goodbye, old friend
Yoda Derksen (1993 - 2009), self portrait. Taken (with some prompting) the 29th of November, 2008. Goodbye, my little friend and chum. Your purr is always just one room over.
October 13, 2009
January 20, 2009
we have a new president
There is so much that I want to say at this, but I think that he is his own best advocate, and so I will let the man speak for himself.
these days
"We are young despite the years, we are concern.
We are hope despite the times.
All of a sudden, these days
Happy throngs: take this joy wherever, wherever you go..."
November 20, 2008
on the road to lake tahoe
The man was filled with shadow,
the land was bathed in sun.The afternoon was waning,
the man was on the run.He had to get to Reno,
his future there to find.He had to get to Reno,
before he changed his mind.If life is but a gamble,
and each is dealt one hand,
he had to get to Reno
to play his one-man band.Truth may prove elusive,
old beer may lose its fizz,
but a man who leaves his shadow
can change his was
to is.
My father, ever the poet.
October 8, 2008
flying free for a while
By the time you read this, I should be well underway in my voyage to Paris. At this point, I am probably winging my way over the Northeastern seaboard. In the meantime, I present: my gate at Miami International.
MIA has always seemed a strange and magical place. As Miami is the capital of South America, it was inevitable that all of the expatriates and transnational elites would end up passing through on their way to their final destination in the southern hemisphere. We would always run into someone from somewhen else in our extended expatriate experience, sometimes years after we had seen or spoken to them last. Such communications always ended with a chuckle and the suggestion that we "meet here again next summer".
July 6, 2008
goodbye, little kitty
How can you write a eulogy for a princess?
Tango "spooky" Derksen, 1992 - July 6th, 2008.
March 20, 2008
in his own words:
Until a few minutes ago, I had only heard excerpts and soundbites from Mr. Obama's speech on race. The chattering classes had provided summaries and commentaries on the event, all of which completely failed to capture the power and intelligence behind the text of his announcement:
Whoever wrote this piece was brilliant, placing Mr. Obama's words within a compelling historical context. One way or another, I would like to believe that this man will change America - and for the better.
February 4, 2008
family adventures
Being a Derksen means never having to say that you are lost - you're just on another adventure.
December 28, 2007
old friends over for dinner
You know, a sure-fire sign of adulthood is when you and your old pals finally start swapping recipes for dinner.
December 25, 2007
have a merry (cockroach) christmas, y'all
November 22, 2007
happy turkey-day from Florida
June 9, 2007
an ever-expanding family
Today my good friend and brother-in-arms Mark Houck was wed to the most excellent Peggy Varniere in a small ceremony at the courthouse in Grenoble attended by their families.
I wish I could have been there. It is not merely that France is reputed to be a beautiful country for travel, or that I really could use a vacation - for while both are true, my reasons for wanting to have been there are far more personal. The ceremony was attended by family, and after more than ten years of friendship, Houck has certainly earned that title in my home.
He was the first person I actually met on my first day at Grinnell, and with his ubiquitous hat and broad smile, I rather hoped that he would turn out to be my still-missing roommate. No, instead he revealed with an enthusiasm for life that would become familiar to us all that he was from Oklahoma(!), and he essentially ended up living across the hall from me for nearly all four years of our undergraduate education. Houck's insufferable good nature and occasional earnest obliviousness in the face of subtle social faux-pas were the subject of much ribbing over the next several years, but those same qualities led to a steadfast friendship in the face of any obstacle... including his good friend's occasional lapses into melodrama or hyperbole. The Houck ancestral residence also became a home away from home, and a stopping point on the biannual caravan from Texas to Iowa. His family showed incredible generosity to a bunch of indolent and hungry college students, and won our hearts with their baking and love for complicated technological gadgetry. Houck became family, another of the band of brothers who fought through heartbreak and finals stress to graduate somewhere on the other side. Through sadness and joy, Houck stood firm by his friends, and kept them standing upright.
Mark would go on from college to accomplish any of a number of things, the most recent of which was to encounter one Peggy Varniere, lately of France. Her enthusiasm and appreciation for the strange and obscure but wonderful matched his temperament, and after some nervousness and many cups of coffee... the pair fell in love. As Mark is my brother, so Peggy is now a sister.
They are an amazing bunch of folks, and I wish I could have been there to share that afternoon with them. May fortune find your path, Mark and Peggy - and may happiness follow you relentlessly for the rest of your lives.
June 8, 2007
a long time, and a long way
June 8th, 1974 to the present and beyond.
Happy anniversary, and congratulations on thirty-three amazing years for my mom and dad!
May 13, 2007
Happy Mother's Day
Zaniness must just run in the blood.
Call your mothers, and tell them that you love them.
May 6, 2007
with a little help from his friends
Once again, as I prepare to leave Gainesville for Homestead, I find myself indebted to my friends. I'd never have been able to thrive and survive here without the lot of you, and I certainly would not have been able to move out of here without your aid and assistance throughout the process.
You were an unlooked-for bonus in this town, and you kept me sane and you kept me from dropping out. You emphasized that I could survive this program and this project so long as I found a way to make it mine, and that there was always time to prepare for a superior doctoral experience. You reminded me that there was more to research than reading, and that one's interactions with one's colleagues will inevitably prove more valuable in the real world beyond the Ivory Tower. You also knew how to throw a wild party, and I found happiness in your company.
Thanks.
November 27, 2006
out of the summer country
It is amazing how much of a difference three hours can make.
