Running over the same old ground

I had a nice weekend in Ontario again, seeing my mom, my sister, and a cadre of old friends. Drove back to Buffalo Sunday night so I could get up for a 6AM flight home, followed by two days of a conference in DC.

It seemed like everywhere I went over the last four days reminded me of Katie.

It started with visiting my mom: surely doing so wasn't the most exciting thing for a teenager, but Katie was always engaged, contributed to the conversation, and seemed to enjoy it. My eyes kept straying to the empty chair she typically chose.

And she always loved visiting my friends and their kids. (And hearing stories about things I'd done that I might rather she didn't know about!)

One of the friends lives west of the city, in a smaller town. One evening several years ago, we left my mom's and had some time before bed, so we decided to drive by their house and drop in if it looked like they were still up. It had been several years since I had visited, but I had my GPS, so I put in the address and off we went.

I started to get suspicious when it took us far past the small town: that didn't fit with my memory. So we headed back, and stopped at the gas station/corner store to ask. They had never heard of my friends, and didn't think the address I had existed (the road did, but these are country roads and go for miles). So we gave up.

I called the next day, and it turned out that their street had been renumbered at least a decade earlier; the Post Office had happily delivered Christmas cards using the old scheme, so I never knew! And they actually live just a few doors from that gas station (where their teenage son now works, in fact).

Then when I got back and arrived at the conference, I realized that it was at the same hotel as the National Scholastic Press Association/Journalism Education Association conference in 2010, when Katie won the Design of the Year award. While the hotel looked somewhat different without hordes of teenagers scattered everywhere, I could still see them if I looked hard.

And then the second day of the conference it rained, and I drove to Vienna Metro via I-66, at 7AM—a time and a route familiar to anyone who attended Oakton, or whose child did. I fought my way through traffic and the film over my eyes, trying to resist turning to look at the empty passenger seat.

How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found
The same old fears
Wish you were here

– Pink Floyd

Greetings from the Sunny South

Anita and I are in St. Petersburg (Florida, not Russia!). This is our first real holiday in over three years: other than a few quick visits to see family, we’ve been pretty stay-at-home. I’m giving some training here, and so Anita came along for a few days of vacation before and after.

We still aren’t exactly party animals, of course, but we’ve done lots of sightseeing and spent some time on a beach and so forth. We’re having a nice, low-key time.

We were in a restaurant the other day that had a poster of the following (it’s a bit small, but was the best I could find on the web). It’s for a beer called Sweetwater, and says “Est. 420” and “Drink ‘em if you got ‘em”. I found myself reaching for my phone to snap a picture so I could show Katie, which left me so off-balance that I failed to take any picture at all.

Anyway, she would have loved the bizarre mix of pop culture references!

 While driving back and forth to the training site, I’ve found myself listening to Spirit FM 90.5, “Tampa Bay’s Hit Christian Music”. Now, I’d have said I was about as likely to listen to gangsta rap as to “Hit Christian Music”, but I tripped across the station while pressing Seek repeatedly, trying to find something other than country, talk, or Spanish radio. It’s playing a broad range of stuff, from pop to R&B to nu metal.

So of course I wish Katie was here, so we could talk about the music. There’s an earnestness about the bands that’s quite appealing. I don’t mean the lyrics, which I don’t really listen to: I mean the music, which isn’t overproduced, as so much music is—I doubt there’s an Autotune in sight. Definitely a good thing. Some of it reminds me of Relient K, who she used to like; I looked them up to be sure I was right about the spelling of “Relient” and was surprised to learn that they’re also considered Christian rock.

Which in turn reminded me of my recurring daydream that Katie should be an “A&R man”—a talent scout for the music industry, roaming the country, listening to crappy band after crappy band in honky-tonks and high schools and wherever else, looking for the Next Big Thing. Of course, with the Internet and YouTube and the general ill health of the music industry, it’s not clear that A&R people have any future, or perhaps even still exist. But it’s definitely something I could see her enjoying, and with her knowledge of and interest in music, she’d’ve been great at it.

Spring has sprung...

...the grass has riz; I wonder where the flowers is?

As the old saying goes. Well, actually the flowers are out, albeit probably a bit confused at times with the wild weather swings!

Due to FCPS eligibility rules, Katie was one of the oldest members of her cohort (cutoff was 9/30 and her birthday was 12/7, so there were a few kids with birthdays in October and November 1991, but mostly her group were a bit younger; being in GT probably exacerbated that, since some kids came from other school systems and had been accelerated there, making them even younger).

The upshot is that we've been watching her friends turn 21 one by one, with a flurry the last couple of months. Good to see, of course, but it also reminds us that there's one fewer celebrant than there should be.


