Gabi is a TV commentator -- Photo diary of baby-sitters: 3

While baby sitting I had to forsake my baseball and thankfully I was spared by the agony of Pirates being swept by Milwaukee Brewers while I was away. Pirates shouldn’t leave home at all; they are being welcomed wherever they go; it was the 13 straight losses on the road at Wrigley Field (Chicago) last night.

Ben picked all the TV programs or tapes and they watched attentively; Gaby would give me her commentary from time to time, often revealing the action or excitement to come.

含飴弄孫 -- Photo diary of baby-sitters: 1

We’re invited to be the baby sitters for Ben & Gabi for 3 ½ days, dubbed as my birthday gift—the best one ever. I’ll post some photos here to document our work and also to let the parents know what they have missed.


The Chocolate Covered Fruits from Harry & David come with different flavor (vanilla, blue berry, and strawberry) with various sizes. Ben and Gabi had to cover their eyes to hunt for one at a time, making it more fun to get their favorite one. Gabi was apparently pleased with what she got.

WeiChen Tsai 真是一個幸福快樂的阿公!

陳英毅 含飴弄孫，其樂無窮！

Jer-Yuan Tsai 說得好, “飴” (sweet) is what we used to reach their hearts by way of mouths.

The last canna of summer

This is the last canna, alone next to the front porch of our house.

'Tis the last canon of summer

Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred, . . . . . (borrowing from Thomas Moore)

The last canon of summer 

The last canon of summer

 

 

Dining out at MacDonald -- Photo diary of baby-sitters: 2

We took Ben & Gabi out for shopping or dining everyday; They both chose their own dress/clothes with obviously different styles and tastes; you can see Gabi dressed as if she were going to a fancy restaurant—their favorite MacDonald. I had to finish Ben’s cheeseburger, but he asked and got his second chocolate milk and helped finishing Gabi’s 10-piece MacNuggets.


I brought a MacDonald apron for Gabi, she smiled, refusing to put it on saying "I am not a baby."

Noiseless noise in our garden in the deep of night

Emily Dickinson said “Flowers . . . had tongue” and that is why we heard the noiseless noise in our garden during the night. We tiptoed into the garden lest we would disturb their conversation. These photos let you take a glance (love is only a glance away) in our garden in the deep of the night.

Do you see the lone and lonely night street light?

Linda Elliott Mosier We laugh at our "noisy noise" in our gardens at night...it's the deer eating out of the bird feeders.

Nectar of flower is what butterfly goes after

It may seem the bright showy flowers attract butterfly; but in the end it is the nectar of the flower they are going after. The colorful aerial ballet is the happy dance before feasting on the nectar. This is another Emily Dickinson’s poem about butterfly and bee was also mentioned.

The pedigree of Honey
Does not concern the Bee,
Nor lineage of Ecstasy
Delay the Butterfly
On spangled journeys to the peak
Of some perceiveless thing –
The right way to Tripol.A more essential thing.

The Pedigree of Honey
Does not concern the Bee –
A Clover, any time, to him,
Is Aristocracy –

Butterfly in Emily Dickinson’s garden and in ours

A gardener like Emily Dickinson worked alongside with bees and butterflies all the time, it shouldn’t be a surprise that her poems abound with bees and butterflies.


I am curious about her using ‘Chrysoprase’ (a gem stone) since the pupa of a butterfly is also called ‘chrysalis’. I am not aware that butterfly is attracted to buttercup, but I also read butterfly and buttercup together in one other poem. A New England Town is of course Amherst, Massachusetts.

The Butterfly's Assumption Gown
In Chrysoprase Apartments hung
This afternoon put on –


How condescending to descent
And be of Buttercups teh friend
In a New England Town –

In praise of zinnia

No matter what colors the zinnias are endowed; they are all bright and brilliant or even arrogant, treating the other less flashy and gaudy flowers with contempt. Like Emily Dickinson said, “Flowers had . . . tongue.” They must also have personality.


Flowers with delicate and fragile beauty often is ephemeral; Nature makes an exception for zinnia which can tolerate heat, drought, or even poor soil and they live a happy and flourishing life throughout the summer.  I am hoping they can outlive the summer.

