Jimmie (J.J.) Walker was on Letterman tonight, complaining about how he was hassled by the TSA while trying to fly home from Costa Rica through Houston. Apparently, they had searched his luggage and found notes for his comedy routine. They thought he might be a terrorist because he had made a cryptic notation about the Christmas Bomber and Tiger (Woods). The TSA has no sense of humor and could not fathom any reason for the references in a comedian's notes/outline. He was annoyed. It reminded me about my own experience with suspicious airport authorities wanting me to explain the contents of my luggage.
I don’t think I look like a terrorist, but, since 9/11, how many people must have thought this even as they were molested in a pat-down, had the inside of their shoes examined, and were otherwise subjected to intense scrutiny, simply for trying to get from one place to another via a commercial airline? Shortly before 9/11, I was surprised when I was once caught up in the kind of search that we now take for granted when flying.
In 2000, Jack and I were in Mexico. We’ve been going to Chiapas, an impoverished state in Mexico, since 1995, when Jack was five years old. This was our second long trip and we had been in Mexico for two months. It was late June and Jack had to return to the United States to spend the rest of the summer with his father. I was escorting Jack to Atlanta to meet John. We took a taxi to the airport in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas, where we would fly first to Mexico City, and then on to Atlanta. I planned to stay overnight at my cousin’s house in suburban Atlanta and then return to Mexico for another five weeks.
There are two airports in Tuxtla Gutierrez. Which one is used depends on the weather, as there can be perfect conditions at one airport while the other is flooded from the summer storms that occasionally sweep through the area. We usually go to “Aeropuerto Teran,” next to a large military installation near the center of the city (the other airport, whose name I never discovered even when passing through it, is about 20 miles north of the city on the Pan American Highway). Teran is the preferred airport, as taxi rides to and from it are substantially cheaper. However, one never knows from which airport one’s flight will leave; it is always wise to arrive at Teran at least an hour before the scheduled departure time, as, if Teran is closed, the other airport is still 30 minutes away. Recently, we arrived at Teran an hour early, only to have them close the airport just before our plane was supposed to depart; all of the travelers were diverted to the other airport in a convoy of taxis, which the airline paid for. We careened wildly through a flooded Tuxtla, speeding through streets with water deep enough to threaten to swamp our taxi. Our fearless driver never halted and we arrived at the other airport just in time to board the plane.
This time, the weather was fine, but we were still sent to the far airport. It has a pleasant little restaurant that overlooks the tarmac. It is located right above the gates, so we could while away any extra time by having a last meal before departing Chiapas. I was bringing several bags to leave at my cousin’s house, which I would pick up on my final return. I had bought enough souvenirs that it would have been impossible for me to bring it all home in one trip. These bags contained many of the treasures that we had come to love while living in Mexico.
Chiapas is known for its unique textiles, pottery, amber, chocolate, and coffee. I usually bring a kilo of coffee back, even though I don’t drink it. My friends tell me that Chiapas coffee is delicious: strong and very smooth, without any bitterness, so I always bring some home. Chocolate is my passion, and I have the hips to prove it. I’ve always loved chocolate. Chocolate has been grown for export on the Pacific coast of Chiapas for over a thousand years. Both the Classic Maya and the later Aztec Empire used cacao beans, the large seeds that are roasted and ground to make chocolate, as money. Counterfeit cacao beans (made of ceramic) have been found, mixed with the remains of real beans, in Maya graves. In my opinion, chocolate makes more sense than gold.
In modern Chiapas, cacao pods are allowed to ferment, then the beans are removed, roasted, ground, kneaded with sugar, and formed into disks that are somewhat larger than a silver dollar; the final product is called “table chocolate.” Jack and I had discovered that a disk of table chocolate, chopped to powder and divided between two big mugs of hot milk, makes the best hot chocolate in the entire world. It is rich, not too sweet, with a hint of spiciness that cannot be found in commercial chocolate. Topped with Mexican cream, which is thicker than American heavy cream, it is ambrosia, while “Swiss Miss” is an abomination straight out of out of hell. The occasional bit of cacao shell in the bottom of one’s cup does nothing to detract from the essential lusciousness of this drink.
I had purchased two kilos of table chocolate, “Excellencia de Chiapas” brand, which was made in San Cristóbal and quaintly packaged in small wooden crates. I had encased the wooden boxes in ziplock bags; otherwise, my belongings would have been flavored by the rich chocolate scent. I then wrapped the packets in clothes in the center of a duffle bag. In this way, we would have plenty of chocolate for the following winter. Since one of my friends had problems with a light-fingered baggage handler on a previous trip, I had secured the zippers of our duffle bags with small padlocks and placed any desirable items (like my mini maglite and my Swiss army knife) near the center, too.
We arrived at the airport with about two hours to spare. I did not want to risk missing the flight and gone to the taxi stand in San Cristóbal quite early. Sometimes, it takes an hour or more to fill a shared taxi from San Cristóbal to Tuxtla, but it is worth it to share, as it costs over US$60 for a personal taxi, while the shared taxi was US$8 per person. Even with two of us, it was still much cheaper to share, but we had a lot of time to kill at the airport. I was overjoyed when we were allowed to check our bags early. Usually, Mexican airports don’t let you check baggage until 30 minutes prior to flight time.
We went to the restaurant to eat lunch; on this trip, I hadn’t taken Jack out to eat as often as he would have liked, as I was on a strict budget. Since I wouldn’t be with Jack for almost six weeks, I wanted to have a last splurge while I still had him. I don’t remember exactly what we ordered; I just know that we feasted. For Jack, this probably meant mole poblano, which is chicken (or turkey) with a spicy chocolate/chile pepper sauce topped with sesame seeds and served with rice, beans, vegetables, and tortillas. It is one of Jack’s (and my) favorite meals. He also liked this restaurant’s club sandwich, consisting of locally-made ham, freshly roasted turkey breast, tomato, and lettuce on squishy white bread, spread with home-made mayonnaise and served with French fries and incredibly sweet catsup. We probably ordered both meals and shared them.
As we ate, I heard an announcement over the airport loudspeaker. Like all public address systems in transportation areas, the voice was nearly incomprehensible, all the more so as it was speaking in garbled Spanish. Whenever I hear one of these cryptic messages, I think that I’m hearing some version of my own name as part of the message, but I’m never actually the person that they are looking for. In this case, the message was so garbled, I didn’t pay any attention. After a leisurely meal, we used the bathroom and strolled downstairs to our gate.
At this airport, there is one large waiting area with about five different exits onto the tarmac. All you had to do was show your ticket to be allowed through the doors and into the gate seating area. We still had about an hour before our flight, and, once again, someone was paged over the public address system. Again, the whole message was severely garbled. I remember looking around and wondering if it had been my name called, but who would be paging me at the Tuxtla airport?
Jack and I played games, watched other planes leave, and chatted about all of the things he was going to do in the United States. He was headed to summer camp with some of his gymnastics teammates for a week, then to Cub Scout camp for another week. The first camp had cabins and indoor plumbing but the second had platform tents and outhouses. Jack had never been to an overnight camp before and I was anxious because he was going off to camp and I wasn’t even going to be in the same country! Finally, they called our flight. We had lined up to exit onto the tarmac when a pair of uniformed men stopped me, one asking if I was Mar-ee-ay Rob-ee-son. I said I was and he asked why I hadn’t answered any of the pages. I was shocked and told them that I didn’t hear it, which wasn’t entirely true, but I didn’t know how to say that I didn’t believe anyone could have been paging me at that airport.
They brought out our luggage and asked if I would, por favor, open the locks. I pulled out my keys and opened the bags. The one in charge quickly located the two lumps in the center of the biggest duffle bag. He unwrapped the clothing and looked at the first wooden box inside the plastic bag, asking, “What ees thees?” I flipped the plastic bag over to expose the paper sticker on the wooden box and said, “Chocolate. Me gusta mucho la chocolate de Chiapas.” He opened the plastic bag, then pried open the wooden box and broke the paper liner to pull out... disks of chocolate. He quickly opened the second box, with the same result. He desultorily sifted through the rest of our bags, but his heart was no longer in the search. We quickly closed up the bags and relocked them, then he thanked me and ordered his subordinate to bring the bags to the plane.
Of course, the plane had loaded all of the other passengers while we were detained. At Mexican airports, they only call passengers for boarding at the last possible minute, so the plane was now in the last stages of preparing for take-off. The men who operate the movable stairs were beginning to pull them away from the plane. All three of us: Jack, myself, and the soldier carrying our luggage, sprinted across the tarmac to the staircase, the poor little soldier greatly burdened by all of our heavy luggage, me gripping Jack by the hand, fearful of losing him in our haste to catch the plane. We got to the foot of the stairs just as they were closing the plane’s door. Jack and I hustled up the steps while the soldier forced the baggage handlers to reopen the baggage compartment. The hostess quickly thrust the usual Mexican candies into my hand for us to suck on (and prevent our ears from hurting on take-off) and pushed us in the direction of our row. The plane took off about ten seconds after we found our seats, so quickly that we had barely time to fasten our seatbelts, never mind unwrap the lollypops. I was baffled by the entire procedure.
It was several months later when I discovered (quite by accident) that chocolate, because of its density, looks exactly the same as plastic explosives when viewed through an x-ray machine. The little crates of chocolate disks, coupled with the nearby batteries in my emergency flashlight, had made airport security very nervous, particularly when I failed to answer their repeated pages. Politics are taken quite seriously in Mexico; the presidential elections were only days away and parts of Chiapas have been in revolt since 1994. For the officials at the Tuxtla airport, no one’s luggage was getting on a plane without being thoroughly checked and my luggage was suspicious. Upon finally locating me, a chubby, clueless gringa accompanied by her cute little blond boy, they must have had doubts about their alarm, but they still had to verify that I wasn’t the terrorist that they feared.
Me - the chocolate bomber. Yum!
Monday, August 30, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
A random recipe
Since my surgeries, I’ve craved protein so much I feel like a lion lurking near the waterhole. Right after I got out of the hospital, I primarily satiated this craving by eating eggs every day for breakfast and sometimes for dinner, as well. It’s a good thing I’ve never had high cholesterol levels in my blood! Now that I’ve worked my way up to a high fiber diet, I’m usually eating Cheerios for breakfast and, over the course of the day, it’s hard to get both the fiber I need and the excessive amount of protein that I still crave.
I’m a strong believer in the idea that if a little is good, then a bucketful is terrific. The American philosopher Robert Anson Heinlein said to take big bites, that moderation was for monks. Nevertheless, I’m trying to lose weight and eat healthier. I’ve created a dinner salad that is big enough for a hearty eater while still high in fiber and protein. In short, it’s my kind of meal. I serve it in a pretty Polish ceramic pie plate, so it feels special. I feel very full after one of these salads, yet it soothes my craving for protein. And it’s got half of my daily requirement for fiber. That works for me (and please pardon the suppressed burp).
Costco Salad - so called as I get almost all of the ingredients at my favorite warehouse
4 cups Salad mix - I use Earthbound Farms Organic Spring Mix
1/4 rotisserie chicken breast, skin removed and cubed - Costco’s are delicious and inexpensive
2 hard boiled eggs, cubed
1/2 cup shelled organic edamame
1/3 package Tasty Bites chunky chickpeas (with garlic, ginger and aromatic spices)
Hannah Tzatziki Yogurt dip, as needed - I use about 4 tablespoons.
I grow my own tomatoes and peppers, which I add, liberally, but this varies by what is ripe today.
Place a bed of salad mix in your dish, then layer the rest of the ingredients on the greens. Top with tzatziki.
