Today for the first time in over two weeks I had a fully healthy and energetic day, which feels extra wonderful after having a nasty cold for so long.  I went for a long walk with Brooks, did some yoga, and even flossed my neglected teeth.  I’m usually a radiantly healthy person, often avoiding having even a single cold in a winter season, so being sick is like visiting a foreign land where I observe all the minutiae of my energy levels and mucus production.  When I’m healthy I don’t really notice these things at all unless I’m doing yoga or sitting meditation.  But I’m newly grateful for being wholly healthy, and am glad to be well since I begin my April with a week on the road in Dallas and New York. 

I’m catching up on a small fraction of the piles of magazines littering my office and had the strange experience of seeing the same new word in both the New Yorker and the New York Times — umami.  In the March 10th New Yorker it’s in a book review of Perfumes: The Guide, which is more about the language of describing scents, especially in wine tasting.  In the NY Times it’s in a March 5th article about MSG which is currently the second most popular article to email.  And what is umami?  According to dictionary.com, it is:

A taste that is characteristic of monosodium glutamate and is
associated with meats and other high-protein foods. It is sometimes
considered to be a fifth basic taste along with sweet, sour, salty, and
bitter

or

a taste sensation that is meaty or savory and is produced by several amino acids
and nucleotides (as aspartate, inosinate, and glutamate)   

It’s strange to see the same unfamiliar word twice in one day.  Lattice of coincidence.

Dear Tom and Bill and the offensive front line of the Patriots,

Well, that didn’t go like any of us wanted it to, did it?  As you drove down the field in one of those heart-stopping end of the 4th quarter drives, I said to Brad that I would try to take more time off the clock so that the Giants didn’t have any time left on their final possession.  But you gave Eli time to play the very best football I’ve ever seen him play, and you lost the game.  Gack.

And now it’s 7 long months until the next football season begins.  I guess I’ll have to find something else to do with my time.  Sigh.

Happy Groundhog  Day.  Punxsutwney Phil saw his shadow, so we’ll be having 6 more weeks of winter, which I’m pretty sure we would have whether a rodent sees a shadow.  I have been enjoying hiding in my burrow this winter, but now that the days are longer I’m emerging.

I’ve been thinking about intelligence today and what it means to be smart.   I made a site visit to the Rocky Mountain School for the Gifted and Creative and was both amazed by the educational process there, and reminded of my own childhood journey.  My kindergarten and first grade teacher, Mrs. Scholemberger, was concerned that I might be what was called in those days "retarded" because I couldn’t skip.  I remember the humiliating, agonizing experience of being singled out and made to skip lengths down the basketball court in the gym.  Maybe I even had to take after-school skipping lessons.  I can’t remember for certain.  I also remember this boy, Mark Something, who peed his pants while sitting in one of those brightly colored injection molded plastic chairs and denying that he’d had an accident when accosted by the teacher, who interrogated him until he cried, while the puddle of pee cooled under his chair.  Childhood is wonderful, isn’t it?  When I got my diploma from Wellesley I really wanted to track down Mrs. Scholemberger and show it to her, maybe doing some skipping while holding it.

Looking back on my skipping lessons, I think Mrs. Scholemberger was probably trying to make sure I was developing normally, whatever that means.  I think I was exhibiting the introversion and asynchronous development which are now considered to be hallmarks of gifted children’s development.  And when I got to 7th grade I took some fun tests with lots of puzzles, and was placed into the Gifted and Talented program in my public school, where I grew bacteria on agar plates and stained them to look at under the microscope and decided that I wanted to be a scientist, and learned Basic programming and did all kinds of logic puzzles, and made literally lifelong friendships with my peers.  GT rocked for me.

What I saw at the Rocky Mountain School today felt like a sanctuary for kids like me:  rooms full of visual stimulation, classes grouped by ability level and not by age, with different subjects grouped differently, art and music and wellness integral parts of the curriculum, and crazy high achievement from very young kids.  I was there for about 3 hours and wanted to stay longer and see what I could learn.  Maybe one of these young people will invent an alternative to fossil fuels or anti-gravity boots or the great music of the 21st century.  I can’t wait to see..

After watching the Red Sox pummel the Rockies last night, I’m still not sure who I’m rooting for.  Living in Boston for 11 years, including 1986 , I’ve long been a part of Red Sox nation.  My first apartment after college was about 3 blocks from Fenway Park.  But I’ve now been living in Boulder for 12 years, and the Rockies run up to the World Series has been surprising and inspiring and wonderful.  Brad has been wearing his Red Sox jacket around town this week, but more as a provocation than an actual statement of allegiance.

I was hoping for close, well-played games and that I’d be happy whichever team won, and would feel badly for the losers like I always do.  Tonight I’ll definitely be cheering for the Rockies.

Brooksie Brookster pupster is six months old today. 

He sleeps through the night and is incredibly cute and will obey commands like Sit and Down as long as we’re in the kitchen and I have a treat in my hand.  I’ll expand his range of obedience any day now.