Uncategorized

Am listening to a new book now in the car: The Canon by Natalie Angier. I really enjoyed her last book: Woman: An Intimate Geography which is basically a detailed but immensely readable investigation of female physiology.

The Canon’s introduction talks at length about how science has what amounts to a PR problem in our society. It got me thinking of my love for science and all the various ways that has manifested in my life. And how honestly I come by it: I am the child of an MIT PhD who, while pursuing a career in business, has kept a looseleaf notebook full of mathematical proofs and musings. My paternal grandfather and grandmother were both scientists and engineers by training and passion (Pops, who was chief engineer at Grumman, and Gaga, who should have been a doctor but was bound by the constraints of the day).

Uncles, cousins, aunts – these populations in my life, among others, are rich with engineers and scientists. The love of my college life was a Physics major. I myself left London after 10th grade planning to take A-levels in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Double Maths. It only took me 6 years to ‘slide downhill’ and graduate from Princeton as an English major. I did take a lot of extra science at college – in particular I remember being in a Biology lab class with Quincy as juniors; we an oddity in the universe of freshman and sophomores fulfilling their lab requirements.

I have always been interested in this realm: I remember loving The Way Things Work as a child. I adored Legos. I did an intensive two-day career counseling/skills assessment while at BCG and was told, in the final discussion, that I should be an engineer or a surgeon. Well, you can see how obediently I heeded that advice.

Anyway, I am loving The Canon and look forward to listening to the rest of it. It’s reminding me that while I chose a career in business, I can find other ways to fulfill the part of me that is happiest in a lab with beakers. There is a clarity to science, a right answer, that is very seductive to me. I love certainty, cogent explanations, logic, and reason.

Just some thoughts as I realize how completely I am a science nerd.

More coming on seeing so many dear friends this weekend, but for now I will just quote from myself (! a first!):

Thank you, Quincy, for being an incredibly rare lifetime friend – if not the rarest and most special – being with you feels like home! I am amazed to observe the ways that we’ve taken roads that are both incredibly different and profoundly similar … and feel so blessed that the way you get me instantly, with patience and insight and without judgment, hasn’t changed. I think back to the first time I met the long-legged, short-shorted redhead in the Wilson courtyard in the fall of 1992 … how far we’ve come! How many friends know what I wrote my thesis about, how many days early I turned it in, the name of my freshman year boyfriend, what I wore to my 21st birthday, that I cried almost weekly in my first job out of college, what my favorite song, book, and movie are, what I thought the day I met my now husband, and a million other of the mundane details that make up a life? How many friends were there with me the night I broke my leg running naked in the snow, the night before my wedding, and within weeks of my first child’s birth? I can’t articulate how much you mean to me – and how much the shared history that brought us here is part of the bedrock of my life … thank you.

“But there’s no vocabulary for love within a family.

Love that’s lived in, but not looked at.

Love within the light of which all other love finds speech.”

– T S Eliot

Hallelujah:

“Kids who watched “Sesame Street” as a preschooler have higher grade point averages when they get to high school.” (Business Week online article)

Thank you, Hadley, for sending … best news I’ve heard all year. And doesn’t the Sesame-Street-watching child above look like he’s destined for brilliance and an 800 on the verbal SAT?

Is it just me or is Whit’s hair starting to resemble Princess Diana’s in her heyday?

Spoke to Grace and Whit this morning as I walked to work from the hotel. Grace announced to me that “Daddy is the best babysitter in the world” and I got some laughs at Starbucks when I said, “he’s not a babysitter, Grace, he’s your father.” Literally several people guffawed out loud.

Had a lovely visit with Alexandra and Tim last night. I finally got to see their divine house (HOUSE!) in the west village and had a chance to see both Margot and Cameron before they went to bed. It is seductive to imagine living down there in the village – everything seems so adorable and accessible.

Slept like a log which is a nice change from the usual. The Regency upgraded me to a ridiculous two-bedroom suite which was pretty much the same size as our house. I went for a very quick run this morning and was at the office by 8am. Heading home tonight!