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What is your most memorable childhood experience? My most memorable childhood experience is sitting on a hillside with my father watching the sun begin its descent beyond the horizon. I could smell sagebrush and dry dirt settling in for a cool evening. We ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I had a glass of milk; how new it tasted. What immediate family member do you closely identify with and why? The family member I closely identify with is my sister. Although we are completely different people, growing up together endowed us with similiar experiences creating a near mystical bond. In each others' presence today we understand the other's habits and world views. We can see a movie together and have similar thoughts and criticisms of it. We like to eat the same foods, and enjoy the company of the same people. What character traits do you admire in an individual? The drive to understand the world and oneself in more acute ways and the discipline to succeed at the undertaking are character traits I admire in individuals. Such traits are found in humans like Franz Schubert, one of the most prolific composers in history, writing over six hundred songs plus ten symphonies, six masses and operas. His brilliance and discipline expressed in some of the most lovely music of the period. Or Caleb Cushing, the early nineteenth-century American politician who served as the Congress' most stunning orator (in John Quincy Adams' words) in the 1830s, who taught himself Chinese and Manchu and negotiated the first US treaty with China, and then headed the Justice Department as Attorney General in the 1850s. Or even our contemporary Lance Armstrong, the cyclist who has come to a profound understanding of himself to consistently perform at the highest levels of physical activity, and who possesses the discipline to train for and win the hardest sporting event in the world. What is the funniest thing ever to happen to you? Many years ago I worked as a waiter at a restaurant in a hotel. There we entered orders through a computer system that would send the food order to the cook, the drink order to the bartender, tabulate the total and print a check. One night, with a full house, the computer system crashed throwing us into turmoil. We had become so reliant on this machine that without it we became paralyzed. The cooks didn't get the food orders, we had to run around to the bar for drinks, checks had to be computed by hand. The whole process slowed to a near standstill and customers got angry; they yelled and cursed. Us waiters ran around like mad, explaining then arguing with customers. The bartenders and cooks were at a loss of what to make and prepared anything. In the midst of this, I erupted into a hysterical fit of laughter. I went to the back and laughed myself silly. I could not stop laughing. This internal bubbling in my belly did not arise from the stress and tension to help me cope (for I have never laughed under stress). Rather, it was our--all the people then existing within the restaurant--complete absorption in the moment of our lives, taking ourselves so seriously in our jobs and meals only to be denied the ease of transaction for something so absurd as a computer glitch. It was like someone had paused the world but forgot to tell us, and onward our momentum carried us even though the reels had stopped. If time and money were not an issue, where would you travel and why? If time and money were not an issue, I would travel to Western China. Travels as far as Qinghai some years ago left me with a powerful impression of the land and culture. The high grass tundra stretching west to the voluptuous foothills of the Himalayas holds a serene beauty. The expansive blue heavens laid like a blanket around the earth below gave a timelessness to the barren land. Drunk off the cool sun I can walk for hours, for days, in the quiet of the land and be completely at peace. Furthermore, the people and culture in this part of China tells us something about the lives of people and the veracity of the human spirit. Impoverished, perhaps, but a livelihood seeped in generations of tradition of existing and living through hardship. When and if you ever have children, what would you like to pass on to them? I would like to pass on to my children a curiosity about the world and the way it works--always questioning and then searching out answers, forming hypothesis and analysis. The ability to analyze an event or situation and to form connections--not enough to state the facts, but to know why the facts are the way they are. Also, the development of a good physical heart. To cultivate and train this heart not just to pump blood efficiently through one's body, but to be able to use it to its full capacity; to be able to make it beat over two hundred times a minute in a test of one's physical and mental capabilities. | |||