Nutritional data: 575 calories, 25.5 gm fat, 10.1 gm saturated fat, 41 gm protein, 43 gm carbs, 12.5 gm fiber, 3 gm sugar
Try it out and tell me if you like it, too.
I’m a strong believer in the idea that if a little is good, then a bucketful is terrific. The American philosopher Robert Anson Heinlein said to take big bites, that moderation was for monks. Nevertheless, I’m trying to lose weight and eat healthier. I’ve created a dinner salad that is big enough for a hearty eater while still high in fiber and protein. In short, it’s my kind of meal. I serve it in a pretty Polish ceramic pie plate, so it feels special. I feel very full after one of these salads, yet it soothes my craving for protein. And it’s got half of my daily requirement for fiber. That works for me (and please pardon the suppressed burp).
Costco Salad - so called as I get almost all of the ingredients at my favorite warehouse
4 cups Salad mix - I use Earthbound Farms Organic Spring Mix
1/4 rotisserie chicken breast, skin removed and cubed - Costco’s are delicious and inexpensive
2 hard boiled eggs, cubed
1/2 cup shelled organic edamame
1/3 package Tasty Bites chunky chickpeas (with garlic, ginger and aromatic spices)
Hannah Tzatziki Yogurt dip, as needed - I use about 4 tablespoons.
I grow my own tomatoes and peppers, which I add, liberally, but this varies by what is ripe today.
Place a bed of salad mix in your dish, then layer the rest of the ingredients on the greens. Top with tzatziki.
Nutritional data: 575 calories, 25.5 gm fat, 10.1 gm saturated fat, 41 gm protein, 43 gm carbs, 12.5 gm fiber, 3 gm sugar
Try it out and tell me if you like it, too.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Lies
I don’t read people’s expressions very well. This is why I insist that people be verbally honest with me. It drives me crazy when people tell me “little white lies.” For me, a “white lie” means that you think I can’t handle reality.
Tonight, I asked someone to do something (a simple thing, but a favor nonetheless). I could tell that this person didn’t want to do it, but rather than be honest, they attempted to placate me by telling me that they would do it, and then they didn’t. As a result, I’m FURIOUS.
What is so hard about saying, “No.” Simply, politely, “No.” I would try to convince the person that what I wanted wouldn’t draw blood or otherwise injure them. It would be a good conversation. I’d even accept the “No,” eventually, with good humor. Instead, I got shut down, treated like a toddler who might have a tantrum. Now I WANT to have a tantrum!
“Little white lies” are pernicious; they display a fundamental disrespect that I will never tolerate, ever again.
Tonight, I asked someone to do something (a simple thing, but a favor nonetheless). I could tell that this person didn’t want to do it, but rather than be honest, they attempted to placate me by telling me that they would do it, and then they didn’t. As a result, I’m FURIOUS.
What is so hard about saying, “No.” Simply, politely, “No.” I would try to convince the person that what I wanted wouldn’t draw blood or otherwise injure them. It would be a good conversation. I’d even accept the “No,” eventually, with good humor. Instead, I got shut down, treated like a toddler who might have a tantrum. Now I WANT to have a tantrum!
“Little white lies” are pernicious; they display a fundamental disrespect that I will never tolerate, ever again.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Names
I was thinking today about when and why John first started to call me "Little Bear." My oldest brother was named after our father, Ed, but our mother didn't want to call him Ed because she foresaw confusion as he grew and started to have friends calling him on the telephone. She insisted that he needed a different nickname from the beginning and she didn't want to call him Junior. So, my brother Edward became Ted. Ted rapidly became Teddy, then Teddy Bear. My sister insisted he couldn't be Teddy Bare, that he must be Teddy Dressed. This discussion about his name continued for years. As teenagers, Ted started calling the rest of us kids by our name followed by the word Bear, probably to protest the continuation of Teddy Bear. Karen became Karen Bear and I was Mary Bear. Karen started referring to Ted's best friend (Neil) as Neil Baby. Both Ted and Neil always used the Bear names in retaliation. John had heard all of the "Bear" names and noted that I was the youngest Bear. So he started to call me Little Bear. I felt it was somewhat condescending as it was often accompanied by a pat on the head, but he could not be dissuaded. The patting stopped when I repeatedly tried to bite him. After all, real bears bite anyone who pats them. He ceased the patting (for the most part) but continued with the name.
John had named himself Zeke. I was never that fond of the name Zeke. It is ironic, as I ultimately became an archaeologist who looked for graves ("Ezekial cried, "Them dry bones"; Ezekial cried, "Them dry bones." Ezekial cried, "Them dry bones; Now hear the Word of the Lord. The foot bone's connected to the leg bone. The leg bone's connected to the knee bone. The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone.... " This is practically the theme song for grave-seeking archaeologists!). John was tall and skinny, a little too skeletal for me to want to call him that. It thought it was disrespectful, even though he wanted to be called Zeke at the time.
I named our son for the same reason why my mother named my brother after his father, but like my mother, I wanted him to have a different nickname. Jack became a popular name for baby boys a few years later, after the release of "Titanic" but I named Jack after his great grandfather, who shared the nickname and who died a few years before my son was born.
During our divorce, I didn't want John to call me Little Bear any longer. It felt like he was trying to maintain a pet name after our intimate relationship ended; it annoyed me beyond all measure and seemed completely inappropriate. I don't feel that way any longer. Enough time has passed that I was able to remember that the name had its origins long before we became intimate, so it no longer feels inappropriate. It is, once again, just his special name for me, one of his best friends from a difficult time in both of our lives.
John had named himself Zeke. I was never that fond of the name Zeke. It is ironic, as I ultimately became an archaeologist who looked for graves ("Ezekial cried, "Them dry bones"; Ezekial cried, "Them dry bones." Ezekial cried, "Them dry bones; Now hear the Word of the Lord. The foot bone's connected to the leg bone. The leg bone's connected to the knee bone. The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone.... " This is practically the theme song for grave-seeking archaeologists!). John was tall and skinny, a little too skeletal for me to want to call him that. It thought it was disrespectful, even though he wanted to be called Zeke at the time.
I named our son for the same reason why my mother named my brother after his father, but like my mother, I wanted him to have a different nickname. Jack became a popular name for baby boys a few years later, after the release of "Titanic" but I named Jack after his great grandfather, who shared the nickname and who died a few years before my son was born.
During our divorce, I didn't want John to call me Little Bear any longer. It felt like he was trying to maintain a pet name after our intimate relationship ended; it annoyed me beyond all measure and seemed completely inappropriate. I don't feel that way any longer. Enough time has passed that I was able to remember that the name had its origins long before we became intimate, so it no longer feels inappropriate. It is, once again, just his special name for me, one of his best friends from a difficult time in both of our lives.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Completely geeked out
Last month, Jack and I went to a convention called “The Next HOPE,” where HOPE stands for Hackers On Planet Earth. I had a blast. In my day, hackers were just people who messed around with computers, but now the term has expanded to anyone who examines stuff, takes it apart to see what makes it tick, and creates Frankenstuff. I’ve always taken broken items apart; sometimes I fix them, sometimes I leave a mess of parts, but I always learn something. Imagine three thousand people who like to take stuff apart, taking over part of a large hotel for a weekend in New York City! That’s what HOPE was.
Actually, this HOPE wasn’t supposed to happen, as the Hotel Fithadelphia (not original to me, but I liked it as it perfectly described the Hotel Pennsylvania) was supposed to be torn down two years ago, after “The Last HOPE.” The developer is still trying to tear the place down and put up parking and offices, but the dirty old hotel is still running.
If you Google the hotel, you find lots of links to blogs describing in horrific detail the bedbug infestation that has plagued many rooms in recent years. We got lucky and got a room with new carpeting and mattresses - so new that the corners were not tacked down. On arrival, I pulled back the sheets to check the mattresses for bloodstains - a clue to an infestation - if previous guests were bitten, they leave small stains where the bedbugs thrust their piercing and sucking apparatus right through the mattress cover into their flesh - but the mattresses were pristine. From this, I assume the room had been effectively exterminated in the very recent past. I also looked in all of the nooks and crannies for the tiny insects. Finally, I checked myself out the next morning in the bathroom mirror and had no wounds. I think we were lucky.
The main rule at HOPE was, no messing with the hotel - which meant, primarily, no reprogramming the elevators, at least, not by the general membership. no matter how qualified.
The membership badge, hung on a lanyard around everyone's neck, was a circuit board into which you inserted a button battery. Once powered, a little red LED blinked regularly. Everyone quickly figured out that if you touched certain places on the badge in the right order, a white or a blue LED blinked, instead of the red one (these were hackers, after all, so we all immediately starting messing with the badge). The badge was an RFID sending device - there were readers all over the hotel so once you registered your badge, you could go to a big monitor and watch how people moved around the convention space. You could also purchase a small kit and “sniff” the datastream right from your badge in real time, if you had brought your laptop. I didn’t, but most did - and I bought the kit anyway.
To install the kit, you had to be able to solder a flatmount integrated circuit (a “chip”). It wasn’t easy. The chip was smaller than my thumbnail with 28 tiny legs, each leg separated from the next by a hair’s width. The Hackerspace had tables, soldering irons, and people selling various electronic kits. We bought the modification kits and settled into the Hackerspace. I had never soldered flatmount before, but figured it out quickly as I’ve built a LOT of devices (who do you think actually built all of the electronics that John designed for Ace Frehley’s lit guitars?). I taught Jack and Kirsten how to solder bigger components to give them practice before they tackled flatmount; they bought kits for various toys. In addition, there were electronic devices to dismantle and we had a grand old time, taking crap apart and putting stuff together.
Then, strangers started coming up and asking me to help them. I taught soldering for three days in the Hackerspace, whenever I wasn’t watching a panel - which added up to a LOT of hours! I made a lot of new friends. They plied me with beverages, including a vile drink that was popular at HOPE, “Club Mate.” I’m glad I tried it but it tastes like.... yuck. It is carbonated Yerba Mate tea, has a lot of caffeine, and is popular in Germany. As far as I am concerned, it can STAY in Germany!
Someone at HOPE started calling my method the Zen of Soldering. Soldering flatmount is substantially different from soldering larger components.
When you solder, don’t try to overpower your hands. Everyone shakes - you can’t help it as long as your heart is beating, so the soldering iron will also shake. The key is, find that perfect moment of stillness between your heartbeats to apply the iron to the delicate legs of a flatmount.
The steps for flatmount -
The circuit board is electroplated with solder, as are the legs of the chip, so you don’t need to add any more.
You DO need to add flux, which helps the solder flow smoothly. Someone at HOPE had a flux-marker, like a magic marker. It worked well. I think he got it at Radio Shack.
Place the chip onto the pads. Make sure the pin number one markers match. Nudge the chip gently to get it perfectly located, with the tiny legs centered on the pads.
Hold the chip in place with a finger on one hand as you apply the soldering iron to a single corner pin. You can see a metallic flash as the solder melts on the pad. It should take only a second or two (at most) with a hot iron.
Take the iron off without moving the chip. There will be another flash as the bright silver color of the liquid solder suddenly dulls to a solid.
Take your finger off and examine the chip carefully. Are you happy with its location? If not, tip the circuit board sideways and nudge the leg gently with the soldering iron, melting the solder and allowing the chip to fall off. Start over.
If the joint is good but the placement of the rest of the legs isn't perfect, you can nudge the chip with your finger into a better position without the necessity of disturbing the first joint.
Solder the opposite corner and examine again.
If you are happy, solder each remaining pin individually, a second or two per pin.
With a magnifying glass, examine the legs for bridges, which would cause a short-circuit. If you’ve been careful, your flatmount should be properly soldered. If you have a bridge, carefully heat the area and shake the excess solder off, being careful not to shake molten solder someplace worse! I usually smack the edge of the circuit board sharply on a table top to shake off excess solder.
Jack had never seen me in building electronics before. I’d built a radio-controlled model airplane to take photographs of archaeological sites when he was a toddler but I did all of the construction in the archaeology lab while he was in daycare. As far as he was concerned, I might as well have bought it. At HOPE, he was surprised to see me completely absorbed in building - either building my own toys, teaching others to build their own things, or building for them. He commented that he’s never seen me “geeked out” before. Indeed, he sometimes had trouble getting me to leave for meals! I’d forgotten what an integral part of my life electronics used to be. I hadn’t known how much I missed it and was thrilled to spend a weekend with like-minded people. Radio Shack, here I come!
Actually, this HOPE wasn’t supposed to happen, as the Hotel Fithadelphia (not original to me, but I liked it as it perfectly described the Hotel Pennsylvania) was supposed to be torn down two years ago, after “The Last HOPE.” The developer is still trying to tear the place down and put up parking and offices, but the dirty old hotel is still running.
If you Google the hotel, you find lots of links to blogs describing in horrific detail the bedbug infestation that has plagued many rooms in recent years. We got lucky and got a room with new carpeting and mattresses - so new that the corners were not tacked down. On arrival, I pulled back the sheets to check the mattresses for bloodstains - a clue to an infestation - if previous guests were bitten, they leave small stains where the bedbugs thrust their piercing and sucking apparatus right through the mattress cover into their flesh - but the mattresses were pristine. From this, I assume the room had been effectively exterminated in the very recent past. I also looked in all of the nooks and crannies for the tiny insects. Finally, I checked myself out the next morning in the bathroom mirror and had no wounds. I think we were lucky.
The main rule at HOPE was, no messing with the hotel - which meant, primarily, no reprogramming the elevators, at least, not by the general membership. no matter how qualified.
The membership badge, hung on a lanyard around everyone's neck, was a circuit board into which you inserted a button battery. Once powered, a little red LED blinked regularly. Everyone quickly figured out that if you touched certain places on the badge in the right order, a white or a blue LED blinked, instead of the red one (these were hackers, after all, so we all immediately starting messing with the badge). The badge was an RFID sending device - there were readers all over the hotel so once you registered your badge, you could go to a big monitor and watch how people moved around the convention space. You could also purchase a small kit and “sniff” the datastream right from your badge in real time, if you had brought your laptop. I didn’t, but most did - and I bought the kit anyway.
To install the kit, you had to be able to solder a flatmount integrated circuit (a “chip”). It wasn’t easy. The chip was smaller than my thumbnail with 28 tiny legs, each leg separated from the next by a hair’s width. The Hackerspace had tables, soldering irons, and people selling various electronic kits. We bought the modification kits and settled into the Hackerspace. I had never soldered flatmount before, but figured it out quickly as I’ve built a LOT of devices (who do you think actually built all of the electronics that John designed for Ace Frehley’s lit guitars?). I taught Jack and Kirsten how to solder bigger components to give them practice before they tackled flatmount; they bought kits for various toys. In addition, there were electronic devices to dismantle and we had a grand old time, taking crap apart and putting stuff together.
Then, strangers started coming up and asking me to help them. I taught soldering for three days in the Hackerspace, whenever I wasn’t watching a panel - which added up to a LOT of hours! I made a lot of new friends. They plied me with beverages, including a vile drink that was popular at HOPE, “Club Mate.” I’m glad I tried it but it tastes like.... yuck. It is carbonated Yerba Mate tea, has a lot of caffeine, and is popular in Germany. As far as I am concerned, it can STAY in Germany!
Someone at HOPE started calling my method the Zen of Soldering. Soldering flatmount is substantially different from soldering larger components.
When you solder, don’t try to overpower your hands. Everyone shakes - you can’t help it as long as your heart is beating, so the soldering iron will also shake. The key is, find that perfect moment of stillness between your heartbeats to apply the iron to the delicate legs of a flatmount.
The steps for flatmount -
The circuit board is electroplated with solder, as are the legs of the chip, so you don’t need to add any more.
You DO need to add flux, which helps the solder flow smoothly. Someone at HOPE had a flux-marker, like a magic marker. It worked well. I think he got it at Radio Shack.
Place the chip onto the pads. Make sure the pin number one markers match. Nudge the chip gently to get it perfectly located, with the tiny legs centered on the pads.
Hold the chip in place with a finger on one hand as you apply the soldering iron to a single corner pin. You can see a metallic flash as the solder melts on the pad. It should take only a second or two (at most) with a hot iron.
Take the iron off without moving the chip. There will be another flash as the bright silver color of the liquid solder suddenly dulls to a solid.
Take your finger off and examine the chip carefully. Are you happy with its location? If not, tip the circuit board sideways and nudge the leg gently with the soldering iron, melting the solder and allowing the chip to fall off. Start over.
If the joint is good but the placement of the rest of the legs isn't perfect, you can nudge the chip with your finger into a better position without the necessity of disturbing the first joint.
Solder the opposite corner and examine again.
If you are happy, solder each remaining pin individually, a second or two per pin.
With a magnifying glass, examine the legs for bridges, which would cause a short-circuit. If you’ve been careful, your flatmount should be properly soldered. If you have a bridge, carefully heat the area and shake the excess solder off, being careful not to shake molten solder someplace worse! I usually smack the edge of the circuit board sharply on a table top to shake off excess solder.
Jack had never seen me in building electronics before. I’d built a radio-controlled model airplane to take photographs of archaeological sites when he was a toddler but I did all of the construction in the archaeology lab while he was in daycare. As far as he was concerned, I might as well have bought it. At HOPE, he was surprised to see me completely absorbed in building - either building my own toys, teaching others to build their own things, or building for them. He commented that he’s never seen me “geeked out” before. Indeed, he sometimes had trouble getting me to leave for meals! I’d forgotten what an integral part of my life electronics used to be. I hadn’t known how much I missed it and was thrilled to spend a weekend with like-minded people. Radio Shack, here I come!
