Construction

Life has been all about building things lately. Last week, I helped my good friend Richard build a new railing around his deck. We finished all but the top boards, which we will add in the not-too-distant future. There are about 70 linear feet of railing. Working at his home, which is nestled in the woods, was really fun–there were birds galore coming to the feeders constantly while we worked–Orioles, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Nuthatches, Wrens, Finches, Cardinals, etc. It was shady, cool, and colorful. Hard to find a better place to work.

The week before our Chicago trip, Rob and I dug some holes and poured some footings for a playhouse for Eleanor and Penny. While Rob was busy at his daytime job, I started work on the structure. I began on some rainy days by prefabricating the trusses and house walls. When it finally turned sunny again, I built the base atop the footings.

Then I put the prefabbed walls in place and the trusses atop. Four porch supports were added as well.

While we were in Chicago, Rob got a good start on the siding, as well as the windows and door. He also put the sheeting on the roof.

Over the past weekend, Rob and I worked together. That is fun in and of itself. We finished the gable siding, installed some vents, put quite a bit of the trim in place, and shingled the roof. Took this picture yesterday morning. Rob has lots more to do on his own, now that we are headed for the lake. I'm looking forward to pictures of the girls playing here.

Weekend in Chicago Area

We enjoyed a visit to the Chicago area this past weekend. On Friday, we stopped to visit Georgia, one of Kathie's Alpha Phi friends.

Next, we stopped to see Tom, Kris, Cullen and new baby Conor. Kris is Kathie's niece. The boys were really fun. Hadn't seen Cullen since he was a baby, and of course, now that he is two, there is lots more for him to say and do.

Friday was a miserable, cold, rainy day with temperatures barely reaching the low 40s. Henry had a baseball game that afternoon. Most of the boys had so many extra clothes on that you either couldn't see their uniforms or noticed that they were very padded with extra layers underneath. Henry was happy to have us there though, and he played well, including scoring the go-ahead run that eventually resulted in another win for Little Louie's (his sponsored team's name).

You can get some idea of the lovely weather for watching a game as we grandparents and parents occupied our ringside seats.

Afterwards, a stop at Starbuck's for some hot chocolate and coffee seemed like the right thing. The kids liked watching them make their treats.

Betsy took this great picture of us with three of our special grandkids.

On Sunday, Clara had to go out for baseball practice as well. Her game on Friday evening had been rained out. Fortunately, Sunday was a much better day for being outdoors.

Later, Henry and Clara taught Nana and me how to play Ticket to Ride, a board game that involves capturing train routes to link cities together. We enjoyed it! Frederick was more interested in iPad games and coloring pictures, however.

On Monday, I briefly stepped back out of retirement and into work mode and attended the 20th anniversary meeting of the Internet2 organization. Internet2 had invited lots of us old timers and past organization founders to join the event. I was one of 34 individuals (each of whom represented a major research university) who met at the O'Hare Airport back in 1996 to commit resources and time to the creation of an organization called Internet2. This was roughly at the time that NSF had decommissioned NSFNet, arguably the first true Internet. Those of us in higher education, especially at the so-called R1 research universities, were concerned that the subsequent commercialization of the Internet would not continue to serve higher education well, and that has proven to be largely true. Internet2 was a major turning point in the direction of a dedicated, very high performance backbone network for higher education. The resultant technology and advances have accelerated Internet capability and capacity on both the commercial and academic sides.

I am proud to have been a part of this effort, and it was great fun to reconnect with my old colleagues to celebrate all that has happened in the 20 years since. There were several sessions that dealt in a retrospective way with all the major milestones and events that have occurred over that time. I had been asked to make a very brief set of comments on my related roles at the founding, while a CIO at Iowa, and also while serving at NSF from 1998 to 2000, when I directed a program that provided significant levels of funding to aid universities in these developments.

In addition to my close friendships with the other Big 10 CIOs, some of my most cherished relationships are with other NSF colleagues from that time period. Here I am with George Strawn and Mark Luker. George and I were already good friends from the days when he was at Iowa State and I was in the Department of Computer Science at Iowa. George directed the division at NSF within which my program was housed, so he was my boss there. Mark Luker preceded me at NSF in the same capacity. Mark had been CIO at Wisconsin, so he and I were also good friends. Each of them has enjoyed further career opportunities in Washington, and the three of us have stayed in touch over the years.

Mothers Day, Birds, and Granddaughters

First of all, I want to wish a very Happy Mother's Day to all my daughters and daughters-in-law who are such wonderful parents to those delightful eight grandchildren of mine. I am also remembering with great fondness my own mother who has now been apart from me for over 37 years. Most of all, I wish a very Happy Mother's Day to my beautiful wife, without whom I would still be a frog!

I know the title to this posting is a strange mashup of things, but rather than string out the topics over several days and in order to be timely, I thought I'd just throw everything together. Several days ago, we looked out towards our bird feeders early in the morning to see this convention of goldfinches on the ground. There must have been 25 of them at the peak of the gathering. Such pretty yellow against the very green lawn.

I had made a couple of wren houses for friends, and while I was at it, I found a different design for one and decided to make it for myself. The plan suggested it was a haiku wren house. I don't know if that is quite true, since I haven't tried working up an appropriate 17 syllable poem, but since haiku poems are meant to describe the natural world, maybe it is possible. Regardless, I like the looks of it in our flowering crab apple tree. Now we await its being found by a wren!

