – a one way street - on to MLK while I was in the cross walk with the right of way, I was told to use the other side of the street. Really? The other side is safe? Well, yes because there is less traffic and drivers cant get up as much speed when they come through the cross walk. Remarkable, but it is quite apparent that neither the drivers nor the campus police care about pedestrians. I once approached the cross walk with a pregnant woman who even though she had the right of way was so afraid of the on coming cars she wouldn’t move off the curb even holding on to my arm. Only when she didn't have the right of way, but the way was clear, did she venture across the street.

Unfortunately, the campus police refuse to monitor this intersection because MLK is a city street crossing campus. Actually, across the entire city the police have abdicated control to drivers many of whom appear to have never passed a driving exam. Not long after my complaints to the campus police one of our pharmacy students was hit in the intersection and hospitalized with nonlife threatening injuries. Later in the year another pedestrian who yelled at a driver who almost hit her found herself chased and beaten by the driver who then tried, but failed, to steal her phone while she was calling the police. This is the pedestrian life in Baltimore where I walk three miles round trip every day to and from work. So far, so good.

 

 David, Dave and Graham at the Red Barn south of Montgomery

Donna and the Judge. At the beginning of December Donna was chosen for jury duty. It’s a murder trial where jurors were selected only if they had never heard of the case. Having been here only a year and a half made her a perfect choice. Plus, she failed to take my sound advice “behave rudely and go off about your believe in the death penalty”, but Maryland doesn’t have the death penalty and even if we did she doesn’t believe in it.

For the first 11 days she was alternate #1. However, the very pregnant woman that had been selected before her did not last. So now, Donna is juror #8. She of course can’t talk to anyone about what is going on, but says she is learning a lot about criminology. Fortunately, she received the jury duty request in early November and decided to finish 90% of her Christmas shopping by the day after Thanksgiving. Still it's a bit much right at the Holiday season to be called on to serve the community. ...  As of this morning though the judge declared a mistrial. So you can now read comments in the Baltimore Sun from Donna and the other jurors who were questioned on leaving the courthouse; see http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/blog/bal-second-trial-in-phylicia-barnes-murder-ends-in-mistrial-20141222-story.html

There’s more, but that is probably enough to give you a flavor of the Baltimore life. It's a patchwork of good and bad. Where some cities practice effective socio-economic segregation, the nature of Baltimore does not allow this. I'm not complaining. Diversity is good, but would the nut job who broke the brass water faucet off the front of our house leaving water squirting out into the street please return it?

 Dave and Jace celebrating the Seahawks 2014 Superbowl win.

c h r i s t m a s 2 0 1 3

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

Christmas Letter 2012

Goodlett Family 2012 Collage  

I suspect that like me, you all are having a hard time getting past the massacre of 20 innocent children in Newtown, CT. The innocence of my own kids at Christmas time when they were that age leaves me unable to get this sadness out of my mind. For me the idea of a child’s innocence is seared into my memory from one Christmas morning when the boys were about four and five years old. Mint ran down stairs and on seeing a construction set displayed on the floor yelled to his brother “Graham! He really did come. He really did come!” …

Of course, guns don’t kill people. People kill people. This time in Connecticut and earlier this year in Colorado and before that in Virginia, and before that again in Colorado … mentally disturbed young men massacred innocents. So while some form of gun control is needed, its also clear to me that President Reagan’s vision that communities and local governments would take care of their mentally ill isn’t working. His actions abolished the provisions of the National Mental Health Systems Act that were signed into law by President Carter and stopped existing government aid to care for the mentally ill. So while its true that the lethality of readily accessible weapons is part of the problem, our national discussion has to include mental health care reform because the combination of a mentally deranged person with an assault weapon is like yelling fire in a crowded theater. It should be illegal. 