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Looking for stray bits of a little girl; CSI isn't real life
I wrote the following about four years ago. I still shed tears every time I remember Sarah. Her tragically short life and the mystery of her death will remain with me for the rest of my life.
I am an anthropologist and archaeologist. My master’s project used geophysics to try to figure out what was underground without digging. A related use for archeological geophysics is the search for hidden graves. After I gave a talk at Massachusetts OCME, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, about the use of geophysics, my friend (the new forensic anthropologist) called to ask for my help.
Nine year old Sarah Pryor disappeared on October 9, 1985, while walking in her suburban Boston neighborhood. In 1995, a dog-walker found a peculiar-looking bone fragment in the woods. The fragment had lain, like a small bowl, near a path in a secluded section of woods in neighboring town. The man had seen the bone numerous times before he wondered if it might be a part of a person and called the police. The bone was part of a human skull. A search turned up a second fragment near the first piece; the two pieces fit together. The coroner determined that the bits of bone belonged to an adult, but could not identify the person. The bones were relegated to a closet for almost two years.
The newly hired forensic anthropologist at OCME was determined to identify all of the old cases. She examined the skull fragments and knew that they belonged to a child, not an adult. The only missing child from the area was Sarah. New techniques for identification had developed since their discovery; mitochondrial DNA sequencing could determine maternal descent. The bones were sent off for testing along with a sample of Sarah’s mother’s blood. Months later, the results came back. It said, with 99.99% certainty, that the bones were Sarah, the long-missing little girl.
At the time of the initial find, a search had been undertaken by the police. Now that Sarah had been identified, everyone wanted to find the rest of her remains. With more remains, a cause of death might be determined or even some clues as to her disappearance - there wasn’t enough information to know whether or not she had been kidnaped or had died by mishap, although everyone had suspicions. After all, how else had her skull turned up, miles from where she had last been seen alive, broken to pieces?
I met the forensic anthropologist and the officers who had made the initial search. We systematically walked all over the small patch of woods, through which we could hear traffic on all sides. The vehicles were invisible to us despite the autumn-denuded trees. I’ve never lived in either a city or in true suburbs; it was very odd to be surrounded by the sounds of busy civilization while completely hidden from its sight. I had always believed that suburbs consisted of endless subdivisions and row upon row of tract houses. From the thick woods, we might have been in the deepest countryside, except for the sounds of busy suburbia surrounding us.
The dog-walker also met us and showed us the exact spot where he had found the piece of bone, years earlier. He was still very distressed over having seen it repeatedly without recognizing it for what it was. We scuffed through the fallen leaves, looking for a possible grave site. The soils in the woods were very thin; bedrock was very close to the surface in most of these woods. It tore at my heart to know that I couldn’t help; geophysical surveys are pointless when bedrock is so shallow. A grave couldn’t have been deeper than a foot or two and our close inspection of the ground’s surface would discover such a grave. There was none.
A small swamp might possibly have hidden a grave. Geophysics will not work under water. If her body had been secreted in the swamp, we probably would not find any remains, as they could have completely decayed; even bone will dissolve in swamps.
The only satisfaction that we had was the knowledge that Sarah’s mother had been able to have her child declared dead. There was no chance for her to still be alive, somewhere, possibly suffering through years of abuse. The pieces that had been recovered were from areas where the loss of bone was incompatible with life. From the bleaching the sun had done to the exposed bones while they lay on the ground, we could definitively say that the child had been dead for about ten years before the pieces of her were found - she hadn’t been kept alive, perhaps being tortured or abused, for any great length of time. We could only hope that she died quickly. Her mother was able to touch the remains and say good-bye to her child. Local children, many of whom were born long after Sarah disappeared, attended her funeral. Her mom dedicated a new playground in Sarah’s memory. And life goes on in Boston’s suburbs.
If this was CSI, we would have found the grave. They always find the body. Eventually, they always get the bad guy on TV, although sometimes it takes a couple of seasons. We weren’t on TV. We never found the rest of Sarah, discovered who killed her, or even determined the cause of her death. We could say that her skull was fractured around the time of death, which occurred around the time of her disappearance. That’s it. We suspected that a particular child molester, in jail in another state after the kidnap/murder of another child, was responsible. He had been in the area at the time of the Sarah’s disappearance but he never confessed. We couldn’t prove anything.
I’ll always remember Sarah. It’s been over ten years since I took that disturbing walk in the woods, but sometimes, I hug my son, even though he’s sixteen and objects to parental hugs, just because I’m thinking about Sarah. I read that Sarah’s mother wanted everyone to hug their children in Sarah’s memory; I can do that much for her. I wish I had been able find more of Sarah, or to be a part of getting justice for her and for her mother. Real life rarely duplicates fiction.
I am an anthropologist and archaeologist. My master’s project used geophysics to try to figure out what was underground without digging. A related use for archeological geophysics is the search for hidden graves. After I gave a talk at Massachusetts OCME, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, about the use of geophysics, my friend (the new forensic anthropologist) called to ask for my help.
Nine year old Sarah Pryor disappeared on October 9, 1985, while walking in her suburban Boston neighborhood. In 1995, a dog-walker found a peculiar-looking bone fragment in the woods. The fragment had lain, like a small bowl, near a path in a secluded section of woods in neighboring town. The man had seen the bone numerous times before he wondered if it might be a part of a person and called the police. The bone was part of a human skull. A search turned up a second fragment near the first piece; the two pieces fit together. The coroner determined that the bits of bone belonged to an adult, but could not identify the person. The bones were relegated to a closet for almost two years.
The newly hired forensic anthropologist at OCME was determined to identify all of the old cases. She examined the skull fragments and knew that they belonged to a child, not an adult. The only missing child from the area was Sarah. New techniques for identification had developed since their discovery; mitochondrial DNA sequencing could determine maternal descent. The bones were sent off for testing along with a sample of Sarah’s mother’s blood. Months later, the results came back. It said, with 99.99% certainty, that the bones were Sarah, the long-missing little girl.
At the time of the initial find, a search had been undertaken by the police. Now that Sarah had been identified, everyone wanted to find the rest of her remains. With more remains, a cause of death might be determined or even some clues as to her disappearance - there wasn’t enough information to know whether or not she had been kidnaped or had died by mishap, although everyone had suspicions. After all, how else had her skull turned up, miles from where she had last been seen alive, broken to pieces?
I met the forensic anthropologist and the officers who had made the initial search. We systematically walked all over the small patch of woods, through which we could hear traffic on all sides. The vehicles were invisible to us despite the autumn-denuded trees. I’ve never lived in either a city or in true suburbs; it was very odd to be surrounded by the sounds of busy civilization while completely hidden from its sight. I had always believed that suburbs consisted of endless subdivisions and row upon row of tract houses. From the thick woods, we might have been in the deepest countryside, except for the sounds of busy suburbia surrounding us.
The dog-walker also met us and showed us the exact spot where he had found the piece of bone, years earlier. He was still very distressed over having seen it repeatedly without recognizing it for what it was. We scuffed through the fallen leaves, looking for a possible grave site. The soils in the woods were very thin; bedrock was very close to the surface in most of these woods. It tore at my heart to know that I couldn’t help; geophysical surveys are pointless when bedrock is so shallow. A grave couldn’t have been deeper than a foot or two and our close inspection of the ground’s surface would discover such a grave. There was none.
A small swamp might possibly have hidden a grave. Geophysics will not work under water. If her body had been secreted in the swamp, we probably would not find any remains, as they could have completely decayed; even bone will dissolve in swamps.
The only satisfaction that we had was the knowledge that Sarah’s mother had been able to have her child declared dead. There was no chance for her to still be alive, somewhere, possibly suffering through years of abuse. The pieces that had been recovered were from areas where the loss of bone was incompatible with life. From the bleaching the sun had done to the exposed bones while they lay on the ground, we could definitively say that the child had been dead for about ten years before the pieces of her were found - she hadn’t been kept alive, perhaps being tortured or abused, for any great length of time. We could only hope that she died quickly. Her mother was able to touch the remains and say good-bye to her child. Local children, many of whom were born long after Sarah disappeared, attended her funeral. Her mom dedicated a new playground in Sarah’s memory. And life goes on in Boston’s suburbs.
If this was CSI, we would have found the grave. They always find the body. Eventually, they always get the bad guy on TV, although sometimes it takes a couple of seasons. We weren’t on TV. We never found the rest of Sarah, discovered who killed her, or even determined the cause of her death. We could say that her skull was fractured around the time of death, which occurred around the time of her disappearance. That’s it. We suspected that a particular child molester, in jail in another state after the kidnap/murder of another child, was responsible. He had been in the area at the time of the Sarah’s disappearance but he never confessed. We couldn’t prove anything.
I’ll always remember Sarah. It’s been over ten years since I took that disturbing walk in the woods, but sometimes, I hug my son, even though he’s sixteen and objects to parental hugs, just because I’m thinking about Sarah. I read that Sarah’s mother wanted everyone to hug their children in Sarah’s memory; I can do that much for her. I wish I had been able find more of Sarah, or to be a part of getting justice for her and for her mother. Real life rarely duplicates fiction.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Why did I title this blog, "No longer hiding in the attic"?
It has to do with my childhood. My parents had what I politely call a tempestuous relationship. My dad was both a loving parent and a violent monster with a vicious temper. He didn’t require alcohol for the monster to emerge, but alcohol had the monster knocking on the cage-door. And my mom often couldn’t prevent herself from opening the cage. It was the 1960s; wife-beating was socially acceptable, or at least, ignored by law enforcement. My parents fought over how much time (and money) my father spent at the bar at the American Legion, over my father’s infidelities, and over my mother’s inability to accept his behavior. As an adult, I can’t understand why they constantly egged each other on to greater and greater excesses while fighting. When they weren’t actively fighting, they were often quite loving to each other and to us children.
I was the sickly youngest child with a heart condition that prevented me from running or participating in typical child’s play; we had no neighbors with children, either. I taught myself to read and spent much of my time doing this (or just day-dreaming) in various nooks and crannies inside the house and around our spacious yard. I had hiding spots everywhere: behind two racks of clothing in the closet I shared with my sister; in various trees all over the yard; inside the woodbox in the living room; and in a fort that I had built for myself in an attic.
Our house had a number of attics; every upstairs bedroom had at least one. This attic was my favorite hideout. It had no windows and it was roastingly hot during the summer. Its tiny door was inside a small closet, but it extended over thirty feet long by about twenty feet wide. A bare bulb illuminated only a small portion of the space. It had no floor, but my father had stored extra wood from building the house and I was careful to spread some to span the joists. An old mattress served as a lounge while I read. I brought up Cokes or water to drink, and sometimes stayed hidden all day. I felt like I was literally inside “The Magician’s Nephew,” one of a series of children’s books by C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors.
I also had other, less formal hiding spaces, under and behind various pieces of furniture and behind the floor-length curtains in the living room. Inside my little fortresses, I often couldn’t hear the sounds of everyday life. Whenever my parents started to argue, I would flee to the closest hiding space, shut my eyes, and clutch my ears to block out the sounds. My parent’s violence terrified me. One warm spring day, I couldn’t escape.
I had been in the living room, lying on a sofa, reading, when I had to get up to get a drink. As I crossed through the front entry, I heard another argument erupting in the kitchen. I pulled the heavy front door shut as I slid into the tiny space between the front door and the screen door. Neither door quite shut as, although I was a skinny child, I was a bit more than three inches thick, the total space available between the doors. I was forced to witness, through the heavy door, a vicious argument as my parents moved into the front entryway. Once again, I heard my father strike my mother, the slapping sound echoing as a sharp crack, a not-uncommon occurrence. I froze, unable to escape without their noticing the screen door’s movement through the high windows of the front door.
Suddenly, in response to something that my father said about “not in front of the children”, my mother ripped the front door open and screamed that it was too late for that. My mother must have witnessed me slipping out the door, noticed that the screen door remained ajar, and surmised my hiding place.
Exposed, I burst into tears, fled upstairs without looking at either of them, and dove into the closet in my shared bedroom, pushing past my older sister’s clothing that hung on the high front rack, past my own smaller clothes that hung on the lower rear rack. I flung myself against the sloping wall at the very back of the closet, behind all of the clothes, completely hidden except to someone who was willing to kneel, bending even lower, and move the two sets of dresses. I cradled my head in my arms and cried for hours. I wanted my parents to stop fighting and for my father to stop hitting my mother.
My father soon left the house and my mother came in search of me. I didn’t respond, I continued to cry with hands over my face, my whole body turned towards the wall. I could not speak. Eventually, my sister coaxed me out of the closet (I didn’t want to emerge but I was afraid of wetting myself). I went to bed early rather than face my mother over dinner. I blamed both of them for the fights; I couldn’t help thinking that other kids probably didn’t live the way we did, with parents who seemed to hate each other in front of us but behaving properly in front of visitors. I didn’t know if other families acted like mine; my parents certainly didn’t act like the parents I read about or saw on television sitcoms, but maybe that was their trick for me, a visitor.
My sister brought me a snack to make up for my missed meal; she was accustomed to acting as a surrogate parent when our real parents forgot themselves in the passion of battle. Despite her kindness, I often felt too sick to my stomach to eat during my childhood. I remained little more than skin and bones until adolescence.
The attic was a safe place, but a place that always keeps its inhabitants safe from outsiders is a jail or a cage. I started to emerge from my cage years ago and I continue to work on not retreating back into it. I can’t hide in the attic any longer.
I was the sickly youngest child with a heart condition that prevented me from running or participating in typical child’s play; we had no neighbors with children, either. I taught myself to read and spent much of my time doing this (or just day-dreaming) in various nooks and crannies inside the house and around our spacious yard. I had hiding spots everywhere: behind two racks of clothing in the closet I shared with my sister; in various trees all over the yard; inside the woodbox in the living room; and in a fort that I had built for myself in an attic.
Our house had a number of attics; every upstairs bedroom had at least one. This attic was my favorite hideout. It had no windows and it was roastingly hot during the summer. Its tiny door was inside a small closet, but it extended over thirty feet long by about twenty feet wide. A bare bulb illuminated only a small portion of the space. It had no floor, but my father had stored extra wood from building the house and I was careful to spread some to span the joists. An old mattress served as a lounge while I read. I brought up Cokes or water to drink, and sometimes stayed hidden all day. I felt like I was literally inside “The Magician’s Nephew,” one of a series of children’s books by C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors.
I also had other, less formal hiding spaces, under and behind various pieces of furniture and behind the floor-length curtains in the living room. Inside my little fortresses, I often couldn’t hear the sounds of everyday life. Whenever my parents started to argue, I would flee to the closest hiding space, shut my eyes, and clutch my ears to block out the sounds. My parent’s violence terrified me. One warm spring day, I couldn’t escape.
I had been in the living room, lying on a sofa, reading, when I had to get up to get a drink. As I crossed through the front entry, I heard another argument erupting in the kitchen. I pulled the heavy front door shut as I slid into the tiny space between the front door and the screen door. Neither door quite shut as, although I was a skinny child, I was a bit more than three inches thick, the total space available between the doors. I was forced to witness, through the heavy door, a vicious argument as my parents moved into the front entryway. Once again, I heard my father strike my mother, the slapping sound echoing as a sharp crack, a not-uncommon occurrence. I froze, unable to escape without their noticing the screen door’s movement through the high windows of the front door.
Suddenly, in response to something that my father said about “not in front of the children”, my mother ripped the front door open and screamed that it was too late for that. My mother must have witnessed me slipping out the door, noticed that the screen door remained ajar, and surmised my hiding place.
Exposed, I burst into tears, fled upstairs without looking at either of them, and dove into the closet in my shared bedroom, pushing past my older sister’s clothing that hung on the high front rack, past my own smaller clothes that hung on the lower rear rack. I flung myself against the sloping wall at the very back of the closet, behind all of the clothes, completely hidden except to someone who was willing to kneel, bending even lower, and move the two sets of dresses. I cradled my head in my arms and cried for hours. I wanted my parents to stop fighting and for my father to stop hitting my mother.
My father soon left the house and my mother came in search of me. I didn’t respond, I continued to cry with hands over my face, my whole body turned towards the wall. I could not speak. Eventually, my sister coaxed me out of the closet (I didn’t want to emerge but I was afraid of wetting myself). I went to bed early rather than face my mother over dinner. I blamed both of them for the fights; I couldn’t help thinking that other kids probably didn’t live the way we did, with parents who seemed to hate each other in front of us but behaving properly in front of visitors. I didn’t know if other families acted like mine; my parents certainly didn’t act like the parents I read about or saw on television sitcoms, but maybe that was their trick for me, a visitor.
My sister brought me a snack to make up for my missed meal; she was accustomed to acting as a surrogate parent when our real parents forgot themselves in the passion of battle. Despite her kindness, I often felt too sick to my stomach to eat during my childhood. I remained little more than skin and bones until adolescence.
The attic was a safe place, but a place that always keeps its inhabitants safe from outsiders is a jail or a cage. I started to emerge from my cage years ago and I continue to work on not retreating back into it. I can’t hide in the attic any longer.
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