Changes

One thing that has characterized the past couple of months for the Bardsleys is the realization of change.

The kids are now teens. Actually, Ellie just turned twelve, but she's a teen in spirit: she wakes up early to put on makeup, wears clothes that I'm not really comfortable with, and is willful as can be. As for Alex, he just turned fifteen and has entered a stage of adolescence that Jen and I were too naive to think would be coming this soon. I won't share details, but suffice it to say that he's just now being released from a month-long grounding.

And if that weren't enough, Jen has been wrapping up her undergraduate career this semester, and graduated just yesterday. She finished really strong, worked her butt off, graduated with honors, gained recognition as the outstanding Art Department graduate this year, and pushed her art to a new level. I'm really proud of her and look forward to seeing what she does next.

Yesterday, after attending commencement in the football stadium and then the College of Visual and Performing Arts graduation ceremony, where Jen got her diploma, I got my cap and gown and went to see off the Math Department graduates this year in a small ceremony. This small gathering of our current math graduates is the most inspiring event of the year for me. For each student that attends, a faculty member gets up and says a few kind words. The graduates are rightfully proud of their accomplishment, and their families are there and are proud. Each has completed a major life milestone and is looking forward with hope and expectation, something we should all make a practice of doing.

A Meditation on Chuang Tzu

For years now, I have set goals

and gone for them—achievements

have been my measure of success.

But with each one, the sum growing,

I’ve lost faith in this path.

                             Cuang Tzu says:

Don’t dream too much or scheme

and over-plan, don’t make success

in the world your measure of self,

rather, be like water (content to be

high or low, to be moving rapidly,

or to be still, deep and dark, where

the big fish swim), take what comes,

without too much anticipation or joy,

without much complaint or anxiety,

and have the right amount of fear.

Review: The Man Who Quit Money

I just finished Mark Sundeen's "The Man Who Quit Money" yesterday. It came to me through Jen's book group. Sundeen is a Missoulian, I understand, and also a part-time resident of Moab, Utah, where the subject of the book, Daniel Suelo, lives in caves outside of town.


I give this book a high rating because it shook me up. It brought to mind a quote of Kafka: 'I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?'


The writing is top notch, but it's the subject makes the book: Suelo is a fellow who decides to give up money at about 40 years old after reaching a point of despair in his life. It seems to me that he does it for the right reasons: his own sanity, his own ideals, freedom, and to pursue 'the good life'. And he appears to have been successful on all levels.

I was shook up by the book, not because I want to give up money -- for me it would be a disaster -- but because Suelo's example made me look at myself. I could certainly be less focused on (and worry less about) money, be less concerned about my place in the social order, and more focused on enjoying life, my family, cultivating friendships, and being content with what I have, which is a lot.

I have to admit that Suelo's (and also Sundeen's) connection to Moab added to my interest. In particular, I was struck with the Sundeen's description of Moab in the early-to-mid 1990's, when Jen and I first started visiting -- a time and place that looms large in our history as a couple. We went there many times between 1993 and 96, even a couple of 4-day weekends in October, cutting class at Montana Tech and taking off at the last minute, driving through the night. When I look back on my life and ask, 'When was it that I felt most free?', it's those trips.

Anyway, I recommend the read, but if you read it be prepared to be challenged. 

A Dylan lyric for parents

As a result of some recent challenges associated with parenting my kids, this Dylan lyric really struck a cord with me:

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

Looking Back 15 Years

I'm sitting in the Community Food Co-Op in Bozeman on a Thursday morning. This place remains my favorite grocery store/cafe in Montana; the Good Food Store in Missoula doesn't hold the same sway for me. Part of the reason has to be that I used to come here as a 23 and 24 year old, sit at a table with coffee, and soar in idealism as I wrote in my journal and dreamed of a life of freedom. 

Am I living that life. Well, it's complicated, as most middle-aged readers will understand. On the one hand, a few of my pipe-dreams from back then have been realized: I have a great family, a beautiful home, have traveled the world, am a professor at the University of Montana, and I am still able to get out and do the things I love in nature. On the other, I must admit that I don't carry the weight and worries of life as lightly as I would have hoped. But I'm working on that.  

I drove to Bozeman from Butte, where I stayed with Mom last night. The air is clearer in Butte and Bozeman than it is in Missoula, and it's more open. I noticed on the drive that the transition occurs around Drummond, where Ponderosa Pine forests stop and arid high desert begins. It's probably the altitude that does it, as the air feels closer to alpine, especially in Butte, where the great beauty of Summit Valley, surrounded by the snow-capped peaks of the Highlands and Pintlers, is offset by the ugliness of 100+ years (and still going strong) of heavy mining. 

Today I give a talk on my research in the MSU Applied Math Seminar. Wish me luck!

No More Telemark Skiing -- The End of an Era

That's me tele-ing Guns and Roses on the backside of Discovery several years back. So long free heels.

