C H R I S T M A S 2 0 1 7

In January this year having been in Baltimore long enough to have life settle down, I thought I had a bit of spare time. So, I started the year with some jazz lessons with local jazz guitarist Skip Grasso (www.skipgrasso.biz). In Seattle I spent time studying with Ryan Burns (ryanburnsmusic.com), a local jazz pianist, trying to understand jazz theory, not piano. With Skip, who is supremely enthusiastic about teaching jazz, each one-hour lesson typically lasted two. I think quite a bit sank in, but it required lots of pondering for which I have plenty of time, but even more hands on time which has been sadly precluded by my travel schedule. It was clear that my music theory understanding was way ahead of my musical reduction to practice. So, the lessons went into a holding pattern while I tried to get under my fingers what Skip was saying. For me this meant going back to the dominant 7 chord and mixolydian scales and arpeggios and its cousin the altered scale. The dominant 7 chord provides an opportunity for dissonance in jazz and music in general. It’s the tension part of the tension and release motif of jazz. Since last seeing Skip I have spent the 5-10 minutes per day I have available focused on comparison of dominant chord movement in the Major Blues, Minor Blues and Jazz Blues all in the key of Bb, which has helped but much work remains.

Dave with Ted Hupp (left) in the Lower Damgate, UK at the Ardgour symposium; see www.kilgourlab.com/ardgour-2017-travel-info/. Ted is originally from West Virginia but moved to Scotland for his postdoc with David Lane of p53 fame and never returned. He is also PI of the newly funded ICCVS (vide infra) in Gdansk Poland where we aim to discover peptide neoantigens that can turn on a patient's own immune system to kill cancer.

Just before the new year started Donna and I drove to Alabama for my Dad’s 85^th birthday. For that I learned a few songs from my childhood, which were infused with the sounds of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. As a young man I steered clear of these legends, but time provided context and appreciation. Like comfort food, which I would not eat when younger such as turnip greens with hot sauce that I now find delicious, these music legends now connect me to the nostalgia of my childhood. As we were leaving Dad said it was his best birthday ever. I don’t know about that, but I do know it wasn’t the best those songs - Folsom Prison Blues and I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry - have ever been played. He enjoyed them though, which was the point and they were certainly easier to master than jazz where I am still trying to maneuver through Autumn Leaves’ Major ii V I IV connection to a Minor ii v i VI.

Mr Dave’s home office decorated by Miss Donna*; for more on Mr Dave’s thoughts on this and that mostly related to biomedical issues please see twitter.com/goodlettlab1. *In Baltimore they often refer to older folk of course using Sir or Mam if they don’t know you, but if they do know you then you are likely to be addressed as Miss Donna or Mr Dave.

During the drive down and back to Moulton we listened exclusively to the Tom Petty channel (aka the TP channel) – that’s 14 hours one way of TP – all because Donna is a humongous TP fan and because she was driving the whole way had the driver's choice of music rule on her side. Ugh. Not my favorite, but there are some Mudcrutch (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudcrutch) songs that I like and even a few TP songs, but most of his compositions don’t do much for me. Not long after the new year began we realized TP was coming to Baltimore in July on his 40^th anniversary tour. Shortly thereafter TP tickets came in the email for her January birthday. I have to admit that even though I’m not a fan of his style, the concert was really well done. They were one of those bands that pretty much did the songs as you expect to hear them, which is no easy feat in part because as a musician it becomes a bit boring night after night….for 40 years! Sadly, TP passed on to the next world by Summer’s end as did one of my favorites - Chris Cornell of Temple of the Dog, Audio Slave and Sound Garden fame (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Cornell).

La Famiglia waiting on Kansas to perform at the Art Model Lyric Performance Center which is only a 15 minute walk from our crib in Bolton Hill.

30 years ago this past May Miss Donna and I got hitched at Dalraida United Methodist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Over the years I have tried unsuccessfully to uncover the origin of the world Dalraida, which is also the name of the neighborhood I grew up in from ’66 – ’78. It is suspiciously close to the spelling of the ancient Scottish kingdom of Dal Riata (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1l_Riata), but that is as far as I can get. We spent our anniversary this year in New York City where we got to meet the infamous Hari Kondabolou most recently of Apu fame (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Kondabolu) who was performing at Caroline’s comedy club. He has a sharp tongue when it comes to white privilege in the US, which we really appreciated because we too are tired of listening seas of white haired white men go on about what is good for the country. Some though find his routine offensive enough to leave mid-show. C’est la vie. He is a hoot! Donna also got to see the Liberal Redneck (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trae_Crowder) perform in WA DC this year. He is also a hoot, but in this case for his ability to poke fun at redneck culture, from which we are not too far removed.  