Mental health issues are something our family hears about on a frequent basis from Donna who has continued her efforts working with the homeless community this past year. From my perspective I can see that it’s rather easy to get them the food and shelter they need, but nearly impossible to do more. Doing more requires establishing relationships to help them get out of their behavioral loops, but such meaningful relationships cost time and money that local governments and charities lack. Most homeless are not mentally ill, but simply down on their luck. Others though are in deep dark emotional holes that they can’t climb out of alone. Climbing out requires individualized help for which society currently has no answer beyond family, community and faith organizations all of which are overwhelmed. Barring requiring a license to reproduce, which would be more controversial than gun control, teaching people how to be good parents would help a bit with some of the homeless issues we have, but not mental illness. Many of the homeless simply had bad examples set by their own parents that in turn sent them spiraling down poor behavioral paths. Most are really good people who are down on their luck and can’t get ahead in this economy.

Donna and Graham at HiLife for dinner

While one can argue that being a good parent is the most important job we do for society, the training for parenting is as haphazard as genetic recombination. No license is required to be a parent like is needed for driving a car, but doing both badly is dangerous to society. Unfortunately, it is often the case that being parented well depends in large part on the luck of being born to good parents. I still marvel at the apparent randomness in genetic recombination that gave us our boys. Parents with a dozen kids will tell you the same thing that each one is unique. From a scientific perspective even identical twins raised in the same household will have unique differences. With our boys who don’t look alike, its easy to see the differences. One is artistic and gregarious, while the other is logical almost to a fault. We can see these traits in ourselves, but there are no hard stops between the traits. In Graham’s case his phenotype is randomly matched to his middle name, Robinson, which was my Mother’s maiden name. Grandpa Robinson was a bit of a math genius from the back woods of Mississippi. Like all my Grandparents, he didn’t finish high school. He did however become a master automobile mechanic, which after being drafted saved him going to Europe in WWII, and later an ironworker. He had an inherent understanding of math and logic that you cannot teach, nor can hours of parents helping with homework instill. Recently, the argument of which is more important nature or nurture has been turned on its head by the science of epigenetics. There are now many documented examples where nurture, by which I mean here being a good parent, is much more important than nature, i.e. your genetic make up. In fact this science is beginning to explain some of the old wive's tales of inherited traits skipping generations. To catch up on this, I recommend you read “The Epigenetics Revolution” by Nessa Carey.

David eating in Baltimore's Little Italy

Not so random were a bunch of E’s (same as old-school F’s) that showed up recently on Graham’s new-school, online real time grade report. Being analytical, he had a perfectly logical explanation. He calculated that because his math homework only counted for 30% of his grade he could afford to take some E’s on homework assignments. He rationalized these omissions by explaining that 1) he already knew how to do the assignments for that topic and so they were a waste of his precious time, 2) he could explain them to everyone in the class better than even the teacher and 3) doing so would hurt neither his grade nor his education …… tsk, tsk, tsk. While I appreciated the logic, I made an on the spot correction to his innocence in rationalizing. Of course this is one way innocence is lost – jaded parents who superimpose their learned behavior on kids – or try to. In this case I am at least recording his feat to be feted by him at a later date, but I do appreciate his time management skills because I make those type decisions every day.

David and Graham eating at the bar at the Hilife in Ballard

In another testament to parents being more “correct” than not, Mint joined the drum line and the school’s marching band. After five years of trap set lesson, we encouraged him to get involved in the music program when he started high school. “Life’s not a spectator sport” he heard me say over and over. In spite of or because of my parenting skills, when he started 9^th grade I had to make him sign up for the percussion class. In hindsight this was my last lesson applied by force with him, but in my defense I knew that he might need an easy A. I won the battle, but he refused to try out for jazz band or marching band even when his older classmates encouraged him. At the end of 10th grade the rules for being in percussion class changed and he was forced to try out for drum line or leave the class. For some reason – maybe he liked being in the class after all? - he tried out for and made the drum line. While he didn’t make the premier snare position he wanted, this came to us as no surprise. In preparation for the try out he played hours and hours of xbox and only the night before the try out went over snare parts for about 30’. When I asked about his preparation he exclaimed …. ”whaddaya mean I didn't prepare well? I worked for an hour or more!” … Fast-forward to the end of Summer 2012 when tryouts happened again for those seeking redemption and the same game plan produced the same outcome - a bass drum slot. There is something similar going on with math, but then I didn’t quite get math or music sorted until college. So, I don’t want to say much knowing that neither my apple nor his fell too far from the tree of reproductive randomness.

