Virtually Home

Well, I seem to have survived the crisis of identity that was graduating from college, moving across the country, and starting graduate school. I'm having a lot of fun here, for the most part. I get to think a lot about frogs, evolutionary biology, the causes and consequences of sexual reproduction, and the factors that influence female mate choice and male competitive strategies. I think this is really fun. It's also really amazing that I can get paid to think about things. To learn stuff, to question what other people have learned, and to design ways to learn more stuff. That basic research is supported by our economy and our society is remarkable to me, and, however much I wish it was better funded, its simple existence is pretty incredible. Grad school turns out to be a pretty stressful environment. There is an ever-expanding list of things to read and think about, and this semester I had the added stress of teaching for the first time. I'm striving to change the wa...

Icky Blossoms! On Thursday, I caught The Faint for the first time in years. It was the last night of their first tour in three years, so that maybe isn't surprising. It's one of those bands that stands out in my library - dance? electronica? that's different - and reminds me of times past. I'm too young to be as nostalgic as The Faint makes me. And damn, they put on a good live show. They formed in Omaha, originally including a Conor Oberst who stormed out of practice one day announcing he was going to devote more time to his other project (which would become Bright Eyes). That split turned out pretty great for both bands, I think. Derek Pressnall at the mic for Icky Blossoms. Icky Blossoms opened -- another Omaha gem featuring Derek Pressnall, my Tilly and the Wall/Flowers Forever hero. The day before, their van had broken down across the Canadian border, and I had feared they wouldn't make the show. It's hard to be a dance band and an opening act at ...

Some years ago, I received some advice from someone in some situation that I can't quite remember. Maybe it was someone's high school commencement address. I'm not really sure. But the speaker, who I no doubt expected to ignore, said this: you don't ever want to be the smartest person in the room. I am, so far, quite pleased with my choice of graduate program, mostly because I am continually inspired and challenged by the other students. It's been kind of a revelation. You really don't ever want to be the smartest person in the room. I'm learning a lot of stuff, and it's pretty great. More later, I hope.

Four years ago, I voted in my first Presidential election via absentee ballot. I was a college sophomore living with two friends and an indescribably weird roommate who hated our guts. I suddenly needed to know what a notary was, and where to find one. I was desperately hopeful about a great many things. Since I had become politically conscious, I had only experienced the absurdity that was the George W. Bush Presidency. I was ready for a change, and I was excited to vote. I still have a copy of the Daily Oklahoman with the triumphant headline: "Yes, he did!" My only disappointment was that I would be spending most of Obama's first year in office abroad. I was, in retrospect, relieved -- a Democratic President-elect made the beginning of my year in Europe a lot less embarrassing than it would have been in the Bush era, or even in a McCain one. I watched in real time as America's reputation abroad changed, and I was proud. Well, here we are on election day. Some th...

Owen Ashworth from Advance Base. I found out kind of last-minute that Ben Gibbard had released a solo record, his first release since Death Cab's Codes and Keys (not my favorite DCFC album) and since his breakup with Zooey Deschanel. I hurried to my local record store to pick up a copy. I like the record so far -- it features a duet with Aimee Mann that is quite pleasing to me. I realized just in time that he was kicking off his tour in Minneapolis and jumped on tickets, but since it was a seated show, found myself toward the back and off to one side. I had a frustrating day that was compounded when I had to drive through Minneapolis traffic with bad directions, only to find that parking near the venue was nearly impossible. By the time I got in and sat down I was not in what you might call a concert-going mood. Telling a story. Luckily for me, the first words sung by the opener, one man with a keyboard and a synthesizer who was calling himself Advance Base, revealed t...

Last Wednesday I caught the Mountain Goats with Matthew E. White at The Varsity, a venue in the University of Minnesota's "Dinkytown" neighborhood (think Campus Corner, Oklahomies). The venue was pretty interesting -- a big standing area on one level, with a circular balcony area with seating that seemed not to be open for this particular show. They had, unfortunately, decided to project a bunch of advertisements for upcoming shows on a retractable projector screen in front of the stage. I found this obnoxious, and it cost the venue some points in my book. Matthew E. White opened with a band of 10, including two keyboardists, two percussionists, and a horn section. I found the lyrics repetitive and some of the subject matter kind of presumptuous, but considering those things along with my general dislike of horns, I liked it surprisingly much. They were from Richmond, Virginia, and spent a rather long time talking about Richmond, Virginia. It turns out that Matthew E....

Tilly and the Wall are a delightful act to see. They come onto the stage with a little audience participation: "We say 'Tilly,' you say 'what' (Tilly! What? Tilly! What?) -- We say 'Oh,' you say 'Fuck!'" You get the picture. Everyone is yelling from the start. When they started in with "Love Riot," the single from the album they'd released four days prior to the show, the bass was intense. Shake your ribcage intense. Intense enough to blow a fuse and disrupt the show, as it turns out. They battled electrical issues for the first three songs. See the setlist! If you're not familiar with Tilly and the Wall, they often use a tap-dancer as a percussion instrument. When I saw Tilly in 2010, they had scaled back Jamie's tap-dancing because she was four months pregnant, and she wore an awkward dress with a cartoon fetus on the front. This time, Derek had lost his voice and couldn't sing. That was a shame in t...