Mr Dave’s nemesis at the YMCA located in Baltimore at the site of the old stadium where Johnny Unitas played for the Baltimore colts which I watched on TV Sundays after church with my Dad. For the last year I have been stuck at around 5 sets of 5 reps of 225lbs for deadlifts and 185lbs on squats and bench press.

The reason to go to NYC instead of some exotic locale was that work circumstances meant that I would be in the Bronx at Albert Einstein Medical University right before our anniversary. While we had discussed going back to Cumberland Island where we honeymooned, the $600 a night was not appealing (greyfieldinn.com). Instead, we already planned to go to Florence Italy and Split Croatia in 2018, and thus didn’t see a reason to splurge on a 30^th anniversary trip just for the heck of it. Besides, NYC has more than enough sites to keep you busy for a few days. We even made it to the top of the Empire state building this time and ate our fill at numerous delicious spots including Korean at gaonnurinyc.com; nouveau Americana at thesmithrestaurant.com and overpriced Americana at www.bryantparkgrillnyc.com. We also spent a long day in Central Park and at the Metropolitan Museum where we wore our feet out seeing as much as possible.

Miss Donna taking a break at The Met in NYC, but thinking "Can we go back to the hotel now?". 

Meanwhile, the boys have been hard at work at University. Graham at the University of Maryland College Park studying Chemical Engineering, which is even harder to do well in than chemistry which I studied. David on the other hand is at Towson University in the pre-medicine program, but truth be told he, like his relative Mike Goodlett who is an MD for Auburn University sports, is mainly interested in sports medicine practice. Neither program is easy. So both of them are busy bees working hard to secure their futures. Both guys had jobs this past Summer. Graham worked in a microbiology laboratory optimizing an extraction protocol for bacterial lipids and David went door-to-door in the oppressive Baltimore humidity selling new roofs. Judging from conversations with his Mom Graham is a fan of logic and understanding life from first principles, while David is wishing he had enough money to turn my 2004 Subaru Forest XT, which he commutes in, into a tuner. Fortunately, he can’t afford all the modifications!

Miss Donna with her Resist Hon* sign at the 2017 Women’s march in Washington, D.C. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Women's_March), which had so many people (estimates range from 440k to 500k people in WA DC alone) they could not march making it in fact a rally. 

* Hon = a popular euphemism for honey here in Baltimore, or as they say here Ball-mor not unlike where I grew up Mun-gum-ree instead of Montgomery.

Donna has taken a page from her past and worked for most of the year, but also protesting a bit on two occasions, the : 1) 2017 Women’s March and 2) Science March. At work she is an office administrator for a naturopath she met as a patient (sunlightnaturalhealth.com). As an expert uber organizer, which drives me crazy with my fail safe pile based method of organization, she has been doing everything she can to help them corral the loads of paperwork that comes with running a small, independent medical practice. Having the boys out of the house has meant she had time to take care of herself again part of which was just getting out of the house to work. However, she also signed up recently for a service provide by a company called Arivale (arivale.com) that my former boss Leroy Hood (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leroy_Hood) began. They run hundreds of standard biochemical tests on you but also provide a genetic profile to try to determine your overall state of health. After all the tests are done they provide counseling to try to correct any biochemical markers that might be out of range. 

This type of medical counseling is part a new wave of trying to better understand what defines healthy normal humans, which is not as easy as it might seem. While the National Institutes of Health has spent loads of money in the last 50 years studying disease, not much has been done to define what healthy normal looks like. In short it turns out that there is a wide range of healthy that can look heterogeneous with some folk who are normal being outside the standard normal ranges and some who have disease are inside the range. Arivale is one of the companies leading the way to the future of what they call data-driven health. The data part is not new but the amount of data they collect is well beyond what historically has been collected at one time on an individual patient. For example a typical doctor will listen to your complaints and order a few tests, whereas Arivale order everything all at once and then diagnose you. This concept is an offshoot of the Institute for Systems Biology (systemsbiology.org) that Hood created in 2000 that sought to define biological organisms as an engineer would reverse engineer how something worked by first defining all of the parts and their range of functions before developing a model of the whole system.

Jeff the Peroni drinking redneck rooster (made in Tennessee) that Miss Donna bought for herself for her 30^th wedding anniversary present, but from Mr Dave she got pearls.

 

Merry Christmas from the Baltimore Goodletts!

P.S. below are some leftover photos from the year

Dave lecturing about the importance of longitudinal as opposed to pair-wise comparisons for discovery of biomarkers of tipping points in disease progression at Clinprot (clinprot2017.org/) in Moscow.

Not the Heineken palace in Moscow but the Kremlin from a boat tour through downtown Moscow.

Dave, Garry and Eric in Dublin for HUPO (hupo2017.ie/dublin-ireland) at the Marker Hotel watching a rugby match.

Yes. Guinness (www.guinness-storehouse.com/en) tastes better at the source!

Mint ready to drive Ham to college park to start the 2017-2018 academic year.

The remains of Dave’s hogfish lunch in Key West in April on the way to the North American FTICR MS conference (nationalmaglab.org/news-events/events/for-scientists/ft-ms-conference) with my Russian friend Yury Tsybin of Spectroswiss (spectroswiss.ch) fame just out of camera range.

Side one of Miss Donna’s Science March sign.

Side two of Miss Donna’s Science March sign.

Dave “incognito” at Hotel Croatia water side for two days R&R (www.adriaticluxuryhotels.com/en/hotel-croatia-dubrovnik-cavtat) in Cavtat, Croatia.

Dave’s traditional post-MSBM (www.msbm.org) lunch of grilled squid at Hotel Croatia.

Promenade in Gdansk Poland where Dave will soon be a Visiting Professor at the International Centre for Cancer Vaccine Science (www.iccvs.ug.edu.pl/).

Christmas 2016

C  h  r  i  s  t  m  a  s      2  0  1  6

A few days before he was due to move into his dormitory at College Park, Graham received a diagnosis that he had a Lyme disease infection. Terrible news, but at least we could now explain the mysterious aches and pains in his joints that had gotten worse over the course of the Winter of 2016. The primary organism causing Lyme’s symptoms, Borrelia burgdorferi, prefers synovial fluid as its home in mammals, which in turn is why it can lead to arthritis like symptoms. Way back in January of 2016 Graham had been the picture of a healthy 18 year old setting a personal best bench press record of 235 lbs. At 150 lbs he was then 10 lbs heavier than me, but half the body fat! This record had come through hard work and determination to stay on a diet and work out regime designed to build muscle. He has now not worked out since roughly May due to the lethargy, aches and pains that accompany the infection.

I also had a bit of a health scare this year. It ended with me waking up in the emergency room seeing a nurse coming up each pant leg with scissors. Yeah! Not an unusual dream, but in this case it was no dream and my pants were soaked in blood. As they tossed the jeans aside I recalled fainting as I was checking myself into the ER. Apparently, I made a bloody mess all over the receptionist’s rug. She also almost fainted! Regardless, I highly recommend this approach to those not wanting to wait endless hours in the ER. A few minutes before passing out as I was walking into the ER Donna, who dropped me off, said “are you, OK” to which I replied “yep”. I was, but only long enough to tell the receptionist my name and that I had had a colonoscopy that morning. 

All had gone well after the routine colonoscopy until a few hours after getting home when I got my first period, so to speak. Ugh. That didn’t happen with my first colonoscopy years before. There was no mistaking the sight of bright red blood where it shouldn’t as a problem that needed solving. A couple of phone calls to the doctor later and it was clear the only thing to do was go to the ER. All’s well that ends well, I reckon. Kudos to the ER staff and intermediate care nurses who treated me like family for the several days I was in hospital. So, much for preventative medicine, but I still encourage you all to have a routine and hopefully uneventful colonoscopy.

On a more positive note, Graham finished high school well enough to receive a President’s Merit award at the University of Maryland which provides $20k over four years of study. Given his interests in hormones, metabolism and the differences in individual outcomes on the same training regime, he has started a degree in the chemistry-biochemistry program. That meant a typical tough first semester with chemistry and calculus, but it seems he has in the end done well and will continue in the program next semester.

Meanwhile at Towson University, and only about 20 minutes from our home, David also had a good semester in their business program. Unlike Graham’s interest in biochemistry, he is not sure if wants to continue in a business curriculum. What is certain is that his health has vastly improved on humira allowing him to also move out into a dormitory and to focus on school in a way he could not before. He is hoping to transfer to College Park in the Fall and next semester’s grades will tell the tale of whether they let him in or not. The University of Maryland is quite competitive being ranked just below the University of Washington, which was the other school Graham was accepted to.