Young David in Turku

Young David and I spent a month away from Mom and Graham this year. Three weeks in Turku, Finland and a week in Dubrovnik, Croatia. For me it was mostly “work”. Not my Dad’s definition of work, but work all the same. When asked by his Mom what did he like about Finland he replied … “the pickled onions on hamburgers and the blondes”. Coming from Seattle, which is the 5^th whitest city in the US including nearly 40% Asians, the preponderance of blondes in Finland was probably shocking right off the plane. The pickles I can’t explain except that the Finns even make pickled herring taste good. In Croatia we swam every day in the crystal clear, cold sea and all signs of his Seattle-based sinus problems dried up. We also had our first Father-Son beer moment. Or I could say that I had a beer with my sandwich and he had a sandwich with his beer. Regardless, during this week I had a glimpse of the Man who will soon emerge from the Boy and I liked what I saw. Besides the pickled onions and blondes in Finland, in Croatia he gained a taste for fish, which also is no surprise because in Croatia they do fish right.

Dave and Donna on the Piazza del Campo, Siena

Some of you will have heard that next year we are moving to Baltimore. After nearly 20 years in Seattle, I never imagined leaving. The School of Pharmacy at the University of Maryland – Baltimore (aka UMB; www.pharmacy.umaryland.edu) though had other ideas. After nearly two years of back and forth discussions, I finally agreed that the best thing for both parties was to leave the School of Pharmacy at the University of Washington (sop.washington.edu) where I have been for nine years.  Part of the long time in discussions included trying to convince the family to move. Convincing the boys was easy because they didn’t really understand what they were agreeing to J. That’s not completely true, but given that we don’t move until July of 2013 our visit in April 2012 was so far away that they probably didn’t quite get the reality of the visit and move. Regardless, all of us enjoyed our tour because the folks at UMB showed us wonderful hospitality and the locals we met really loved to talk about their city. This despite the dangerous reputation of Baltimore that dates back to the white-flight days of the 70s and more recently the TV show “The Wire”.  For the record, I’ve not seen that show and probably won’t until I move there! The real challenge of moving a laboratory and a family without dropping the ball on either is now a reality for us. The lab has already started the transition.

Dave and Donna 25 years on

Donna and I had time to reflect on the future move and 25 years of marriage when in August when we went once again to Siena, Italy for a scientific conference and Turku, Finland. We also spent a day in Milan shopping and site seeing as well as a day in Helsinki on the way home. The week spent in Turku opened her eyes to the Finns who are at first glance are quite reserved. For example, after walking me into the lab each day she said “No one looks at you or even smiles.” For Americans who are in large part overly friendly to strangers, this military-like coming and going bothered her. However, after dinner in the homes of a few Finns she realized they are pretty much the same when it comes to hospitality but all business when it comes to to’ing and fro’ing. If you’re wondering what I am doing in Finland, you can read more about it here http://goodlett.proteomics.washington.edu and below that even is a link to a farewell lecture I gave to a local mass spectrometry group. We are excited and apprehensive about our fourth cross-country move, but I’m certain all will be well in the end.

That’s probably enough reviewing for this year. When I started to look for photos form the year, it seemed that most were of us at dinner. Maybe we eat out too much? Anyway, we wish you all a happy holiday season and prosperous new year. 

Dave, Donna, David The Younger, Graham and Trixie The 100 lb Lap Dawg.

