Ada Lovelace Day

So, today is Ada Lovelace Day, the day to celebrate the achievements of women in science and technology. Personally, I think every day is a day to celebrate that. Not just women, but men... and children... and, uh, dogs. Just anyone/anything who achieves something in science.


According to Lovelace's Wikipedia entry, “During a nine-month period in 1842-43, Lovelace translated Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea’s memoir on Babbage’s newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article, she appended a set of notes. The notes are longer than the memoir itself and include in complete detail, a method for calculating a sequence of Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, which would have run correctly had the Analytical Engine ever been built. Based on his work, Lovelace is now widely credited with being the first computer programmer and her method is recognized as the world’s first computer program…In 1953, over one hundred years after her death, Lovelace’s notes on Babbage’s Analytical Engine were republished. The engine has now been recognized as an early model for a computer and Lovelace’s notes as a description of a computer and software.”

Interestingly, Lovelace was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron, who died when she was nine. Apparently her mother was obsessed "with rooting out any of the insanity of which she accused Lord Byron".

So, in the spirit of Ada Lovelace Day I bring you... Gertrude Bell!


One of the first working female archaeologists, she was a force in what was a man's world - and in Iraq! She did some serious work in Mesopotamian archaeology as well as travelling the world and writing books about her adventures. Read her entire story here. This obituary, written by a male colleague, is just the definition of perfection. If I could write my own obituary, this would be it.

"No woman in recent time has combined her qualities – her taste for arduous and dangerous adventure with her scientific interest and knowledge, her competence in archaeology and art, her distinguished literary gift, her sympathy for all sorts and condition of men, her political insight and appreciation of human values, her masculine vigor, hard common sense and practical efficiency – all tempered by feminine charm and a most romantic spirit."

There is a certain anticipation, a longing, a curiosity, a tinge of fear, heightened awareness of life and the world around you associated with SCUBA diving. Those feelings only grow as you approach dive time. Your body prepares itself to be hyper-aware, your senses perk, you suddenly think about things that come naturally such as breathing and appendage movement. All systems are go and every endorphin your body has is released into your bloodstream.

And then it happens.

A fin strap snaps. A tank leaks. A mask cracks. And its over.

Yet... those endorphins, that feeling your body released in preparation for a life-threatening situation, they remain. Like Regan's demon, it has to be exorcised. The only way to do that is to dive.

My last two planned dives failed pretty miserably. In Ecuador Cameron and I had planned to dive the entire bay at Salango in hopes of plotting some underwater archaeological material. When we got there and saw the state of the water (high current, horribly murky, zero vis) we realized that might not happen, but decided to give it a go. On a side note, this is an area of murky water known for Hammerhead sharks in a bay in which a cat food factory dumps fish gut chum. Im just saying. Anyway, we head to town to get gear that was last used in 1974 and haul it and tanks back on a rickety tuk-tuk. Dive #1: my air hose has a massive leak, spewing bubbles into the water. No dive for me. Dive #2 (new set-up): AGAIN, my hose has a massive air leak. No dive. That was the end of diving in Ecuador.

Next up: December winter diving in Hood Canal, Washington. Cameron and I had been diving here before and we figured we would get in a nice, cold dive before heading south to see the families for Christmas. Upon arriving in Hoodsport something looked terribly amiss in the water. What was that? Ice? Yes, the sea water had frozen solid. We waited it out one day hoping it would melt off, but after stories of regulator free flow (which happens at temperatures below freezing and is not a good thing) we decided to pack it in and head south early.

So, I have stored up within me many, many diving endorphins just waiting to be released.

Next question: where to??

Always something so literal, yet intangible about Wendell Berry's poems.

In a dream I meet

my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: "How you been?"
He grins and looks at me.
"I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees."

-Wendell Berry, A Meeting in A Part

Soundlessness

I have found that I have been going hours, days without uttering a single sound. I hear only the constant click of the keys as I type.

Sometimes I find myself opening the curtains to look for other students on the sidewalks, convinced of the possibility that the world had come to some fiery end outside while I spent the day writing grants or outlining a dog burial typology. I think thoughts like, "That will be too bad if everyone is gone. Who will read my typology now?" I look out the window again.

After days of soundlessness you find even the most minute of noises bothersome and seemingly disturbing. The other night while lying in bed trying to sleep, with my eyes wide open, I stared at the dancing red dust I often see while staring into the dark. "Some blood vessel trick, some adjustment to the low light by my cornea" I told myself, but something wasnt right. This noise, this noise. grrrrrUK! grrrrrUK! Faint, but repeating, seemed to be far away, but close enough so that the sharp sting of its crescendo irked me. I searched. Where was it? Under my bed? I leaned over to look. grrrrUK! What the fuck. I leaned to the other side. grrrrUK. I sit straight up in bed, quickly. GRRRRUK! "OH. What an idiot" I think to myself as I realized that the springs of my bed made a creak that suspiciously corresponded with my every movement. I put in my earplugs and return to the calming silence.

The poet Jack Spicer writes about the desire to create poems without sound:

“I would like to make poems out of real objects. The lemon to be a lemon that the reader could cut or squeeze or taste—a real lemon like a newspaper in a collage is a real newspaper. I would like the moon in my poems to be a real moon, one which could be suddenly covered with a cloud that has nothing to do with the poem—a moon utterly independent of images. The imagination pictures the real. I would like to point to the real, to make a poem that has no sound in it but the pointing of a finger.”

Little Tough, Little Soft

Im really loving this blog lately. A city girl visits her small hometown. Meets a rugged cowboy. Falls in love. Marries said cowboy and lives a ranch life with him. True story! Sounds like a movie right? Apparently, it might be.

Not only is it a truly sweet love story, which she describes in detail, but she has really gorgeous photographs, good recipes and just plain entertaining blog posts. There is something undeniably fulfilling about country life and she captures it really well. Reading her blog makes me want to go work my grandparents farm in Kansas. Plow fields. Run cattle. Grow crops. Put in a hard day of work.

Simple Pleasures

One of the great joys of being the only person to read my own blog is that I feel no apprehension posting about my minute obsessions with random objects.

It is not often that I take time from my busy dog burial research schedule (yes, I typed that with a straight face) to think about something else, but ever since I saw the new Jeffrey Campell Mary Rocks shoe six months ago it has been itching at me. Finally, bought! Sure, by the time it is shipped to me in mid-May I will have wished I spent that money on the research material I desperately need, but at least I will look good walking to the library.

Its the little things.

Also, tonight I am eating Khazak horse meat.

One of my favorites:

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just tow me an inch, no--
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter--
Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure
In the million perfectly-chisled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheeks of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept on like a bent finger.
The first thing I was was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mice-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, and arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.

-Love Letter, Sylvia Plath