With our nest cleared out, we relaxed a bit and went on our first Empty Nest Tour. This took us in to Croatia in October. First to Zagreb where I spoke at a Lost in Translation event – yes, I’m always working – and where we made it to Mirogoj Cemetery, one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world and Plitvice Lakes a UNESCO heritage site of stunning beauty with hundreds of waterfalls. From Zagreb we flew south to Cavtat for a couple days, and then Dubrovnik – Lokrum for a few more days, the latter two of which are filming sites for Game of Thrones. 

In Dubrovnik we stayed with a long time acquaintance, Miško Ercegović, at his Sesame Inn and dined at his restaurant that makes no doubt the best beef carpaccio in the world … best in the world! Donna, not one to try anything exotic, went out on a limb and loved it. She even had the octopus carpaccio, which was delightfully light compared to the beef carpaccio.

Lokrum island was not quite the same as in July when I am usually there and when there is a deafening drone of cicadas, which evokes fond memories of my childhood in the South, but the island was still beautiful and still over run with peacocks. Fortunately, it was still warm enough to swim. On our last day in Dubrovnik we had an absolutely terrible meal at one of the side streets restaurants which I knew were hit or miss. A miss for sure, but we had nice company – a retired German teacher - and a bottle of Croatian malvazija, a white wine in the style of sauvignon blanc. Naturally that meal was followed by a nap, and then drinks in the Sesame’s bar with some exotic, local (odorous) cheese and homemade bread before dinner. All of this courtesy of Marina, a Cordon Bleu trained chef. Dinner saw another bottle of wine consumed. This time a Croatian red – a Plavic Mali. And, just as we were finishing along comes Misko, who was done hosting for the night, with a bottle champagne. It would have been rude to say no. So we three finished that too. Fortunately, all the walking we did meant there was never a hangover in sight!

Meanwhile back at the Baltimore brownstone, Donna got a new couch. It was only her third in 30 years, which seems to coincide with her new car every decade. Those new cars though are much too painful – for her body, as each prior one has been totaled in an accident that she walked away bruised and battered from along with my bank account – for me to discuss. Anyway, Trixie, who formerly ruled the old cloth couch, is not happy with the new leather one because she can’t quite get a grip to stay put, but no doubt she’ll adjust. With the empty nest, Donna is also back in the gym being trained by the stout young, handsome Dan who no doubt reminds her of the former much taller and handsomer me. Erh, well maybe.

Anyway, she is in fact glad to be back in the gym, which is good for all of us. We also made it once again to Seattle this year and this time for the wedding of Sonia Ting, a former programmer in my lab at the University of Washington. Was great to eat and drink with many of our old friends from our rainy Seattle child rearing days, many of whom also are now empty nesters. …  and at long last after years of discussion and before leaving Seattle, Donna got a tattoo! You’ll have to come for a visit though to see it. With the boys mostly away at University, we mostly have two vacant rooms with adjoining baths only 10 minutes walk from Baltimore's Penn station from which WA DC, NYC and Philly are a short ride away. So, feel free to come for a visit.

 Merry Christmas from the Baltimore Goodletts!

Dave and Mint at Mint’s 20^th birthday dinner.

Graham and Donna at Mint’s 20^th birthday dinner.

Mint, Mom, Dad, Graham, Donna and Dave at Graham’s high school graduation.

Donna in Seattle.

Dave on the Iron Throne on Lokrum island.

Dave and Donna at Mirogoj cemetery, Zagreb.

C A U T I O N    T R U M P    T R A I L E R
 

P.S. Its inescapable that I would close the letter without a comment on Trump’s victory. One thing for certain is that many of his election promises were idle ones. Spoken simply to win and now having done so he has started walking them back. Among others, why not investigate Clinton? Surely that will eventually bear fruit so that she can be locked up. Sadly, its much more likely that his attacks on the press will reinvigorate the spirit of Watergate resulting in his impeachment rather than her being locked up. But, before that happens I really hope someone takes away his twitter account. Geezus. He can't leave criticism alone, can he? As shown in the Frontline piece, which was possibly the most balanced piece of reporting all season on he and Clinton, rightly or wrongly he was (bigly) trained to double down on any and all criticism. That trait seems like a disaster waiting in the West wing, so to speak. Anyway, he is our President now. So I hope he is successful. As a conservative I know said "I survived Obama. So surely you can survive Trump". Let's hope so.

 

c h r i s t m a s 2 0 1 5

La famiglia relaxing at the Mariners versus Orioles game in Camden yards. Go M’s and for that matter Go Hawks!