David the Younger after swimming in Cavtat Harbor

Dave the Elder and Graham at Chinooks - 

Fisherman's Terminal, Ballard

Christmas Gift 2011

“Castanets, right?” the ginger haired boy politely asked David. “I was on cello” he continued. The two had just been part of an extraordinary winter concert at Ballard High School. The choir and orchestra combined with a guest soprano and bass to perform Carmina Buran. If you have never heard this piece, then I urge you to check it out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmina_Burana_(Orff) as it is marshal music at its best. The performance by high school kids was a tribute to their dedication and that of their teachers who directed them. David is in a percussion class along with thirty other kids at Ballard and about ten of them participated in this performance. His role was to accompany the soloists in a de facto duet with a syncopated castanet part. Between the stand out performance and literally standing out in the back row where the percussionists were visible to all, he apparently made an impact beyond La Famiglia. After a nonchalant grin and a nod to ginger, he was back to perusing the video game aisle and arguing with his brother, Graham.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare is mostly where David’s head is these days. For a while he was a Master Sergeant on his team, but resigned after realizing all the organizational work that was needed. It was quickly back to grunt work for him on the team as this allows him just enough time to slip in mostly A’s and B’s at school. Baseball season came and went with the usual mix of mental fielding slipups of a typical teenager interwoven with stellar backhanded, leaping catches. This came along with last year’s Ichiro-style whacks at bat that got him on base, but kept him frustrated that he could not hit the long ball. Not sure what he will do next year about baseball. Says he wants to play and he has started lifting weights to build upper body strength, but his Crohn’s condition really has hampered muscle development. This will simply take time to correct. Thankfully and amazingly to his GI doctor, he’s in remission. This came after a Summer long struggle that restricted his diet. For now the only remnants of that Cathartic diet are the almond milk he drinks with Hershey’s chocolate syrup every morning instead of dairy and his acerbic tongue that found a new voice in his dietary oppression. His tongue also gets a workout eating all that junk food again that forces him to live allowance to allowance as it were spending every dollar earned on food and hanging out with his mates.

In counterpoint to his brother’s often less than witty chatter and spendthrift ways, Graham has developed a steely cool discourse with words and a banker’s appreciation for a dollar. We all know that there is nothing more irritating than being defeated with a simple twist of words. David never admits defeat, but it is there nonetheless and covered up by his own banter. With Graham’s logic there are few flaws and even when wrong he is commanding seemingly logging somewhere why he was wrong. Listening to those two argue is like listening to a Republican debate where Gingrich yammers on and on cycling from one topic to the next without a break or obvious segue against a calm cool logic like that of a Ron Paul type. I’ve threatened to sign Graham up for the debate club when he gets to Ballard next year. “Life’s not a spectator sport” I like to remind him “and since you quit your music studies, making band in high school a moot point, you’ll be doing some other group activity there. Your choice or mine”, I say.

Graham really is quite a determined young man. For example, in less than a year he saved about $1000 to buy a new gaming PC. Industrious too, as he never takes lunch but always eats lunch. When I asked about this he says that most kids bring more food in their lunches than they can eat. So, he simply relieves them of this excess to prevent it going to waste. A humanitarian in the making perhaps, but I hope he didn’t relieve any of those same kids of cash they don’t need. Probably not, as I would have heard about this by now – right? I mean when he suggested to the girl in second grade who wanted to be in his playground club that the only way to join would be to drop her “pants”, we heard about this the same day from the Principal….. Donna blamed that incident on my instructing the boys in the fine art of “pantsing”….. Anyway, regarding the cash he saved up, he did have a bunch of questions about how to use PayPal. However, I put an end to that when it became clear that what he was planning was nothing more than an illegal scheme – in most countries - to free people from their cash. Another example of Graham’s resourcefulness is his Korean social security number, which he required in order to play on a Korean gaming server. I discovered this after seeing him play the PC game Maple Story (http://maplestory.nexon.net/) on a screen filled with nothing but distinctive Korean script (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_script). While he did learn some about the programming language Python (http://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/) this year, I didn’t think he knew much Korean tipping off this alert parent that something was amiss and forcing the question “why are you playing on a Korean server?” Turns out they get all the new game modifications before anyone else. It all looked legal and safe. So, I let that sleeping dog sleep on for the time being.

