The Importance of Being a Happy Parent

A dozen years ago, I first wrote about the importance of being a happy parent [here]. My two daughters were young at the time, the nation was at war in the Middle East, I was considering changing jobs, and national politics was upsetting. Since then, I've changed jobs and my daughters have grown up in Dubuque, but war and politics are still unsettling, to say the least. That said, it seems more important than ever to try to be a happy parent.

In the fall of 2015, my older daughter, Ananda, left for college two hours away. We touch base occasionally, but I am definitely not a helicopter parent. I make a point of emphasizing that she is now an adult—with a credit card, no less! I love her dearly, but I don't want to be overly involved in her life. She needs to make some decisions, even a few mistakes, and think for herself. She's a bit more religious that I'd prefer, but not in a fundamentalist direction. And I, after all, was a Baptist missionary at 22 years of age, working for two years in Africa.

The summer before she started college, I took Ananda to Wyoming for a 10-day wilderness program run by Solid Rock Ministries. As the name suggests, a religious group runs it, but one of my favorite former students had gone and loved it, and it fit with Ananda's desire to pursue the psychology of wellness, which includes spirituality and exercise.

My younger daughter, Tess, started high school when Ananda was a senior. Initially, she chose to join the activities that Ananda had pursued, but soon she branched out, particularly in speech competition. One of Tess's great loves is Frogwarts summer drama camp. Amy Ressler, one of my UD colleagues who runs the theater program, has created a web of Frogwarts campers and alumni throughout the region—kids who rendezvous at Renaissance Fairs, go to plays and movies and dances together, and text each other way too often. Tess has blossomed as a node in the network.

Both daughters seem amazingly sane and happy. They were both born in New Orleans to parents who have struggled with anxiety and depression. Both sides of the extended family have a long litany of mental issues, from depression to addiction to full-blown psychosis. And when they were 5 and 7 years old, respectively, we moved them a thousand miles up the Mississippi River to Dubuque, Iowa. Despite this past and heritage, they've had a wonderful childhood and adolescence, as best I can tell. Why?

I really do wonder how they turned out so well. I can't claim credit, but I am also unwilling to give it all to my wife. Instead, we have together learned on the job, and I think we may have some things to pass on to new and prospective parents:

1. Be happy and don't worry too much. If you're not happy, kids take it as either that they are the source of your unhappiness or that the world isn't a good place—not safe, dangerous to explore.
2. Live simply and keep your expenses below your income. Couples fight most about money. My wife and I got by with a single car most of our married life. I added a scooter for mobility in the summer months. During her senior year, my older daughter went to two formal dances and spent a total of $5 on dresses, buying one a Goodwill and borrowing another from a friend. (She looked lovely.) Also, we raised them both without a TV in the house but with lots of books and movies.
3. Don't worry about a mess or overprotect them. My wife arranged for her dad to build an art stand in our living room in New Orleans—glitter glue, paint, and a huge roll of paper. Pretty much anything they needed for creativity. And lots of time to play with cardboard boxes, fire ants, and a Boston terrier named Sam.
4. Support each other. My wife is an introvert. She needs some time alone on a regular basis. When the kids were little, she knew she could depend on me on Tuesday nights to be home with the kids so she could go out for sushi and to a bookstore by herself. Childless friends of mine got in the habit of coming over on those nights to grill chicken, drink wine, eat stinky cheese, and play with the kids. Great memories.

Unfortunately, instead of being happy, most of us spend a lot of time complaining, often over and over again about the same thing. That fits this definition of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome." Instead, either accept the situation, get out, or force a change (at least that's what my therapist said, and it was good advice for me. AA uses it, too.) And avoid hanging out where you get sucked into complaining. My wife is a teacher, and we've often talked about the toxicity of the teachers' lounge, and we have our own versions among college faculty-most places do. Day after day we bitch and complain and whine. It becomes too easy to fall into negativity. It seems addictive.

Like most habits, it takes a while to change behavior. One way is with a gratitude journal or a daily positive email. Perform random acts of kindness. (See [here].) Focus not upon the other person but upon the relationship. What's missing? Often, communication. How can I improve the communication? Not by blaming the other person. Finally, exercise matters. For me, a daily walk with my dog ([here]) is a key part of my well-being. He's always eager to go, happy to be outside.

I realize as I write this that some people will use it as another excuse to feel guilty or beat on. If you really feel that way, get help. I've spent a fair amount of time with therapists, and it was time well spent. (See the therapy section on my blog [here].) Things can get better. Part of being happy is having a goal to work toward. And working toward being happy for your kids' sake is a worthy goal.

