May 2011

Hey there mathbaby,

You are no longer a baby. You are moving out of toddler to big girl. Still coming to terms with that. I'm writing this for you, speaking to where you are now and not to where you are going to be in 10 or 20 years. Here is hoping that you get through both well. Excellently. I want to be there for you, but the future is not something that comes with a guarantee - or at least not many.

All success in life requires having a team. The family is the first team. Mom, dad, sibs .. assuming you get all of those - they can be a good team or a bad one. You don't get to pick the team you are on except that you get to pick what kind of team-member you are. Later in life you get to pick your team, your goals, .. some. Not all but better than no selection. Read "Outliers" by Gladwell for some examples of team successes, and failures. I wish someone would have told me that - its good to know as an adult.

When I was a kid there was an amazing and noble friend for our family - Doc Dye. He was (and is) a good man. His greatest gift to me was to show me that it was possible to not live in the environment of economic, spiritual, and moral poverty that was around me for most of my childhood. The way out of the darkness is to choose the light - choose it with your mind, your heart, and your actions - every day. Every day. It took a while for the lessons to sink in, but that was the substance. As a grandfather he took in 12 (!) of his grandkids. He and his wife Suzy (I told you about her some) though they never had children of their own body - they were father and mother in many ways to a very large number of people. I admire him and aspire to be like him in a number of ways. As a troubled (half-crazy) 16-18 year old kid I was likely much more cost to him than benefit, but both he and his wife were very gracious. Though it is many years away, and we are all in a places in life that makes proximity impossible - they are still a team to me because they are in my heart and are defining parts of my self. As long as I exist, some part of them exists through me - not a child of the body, but a child of the consequence of their choices and actions. They are a good team to me still.

I wonder sometimes if you will ever read this. It goes back to the unknown future - I can know what I intend by the blog, by these letters, but not what I accomplish. I hope you do.

God gets me through. I'm like a blind man walking - i don't know the road either 1 foot, or 100 miles from me but he picks me up and helps me walk the line he wants me to walk. He has done me amazingly well - he brought you into my life as well as your mommy - so as scary as walking blind is I have some reasons to trust His intentions. God has been very good to me. I hope you find him good to you. He gives challenges, sometimes ones so big only he can think it possible they could be surmounted, but he gets us through them.

We are growing tomatoes (and eating them) and you like that. You pollinate flowers with mommy - crazy biologists doing what butterflies and other pollinators should do.

I am reading reports that the price of food could double in the next 20 years. That would be a big challenge. The biggest part of that is likely about big-oil. Land isn't disappearing, neither are seeds. Tractors, fertilizers, transports, processing equipment - they each get more expensive as oil prices rise, and they pay their bills using food prices. I have some very immature energy ideas, but they are going to take 5-10 years of work to get them going well. I don't think the folks here at ASU are interested in me, or the ideas. I have been fighting for as long as you have been alive and am not very far along. I wish I could do something about the upcoming challenges. In some significant ways I do not have the team required to make these things become a reality. I hope you do not know hunger. I starved at times as a kid - like my belly swelled up like the USA for Africa infomercial kids. This results in me being afraid of hunger, and being fat. It is part of a set of inputs .. letting my discipline to keep in shape go, indulging desire for rest, letting my fears define me. Don't give up on what you know is good. Do not let your fears define you. Let the excellent things that you hold on to - let them define you.

I gotta go kiddo. I hope to write you again.

Love,
mathdad.

May Already - 2011

Hello Mathbaby,

You are becoming such a big girl. You jump, and articulate your words. Almost 3 now.

We had a good evening. We have bible study at our friend Mr. Allen's house. We went there tonight. We brought first-fruits. You have these tomato plants that you and mommy care for. They are growing baby tomato's. The picture isn't our cherry tomato (we don't have picture of those) but it looks a lot like what ours look like. Mommy is learning how to grow plants, so though tomato is not a big part of our diet - its an easy start. Most home depot's have the plants already planted and growing for a few dollars, so you don't have to make seeds grow, you just have to not kill plants. It is a good plan for starting out.

