Dialup == Infrequent Updates

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred... let me sow love.
Where there is injury... pardon.
Where there is doubt... faith.
Where there is despair... hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness... joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled... as to console,
To be understood... as to understand,
To be loved... as to love,
For
It is in giving... that we receive,
It is in pardoning, that we are pardoned,
It is in dying... that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

-- St. Francis's Prayer

Gainful Employment

I have a summer job (!). I'm working at UNAVCO, which is part of (or associated with, perhaps) UCAR. It's over on 47th St. near the Diagonal Highway. Two parking lots away from Brendan's place of employment, as it happens.

I'm working on Earth Voyager Jr, a specialized and optimized child of Jules Verne Voyager. The site lets users build all sorts of maps, selecting features to show (such as rivers, volcanoes, and tectonic plate motion) and and what region to show. Where else can you find a map of Mars from its south pole or see a night view of southern Africa with river and coastal outlines?

As someone connected to the project and one of my teachers from last semester were driving around, the former asked the latter if she knew anyone who would be good for this project. Just then they happened to pass me, standing on the sidewalk in an odd hat of some sort in my usual "I'd recognize him anywhere" kind of essence. "Trevor would be good," she said. Not knowing of this incident, I forwarded my normal ASCII résumé when my prof. sent contact info over the class mailing list. They also took a look at my unique résumé and told me "You're a very interesting person." The interview to determine my skills met their needs was: "Do you know what a hash is?" "Yes." "Do you know what a hash ref is?" "Yeah." "Excellent."

I get paid more than $20 per hour to look at maps and write code. If they provided a cat to sit on my lap, I couldn't be more satisfied. I'm a temp employee, which means I'm not tied to the job after I graduate in December. I'm hourly, which means my schedule is flexible so I can take the summer trips I've got lined up. And I'm making good money, which I can use to travel once I graduate.

Eating lunch in the UCAR cafeteria, I noticed that it was like middle school, except every table was the nerd table. They don't talk about the weather, they talk about the climate. In serious depth. Most of them seem to be nerds rather than geeks. Which is neat. It's been years since I've been in a room with so many socially awkward people. It'd feel homey if social situations didn't cause a sense of nervousness and out-of-placeness.

Cowboy Funeral

After my interview last Wednesday, my mom, dad, and I loaded up the Suburban and drove East. After miles of amazingly green fields, we reached Haigler, Nebraska. Mark McVey had asked my dad to sing Fay's Waltz at Fay's funeral, and we were only too willing to comply. We spent Wednesday evening at the ranch house with the family. For a cowboy, Mark was amazingly open about his mom, his family history, and his feelings. They had some really swell pictures, including a hand-tinted and -colored photo from when he and bother Bill were around 10 years old. The two were chummy together in vests and cowboy hats, and the picture could be of anyone who grew up in the '50s. Every boy had a cowboy hat. The irony was, these were destined to be the real thing.

Cowboys and Sandhillers don't wear suits very often, but they all have one. And as fairly middle-of-the-road Christians, all of the proper funeral customs were observed. But even though it wasn't customary, Mark slipped a feather in Fay's clasped hands in the casket.

The sign at the city limits says population 211. If you add those who live in the outskirts and on the ranches, you won't get more than 250 residents, I'll wager. But the United Methodist Church was packed. Everyone in town knew Fay.

This was the first normal American funeral I've attended. Specifically, this was my first funeral where they didn't open the floor from comments and stories from all assembled. The minister also got fairly deep into scripture. All of the standard funeral fare quotes ring a bell, because I've heard them in movies and books. But he was getting into Revelations and talking about Heaven like he'd been there. But it was heartfelt -- he even got choked up at one point. He was a Haigler native, and knew Fay. Even someone for whom funerals are a job can't avoid the power of Fay's love.

After the minister pronounced "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" and the casket was lowered, we returned to the church basement, where Haigler proved its status as a midwest town. The luncheon featured simple sandwitches cut in quarters (though some had whole wheat bread!), potato chips, and three different Jell-o salads, one with cheese and one with cream. Not to mention the two trays of dessert squares, iced tea, and coffee.

Pagan Church Tour

Oddly enough, 26 hours earlier, I was in the basement of the Boulder United Methodist Church. While it showed no signs of Jell-o, it did feature a full-sized Chartres-style labyrinth.

As part of an initiation-challenge, I led three members of my circle on a church tour. We visited Sacred Heart of Jesus and admired all of the images and ritual set-ups. The initiate-to-be picked up a prayer book hoping to find St. Francis's prayer and opened right to it. We then walked to St. John's Episcopal and sat in their small stained-glass-enclosed chapel. Almost everything about this introverted Protestant place differed from the extroverted Catholic church, but a similar beauty and sereneness prevailed. We then concluded our tour in the labyrinth. I asked the challengee to reflect on the inward walk on what he has received from the church. On the way out, he focused on what to keep and what to release.

The whole experience was lovely, meditative, and sacred. It wasn't at all a bunch of Wiccans going into a church to mess with the silly little Christians. It was a journey into the past of individuals and of a culture. I reflected on how many Christian attributes, mannerisms, and ideals I have acquired, despite only ever visiting church services for musical or anthropological reasons. I also reflected on the Christian past of my ancestors and once again identified with the monastic authors of the Book of Durrow.

Movies

I finally watched The Matrix Reloaded on Saturday. I liked it. It feels quite different from the first, as it should. The first was a mystery martial arts philosophical sci-fi movie. This was an action martial arts philosophical sci-fi movie. The philosophy was more focused and subtle. The fights were more impressive. It may have the best car chase scene in a movie to date, though I was disappointed they didn't have someone get hit by a bridge. What was missing here but present in the original was perfected originality. Every last line of the original dialog was perfect. Why else would people quote the line "Whoa."? Each camera technique was novel and perfectly tied to the scene. Four years later, everyone knows the story (thank goodness they didn't try to explain the whole first movie), so the dialog can't be as literally awesome. "The Matrix" established several cinematic conventions, so a 360°ree; pan of a frozen fighter isn't novel, it's just the way things are done. So of course I didn't walk out with the same amazed "That ruled!" expression. But it's still a very good movie.

That night I watched Easy Rider. The usual description of the movie is "Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper take a motorcycle road trip across the southern U.S." The movie is significantly weirder than that sounds. Jack Nicholson must be mentioned, of course, and then there's the strange trip in New Orleans. On the whole, however, I didn't really connect with the film.

On Monday, my dad had us watch Du Düve, a hilarious short film parodying Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries and Seventh Seal, right down to unreadable white subtitles over white shirts and a badminton game with Death. Even stranger, the same tape had The Cameraman's Revenge, a story of infidelity told through the obtuse medium of live-action insect animation. Made in Russia in 1912. Mont Alto did the score for the tape, I think. If you ever have a chance, watch these films.

Teaser

I still haven't posted my notes from the Conference on World Affairs. In the near future I'll also make a post about summer goals and all that. I've even got a few neat memes to spread.