T’was more of the same for me and for Donna this year. My role as chair of an advisory board in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh et al. ended with the end of that grant, but a new avenue for collaborations opened up at BioCity (www.biocity.turku.fi) at the University of Turku in Finland. So for the next four years I’ll be traveling more to Finland than Scotland to oversee experiments on diabetes and ovarian cancer (http://www.fidipro.fi/pages/posts/international-expertise-for-research-in-service-innovations303.php). That’ll be a nice change of pace, but a company founded with a colleague in Edinburgh will keep my attention in the Scottish lowlands. Meanwhile on the coast of Croatia the mass spectrometry school (www.msbg.org) had its tenth anniversary this year in Dubrovnik and is on again for 2012. And for the first time in seven years I was back in Korea. This time I visited two of the guys who worked for me at the ISB who now have their own faculty positions. It was good to eat in Seoul again where traditional restaurants have a seemingly never ending variety of fermented roots and spicy vegetables.

Donna was once again slave to the Trustees wishes at church and to the S.H.A.R.E. homeless shelter. This church work mostly involved what I call the removals business. These ‘removals’ included the usual suspects from the naked man pleasuring himself in the back garden to the removal of bed bugs from the homeless shelter to the removal of the drugged out dudes in a street brawl during the weekly Saturday soup kitchen. Her exasperation remind me of the end of the poem in tribute to the martyred Good King Winceslas that reads “Ye who now will bless the poor, Shall yourselves find blessing”. If so, then she has got blessings in abundance waiting for her, but probably shouldn’t wait up for delivery. Fortunately, this year a new couple was in charge of the auction which was relief. Please note that I have nothing to do with the auction, nor any home maintenance for that matter, but Donna who does makes the work of one seem like the work of a couple of (groups of) people. These unwitting surrogates helped tremendously to maintain her physical and mental health into the holiday season.

In the end our hearts go out to all those suffering with under employment or no employment. While Seattle is doing better than most, there is talk of setting up parking lots for overnight accommodation for those forced to live in their vehicles. This, in addition to our tent cities that appear to be permanent fixtures, suggest things could be better here. Like the land rich, money poor ‘dirt’ farmers of the old South, these folk have almost enough to get by. Almost, but at least they have their vehicles’ roofs over their heads. So, we hope the new year brings you enough prosperity to be almost satisfied and that any extra that comes your way will be passed along to those in need, many of whom are working right beside you.

All the Best from the Goodletts in Seattle where our contact information remains the same as in 2010 elsewhere on this blog.

Christmas 2010

We celebrated my 50th birthday this year on 2 May at our favorite Sicilian restaurant - Mondellos. About 30 folks showed up to eat, chat and relax. I had told myself I would have six-pack by that day, but only a couple ridges developed. Oh well, as consolation I ended up with a six-pack of scotch. At fifteen years past actuarial middle-age, I’ll keep the unattainable goal just to get me outta bed. The scotch though, I will not keep. Like most my age I am about 10 erh, no 20 uhh, or maybe 30lbs past my svelte high school form. It seems that the trick to removing some of the excess requires a delicate balance between nursing injuries, rest and exercise, but I do not yet want to admit the truth that exercise is not enough. My trainer likes to remind me that “Da Nile” is not just a river in Eygpt, but a state of mind for some of his elderly clients. The lab also gave me a very nice 50th birthday party and as a present a soda stream (http://www.sodastreamusa.com/) carbonated water maker that I love.