On a Friday in early February, I forgot my boots on the way up to Snowbowl and so rented some equipment for the afternoon. I had been thinking about getting rid of my telemark gear for weeks (even years) and had been alpine skiing on my tele equipment for a while. The experience on some proper alpine gear convinced me that it was time to make to switch. So I bought myself some boots, grabbed some bindings off of an old pair of skis, had them put on my tele boards, and that was that, I was a tele skier no longer.

This may sound like no big deal, but it kind of is for me. I started telemarking back in the winter of 1992-93 as a freshman at Montana Tech. I was passionate about skiing from the start and remain so, but I always was proud of the fact that I was a telemarker, especially back in the 90's when that was the 'cool thing'. Over the years, I got to be pretty proficient on the teles, moving from leather boots to the modern, beefy plastic boots that are as stiff as an alpine boot.

I probably would never have given telemarking up, but my knees began to hurt me a few years back. I was able to ignore the pain for a while, as it wasn't so bad, but finally this year it began to impinge on the fun, and so I figured it was time. I've been glad to find that the move to alpine from telemarking is easy. Indeed, alpine skiing is significantly less strenuous and so I can enjoy a longer day, I feel like I can ski harder, and most importantly for me, it doesn't hurt.

Okay it hurts a little, but that's skiing for you. Where else can you ride 2500 feet down a mountain, weaving through trees and snow, in five minutes. (Oh yeah, mountain biking!) It's a feeling like few others. Anyway, I say good bye to telemark skiing, in the hopes that I'll be traveling to the hill in winter for decades to come.

A Week or So of Great Skiing

The skiing at the Bowl has been varying degrees of great these past couple of weeks, culminating in powder days and a handful of near-perfect runs this past weekend. To glut oneself on skiing is a privilege few have the opportunity to enjoy, and we in Missoula have that chance, even if not many take it.

We've been loving the proximity of Snowbowl to town. Jen and I have been going up on Friday afternoons for an end-of-the-week catharsis.

Jen took these shots of me on Saturday morning (2/25), when there were few folks given the quality of the skiing.

West Bowl chute from Patrol Shack

Closer to Jen, spraying her with powder (got in her gloves).

Ha ha!

And looking down the hill toward the base.

CD Club Mix, January 2012

I'm in a CD club and just sent out my mix. The letter and song list are below. I'll send out a few to anyone who wants a copy. Just send me a message.

CD Club Mix, January 2012: Resolutions

Hello CD-Clubbers,

This mix has been ruminating for about a year, though several of the songs on it are recent additions to my collection. Now that I am finally burning the discs for you all, I've thought about and listened to the mix, in some form, so many times that I've become numb to its charms. But rest assured, there are charms to be found, and my wish is for you to discover a few.

One thing that struck me after having a look at the song list from my last mix, which I made in April 2010 (see the Google Groups site), is that my listening tastes haven't changed much over the last two years. It's a bit disappointing, as I like to think of myself as a searching and open minded listener of music. Nonetheless, there have been some new discoveries since that mix: Mother Mother, Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, Raphael Saadiq, and Starfucker, to name a few.

I've put a lot of time and feeling into this disc, and not as much thought; when it comes to music, I'm no intellectual. The name of the mix is Resolutions, which is ironic because I decided just this year that I no longer believe in New Year's Resolutions. For me, if I'm ready to do a thing, I do it, and if not, I don't, whether I make a resolution or not.

The truth is, this mix doesn't really have a theme, it's just a collection of songs that I fell in love with over the past couple of years. Indeed, the mix could be thought of as a musical journal of the last 18 months, or so, of my life.

It's good to be back in touch with you all, and to all of the newcomers welcome. I am a mathematics professor at the University of Montana. I like my job, and love to bike and ski; indeed, I'm sending this out at the end of the Jan 10-20 window because we've been getting dumped on and the skiing has been insane! Oh, and I've got a couple of kids and a wife who are tops for me. As I'm sure is the case for you all, life is too busy, and music makes it richer.

Happy listening,

John

Resolutions

1. War On War             3:50      Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot  

2. Wasted Hours           3:22      Arcade Fire, The Suburbs        

3. Keep Your Heart      5:43      TV On the Radio, Nine Types of Light

4. Futures                      3:50      Zero 7, The Garden

5. Culture of Fear          3:14      Thievery Corporation, Culture of Fear

6. Little By Little            4:28      Radiohead, The King of Limbs             

7. Lost In the World      4:18      Kanye West & Bon Iver, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy           

8. Never Give You Up  4:14      Raphael Saadiq, The Way I See It (Bonus Track Version)           

9. Ghosting                    4:49      Mother Mother, O My Heart

10. Loving Cup             4:27      The Rolling Stones, Exile On Main Street

11. Everlasting Light      3:25      The Black Keys, Brothers (Deluxe Version)

12. Take It Easy           3:58      Surfer Blood, Astro Coast

13. Bury Us Alive         3:11      Starfucker, Reptilians

14. Go Do                    4:41      Jónsi, Go

15. King of Spain          3:29      The Tallest Man On Earth, The Wild Hunt

16. Holocene                5:38      Bon Iver, Bon Iver

17. Get Real Get Right  5:13      Sufjan Stevens, The Age of Adz

18. Someone Great       6:26      LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver