Tonkin to You!

 “Feeling honest as a promise Troubled times have come upon us At the core of the cosmos We are so much more than particles Sonic to the subatomic You are a whisper and a scream You are, we are All part of this everything” --Eddie Vedder, Invincible This past week, I turned 49; it’s an interesting age to be. While being reminded that the milestone of “50” is just a year off, you also realize that in all likelihood there is more life left behind than ahead. Such an epiphany is not necessarily morose; instead, it’s a cause for reflection, a time to realize how many waves of reality have washed over you.  When spoken aloud, recollections of change within your own near-half-century can be staggering…especially when you’re a GenXer who grew up during the height of the space age! My earliest memories all circled around spaceships, aliens, and the big bad universe! I vividly recall my brother and I playing with science fiction toys as young geeks in the 1970s.  The plastic fanta...

 Academia is often a waiting game. Degrees take time to accomplish, hires and fires are slow, and any kind of change is incremental.  Despite the speed of information in 2022 (and beyond), the institutions of learning move more like a Jawa’s sandcrawler: Full of valuable stuff but frequently slowed down by their own bulk.  (Image attribution: starwars.com) Since my successful dissertation defense during the first week of November of last year, I’ve been waiting for my diploma to show in the mail. Following weeks of reminder e-mails to the registrar and graduation services, this paper validation of the past 4.5 years of work arrived at my house. I came home to find the following: To say the final ceremonial step in my doctoral work was anticlimactic would be an understatement. It actually looked like the mailman had flung it like a frisbee, releasing it to sail across my lawn to rest on my porch. I could picture “graduation services” driving through neighborhoods on floats...

Like many middle-aged Americans trying to hold on to their last vestiges of youth, I’m a regular at Planet Fitness. There’s people of all shapes and sizes there and no prevailing “style code” enforcement (though I have seen some very questionable workout attire). There are also big screen televisions, like, everywhere. Like a loud bar or kitschy chain restaurant, silent visuals prevail. No captions, just televisions silently broadcasting a continuum of mainstream entertainment consisting mainly of sports and news.  As a creature of habit, I always seem to end up at the same elliptical machine. This station is perfectly positioned in the middle between MSNBC (to the left) and Fox News (to the right). Yes, I’m serious. From my captive vantage point, for 30-40 minutes at a clip, I get to observe the polar opposites of “news” delivery. With the sound off, the viewer has only the visuals to guide them, but it’s still not hard to follow.   With the exaggerated facial expression...

Everyone is familiar with the themes behind 1983’s “A Christmas Story.” Ralphie desperately longs for the toy of the year, in this case, a bb gun. Mom and dad are hesitant. Their concern for his safety and the hanging threat of “you’ll shoot your eye out” mask the bigger looming fear, namely the beginning of their son’s transition to adulthood. Eventually, the parents relent, providing one of the keys which help Ralphie open the door to making his own decisions (good and bad), experiencing both joy and success and heartbreak and pain, and coming into his fully-formed self.                (Photo credit Hollywood Reporter) The movie’s turning point, where Ralphie receives “ol Blue” as surprise final gift, actually played out in my own life. It was 1987; my friends and I had all hatched an idea in study hall to form a band. Scott played drums. Bob was practicing the hell out of an old acoustic guitar and Dan already had an electric to ...

Hey my friends!  It’s been too long…and so much of my time and creative energy has been consumed in finishing my dissertation (Chapter 5, here we come)!  One of the best parts of being a teacher is getting to learn from my students.  These young folks often provide viewpoints and life lessons during the simplest of interactions.  I often do class roll call with a “question of the day.” Although the process eats up a few extra minutes of class time, it gets the students talking, wakes up their brains, and even produces some disarming humor…all while we get to know each other a bit better. Last week, one of my students suggested the question for the day: What time period do you wish you had lived within? Answers were all over the map. Two students wanted to see if they could hunt dinosaurs. Others yearned for the early 2000’s of their youth.  Several young ladies wanted to experience the Roaring 20’s. My favorite answers, however, came from those who wished they h...

Though I have friends of all political and economic “stripes,” I identify as an ethical free-market capitalist and a moderate. I believe that anyone should have the right to work hard and prosper, free of overly restrictive legislation or limitations. Alongside my fierce independence, I also acknowledge the need for intervention to combat barriers to entry and to weed out institutional discrimination. I support social safety nets and espouse compromise; in the same way that the world has never seen a pure communist or socialist system, we, as Americans, do not live in a “pure” capitalist economy either. In reality, “pure” strands of anything seldom work. Purebred animals suffer from genetic defects and vulnerability to disease. Pure culinary components produce bland and flavorless dishes. Similarly, “pure” economic systems result in undesirable benefits for many or concentrations of power in the hands of a few brokers. In reality, hybrid animals, food combinations, and mixed economic s...

My wife and I are more obsessed with our dog Willis than Thanos was about finding all the Infinity Stones. He is handsome, smart as hell, and a born comedian….a textbook Jack Russell terrier. This slightly mighty canine is a perpetual motion machine stuffed into nine lbs of muscle, attitude, and spunk. Seldom a day has gone by in the Tonkin household since his arrival four years ago that Willis hasn’t inspired a laugh or brought more light into a room. He is my teaching assistant, hiking partner, confident, and best bud. Recently, Mr. Willis (as my wife has taken to calling him) earned a new title: Mentor. A little over a week ago, a two pound ball of fluff showed up at my house (courtesy of my brother-in-law Raife). Looking like a wet rat and smelling of cigarettes, this little terrier/chihuahua mix (a “cherrier”) was wobbly, thin, and in dire need of a home. Raife’s rescues were not a new phenomena in the family; as a landlord, he often comes across “unplanned” critters needing a ...