We have to expand our garden next season, why?

These photos show why we have to expand our garden next season. The new garden will be more than double the current size. Joy was home in late July, and brainstormed to suggest that we moved the garden to be adjacent to our house and we have since taken up that idea.

In the undated photo (taken in late May or early June) you can see the emerging green beans, shy, hesitating, and not sure; the path was not constructed yet.


The photos taken from 6/13 to 8/21, documenting the vigorous growth of green beans and has since completely covered the walking path. The zinnia, geranium, and begonia all struggled to grow taller lest they would be overshadowed into oblivion.

The green beans have completely covered the path.

Early breakfast for bumble bees and wasps in our garden

Luffa flowers bloom in the morning, making them ideal breakfast for the bumble bees and wasps. There are nearly (or at least looks like) hundreds of bees and wasps having early breakfast in our garden.

One photo shows two bees eating together in the same luffa flower and that is unusual; it is too close for comfort. If two bees land on the same flower, either one will leave without a fight; with so many flowers available, there is no need to fight for a meal.


Their table manner is more or less the same, 埋頭苦吃 (burying the head and eat attentively and continuously.

My gardening leads me to Emily Dickinson

My non-medical reading interest changes as sure as the seasons, but much less regular or predictable. T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Bertrand Russell kept me occupied for a while and now Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville have my attention. My gardening led me to Emily Dickinson, and it was zinnia that brought me to her. I am reading Emily's letters; one cannot write good verse (poem) unless one is well versed in prose.

When Roses cease to bloom, Sir,
And violets are done —
(This may be less well known than Thomas Moore's "The last rose of summer", but is as good)

When the garden season is done;
Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville will not be gone —

Emily Dickinson read Shakespeare and thought "Why is any other book needed?" it is of interest to learn that Virginia Woolf also said "How could they go on with poetic plays after Shakespeare?" Like minds think alike.

This 2015 garden photo was later added to prove zinnias are here to stay as is Emily Dickinson

A glorious record-setting day for Rachel Rohanna in golf

A glorious record-setting day for Rachel Rohanna—the great grand-daughter of Mrs. Greenlee, my neighbor—at the U.S. Women’s Amateur Golf Championship at the 6,559-yard Charlotte Country Club in Charlotte, North Carolina on August 9. The photos are from August 20 issue of Golfweek and August 10 Observer-Reporter.

Her 7 under 65 in stroke play qualifying for U.S. Women’s Amateur broke the U.S. Amateur scoring record of 66 set by Kellee Booth in 1998 and was also the best score in the 110 years history of U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship, and bear with me for one more record; this was also the best score for Charlotte Country Club in its entire history; men or women, amateur or professional.

Rachel will be a sophomore at Ohio Sate this fall. Her first and best golf coach is her grandfather, Mr. Dick Schwartz, a former PGA Tour player, and her grandmother, Roseann Schwartz, is the head golf coach at Youngstown State; so is it a nature or nurture? Both, no doubt! The proud parents are Debbi and Tom, and the even more proud grandparents are Janet and Kay Rohanna. And from what we heard, Rachel’s younger sister, Emily, is catching her up, not far away at all.

While Rachel was making news and breaking record at U.S. Women’s Amateur, Robert Rohanna also won the 94th Pennsylvania Open Championship title and Applebrook Golf Club and earned $10,000 for the victory. All in the family! Both Rachel and Robert played and practiced at Rohanna Golf course at Waynesburg, PA.

(click the photo to enlarge it)

My brother is an avid and accomplished (or at least what he claimed) golf player; he always lamented that I am not playing golf when the golf course is just a few minutes drive away. Katy did take him to play at Rohanna golf course once he visited us some years ago.

Rachel had nine birdies in her record-setting round of 65. The other two medalists in the stroke play, Jennifer Johnson and Jaclyn Sweeney have decided to turn pro whereas Rachel will return to Ohio State; but to us Rachel is a pro, indeed; our hats off for the most famous daughter of Waynesburg, PA.