Laura Burhenn during her opening set. Recently, I got to catch Conor Oberst perform solo for the first time(s), ever. I mean, really solo. Not solo like in 2008 after the self-titled album came out and the Mystic Valley Band went on tour to support him. Solo, like, Conor and a guitar on a stage, with a guy on vibraphone and Laura Burhenn doing some backup vocals on a few songs. I caught a Thursday night show at the Fitzgerald Theatre in Saint Paul, which is home to A Prairie Home Companion. The show was hosted by the Minnesota Public Radio station The Current, and recorded for future streaming on their website. Laura Burhenn opened for both shows, as well as singing backup for Conor. She fronts the Mynabirds, who I caught opening for Bright Eyes in Detroit and Chicago in March of 2011. They sometimes remind me of Heartless Bastards, but I think it might just be the singers' ranges and physical appearances more than the bands themselves. She played some stripped-down versi...

Minnesotans are terrible drivers. Part of the problem seems to be their interstate system, which was evidently designed around the existing Cities and can therefore be mostly forgiven for its windiness and the resulting 55 mph speed limits. What it cannot be forgiven for is the dynamic nature of those speed limits, which can change one lane at a time down to as low as 30 mph. It cannot be forgiven for its propensity to have entrances and exits on both sides of the interstate simultaneously. And it certainly cannot be forgiven for putting all of its entrances within 200 feet of the exits sharing the same lane, so that every quarter mile is a chaotic jumble of cars entering and exiting from both sides onto an interstate with an unknowable speed limit. At least, I think this might be what makes Minnesotans insane. The fact is, Minnesotan drivers run red lights. I'm not talking about lazy, rolling-through-a-yellow type infractions. I'm talking about from-a-dead-stop, turning-left...

Today, I got a haircut from a random stranger. This was weird for me, since most of my life I've had my hair cut by the same person, from 1995 to 2012. It ended badly. Not only did she blow-dry and straighten my hair just moments after I finished explaining that I never used blow-driers or straighteners, but she also cut about four inches more than I asked her to. It made me miss my old hair dresser. I find myself in need of a new doctor and dentist as well, and, for the first time in my life, don't have a family referral for a good one. I really hope I don't end up with a physician as bad as that stylist. The consequences could be much more severe.

When I moved to Saint Paul, I was terrified that my life was going to turn out like this song by Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. It's about a girl who graduates from college at age 22 and moves to Saint Paul, where she's basically miserable and alone. Hey, I was a 22-year-old girl graduating from college and moving to Saint Paul. Huh. So far, it hasn't been like that. But winter is coming. "It's gonna be a cold, white Christmas in Saint Paul."

Desaparecidos released one punk rock album in 2002, called Read Music/Speak Spanish after frontman Conor Oberst's goals for that year. Forming the band was widely regarded as a terrible move by Oberst's critics. One of my favorite cuts from the record responds "They say it's murder on your folk career to make a rock record with The Disappeared -- Well let the police helicopters pull stereos out of the lakes. There's not an image that I must defend, there are no art forms now, just capitalism." The whole album is an indictment of the American obsession with wealth and possessions, and the effects of that obsession on our relationships, communities, and political system. It's loud and distorted, and remarkably few fans of Oberst's work with Bright Eyes or the Mystic Valley Band or Monsters of Folk identify as Desaparecidos fans, despite similar themes and the same solid songwriting we have come to expect from him. Oberst is notoriously prolific...

Night on the frog pond is magical. Sure, it's kind of exhausting, tromping through thick, sticky mud and trying not to fall down. And if you're not careful with the bug spray, you'll lose a pint of perfectly good blood to mosquitoes on any given night. And it's often frustrating, particularly at this point in the breeding season, when (I'm told) there are fewer frogs to be caught and more effort has to be put in to every capture. But last night the moon was waning, half-full, and brilliantly orange on the horizon. The frogs were singing, in a chorus of more than one species. As I looked for gray treefrogs I found lurking green frogs and huge, conspicuous leopard frogs that stayed perfectly still until they were absolutely sure you saw them, then leapt into the water with an ungainly splash. There is the occasional toad floating on top of the water, spotted and glandular. You can pick them up, right off the surface of the water, without much trouble. They're ca...