The year started and ended for me with trips to Amsterdam. In January I spoke at a chromatography event (www.scm-7.nl) about our surface acoustic wave nebulization (SAWN) technology being commercialized by Deurion, LLC of Seattle (www.deurion.com). This company was set up in 2011 by me and Pat Langridge-Smith of Edinburgh. Its built around technologies developed as part of the RASOR consortium in Scotland. Unfortunately, the highly successful RASOR consortium has no web footprint outside of a mention on Pat’s website; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIRCAMS. 

Dave’s Subaru buried in Baltimore’s snow where the year started with a heck of a lot of snow. Not as much as Boston, but a lot.

In January Amsterdam was freezing cold, wet and overcast and in December the weather was different only in that it was not yet freezing. This last time I visited to speak at the Professorial inauguration of longtime friend and colleague, Garry Leander Corthals, at the University of Amsterdam; http://hims.uva.nl/shared-content/events/symposia/2015/12/casa-seminar.html. The Dutch take very serious the appointment of Professors as the inaugural lecture was given from the pulpit of the local church. It was a bit like an American church wedding in that the family was escorted out after the new Professor and then the attending Professors and then the general audience were allowed to leave. Even the after event had a line in waiting to speak to the new Professor just as we have for the bride and groom. 

December 2015 with Garry and Dave preparing for his inaugural address at the Academisch-cultureel centrum at SPUI 25 in Amsterdam (www.spui25.nl).

By midyear it was once again time for the annual Mass Spectrometry in Biotechnology and Medicine Summer School in Dubrovnik, Croatia (www.msbm.org). For me this is like Christmas in July because by July – just like December – I’m usually mentally exhausted and need a bit of a break. Most of the effort to set the event up takes place in the first couple of quarters of the year. So by the time we arrive most of the preparation is done leaving some time to relax with colleagues and the students. It is though still a bit chaotic with 45-50 participants and two dozen faculty. However, this year we had close to a record number at nearly 60 participants which was a bit much logistically. We managed, but having around 45 is some how a much easier number to organize food and exams and excursions for. Next year will be the tenth version of MSBM, but it hasn’t been held every year until recently. The first was held way back in 2001 in September. I was in Korea on 11 September that year and intending to fly to Croatia for the first MSBM. Was just as well because I could not come back to the US any way for about another week. At that time Dubrovnik still had the scars of war with many homes in the old town still having large holes in their red tile roofs from the bombs lobbed from the adjacent hill into the city. 

Above is the view from across the harbor in Cavtat looking out from Hotel Croatia, which is just to the South of Dubrovnik and much less crowded making it a better getaway than Dubrovnik.

At work the year ended with establishment of a Baltimore based company, Pataigin, LLC, set up with long time microbiology collaborator Robert Ernst to commercialize technology to more rapidly identify bacteria direct from specimen. In 2016 we plan to add more intellectual property to address needs in development of vaccine adjuvants and anti-inflammatory therapeutics. Erik Nilsson, whose origins are in the ethnic Swede-Finn minority of Finland, has been busy in 2015 running both Deurion and Pataigin from Seattle and at least for the moment does not seem sorry our paths crossed, but he has been over run with work by these startups. Without someone like Erik who has made a career of starting companies neither startup would be possible as I don’t have time to do it and legally can’t as a Professor at a state owned University.

David with nearly a year’s worth of hair in attendance at his maternal great grandmother, Reba Roberts Robinson's funeral.

While in Finland in early April seven hours ahead of Baltimore I had a text from Donna that she and David were in the emergency room. Appendicitis they thought, but I suggested it might be from Crohn’s. A typical emergency room story followed in that they were ignored for hours and hours and hours. Finally an MRI showed it was not appendicitis but lesions from Crohn’s threatening to rupture. Doing so would mean septic shock could set in quickly which is often fatal. So, while they suffered hours of being ignored, I cut short my trip to Turku and headed home. It would be my 55^th birthday on 2 May before surgery would remove a foot a his small intestine too riddled with lesions to heal even after nearly a month on a pic line as his only form of nutrition. If you wonder what a pic line is then see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripherally_inserted_central_catheter.

David rollin round da ER

A couple months after surgery and in Seattle for the Summer he started humira. This treatment, which we worried about being too powerful and dangerous, has proven to be a miracle drug. With the TNF-a under control he became a new person reborn from years of being inflamed putting on 30 lbs by end of Summer. This Fall has seen him enjoy being at Towson University and doing very well in an economics program after having to go through medical withdrawal the prior Spring. 