The great ‘soup vs. spark’ debate: the origin of modern psychiatric & neuropharmacology

The students of neuroscience are familiar with the great 'spark vs. soup' debate in 1930s. We now know the neurons (nerve cells) communicate via synapses, which depend on a chemical substance called neurotransmitter to pass along the messages. This theory was established by Henry Dale and Otto Loewi; it was called 'soup' camp for there was a chemical molecule involved. John Eccles theorized the message transmission between neurons got to be an electrical phenomenon, thus called 'spark' camp.

Bernard Katz fled Hitler's Germany to England in 1935 and witnessed a 'stand-up fight' between John Eccles and Henry Dale and the chairman (at University College at London) "acting as a most uncomfortable and reluctant referee." Of course, we now know the sparkers were in the wrong.

The experimental results were actually the same in both camps; it is the different interpretation and theory that led to the radically different conclusions. How could it be so? Only scientists, like Miao Chih (妙智), can fully understand and appreciate it.

This reminds me of the story about Max Delbruck who would lock up the Lab on Fridays so his scientist researchers could stay away from the Lab and could 'think' and interpret the experimental results.

John Eccles later discovered synaptic inhibition in the spinal cord. The GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is the main inhibitory transmitter in brain. Many tranquilizers and general anesthetics bind to GABA receptors, producing a calming effect by enhancing the receptors' inhibitory function. The drug-made equanimity that we can enjoy should be credited to John Eccles who was once so wrong in the soup vs. spark debate. He went on to receive his Nobel glory in 1963, nearly 30 years after Henry Dale and Otto Loewi (the soupers) got theirs in 1935.

The story tells the great scientists are still great even when they are in the wrong and I cannot emphasize enough that this is the origin of modern psychiatric and neuropharmacology.

Double pleasure in gardening—a work of the body and the mind

You may or may not know it that this is the first year I plunge into gardening although Katy has been an old hand with a green thumb. Seeing the blooming flowers, Katy marvels at their beauty and glory and feels sorry for me that I cannot appreciate them as much as she does; nothing is further from the truth. Paraphrasing or quoting Richard Feynman, “Although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as she is, I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. But, at the same time, I see much more in the flower than she does. I can imagine the cells inside, which also have a beauty. . .”

Why do scientists love science? I find the answers in Richard Feynman. We appreciate and enjoy things beautiful and he found the beauty in science, which simply put, is to understand how Nature works.

summer lush

Not only can I see the strikingly bright colors of zinnia or geranium, I also marvel at the colorful aerial ballet of the butterflies—a dancing ritual before pollinating mission or nectar feasting. I am curious why Geranium ‘Rozanne’ and Butterfly bush attract butterfly more than others. Like Feynman I wonder “The fact that the colors in the flower have evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; that means insect can see the colors. That adds a question: does this aesthetic sense we have also exist in lower forms of life? There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.”

Melvin Calvin

Whenever I see how green was my garden, I see the photosynthesis; I see how carbon dioxide is fixed (reduced) to make glucose (sugar); I see how Melvin Calvin figured it out in U.C. Berkeley, unraveling the secret of the first and the most important chemical process of life; I see how Krebs cycle is the reverse of Calvin cycle (Is this an ingenious design of God or He was simply too lazy to design a different and unrelated process?) in that a series of oxidation of glucose is to make energy to sustain us.

This is how I have double pleasure working in the garden; it is a work of the body and the mind.

Food for thought and food for art?

The harvest we had today didn't amount to anything, but enough variety for Katy to make a clown, reflecting our lighthearted mood, cultivated from gardening; we cultivate not only veggies and flowers, but also a pleasing sentiment reading the work of the likes of Emily Dickinson, Robert Burns, and Henry David Thoreau.

Joy, Mrs. Eichenlaub's daughter, called and said she loves food for art and that was exactly what Katy did, and to me it is food for thought.

The ideal bookshelf?

The depth of my ideal bookshelf is twice as deep as the one we normally find in the store. In addition to the space to line the books, one needs spare space to litter with the books being actively read. I recently converted a metal shelf that Joy had in her dorm in her undergraduate days; it suits my need just fine. The photos tell the difference.  (may click the photo to enlarge it)   

Janice reads one book at a time; just like Morgan Stanley’s motto, “one customer at a time”.  I have a bad habit of reading several books at a given period of time, although I only read one novel at a time; presently Melville’s Moby-Dick.

Our fellow Pittsburgher—Edwin Stanton

Today (August 12) in 1867 (two years after Lincoln's passing), President Andrew Johnson (Lincoln's vice President) defied Congress and suspended Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that led to Johnson's impeachment.

As a proud Pittsburgher, I have to say a thing or two about Edwin Stanton who was also a Pittsburgher.  Stanton first met Lincoln in a Cincinnati courtroom where they both represented a railroad company.  Seeing Lincoln wearing heavy boots, loose clothes, farmer-looking, Stanton reportedly said , "Where did that long-armed baboon come from?"

Often referring Lincoln as the 'original gorilla' refusing to deal with him as an equal initially, the four war years working under Lincoln absolutely and totally converted Stanton who uttered "Now he belongs to the age." moment after Lincoln succumbed to the Booth's bullet.

A deep friendship grew out of mutual respect and appreciation between Lincoln and Stanton; their families spent the summers together at the Soldier's Home (at Silver Spring area)—Lincoln's retreat, equivalent to Camp David in modern days.

A designed harvest (豐收)

Have you seen the 2 sister chromatids (Italian squash) of a chromosome?

I put what we harvested in a designed pattern on August 6; Katy just had to outdo me today (August 10). We got hot and not-so-hot peppers on August 7. We later learned that this is indeed red pepper, not green one; we harvested a bit early.

Have you noticed (photo, right) that the two Italian squashes (each is a sister chromatid) make a good pair of chromosomes?

Splendor in the Grass (天涯何處無芳草)

Turner Classic Movies had Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty’s Splendor in the Grass tonight. The movie title is taken from the lines of William Wordsworth’s poem.

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind. . . . .

The Chinese name of the movie (天涯何處無芳草) matched or even outdid the original. It also came from a poem of Su Tungpo (蘇東坡)—the 11th century poet; one of the greatest poets in Chinese literary history.

花褪殘紅青杏小，

燕子飛時，綠水人家繞；

枝上柳綿吹又少，

天涯何處無芳草？

牆裡鞦韆牆外道，

牆外行人，牆裡佳人笑；

笑漸不聞聲漸悄，

多情卻被無情惱

---蘇東坡 蝶戀花---

(The following is my cousin, 陳英毅 , an ophthalmologist in Taiwan, commented on my Facebook page; quite a compliment; very kind of him.)

陳英毅 飽讀詩書，學貫中西，佩服！

Jer-Yuan Tsai; "飽讀詩書，學貫中西，佩服!"; 見笑, 見笑, 雖讀了不少, 但很多也都是點到而已. I like Natalie Wood. Her mysterious and tragic death about 20 years ago still puzzles many to this day; the yacht from which she fell off and drowned bore the name of “Splendor”.

美麗的絲瓜花跟 Italian squash 花不互相爭豔

Our vegetables live in peace and do not compete for attraction against each other, 不互相爭豔, 不爭風吃醋; the luffa flower (菜瓜) blossoms in the morning whereas the Italian squash does in the evening. Photos shown are blooming luffa flowers.

爭風吃醋 (“compete the wind and eat the vinegar”—this is the peril of translating Chinese idioms—this describes the jealous competition among the lovers.

Thoreau’s Azalea (杜鵑花) and ours

I posted “Azalea in full bloom in the front yard” (杜鵑花開) in early May. Thoreau had an entry in his Journal on May 31 1853,

Blooming azalea in glory in our front yard in May

“We went on down the brook,—Melvin and his dog, —and crossed the river in his boat, and he conducted me to where the Azalea nudiflora grew, —it was a little past its prime, perhaps, (recall our Azalea was in full bloom in early May) . . ."

“Azalea nudiflora, . . . It is a conspicuously beautiful flowering shrub, with the sweet fragrance of the common swamp-pink, but the flowers are larger and, in this case, a fine lively rosy pink, not so clammy as the other. . . ."