Leo and the Bear-Beaver

A Movie Review of The Revenant

"Leo DeCaprio got raped by a bear," I read on the internet, so I was eager to see a bit of interspecies porn. I love visiting the Grand Tetons, which literally translates as big boobs, so I figured The Revenant was about nature paying back all those fur trappers who fucked nature plus their horses, knotholes, and prairie-dog holes. They even named ladies' private parts after the peaceful dam-builder that they trapped to near extinction. A nature-revenge porn movie!

The movie starts well enough, setting the mood with lots of fog and uncertainty, reminding me of the laundry Tim Robbins enters in Shawshank Redemption just before getting gang-banged by a group of prisoners called the Sisters. A little foreplay conflict, with a bit of blood and killing, set the stage for the bear's grand entrance. I figured Leo was about to get it up the butt as a metaphor for nature paying back the screwing it had received by European-Americans. But no! Instead, in wander a couple of cubs.

Cubs? This powerful metaphor escaped me at the time—the moral righteousness of the strong protecting the innocent, even to the point of death. Still, do the kids have to watch Dad forcefully expel the intruder? And where was the story heading? Surely not a rape in front of the kids!

As the huge grizzly appeared on the screen, I gasped. It was a female. And we all know a female with two little ones has no interest in sex. What was Leo thinking? The subtitles nearly showed the bear's thoughts: "You're going to have to stick me with something harder and bigger than that puny earthworm." And then she mauled the shit out of him.

Unfortunately for the nature-revenge metaphor we've been building, Leo did indeed stick the bear with something other than his manhood—a knife that was in reality too small to kill her, but she agreeably played dead, as this was a Hollywood movie, and I hope she was paid well in salmon or trout. The metaphor that actually works is something like this: We've done our best to screw over nature to the point where she is nearly dead, and in turn we may be to the point of nature killing us in return. Is dying due to new diseases, hurricanes and flooding, droughts and starvation, warfare over diminishing resources and religious conflicts, really so much better than getting raped by a bear?

Why I Tell Stories

... horrible teacher. Instead of explaining the material needed for the test, he tells stories of his geological adventures that pertain to absolutely nothing on the tests. I've heard stories about his daughters, mother, father, sister, and uncle; however, I have actually learned very little about geology.

Reading a student review that trashes me as a teacher, such as the one above from RateYourProfessor.com, sticks with me far longer than a positive review. In fact, most teachers I know react to the negative reviews, not the positive. We argue that they are unfair, that the student is vindictive, that the students don't meet us halfway, that they are lazy, etc. But our attempts to rationalize them away at best numb a bit of the pain but do not remove the knife that has been stuck into us.

A better response is to keep the knife out of the classroom.

I've made my living as a science teacher for more than 25 years. I've supervised graduate theses and undergraduate research, published scientific articles, and given numerous presentations. But last year, I decided to hire a writing coach, a young adjunct with an MFA. The first thing I learned was how different the training is for a writer versus a literature professor, much less a scientist. As an undergrad, I was an English major until soon after my father died my sophomore year. I love Steinbeck, Dostoevsky, Chaucer, and Shakespeare. My younger daughter's middle name is Dora, for the madame who ran the whorehouse on Cannery Row. I love including stories as part of my courses. In fact, Niles Eldredge, a well-known paleontologist, has said,

Our narratives—our stories—should give kids a sense of the intellectual (and sometimes derring-do!) adventures of actually doing science. If we let storytelling like this into the science curriculum, we instantly humanize science, make it relevant to the random child, and automatically make it seem more inviting, less hard. We can do this without watering down scientific rigor, with its canons of evidence that are justly the hallmark of scientific research, innovation, and progress.

Do you see a conflict? Eldredge advocates stories of "adventures of actually doing science" and my student reviewer condemns my "stories of geological adventures." Can you imagine Eldgredge in my classroom?

"I'm pleased to introduce our speaker for today, Nile Eldredge, internationally known paleontologist from the American Museum of Natural History."

"Thanks for inviting me. Geology changed my life. I started college as a Latin major but switched majors when I took my first geology course. Geology is a grand story of the Earth."

"Clearly, this won't be on the test. I think I'll get up to go to the bathroom and not come back," thinks the student.

An opportunity lost. Or perhaps Eldredge would have a great way of breaking through to the student, to make the value of stories apparent.

Eldredge's specialty is evolution, and humans have evolved as storytellers—our oral abilities seem genetic, unlike our writing abilities. Stories have survival benefit—increasing group unity, providing purpose and motivations, and giving a group a sense of identity, of being special even to the point of self-sacrifice for the good of others.