Moving in worked out all right, for all that the apartment is in an old two-story building with no elevator and narrow staircases with no dedicated parking. We were able to park the UHaul on the side of the building (because there's no way we could have parallel parked it in front of the building with enough space to get the ramp out behind it). All the furniture I brought fit nicely into the apartment, and my windowsills are now full of herbs. I started work almost immediately in the lab, helping a post-doc run some phonotaxis experiments in one of the several sound chambers that belong to the lab. He ran the computers that simulate the signals and background noise, while I shuffled frogs back and forth from the incubator to the testing chamber. We're working with Hyla chrysoscelis , commonly called Cope's Gray Treefrog. It's pretty abundant and widely-distributed in the US. In Oklahoma, it's most often a mottled gray color (hence the name) but here in Minneso...

Yesterday I took my last final, and today I was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. I'm waiting to see what grade I get in Animal Development, but otherwise my grades are final and I'm all set to graduate tomorrow. I'll walk across a stage -- twice -- and shake some hands and then I'll officially be an educated adult. I'm not sure how that's remotely possible. I know if I could meet me from five years ago, I'd probably notice a difference, but whatever change higher education has wrought has been unnoticeable to me. Next week I'm moving away from Oklahoma for the first time. I feel more melancholy about that than I thought I would. Not that there's anything inherently good about this place or its people, it's just that I've been working very hard for the last almost-23 years to find all the best people that live here, and now I have to start all over again, and what I have made here can never be the same, and the tyranny of distance makes all rel...

I went to bed last night feeling depressed about North Carolina's Amendment One. Today, the President restored some of my faith in humanity by coming out (of the closet) in favor of same-sex marriage, the first sitting President ever to do so. It's a poorly-guarded secret that he has been on our side all along, but to say it directly this close to his re-election is a brave move. Republicans are going to call it flip-flopping and a moral outrage. Black voters consistently demonstrate that they are opposed, and obviously are a major part of Obama's constituency. North Carolina is a key swing state, as demonstrated by the Democrats' decision to host their National Convention there this summer, and this probably won't go over so well there. All in all, though, I think this will do more political good than harm. Obama needed to energize young people, and give them back some of the hope for change they bought into in the months leading up to the 2008 election. He needed ...

North Carolina passed a terrible Constitutional amendment today, banning gay marriages and imposing a bunch of restrictions on unmarried couples, regardless of orientation. In a stroke, they discriminated against homosexuals and anyone who chooses not to marry, revoking hospital visitation rights, parental privileges, and preexisting restraining orders against abusive partners.      I have a lot of friends in North Carolina, since attending Duke TIP camps in Durham and the relocation of some Oklahoma contacts to the Carolinas. I've always found it a friendly place to visit, retaining all the hospitality and openness of the South, with little of the backwards tendencies native to my own home state. Apparently, I was misled by the atypical political climate of Raleigh-Durham. Some of my friends in North Carolina identify as GLBT, and their futures are a little less promising because of tonight's result. One friend has same-sex parents, and finds her parents' relations...

It's funny how impending change makes me take a harder look at my surroundings. I've been appreciating a lot of things I've taken for granted, lately. Just yesterday I walked into Richards Hall, which is one of two Zoology buildings on campus, and noticed some stonework invertebrates carved above the door. A beetle, a crayfish, a horseshoe crab. A grasshopper, I think. I should really have paid more attention for the last five years. Hell, for the last 22.

On my recent flight from Oklahoma City to St. Louis, an airline employee took the microphone to make an unusual announcement. The aircraft was transporting the remains of a United States servicemember home for burial in Missouri. I was surprised, to say the least. I feel completely disconnected from the war our country has been waging for the last decade, and I think that's not abnormal.  I tend to think of the military as something utterly separate from my peaceful civilian life. That commercial airliners are transporting the mortal remains of soldiers killed in action never occurred to me, but now that it has, it seems inherently wrong, and unsettling in a visceral and inexplicable way. It seems that their comrades in arms should carry them home on military aircraft, and that the horror of war shouldn't intrude on domestic travel arrangements. I can't say why I feel that way. Perhaps if war intruded more on our daily lives, we'd be more inclined to stop it. Maybe ...

This New Year's Eve I attended the fifth annual Flaming Lips New Year's Eve Freakout in Oklahoma City. I've been wanting to attend since the first year, but have spent none of my last four New Year's Eves in Oklahoma. While southern California, Paris, Paris and Belize was a fantastic NYE run, I was kind of psyched about getting to participate. The venue was done up in true Flaming Lips fashion, and I admired the lights and balloons and enormous mirror ball as vast improvements to the vacuous, concrete space that is the Coca-Cola Events Center in Bricktown. The opener was Phantogram, a three-piece band with a drummer, a guitar and a synthesizer, whose dance music was so bass-y that my esophagus must have thought it was experiencing an extended earthquake. No one really danced, which might have been because it was early or because the music was so out of line with what we expected to see next. They seemed genuinely psyched to be there, and having come from New York Ci...

Procrastinate Less. Corollary: If you're going to procrastinate, don't feel bad about it. Do something you want to do: Play more guitar. Read more for fun. Play more video games.