The Goodletts formerly of Montgomery, Alabama reunited at Cecil Lewis’ wedding in June.

Actually on his 19^th birthday on 27 April while at the end of his pic line therapy, the 2015 Freddy Gray riots ensued. As we live in the heart of the city, cars and stores were burned and looted within a mile of our house. Closer still – within a few blocks – if you only count looting. Richard Sherman had the prior year railed against use of the word thugs to describe his legion of boom, but Baltimore’s black Mayor did not hesitate to describe those trying to destroy the city as thugs. As usual very few bad actors caused most of the problems and the same can be said for the police in the Freddy Gray and other cases. Most police do their jobs well with good intentions while being overworked and underpaid. Most police departments are dealing with the ramifications of Reagan’s dismantling of the mental healthcare system.

The Milwaukee chief of police has summed up the difficult problems several times in the last year better than I can. If you care to read about it you can do so here http://www.headlinepolitics.com/police-chief-goes-lack-coverage-black-black-crimes/ and/or here http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/caused-dramatic-tipping-point-deadly-shootings/. No matter where, after many generations of social disparities implementing solutions is difficult. There is actually no shortage of solutions, nor good people trying to help, but cities like Baltimore lack an appropriate tax base to implement solutions. The parts of the city worst hit in April are the same parts that have never recovered from the riots of 1968 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_riot_of_1968). That was the beginning of the end of civility in Baltimore. Today, its common to hear people screaming epithets at each other in person on the street or into their phones. So its no wonder that Baltimore’s murder rate has sky rocketed this year along with Milwaukee’s and Chicago’s and other formerly great cities.

Graham R and David M Goodlett at the wedding of their first cousin Cecil Lewis’ in Alabama.

Both boys once again spent a significant part of their Summer in Seattle. David working for a friend's catering business and Graham for a friend's construction business. Graham, now 18, is doing better than well in his international baccalaureate program at Baltimore City College High School. In short, he has excellent grades and SAT scores. His interest in body building and a detailed weight lifting program have led him to an interest in metabolism; the differences between individuals and outcomes for the same training effort and food consumed. As such he is considering studying chemistry and or biochemistry at University. While he has and will apply to a number of schools (Univ of WA, Northeastern, Johns Hopkins, and UM College Park), he is most interested in UM College Park where he and I spent a day in September touring campus. His lifting and dieting plan (he weighs all his food to precisely calculate nutritional content) has him now at about 14% body fat capable of benching 235 lbs at 5’5” and 154 lbs. By contrast, at 5”6” and 152 lbs I have about 20% body fat and can't bench 235 lbs! Don’t want to either. Looks heavy!

Graham benching 235 lbs.

In hindsight it seems Donna spent much of the year repairing this old house. A ruptured sewer pipe on the outside back wall had to be replaced. A rotten old wooden door to the basement needed to be replaced. The gate to the patio had to be replaced. The koi pond had to be drained and cleaned. A dead willow tree had to be removed. The sprinkler system in the patio had to be repaired. The chimney for the living room had to be cleaned, but to get it to where we can use it is another $5000 that we don't want to spend at the moment. The shared wall in the back of the house needs to be repaired as brick and mortar in many places are in danger of coming down on us when dining outside, but the neighbor is so far reluctant to spend the money. Me too, but its my head that its gonna fall on. So we may have to pay to repair it ourselves. C’est la vie!

Donna’s constant companion and sleeping buddy when I’m away Trixie in what use to be my chair.

Outside of being Mrs Handyman and driving the boys, neither of whom has a driver’s license (C’mon guys!!!), around town she more or less started and ended the year well relaxing with friends in Seattle. In February I needed to be in San Francisco for an NIH (www.nih.gov) review meeting. So, she went along as far as Seattle where we spent a few days visiting friends. Then in September I needed to be in Vancouver BC for an international meeting (www.hupo.org) and she spent an entire week there with me joining for a few days at the end of the week to visit friends and Deurion which is located on the University of Washington campus in Fluke Hall which houses an incubator for startups. Seattle had the driest Summer ever recorded this year but I feel sorry for all those (20,000) folk who have just arrived to work for Amazon because that was no normal Summer. I can remember Summers that lasted no more than one month – August. My last graduate student, Lucas Monkkonen, graduate from the University of Washington this year. So, the only ties there now are our friends and Deurion. 

View of the Space Needle in February from the Chihuly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Chihuly) glass exhibit.

Happy Holidays from the Baltimore Goodletts: Dave, Donna, David and Graham!!!

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.