It was said Thoreau was a botanist.

Linda Elliott Mosier All of the flowers seemed exceptionally beautiful this year and I think it must have been due to the "good" hard freeze and lots of snow cover we had last winter. Your azalea was gorgeous.

Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” was published today in 1854

Today (August 9) in 1854 Henry David Thoreau’s Walden was published. I never read Walden, but I have read some of his “Journal” (diary) including the time when he lived near the Walden Pond for 2 years 2 months and 2 days (was it also 2 hours?). He built a cabin himself on Emerson’s land (Was he Ralph Waldo Emerson? I doubted it). The entry on that day was simply “Aug. 9 Wednesday.—To Boston. Walden published. Elder-berries. Waxwork yellowing."

Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, Melville’s Moby-Dick (the book that I am reading) in 1851, Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in 1855. What more can one expect?

Thoreau once had to work as a surveyor (that was also George Washington’s profession) to make a living. He made a long trip to survey in New Jersey in 1856 and met with Whitman, who gave him an inscribed copy of Leaves of Grasses.

Hawthorne moved to Concord in 1842 and they became friends.

Mala Iyer one of my favorite books. i read it when i want to slow down my frantic pace of life and live, vivaciously, a life that is in synchronicity with the earth and the seasons.

Linda Elliott Mosier You inspired me to re-read it Dr. Tsai. Put it on my Kindle this evening. Will be great for our drive back to PA. Thank you. (Oh, and as a bonus, it was in the Amazon Kindle 'free' selections this week. How lucky was that?)

Jer-Yuan Tsai ‎>>that is in synchronicity with the earth and the seasons.<< One can almost always tell the season, if not the month, of his journal entry without reading the date; some examples: “What is the earliest sign of spring? . . .”—March 7 “Are no...t the flowers which appear earliest in the spring the most primitive and simplest?”—April 28
“The air is full of the odor of apple blossoms”—May 26
“The lupine is now in its glory.”—June 5
“How rapidly new flowers unfold! as if Nature would get through her work too soon.”—June 15
“The air is full of falling leaves. The streets are strewn with elm leaves. . . the butternut is perhaps the first on the street to lose its leaves. Rain, more than wind, makes the leaves fall.”—Oct. 10
“Perhaps the warmest day yet. True Indian summer.”—Dec. 7
“Cold, with blustering winds drifting the snow. Yesterday the hounds were heard. It was a hunter’s day. All tracks were fresh, the snow deep and light.”—Jan. 16

Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth (大地) is worth reading

How have I missed Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth” (大地) for so many decades? It is a from-rags-to-riches story of Wang Lung. Janice also read it this year or last; I can relate it much more than she does. Pearl Buck’s formative years were spent in China; she spoke Chinese before she learned English. Although I grew up in Taiwan, my intellectual growth took place in the States.

All her childhood friends were the children of the peasants in the rural China around the turn of the last century. Jo and Sean have seen my childhood buddy and marvelled at his skill of chewing and spitting 檳榔 when we last visited the village (下潭) in which I grew up. (We moved to 朴子 or more affectionately, 樸仔下, during my fifth grade; I thought we moved to a big city then.)

The book depicts the ordinary Chinese people faithfully in her times; no attempt was made to gloss or beautify its characters. The unflattered stories of the moral corrupt of the rich, the despair of the poor, the lawlessness and banditry of the society irritated the Chinese government and the intelligentsia alike. The longing for a son and contempt to a daughter in a society repulses Janice.

Lu Xun (魯迅 of the “Story of Ah Q” fame) criticized her book saying that China should be left to the Chinese. I couldn’t have disagreed more. This book had won her a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize in Literature.

(The following is my comments in Facebook.)
 

Jer-Yuan Tsai Lin Yutang’s (林語堂) 1935 best seller, My People and My Country, was encouraged and sponsored by Pearl Buck who nominated Lin Yutang for Nobel Prize many times. The rule has it that a Nobel laureate has a right to nominate.

Jer-Yuan Tsai An article in New York Times said of Pearl Buck, “In China she is admired but not read and in America she is read but not admired.” I believe the book was once banned by Communist China.