Storytelling in science is a bit trickier. Scientists tend to be skeptical of stories, wanting to see the data and make their own interpretations. To them, stories are sales-pitches, propaganda, or pure entertainment. And to students, stories are often old guys wasting time reliving their glory days. In other words, a waste of time—not on the test.

However, storytelling is not without parallels to recent emphasis in science teaching upon "doing science." The problem with spending lots of time gathering data and working through other parts of the scientific method is that students often fail to make the connections to broad concepts, similar to my students' problem with storytelling. Like many Ph.D. candidates, students learn quite a bit about very little.

So what is the solution? Focussed repetition with variation. The repetition takes the form of a spiral, coming back to a topic but at a higher level. Each time, we hook ideas into the previous experience and basic concepts. The form this takes when using storytelling in science is something like this:

1. Tell an abbreviated version of the story.
2. Provide students with a written version that is more complete, including key concepts and definitions. (Example [here].)
3. Do an activity that utilizes the concepts to solve a real-world problem. (Example [here].)
4. Have the students write their own story. (Example [here].)

To improve my own abilities, this January, I am joining with a theater professor to team-teach a course on Storytelling in Science. I also did a one-class test-run of the concept at a nearby seminary after Pope Francis released his encyclical on the environment. The task I gave the students was to develop a story from their own experiences about climate change that they could use in their home churches. I was blown away by their creativity—seminary students. Writing stories about their personal experiences with climate change. Wow.

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File translated from T_EX by T_TH, version 4.03.
On 02 Oct 2016, 09:55.

My Deck

The deck I built back of my house in Dubuque.

(The tune for the following lyrics can be heard in this scene from Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay.)


My deck is solid, wide and strong.
Your deck won't last too long.
My deck opened on a double-wide screen.
Your deck was rated, "Better not seen."

My deck has a very strong foundation.
Your deck was shown on White-Trash Nation.
My deck was featured in Better Homes.
Your deck trembles like cheap foam.

My deck I've shown lots of love.
Your deck was crapped on by a dove.
My deck stands out like a colonel.
Your deck was rejected by Ladies Home Journal.

My deck has quality envied by Germans.
Your deck is inhabited by vermin.
My deck gets the finest wax job.
Your deck lacks even a polished knob.

My deck scores from the 3-point zone.
Your deck is a dog without a bone.
My deck hurts me, it looks so nice.
Your deck—not a girl looks twice.

My deck has no poop on its wood.
Your deck can't, even if it could.
My deck is without any flaws.
Your deck looks crapped out by Jaws.

Drifting Blues #7

Sunset at Kure Beach, NC, 2011.

She lay in the coffin, so young,  looking like an inflatable punching bag.   My eyes drifted up the rack of t-shirts she'd tie-dyed, back to her wearing one, over to photos of a happy girl.  Nearby, her parents cried, hugged friends and strangers.  They hugged me, an emissary from better times.

"She's in a better place now." If a grave is better than life. I won't mouth such words of comfort. I don't believe in a god who is going to fix you, or punish you, or reward you for kissing his ass.

At the Christian school where I teach, I've been known to tell a student, "I want to shove my foot so far up your ass you'll smell my toe jam." Words of love, really. Yes, really.

When I connect, I can say nearly anything. But I never connected to her. She was untethered, even then, drifting away into her tie-dyed sky.

* * * Day one: Mix the chemicals, run the analysis, and record the results. Repeat. Day two: Keep pushing the rock up the hill for eternity—it's punishment for something, wasn't it? The required sterile-white lab coat doesn't suit me. I like tie-dyed better. Dad will pay the bills until I find something else.

Still nothing—nothing like my college project with the research adviser I loved,analyzing pervious pavement—rain soaking in, not running off. In front of a crowd after months of work, I presented my results—me, the local expert, as my adviser looked on proudly. I was focused.

A new job and a new boss—he told a co-worker I'm lazy. I'm not. Unmotivated? Yeah. I can't find a focus—I'm just drifting. Doesn't he know the difference? Some manager!

I've got a new boyfriend, but he's no new adviser. He helps me drift, helps me inject the clouds into my tie-dyed sky.

Emergent Properties

Ice crystals on a twig by my driveway.

In The Gods Must be Crazy, a Coke bottle dropped from a plane threatens to disrupt the society of a tribe of Bushmen in the Kalahari desert.  Nothing like the Coke bottle has ever been seen.  Initially, its beauty and usefulness are interpreted as a sign the gods have blessed them.  But soon, its uniqueness and the resulting conflicts for possession of it lead the village elders to throw it over the edge of the Earth—the gods must have been crazy to give it to them.