Three hours to the South of Gainesville, there is still sun, and the leaves are still green. Gainesville may never quite experience winter, but it unquestionably sees fall as the leaves here turn to yellow and gold and sail and swirl away on the wind.
Visiting family for Turkey Day was good. Family is good. They have helped to fill the empty space that my surrogate family made up of my extended network of friends used to fill... or maybe I have that backwards. Whichever it is, I know that it makes a difference to sit down and break bread with people, and to see the same faces every day. There is more than a sense of community - there is a sense of 'belongingness' that I did not find outside of Austin. Besides, few things in the world beat watching your aged and respectable parents laugh and chase after dragonflies with an enormous butterfly net.
Finally got a new battery for my laptop, and it is rather like falling in love all over again: I have no strings, and I may wander. No longer do I need to worry about squandering power frivolously on such things as a monitor with gamma bright enough to read. No longer must I race from outlet to outlet, hoping that I will have enough charge to last all the way through class.
So life is good.
Then again, I am about to re-enter hell-week. You should either expect extended silence from this station, or lengthy tales of procrastination. One of the things I do not miss about the whole educational program is the sheer number of things that must fall together at the last possible minute. I am moving forward, and with far more diligence than in my undergraduate years - but... Yeesh. Corporate life retrained me to accept lower standards, but I am starting over and I refuse to hand in anything less than a solid effort.
Time will tell.
October 18, 2006
if there was ever any question that we were related...
Apparently when given suitable inspiration, my father fancies himself quite the poet:
An entomologist of caddisfly fame
with MS-FLA next to his name
had found his nirvana
with Gobind Khorana
translating the peptide chain.
But Old Holley intervened
and made quite a scene
and said their endeavor was folly.
"I hate to disdain
your nucleotide claim,
but your peptide ain't mono
it's poly!"
Eureka! they said
we'll try this instead,
Old Holley has made it explicit!
So the prize they received
(not quite as conceived)
was not just a double,
but triplet.
August 19, 2006
long roads
Wow.
Florida is an incredibly long and densely populated state. The eight hours between my coursework in Gainesville and my research lab in Homestead is a long way to drive, and while I have stopped to visit my parents in Palmetto at the half-way point... I am still wiped out by this evening's adventure. The trip down was not nearly so exhausting as the trip to return - it rained something terrible this afternoon, and I was no longer as driven to arrive - or as caffeinated.
I am still trying to decide whether it is better to stop and visit my folks (and get some laundry done!) and trek through the Everglades each time, or whether it might be better to head straight through Orlando and then down along the Atlantic coast on that leg of the Sunpass turnpike. One path puts me in my parents' good graces and nets me a free meal and possibly some free laundry. The other road probably saves me the few hours I would otherwise spend visiting with family. I must master each route, as there will probably come a day when I will need to arrive in Homestead as early as possible in order to spend as much time and get as much work accomplished as is humanly possible while I am down there.
In the meantime, it is nice getting the opportunity to know my folks better. As much as I joke about what a chore it is to visit them more often than once or twice a year because I am now only three hours down the road, I am glad that they are there. It is kind of odd: I lived with them almost continuously for well over eighteen years, but I still don't think that we know each other very well. I believe that it is only recently that we have begun to take notice of one another, and to respect each other as adults. They are good and interesting people, and I remain more than just fond of them.
We will see what time brings us.
June 13, 2006
people who start looking like their pets
A photo from my mother of my father and one of our cats, Yoda. Apparently Florida has been treating both of them well...
March 5, 2002
dog gone
>> "I'm sorry to tell you that I had to put Corky to sleep today."
My dog is dead.
1988-2002
He is a good puppy, and I will miss him.
He was a stumpy beast - a Corgi - a sort of sawed-off Collie dog. When he was younger, and cleaner, his back and head were the mottled color of fresh-cut cork-wood, with a shining white belly and paws. He was a friendly dog, and a dog who loved his family.
He was the indefatigable bionic dog - much of him had been replaced, and vets have been telling us that he was on his last legs since at least '94. He survived multiple cancers, two trans-Atlantic moves, food-poisoning, peeing on my father's new carpet, over-feeding, diabetes, urinary tract infections, a heart problem, arthritis, and thyroid trouble. He has had two to five months left to live since '98. The more money and love you poured down his throat, the longer he lived in abeyance of all natural law.
I remember rolling with him as a puppy, and the day we brought him home from the breeder and our tiny cat brow-beat him and eventually befriended him. I remember his short feet plowing through snow drifts taller than I was in the state of Colorado, or when he learned how to use a skateboard better than I ever could, or being chased by him across the long back yard of our first house in Argentina. I remember when he used to herd small children, and how very loyal a dog he was. I remember chasing ducks, and swimming in lakes and pools. I remember when he could still leap up on the bed, or when he and the cat would wait for me to return home from school in the window on the couch that absolutely no animals were supposed to sit upon. I remember walking the dog in a blizzard so thick that I could barely see him, and how he brought both of us out into the depths, and then brought both of us home. I remember when he could still go up stairs, and that he would come to sleep with me if my parents weren't home. He always loved the cold. He only learned one good trick, and it was funny, even if it was kind of dumb. I remember rolling with an old fat dog who loved me, even if he did smell a little bad. I remember seeing him this weekend. He really did seem more active than he had been in a while. He always loved the cold. I figured he still had... at least two to five more months more to say good bye.
He went into seizures again this morning, and they did not stop after two hours and more of his medication, so my father took him into the vet and said goodbye.
In memoriam:
Corky Derksen
1988-2002
I love my doggy, and goodbye.