It has been a time of wonder for you. For many days in a row you come up to me every day and say come see! come see! look at the baby tomato. They are magical/wonderful to you. We picked our "first fruits" the first of the plant. They are cherry tomato plants. There were only about 6 ripe, but they were all ripe. We picked them all - they were all in great shape. We brought them to the study. We showed up early.

I told Mr. Allen - this is a holy and special thing. I want your help. We love God and need to teach mathbaby that we give the first and best of all we have. In the old-testament (time of Moses) the first-fruits were brought before the priest to be dedicated to God. The priest took a part, and offered the rest. The rest was holy and dedicated to God. I told Mr. Allen that, as bible teacher and study-leader - also as authority recognized by mathbaby - I would like him to help us show her about giving to God. He did. It was a good thing. I hope we model this consistently for you.

I work nights. Twelve hour work-days. From 6pm to 6am. Wed, Thur, Fri and every other Saturday right now. I have to keep the schedule all week in order to be awake/functioning for my shift. I miss a lot of day-time interactions and events. I miss time with my family.

So I was watching "A bug's life". There is a scene where a housefly says "I have 24 hours to live and I am not wasting it here". I am emotionally connecting to the statement because I feel like I am putting the hours of my day into the unimportant at the expense of the most important things. We get to have play-days maybe once every two weeks to once per month now. That isn't good. I think we need to have it once per week. I think that is what the levitical idea of Sabbath is about. If you aren't working, and you are around the people you love - you can't help but interact and spend ... quantity if not quality time.

I love your amazing little smile. It looks like you have too much joy for your little face, your whole little self, to contain. I love that happiness, and enthusiasm you have to live. You remind me that I also have an enthusiasm to live, and I need to let it out a little more often.

I want to spend quality and quantity time for my family. I want to live to live, not live to work.

My youngest sister is a mess. It is tragic because she was a wonderful child, and she had so much (now destroyed) potential. The one thing, and greatest thing that I can think of that made her the sad thing that she is now ... is the lack of quality time with people who are healthy, who love her and invest in her at a young age. I want better for you. Please don't grow up to be anything like her. Please. It is a mix of choices that makes us what we are .. our own and those of people around us. I guess I am saying that I am committed to your being all you can be, and I need you to be just as committed. A lot to ask of a 2 year old.

My project in Solar Thermal Engineering this semester was Sky cooling. I was building an op-amp circuit to convert a voltage signal to an amperage signal so that my amperage based data-logger could capture the temperature induced change in resistance of a thermistor (transconductance amplifier). When I woke up and came into they study I found this (at left).

You made the first angel-borg. It seems to be plugged into the matrix. It is an angel piggy-bank thing your grandma mimi sent. You plugged it into my digital multi-meter and the circuit I was building in the 300-in-1 one kit. Those things are useful for hobby-stuff. The kit, not the angel. Maybe you have a future in robotics.

I love how when I was building my emitter with Sherwin Williams painted aluminum foil tape you would come and want to play with the tape and say "Let's build a sky refridgedator". You like stickers and tape. I'm always in the market for a new tape or a new glue. Maybe it's genetic.


We were able to get half-price tickets to the Renaissance festival this spring. For $20 we were able to go as a family. It was fun. We had a very (very very) long day. You got your face painted, and rode in butterfly carousels. We ate turkey legs and pretended it was "roast meat off the bone" or "dragons legs". You and mommy rode a giant rocking horse. We saw falconry and some very big birds.

You found hammocks and decided you like them. If I were rich I would get you one as a new big-girl bed. You have a great bed - it was a crib, but we took off one sides rails, and it is now a bed with 3 sides you can't roll off of. Maybe you would look at graph theory, topology, or knots, if you had a hammock - or perhaps I am kidding myself. I know of a young lady who learned about mobius strips and was so thrilled that she went home and played for a long time with scissors and tape - got herself a bachelors in math, and some good publications from that enthusiasm. What could you do with some wonder, hard work, discipline and a fine little mind? Something wonderful - but only if you actually do it.


I love you mathbaby.

-mathdad.