Interpreting things we don't understand as actions of the gods is an old human behavior.  And that approach is still around—the Intelligent Design movement is an example.  (See here.)  We humans like explanations for what are essentially random events.  Perhaps this is best observed among non-professional gamblers, praying that a slot machine would fall their way as if prayer actually makes a difference.   Or someone who gambles that he doesn't need a seatbelt— ``When it's my time, God will take me.''

One of the hardest ideas for non-scientists to grasp is that just because they don't understand what's going on, it doesn't mean it can't be understood.  Let's suppose for a moment those Bushmen had never seen ice, a not-hard-to-believe assumption.  (In fact, many of my students in Kenya had never touched ice until at our school, where they said that it  burned when they touched it.)  So let's suppose we load up a group of Bushmen and take them camping by a lake where the nights are cold enough for the lake to ice over.  When they awoke in the morning and venture down to the lakeshore, how would they interpret the ice covering the lake?  Was some god punishing them by cutting off access to water?  Was some strange fish-god protecting his supporters?

Perhaps a bold Bushman ventured out onto the ice.  He recognizes that the walking has become treacherous, perhaps slipping and falling. A hazard fit for Hercules?   But worse, suppose our intrepid Bushman crashes through the ice and disappears into the lake below.  Has some god punished his insolence?  How dare he venture into a banned area!  As he disappears into the lake, never to rise again, (he can't swim, and the chances of finding the hole he passed through are small) those more timid Bushmen on the shore draw the lesson—the gods have banned ice walking.  Soon a new religious edict appears—Commandment 7: No walking on ice.

Despite the supernatural interpretation by our Bushmen, ice is an entirely natural phenomenon.  They simply haven't been in a cold and wet enough environment to encounter it.  Nothing supernatural.  A property of water they have never been exposed to emerges as the environment changes.  Such emergent properties—consciousness, playfulness, life—become a barrier for the religious to embrace science and its naturalistic explanations.


For longer writings, see http://www.daleeasley.com/blog-and-essays.php

My Writing Process

Writing at Monk's in Dubuque.

A few people have asked me about how I write, from beginning to end.  Most of what I write about starts in my journal.  I try to write three pages per day, as suggested in The Artist's Way.  I don't always succeed, but the goal of three pages pushes me beyond simply reporting the day's activities---"Got up.  Washed.  Went to bed."  Once I've whipped out the start in my journal, I type it into my computer.  I use Dropbox to store my writing so that it is available on all my computers (office, home, upstairs, etc.)  Then I start revising.  And revising.

Many of you know that I've been working with Andrew Jones for about a year to improve my writing.  It has been wonderful.  Never before in my life have I taken the time or had the opportunity to have someone reread my work and make suggestions multiple times.  Some things we've worked on have been through 18 drafts.  Maybe that doesn't sound like fun to you, but I love it.  I read The Talent Code last years, and one of the big takeaways is that talent is developed, not born.  That development requires focused practice, which comes with motivation, persistence, and good coaching.

Whether I'll be a good writer remains to be seen, but I have no doubt I'll be better than I am.  One of my inspirations is Loren Eiseley.  He was a scientist and educator.  He didn't start writing books until he was 50 but produced outstanding work whose importance has lasted.  If you get a chance to read The Immense Journey, I recommend it highly.  I read it when I was 19 and an English major on my first geology trip out West.  Life-changing.

A Longer-Than-Expected Hike

Dale, Jalee, and Tony in tunnel 

on Badger  StateTrail near New Glarus, WI.

Photo by Jake Theis

A 3-mile hike turned into 12 miles, and I'm not sure where I got my misinformation.  Fortunately, those with me forgave me, especially after I bought them beer upon completing the hike.

Our outing began with two objectives: 1) visit the tunnel on the Badger State Trail near New Glarus, WI and 2) visit the New Glarus Brewery.  We accomplished the first but failed the second---by the time we completed the 12-mile hike, it was 7 minutes till closing time and we still had to drive from the old train depot in New Glarus to the brewery.  Fortunately, along the trail, a banner advertised 80+ craft beers, and the adjacent outdoor patio offered a place to take off our sandals and cool our feet.  Yes, sandals.  They would have been fine for 3 miles.  For 12?  Not so much.  3 blisters and a bleeding toe.  Still, we considered the day a success---the 1,200-foot tunnel was foggy inside from the high humidity and relatively cool air, dark enough to require our flashlights, decorated with graffiti, and far bigger than we expected from the photos.  Well worth the hike.

I am experimenting with the possibility of moving my blog from my website to here, mainly because of better formatting with HTML.  Watch for more soon.

Waterbuck in Kenya from a slide I took while teaching there immediately after college.