I've been walking the paths in Franklin Farm the last few weeks, which I haven't done in years. Katie used to go walking with us, and so there are lots of memories attached to some of the routes: the time she fell off her bike by the big duck pond and it slid down the embankment into the water; Poohsticks Bridge; and of course the place in the woods where some homeowner planted hundreds of daffodils and crocuses at random amongst the trees. They come up every year, have spread, and it's a magical little glade. One of her favorites! This isn't a particularly wonderful picture—it's one of those things that's really hard to get a good view of without a wide-angle lens—but it gives a bit of an idea of how many plants there are.

Seriosity

OK, there appears not to actually be any such word as "seriosity", no matter what Urban Dictionary says, but there should be: the state or degree of seriousness of an individual or situation.

One of Katie's many strengths was her ability to laugh at herself, to not take herself too seriously. I'd say her "seriosity level" was (appropriately!) low. That doesn't mean, of course, that she didn't take anything seriously: rather, she could see the funny side of things, and if that meant poking fun at herself, then she was fine with that.

The flipside of low seriosity is the risk of folks taking offense. It seems to be in vogue nowadays to take offense at just about anything that makes a joke about anyone. While of course there are times and places where jokes are inappropriate, the fact that a joke is made doesn't automatically mean that it's always reasonable to take offense.

I've laughed at jokes about suicide, even after November 2010, because they were funny, damnit. And I know Kt would have done the same.

So that's a long preamble for the following, which I know she would have laughed at, and which will no doubt offend a few folks:

(For anyone who doesn't get the humor, look here and here; the "Look a squirrel!" meme is a common—if mostly incorrect—stereotype of people with ADHD.)

Another Inauguration

Pomp and circumstance, and a lovely day yesterday. I caught bits and pieces between, well, working, and the entire evening news was dedicated to it. One of my favorite parts: watching the Secret Service guys. I bet they all slept like rocks last night!

One overriding thought: if Katie were around, she'd've been down there cheering and waving with a crew of friends (including AK, who was there—you know who you are!).

Big sigh.

Kids Today

There's something about a night flight home from a trip that seems to make me retrospective. I think it's because after a couple of whirlwind days on the road with not enough sleep (I always sleep horribly when I'm away from Anita), I'm in a semi-fugue state, enhanced further by being trapped in a dark tin can with a bunch of folks I don't know.

Whatever the reason, I think about Katie a lot. On my flight last night, this was exacerbated first by watching a fairly mediocre movie called Pitch Perfect. While it had a few good moments, it's mostly a mess, never quite deciding what it's about. There's singing (AutoTuned, sigh), Life Lessons, and sophomoric humor, but it just didn't gel for me.

But it still made me think about Katie and college and like that.

After the movie was a CNBC documentary about 20 Under 20, aka The Thiel Fellowship. Peter Thiel was a co-founder of PayPal, and wants to support young people who have big ideas—to the tune of a two-year fellowship and $100,000, twenty Fellows per year. As the name implies, this means putting college off for two years; the web page says, "Some Ideas Just Can’t Wait." (Besides the link above, there are videos and a blog that are worth checking out.)

The program included clips of some of this year's Fellows talking as they competed to be selected, as well as Sean Parker (the Napster/Facebook guy), Elon Musk (PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors), and a bunch of other well-known names in technology.

It's an amazing idea, and something that simply couldn't have existed even a decade ago. These opportunities for young folks to do interesting things before "paying their dues"—by going through college and finding a "real job" and maybe making enough to go off on their own—have been entirely enabled by the Internet: not just the easy availability of data, but access to technology, crowdsourcing, open source software, and more.

Not that I think Katie was entrepreneurial in the traditional sense. In fact, I doubt that "making lots of money" was something she desired. But some of the Fellows' projects that were mentioned were up her alley, more social than techno. And I could see her getting behind one of those.

I actually wasn't even really thinking that Katie could have been one of that amazing group of kids. What they did remind me of—forcibly—is the passion and energy of the young, and how Katie could be an irresistable force of nature when she put her mind to something.

And so I found myself thinking how the impact of her loss extends beyond just her family and friends: what would she have done, had she lived? Her writing was so powerful and complex, even at 18; I can see her writing the Great American Novel. Or compelling essays on social topics. Or even just a music blog that spread the word on bands worth listening to.

The Grinch

The Christmas that The Grinch came out on videotape (1990 or so, I think?), three different people gave me copies of it. I guess they'd noticed that it was one of my favorites!

And it was one of Kt's favorites, too. (I of course mean the original, animated version; the live-action Jim Carrey version was surprisingly not horrible, but an entirely different experience.)

With the death of Quincy, M.E. (Jack Klugman) today, the following seems particularly apt...and entirely in line with our girl's sense of humor.

 

Here's hoping that everyone got has a safe and happy holiday with their families, eh?