Other than my geriatric milestone, the past year seems like a bit more of the same for us ... more school, more music lessons, more travel to the beach and farm in July, more xbox, more complaints about Dad’s cooking, more baseball, more travel for me, more xbox, more complaints about school work, more work for the homeless shelter auction for Donna, more xbox, more gray hair for me, more grants submitted and more manuscripts written and while not bedside reading the latter can be found via a link for publications from our lab webpage http://goodlett.proteomics.washington.edu/. Related to work, we continue to hold the Summer School on Mass Spectrometry in Biotechnology and Medicine each year in July in Dubrovnik, Croatia. This is one of the nicer and more relaxing trips I have made the last few years. Some photos can be found here on the School's website http://picasaweb.google.com/msbm.dubrovnik/. I hope to get the family over there some time as the boys could literally swim all day in the cool clear waters of the Adriatic and Donna could relax in the shade. Only the price of airfare is holding us back.

As mentioned, the boys played baseball again. And once again they complained all the way to the start of the season about being signed up against their will. Teenagers have rights or so they believe. As before they had the chance to sign up for a sport – any sport – but did not. So, we signed them up for the only sport they have ever played. Of course what they are really complaining about is loss of xbox time on the weekends when they can xbox for hours on end as opposed to the school week when they get only one hour per day. As for baseball, they both settled in to the season and did well. For example, Mint was the lead off hitter on his team for the entire year. He learned to wait for the pitcher to throw a first strike before swinging. Make the pitcher beat me was his mantra. He continued his Ichiro style batting style where the ball is whacked down hard to the infield dirt taking an awkward bounce and running the 90 ft. to first base fast enough to get on. However, his throwing arm continued to be a problem from a tear to the pectoral muscle the season before. This injury combined with the intervening off season during which he worked hard, not to rehab the injury, but at “hanging out” and xboxing kept him at second base where even had one spectacular behind the back snag on the run to get the runner out. And Graham too did well, but he is honestly not really in to it like his brother. He did become comfortable in the outfield catching those fly balls that hang in the sky forever. For the first time ever, I coached Mint’s team. I say coached, but this really was back to my high school trainer days as I kept the guys and the dugout organized more than coached.

Mint joined the symphonic band at Ballard High School this year where he is a freshman (www.ballardbeavers.org/) and where they are known as "the Beavers". His photo in the tuxedo above is from one of their performances of which there have been two. In the first he played crash symbols to which Graham snidely remarked “that ain’t hard”. We reminded Graham, who has a bit of a rhythm problem, that in this case timing is everything. The next concert featured Mint as the solo snare drummer performing roll after roll with perfect placement and volume control. Even the conductor gave him an atta-boy afterward. The part that he played brought out for the first time ever - that I can recall - a determination to get the part down. A week before the concert he did not have the part down, but after hours of practice at show time he was his cocky self. Like me he also had a physical milestone this year when half way through the year he was officially taller than me. Not a tall accomplishment by Western standards, but he was happy about it and by Christmas break he had all A’s save for one B in geometry. This is a 180 degree correction from the last several years where he talked more about dropping out of school because it was a useless waste of time. He was fond of saying that there were lots of examples of famous, rich people who had quit school – you know Dad “like Bill Gates and…” – well he didn’t have another example and was confused with that one as Gates dropped out of Harvard not high school. Anyway, all A’s and B’s is good enough for Dad. By the way, Mom and Dad are eagerly awaiting auction night for the Ballard High Beavers, fondly dubbed “Saturday Night Beaver”. Really?