One night last week, Clara contacted me via FaceTime to explain that she was working on a social studies project on family histories, migrations of people to the United States, and the like. She had all kinds of questions for me regarding our family and how and why the individuals came to be here. Fortunately, I have long kept a fairly detailed genealogical history. One of the fun things I can do is create an ancestry chart, which for a selected individual, shows the parents, grandparents, and all prior generations from whom the selected individual descends. In Clara's case, I was able to take it back 12 generations. My friend Richard kindly printed a copy of it in large format so that it was readable. I rolled it up and included lots of related information and stories about the people on the chart and sent it to Clara, who found it waiting for her on Friday when she got home from school. I understand she is very excited and is working on a presentation to take back to school with her this next week. Fun!

Finally, yesterday we went to Prairie High School in the morning. That was the site for the annual Eastern Iowa Girls Run 5K. Girls on the Run is an international organization dedicated to inspiring women to be healthy and confident. Eleanor is involved in the organization, and she did the 5K run yesterday (about 3.1 miles). Rob and Carrie's friend Sara was her "running buddy." It was really nice to see them enjoying this opportunity together and to see that Eleanor has role models like this. Here they are as they near the last turn.

And here is the final turn toward the finish line.

I loved how Eleanor looked up to check to see that her parents and grandparents were actually there for the big finish.

And, I especially liked this picture, where I caught them in what seemed like perfect running synchronization.

If you click here, you can see the results for the nearly 1,000 girls who ran the race. Eleanor and Sara finished at numbers 230 and 231, with chip times of 34:16. (They wear electronic chips that time them from when they cross the starting line at the beginning to crossing the finish line at the end.) Eleanor said this was about 7 minutes better than she did last year. She looked good. Maybe we have a track star or cross country athlete in our future!

Time in Minneapolis

We were in Minneapolis recently. Will and Sandy both had obligations away from home, so they had asked us to help get Anders to school and to spend some time with him. It was a good chance too to see Jessica in her new position at Redstone Grill, where we had a really nice meal.

After picking Anders up from school the next day, we went over to Jess and Mike's home to see Maia and Leo and Mike's parents who are visiting for some days.

On Friday, after Will returned from his business trip, we went to see Ron and Paula and their new dog Schatzi.

We had pizza at lunchtime at Pompeii Pizza. Anders had his own ideas about the pictures I wanted to take.

Here are Paula and I with our wonderful and very tolerant spouses.

Anders snuck into the middle of the picture eventually. Schatzi thought Anders made a good foot rest.

Before we came home on Saturday, we had breakfast at a favorite place called Emily's.  Here is Will and his old (and getting older) old man.

Anders and Nana made some goofy, funny face pictures, but I liked this one best.

Hard Choices (Well, Really, They're Easy Choices Now)

I know that not everyone who reads my blog cares for Hillary Clinton. However, given the craziness of the campaigns thus far and some of the outrageous politics I have seen lately, I cannot keep from offering my two cents.

I very recently finished reading Clinton's book, entitled Hard Choices, which mostly documents her time as Secretary of State. There is little doubt that she wrote this as a prelude to entering the race for the Democratic nomination for President, and I know that not all book reviewers have judged it to be a perfect book. Nevertheless, I found it very interesting, and a worthwhile read. One of my strongest reactions to it occurred on nearly every page as I read. That was simply that I could not imagine Donald Trump even coming close to understanding what was involved in each of the often delicate State Department and international political negotiations that she discussed. Clinton knows the world's players and she understands the personalities, the factions, the tradeoffs, and the strategies that must make up the handling of any situation in which our nation becomes involved. Trump would have none of this ability, and his vociferous, negative, prejudiced, hostile attitudes make him an exceedingly dangerous person. I tremble at the thought of nuclear codes being in his hands. I sincerely hope that each of you will consider these matters as you make your voting decisions going forward.

I am a Democrat and quite liberal, I guess, but I do try hard to stay informed and to read opinions coming from both the right and the left. One of the conservative writers I most admire is David Brooks, who is published in the New York Times. He recently wrote an editorial you can find by clicking here that speaks volumes to me about what the Trump and Sanders campaigns and phenomena mean for our country and our future. Brooks says, "This election — not only the Trump phenomenon but the rise of Bernie Sanders, also — has reminded us how much pain there is in this country." He goes on to invite us to think about a new national story and for each of us to become involved in embracing our fellow citizens, all of our fellow citizens, and to engage with them. Brooks says, "Trump will have his gruesome moment. The time [our time] is best spent elsewhere, meeting the neighbors who have become strangers, and listening to what they have to say."


And as long as I'm venting and spouting off, let me urge all my fellow Iowans to unseat Senator Charles Grassley this year. I have said that I am a Democrat, but there were years, many years ago, not recently, when I happily voted for Grassley, who used to truly represent Iowa and who stood against vested interests in Washington in favor of doing what I thought of as the right thing. He is no longer that person. Today, he seems to be a pawn of the right and to simply reiterate and defend stands taken by the Republican party and other conservative elements. I suspect big money interests are buying his vote. I have written to him, and to Senator Ernst as well, about matters that trouble me--out of control gun rights, unwise subsidies, and most recently the blocking of the Supreme Court nomination, just to name a few. What I always get back are canned positions and deflections to other issues. It is past time for Iowa to elect someone new to hold that seat. At the moment, I think State Senator Rob Hogg would be an excellent choice (click here for more information). I knew Senator Hogg's father, Bob Hogg, who was an extraordinary Professor of Statistics at the University of Iowa. Indeed, I studied statistics under him. If Rob Hogg is half the man his father was, he will be a strong and ethical leader going forward.