The boys and I made it to the farm again and made a point of going down to Gulf Shores for a few days to see the oil spills and support the economy there. Judging from past years there were half as many tourists. While the water looked pretty clean on the first day, a short walk in the surf left your feet and ankles with an invisible sticky feel. On the second there were work crews out on the beach cleaning up the oil-sand mix with shovels and bags. That morning the boys immediately noticed a scene hearkening back to the Alabama days of my early childhood. A covered wagon full of African-Americans was being pulled on the beach by a tractor driven by a really well fed Caucasian man. It did seem a bit of an odd sight, but I tried to rationalize with them that 1) everyone was being paid – some more than others no doubt - and 2) that there are some jobs that some will not do. A case in point being the Mexicans and Mexican-Americans who do the back breaking work to pick fruit in our state that most of us would not or could not do. Thanks to these folk my favorite beach is clean and my fruit is affordable. Speaking of driving, thanks to my Dad the boys have begun to learn the fine art of cow dodging while driving his truck around the pasture. Asking them about the experience, returns teenage boy speak that makes it sound like they have driven for years. Speaking of bragging rights, Mint beat me and Graham two games in a row at putt putt golf and this in the blazing heat at Gulf Shores. That boy has got the trash talk of victory down like none I know. It does not quite work after a symphonic band concert though the same as for baseball. On that note, I have to say that relaying the experience of vacationing with two teenage boys is not really possible in a family letter. There is no distinction between proper dinner table manners and one’s solitary – or what one should keep solitary – thoughts. I will leave this topic with their favorite quip of the year “…that’s what she said” which apparently is appropriate to say after almost anything you can think of, but you’ll have to try it out yourself.

Donna has officially retired as chair of the Shelter board, but will remain on the board to help out the future chair. This means that after eight years someone else will be responsible for planning and executing the board’s annual homeless shelter auction. She will remain though as chair of the Trustees at church to finish repair work she began this year. She also has been busy planning repairs to our home which after fifteen years is in a need of a few face lifts. Trixie kicked this off for us by remodeling the original 1914 front door that had an oval glass pane in it. She had become a bit pathological about greeting the mail man each day to which I remarked to Donna more than few times “...ya know, maybe you should cover that glass with a curtain so she can’t see the him coming up on the porch…” Shortly thereafter, on hearing the mailman come up on the porch but being in the back of the house, she ran to greet him. By the time she went through the glass landing on the porch floor, the mailman – now on the side walk – turned remarking cool as a cucumber, “wow!” and kept on going. She needed a few stitches, but was otherwise fine. She now jumps on the couch and on to the front window pane…hmmm, I'm waiting for the next Trixie prescribed remodel. However, until then the most obvious on the list is the downstairs bathroom that Donna started ripping up back in May of 2009. In June of 2010 I finally demolished the back wall where all the plumbing is and hopefully by Spring of 2011 we will be able to use it again. Oh yeah, Donna - not to be outdone by her eldest at least without a fight - has taken up the drums. In protest to the cost of all these lessons and being results oriented, I am scheduling a family Spring concert at the drum school where we all study (http://www.seattledrumschool.com/). I'll keep you posted .....

By the Monday before Thanksgiving we had enough snow to shut the city down. As usual with some snow here the boys got a couple of extra days off from school. This always leads to sledding down the steep hill in front of our house. On Thanksgiving day there was still enough snow to sled. So up late after a late night of xboxing the boys went out for a few rides before we went to Chandler's for dinner (http://www.schwartzbros.com/chandlers.cfm). Pretty soon I hear Graham come in and go upstairs without a word. "That's odd", I think. So I go up to see why he came in so soon.......it turns out that as Graham headed down the hill on his sled, Mint jumped on top his sled and then on top of Graham riding him - and Graham's sled - to the bottom of the hill. In protest over being ridden so and the subsequent crash, Graham punched Mint in the head, then Mint punched Graham in the head, etc. After a few rounds with no one knocked out or even bloody, they both realized the disadvantages of this type communication - i.e. their heads and fists hurt. So they gave it up for more verbal abuse. Go figure, brotherly love expressed once again. So off we went for our typical all American, happy family Thanksgiving day dinner out.

We once more wish you all Happy Holidays from Seattle: Dave, Donna, Mint, Ham and Trixie. As before we can be found on FaceBook and otherwise reached at david.goodlett@gmail.com, donnamgoodlett@msn.com, minter.goodlett@gmail.com & graham.goodlett@gmail.com and viewed at picasaweb.google.com/david.goodlett/.